Crossings Knoxville

Rather than offering rigid rules or exclusive expectations, Jesus speaks tenderly to his anxious friends, reassuring them that they already know the way to life with God because they have known him. Gospel Reading: John 14:1-14Worship Songs: Yet Not IGoodness of GodBuild My LifeTake Heart

In the fourth week of Easter, John 10 challenges our culture of scarcity and anxiety with questions about abundance. What does it mean to be completely new? How can we focus on the voice of Jesus’ teachings and ethics? Can we learn to say, “This is my life. I want for no other.”Psalm Reading: Psalm 23Gospel Reading: John 10-1-10Worship Songs: House of God ForeverAll Who are ThirstyGreat are You, LordGood Grace

Somewhere between here an Emmaus is a life of faith that includes our “had hopes” and our desperate prayers of, “God, stay with us.” Thanks to two 17th century Spanish paintings, we find out that we are not alone in this journey.Gospel Reading: Luke 24:13-35Worship Songs: God With UsChrist be all Around MePath of SorrowMystery

What happens when the ultimate disruption—the Resurrection—forces us to give up the illusion of control, especially over our own spiritual lives and the experiences of others? How do we avoid the notion that faith is a one-size-fits-all experience? What does it mean to be entrusted with a story, not to control the outcome, but to discover the unique ways the divine reaches out and meets each of us right where we are?Old Testament Reading: - Numbers 11:16-17, 24-30 Gospel Reading: - John 20:19-31Worship Songs: Rest in YouO Christ, What Can It Mean for UsYet Not I, But Through Christ in MeTeaching Song: Jesus, I Have My Doubts

While most of us have never seen someone come back to life, most of us also have never seen an orbital sunrise. But because of the pictures drawn with colored pencils and the stories handed down to us, we get to participate in a reality where things can be new every morning.Gospel Reading - Matthew 28:1-18Worship Songs - Lord, I Need You - Christ is Risen - Living HopeTeaching Song - New Every Morning (Porter's Gate)

Matthew describes Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as turmoil. How can we pay attention to the tumultuous world around us in the final week of Lent? How can we attend to our own inner turmoil? How can we avoid rushing ahead to the certainty of Resurrection?

What if the raising of Lazarus was a communal event not an individual one? How might that help us better comfort ourselves and our neighbors in times of grief?

Jesus healing of the man born blind was a miracle. But maybe the more important miracle is when Jesus went out looking for the man after the community had kicked him out of town.

What if Lent is less about 'giving up' minor vices and more about confronting the parts of ourselves we'd rather avoid? How can we opt out of dehumanizing rhetoric and identity politics? How can we quiet our judgmental minds long enough to truly know and see others, especially those we disagree with?

The season of Lent draws us into the darkness of the unknown, and asks us to move beyond what is familiar and certain. Exploring well-worn promises and questions, we are invited to enter the mysterious frontiers of life anew. What happens when we let go of our expectations and stay in the darkness long enough to emerge changed? 

Join us as we enter the season of Lent asking, “What if life is more about learning to live in the Wilderness rather than escaping it.”

Join us as we enter conversations about baptism at Crossings in this three part podcast.

Join us as we enter conversations about baptism at Crossings in this three part podcast.

Join us as we enter conversations about baptism at Crossings in this three part podcast.

What if Transfiguration Sunday is as much about our own transformation as it is about Jesus’? How do we see ourselves changing? How can we attend to our ever-evolving selves without trying to rush it or force it? What would it mean for us to see our humanity as being brought into God?

Like rings in a tree and onions and ogres and Russian nesting dolls, we as people and we as faith communities carry layers within us. Like the layer Israel built upon return from exile, and the layer Jesus added to the story of God, may we take apart layers of the nesting doll and bless the lives and years we are given.

What are we supposed to be doing with our lives? How can we focus on “everyday heroics” without becoming frozen by the vast brokenness of our world? What does it mean to live into the blessings of a reality that isn't here yet?

The second Sunday after Epiphany invites us to consider what it means to start over and how we might need to, occasionally, look at things anew. How can we honor the past, including the broken parts, and appreciate who we are becoming? How can we be attentive to the particulars so that we can add our light to the world?

How does the season of Ordinary Time and the story of Jesus’ baptism invite us to look at the world differently, through “poet’s eyes?” How might we embrace the ambiguities and confusions of life and still have a clear sense of who we are becoming?

On the 11th day of Christmas, we are invited to imagine what is coming to life in and around us in ways that are outside the traditional expectations of how and where we experience God.

In “Through the Looking-glass,” the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things before breakfast each day. Every year around Christmas, it feels like Christians are asked to do the same thing. Joseph, who we don’t often know what to do with in the story, seemed to have a similar experience.

Who are we when life doesn't turn out like we thought it would? What if the joy of Advent isn't about magically having our circumstances changed, but about transforming our experiences of the wilderness? Can we stop trying to escape, and start finding a way to notice the strange beauty of our wild, unexpected lives right here, right now?Join us as we explore John the Baptist's doubt and the wisdom of seeing the joy of the whole universe in a single grain of rice.

What makes for peace in Advent? How can we see conflict as a part of the peace process and not a threat to it? How can we be comfortable with who we are while still embracing the differences in others?

As we attempt to move from our Revelation study into Advent, we are given some of the most apocalyptic, Revelation-like words Jesus said. What does it mean to make ourselves at home as if the Kingdom of God were a reality here, now, on this earth? 

Studying alongside the lectionary means learning a new way of telling time centered on the life of Christ. For the next six months, we will study texts that we did not choose alongside one another and faith communities all over the world. We hope to pay attention to ourselves and one another as these texts are read aloud, noticing what resonates and what we feel resistance toward. 

John’s Revelation encourages the Church to endure and hold fast in a world run by dominating Empires. How do we choose to resist? How can we reveal the arbitrary nature of Empire and its limited power? What kind of Church will we choose to be in this world?

We've finally arrived at the final scene of the drama in Revelation. After the destruction and wars, dragons, and chaos, the seas are calm again and John begins drawing a picture of where the whole thing is headed.

In Revelation, John spends a lot of time contemplating God’s justice. How do we account for evil in this world? How do we want it to be dealt with? What was does the Bible discuss it? When is lament more appropriate than certainty?

What if the book of Revelation is like a song being worked on over time, that is never quite finished, but will be covered by later artists who add their own twist to the song? What would our cover of Revelation be like today based on our experiences?

The Great Whore of Babylon is an intentionally derogatory metaphor used to describe people’s attachment to empire. Revelation 17-18 are difficult to read, but communicate something important to all of our interaction with unjust political sysmtems. Namely, it asks, “If and when this empire comes crumbling own, with our faith crumble too, or is there something deeper rooting us?”

Does life, history, and the human condition have a structure of hope and progress or are they as meaningless and arbitrary as they sometimes seem? What can (or should) we do in a world devoid of justice? How can tell a better story that no longer needs seven bowls of wrath?

How can we read the book of Revelation with both a posture of skepticism and respect? How does apocalyptic literature like Revelation reveal the truth about our world and where does its binary thinking present drawbacks? How do we balance Revelation’s imagery with the whole story of God?

Revelation 12-13 introduces us to wild beasts and dragons, and also a pregnant woman with nowhere to give birth. These are familiar stories to John's original audience, and if we pay attention, are familiar stories to us. What happens when the dragons of the empire play pretend-Christian? And how do we respond?

What does it mean to reimagine the Christian witness today? How can we ensure that our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God and not a political ideology? What are we willing to sacrifice to model the peaceable ways of Jesus?

What does it mean to live faithfully in a world gone mad? As we enter the third narrative loop in Revelation, we ask: What does it look like to hold on to our center in a culture of chaos, violence, and delusion? What difference does prayer make when the world feels unchanged?

This week Chad Wright Pittman of Lake Forest Presbyterian joined us to continue our study of Revelation. Together, we asked: “How do account for the differences between what we’ve heard and what we see? How do we endure discomfort as we reminder ourselves that one day, we will experience a true sense of home?”

What and why is evil so pervasive in our world and what, if anything, does God have to do with that? Four horses, their riders, and clay seals on a scroll try to explain it in Revelation 6.

How does the book of Revelation encourage us to expand our imagination of God? How might the book of revelation show the limits of our imagination when thinking about God and heaven? How does our season of life or circumstances shape the way we imagine God?

Like Jimmy Fallon's "Friday Thank You Notes," John of Patmos interrupts Revelation with seven letters to seven different churches in various cities. These letters reveal to us the diversity of Christian thought and practice in the ancient world, and pulls us back into the big, wild, vast ecosystem of God. 

How can an ancient, symbolic, and often misunderstood book like Revelation speak directly to the chaos, injustice, and political realities of our time? What does it mean to live as citizens of God’s Kingdom while surrounded by the power and propaganda of empire? What might it look like to name and confront the deeper forces—fear, death, authoritarianism—that warp human community? How can we creatively blend Scripture’s imagery with the realities of our moment to proclaim a counter-story of hope, justice, and truth? Are we willing to put our own name to a vision of God’s Kingdom, not hiding behind heroes of the past, but speaking and acting with our own voice?

In a world obsessed with end-times predictions and cryptic codes, we want to try to read the Book of Revelation the way it was meant to be heard — not as a secret puzzle, but as an open letter of hope and imagination. This teaching series reclaims Revelation as a powerful unveiling of Jesus Christ, written to a persecuted church asking hard questions: Where is God in our suffering? How is God’s kingdom different from the violent empires of this world? Through vivid imagery and bold worship, Revelation redefines history from God’s perspective, calls out false sources of security, and dares us to live as if Jesus — not Caesar — is Lord. Join us as we explore a story not about escape, but about faithful resistance and deep hope.

Our final week of “My Most Important Question” focuses in on Jesus’s commission to be the light of the world, or the salt of the earth. What does it mean to make a difference? What is our work to do?

How do we see faith as a puzzle-solving exercise done in community? Ryan Foran asks whether the early Christians would recognize his (our) version of the faith. Bethany Long asks what it means to witness when our beliefs about the afterlife and gospel are changing.

Every year Crossings attempts to live into its name, derived from Genesis 32 and Jacob’s wrestling with God. We invite folks to share for 10 minutes about their biggest questions of faith right now, how they arrived at these questions, and ways they’re wrestling through these questions. This week we remembered that the process of solving puzzles is often more important than actually solving the puzzle.

Unforming our Western-influenced, independent, hyper-individualized, understanding of community will take work. Even in our attempts to provide hospitality and create community it’s easy to become so focused on ourselves. What might the story of Elijah teach us about Elijah’s loneliness? What might the plants and creatures of the earth and Indigenous wisdoms teach us about our interconnectedness?

What do we do when our ideas and expectations of God and faith die? Where do we go if we Westernize ourselves out of received forms of Christianity? How can we encounter an unexpected “thin silence” through our intellects, ethics, and brothers and sisters from other religions? What does Christianity look like for now?

What if your body was more than something you have—what if it’s who you are? In this week’s teaching, we explore the ancient story of Elijah through a different lens: embodiment. Together we consider how faith becomes real not just in what we believe, but in what we feel, touch, remember, and experience in our bodies. Because, what if showing up in your body was one of the most sacred things you could do?

What if your faith journey isn’t a linear path of constant growth—but a circle of unlearning, undoing, and rediscovery? This week, we reflect on Elijah’s encounter with God in the silence, explore the harm of hustle-culture spirituality, and consider how non-Western and Indigenous traditions can help us reimagine spiritual formation. Inspired by Our Unforming by Cindy S. Lee, we ask the unsettling but freeing question: What are you doing here?

How can we become better listeners? What if the church's primary role is to translate shalom - peace, wholeness, well-being - into the home languages of all people? How can we avoid using our words to dominate and instead use them to heal?

What if the Gospel is primarily about solidarity? About realizing our interdependence and connectedness? About expanding the category of "us" and shrinking the category of "them?"