Crossings Knoxville

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 a...

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 creati...

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 ki...