Crossings Storyadmin2022-02-24T17:03:51+00:00

The Story of Crossings

In 2006, a group of people began gathering with a simple dream: to create a community of faith where anyone could come and authentically experience God.

In February of 2007, Crossings hosted its first public gathering. This was the beginning of the dream that eventually birthed a faith community that now gathers around Knoxville throughout the week.

From the very beginning, two things were communicated and embodied as community:

One

We exist to help people find their way back to God.

By saying this, we don’t want to imply that some people have crossed a hypothetical line and are now, “good to go,” while others still need to “come back.” Instead, we think ALL live in a world in which things are not as they were intended to be. Because of this, ALL OF US end up seeking some kind of restoration and wholeness in the midst of the world’s brokenness. Our desire as a community is that our pursuit of God would result in a world where brokenness is mended; that the world would become the way it was intended to be- whole, complete, lacking for nothing. The Hebrew word for this idea is SHALOM and it’s a blessing we wish for our community every time we gather.

Two

We will always be a place where the questions are more important than the answers.

The name “Crossings” comes from the story in the book of Genesis in which Jacob wrestled with God at night on the banks of the Jabbok River. As daylight came, Jacob held on tight and would not let go until God blessed him. He wanted something more from his story and his faith than he had ever experienced before. We believe that everyone, at one time or another, crosses the Jabbok River to wrestle with God for a faith that is their own. As a community, we are committed to wrestling with the hard questions of life, faith, and meaning. Our desire is that this community is a safe place for ANYONE to cross over the river, wrestle with God, and, hopefully, receive a blessing.

“We believe that EVERYONE, at one time or another, crosses the Jabbok River to wrestle out a faith that they’ve maybe have heard about but never experienced.”

A community that pursues these things, at times, is incredibly messy. We don’t always agree on everything. But such a community is also honest about our desperate longing for God and the ways of Jesus.

Originally, Crossings gathered in the Downtown West Cinema. But in January of 2009, our Sunday gathering moved to The Square Room at 4 Market Square. In March of 2011, we began a second gathering site at Christenberry Elementary School in Uptown North Knoxville. In 2021, we began to experiment with a third gathering which practiced an ancient form of liturgy. “Word & Table, a liturgical gathering” became a third gathering in the middle of the week.

Regardless of where we gather (The Square Room, Christenberry, someone’s home, etc) or when we gather (not just Sunday), our community simply has one idea in mind: to be a community where people can discuss, question, learn, and worship while desiring for all of us to find our way back to God.

Click on names to learn about people in our community, and how they’re Finding Their Way Back to God.

stories

Crossings Makers
Sam and Jenelle Walker
John and Kelsie McGlothin
Ashley Cutshall
Eric and Kristi Anderson
Ted and Stephanie Hethcote

Crossings Makers

View all of our Crossings Makers series by visiting our YouTube channel.

Sam and Jenelle Walker

We are Sam and Jenelle Walker and we have been a part of Crossings for over a decade, first as individual college students and now as a family of 5 (Nora, Anna, Remington). We are part of the North community that meets a couple of blocks away from our house at Christenberry Elementary. We find great value in living so close to where we worship and where our daughter goes to school. Our kids also have thrived as a part of a community that so clearly shows them that they are a vital and important part of it. This has even more significance to us because we live far away from our extended families. Our hope is that our kids continue to feel support from us, their faith community, and their school and neighborhood and that these layers can continue to overlap.

John and Kelsie McGlothin

Hello! We are John and Kelsie McGlothin, and we joined Crossings in 2018. We met and fell in love in Chattanooga while both training to be mental health therapists and are now working as counselors in Knoxville. As an Adoption Support and Preservation family therapist, John serves families who have adopted children, both through the foster system and through private adoption. Kelsie works as a therapist at Haven Counseling Center in Bearden, and specializes in trauma healing and recovery. We both have different reasons, different stories, different wounds that led us to into the mental health field. Like many, our individual experiences of seeking God have included times that vary from abundant to lacking, but we both feel strongly that this is the work God would have us do in furthering his kingdom. At a time when John was in great need as a teenager, a camp counselor accepted and invested in him. Now, John has a belief that relationships — steady, compassionate and often silly — have incredible power to heal. This enables him to sit with, talk with, play with parents and kids who are struggling. Kelsie sees her job as a way to gently illuminate and soothe the parts of us that hold shame, pain, grief and fear. As someone who suffered with OCD and anxiety without appropriate intervention or explanation for a significant portion of her life, Kelsie now feels particular joy in expressing a message of “You’re ok, and we’ll figure this out together.” To have this opportunity to be the hands and feet, and hopefully the heart, of Christ is the joy and glory of God to us. On a less philosophical but still important note, our lives are also filled with our huge Pyrador puppy Laurel, genuine friends, silly and sweet nieces and nephews, and lots of coffee!”

Ashley Cutshall

Hi, my name is Ashley Cutshall, and I am an ESL teacher at a Knox County middle school which has the highest population of English Language Learners of and middle School in Knoxville. My students are navigating their whole world in a language and culture that isn’t familiar to them. A lot of people think that I teach grammar all day or that I spend most of my class time translating for students, but that is definitely not the case. Most of what I do at the middle school level is teaching them grade level concepts at a proficiency level that is appropriate for that group of students. We practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing and set goals to reach new proficiency levels. Working with a variety of cultures has taught me so much. I’d say the number one thing I’ve learned is how much of a privilege it is to be a part of a multicultural community. I waltzed in to this job thinking, of course they will love me. I’m a really nice white lady. I just assumed my students would love me. But it’s taken years to build trust. My first year teaching, I had limited family engagement and I think that’s because I never stopped and asked “How does this community feel with me being a part of it?” I’ve built trust by committing to this community and learning from the leaders already in the community (i.e. parents!) I am truly working on being first a learner, and then a teacher. I feel like I get to seek out the Kingdom of God in my job by helping my students of all languages and cultures to feel comfortable showing up at school in the wholeness of their own selves, create a sense of belonging for them, and reassuring them of their importance and value in our community.

Eric and Kristi Anderson

When introduced together to someone new and the question is asked about how we met, “In prison,” is the standard refrain; it’s a scratch on the conversational record that skips us to a social justice issue we both care deeply about. Our winding way, first apart, now together travels through the most unlikely of places; prisons and jails and through the locks, walls and razor wire into the hearts of the incarcerated. You see, everyone matters to God regardless of what they’ve done, no one is beyond redemption and restoration: there simply are no disposable people. What if you were only ever known by the worst mistake you ever made? The men, women and youth in custody are reminded continually of their offenses by just about every minute and detail of their life behind bars. For us, moving from the abstract (prisoner) to the personal and known has moved the waypoints on our journey. Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy) insists you have to, “get proximate to the problem.” Hutch, Hicks, D-White, Iron Head, Keith, Ronnie Slim, Deli, Sandra, Cindy, Sabrina – each name recalls a face, a heart, a life that matters. Little by little we come to know each other, we tell our stories from level ground, not about what we’ve done but who we are, and who we are becoming, exhorting one another, not alone, but in community, to love, redemption, restoration, and good works. Working to make prison a place of shalom, where the wounded can find healing, is a driving force and source of joy in our life. We were married under the arch outside of Café 4 in August of 2019, on a Sunday morning in-between Crossings’ services. We love our life in The Knox – the Gay Street Gingers – Graffiti Alley and Market Square in the back yard and Cruze Farms in the front. For us, early mornings are for coffee and the sharing of words read in the books shelved and stacked about, days for work at the 4th Purpose Foundation, nights for Schitt’s Creek, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or a walk down to the river; weekends for mountain hiking and flower seeking. We are rich in daughters having 4: Miranda, Madelyn, Callie and Emily. We are exceeding grateful for our life in the Crossings Community – come visit us downtown, we love to cook and break bread around the table.

Ted and Stephanie Hethcote

Soon after becoming Christians we began more than 30 years of intense involvement in the Christian community through both churches and non-profit organizations. Our hearts goal was to bring the hope, freedom and unity with God that is available to all the world through relationship with Christ. Then after those 30 plus years of what seemed to be successful Christian work, we both had powerful encounters with God within a 24-hour period. Those encounters altered the trajectory of our lives changing how we engage in our relationships with each other, our family, our friends, and with God. Prior to the time of our encounters much of what we did stemmed from a mindset of very “Black and White/Right and Wrong” thinking. In many ways that made life simple making judgements about people and situations easy. It also made it easy when working with those in distress to simply offer good biblical advice and then disengage from their situation. Our times of encounter changed all of that radically. God showed us that His pleasure isn’t in what we do but rather in who we are. That sounds fundamental enough, but it took on great depth when God started asking us to explore these questions: 1) Who am I? 2) What caused my distortions? 3) What needs to change for me to reflect Him more clearly? Our journey to discover answers to those questions altered our hearts toward ourselves and other people. First, we discovered our own stories and how they impact the ways we engage our world and God. This made us curious about how the stories of others have impacted their lives. Our new journey with God has led us from: “Certainty” to “Curiosity” “Having answers” to “Asking Questions” “Working for God” to “Resting in God” “Talking” to “Listening”