Faith Works 6-7-14

Faith Works 6-7-14

Jeff Gill

 

Lexicons of faith and practice

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For those of my readers who are not church folk, may I ask that you bear with me a few lines while I make a bit of a point? Thank you.

 

So: narthex, sanctuary, chancel, pew, steeple, pulpit, lectern, stole, paraments, chalice, vestments.

 

Or: doxology, Gloria Patri, invocation, benediction, introit, postlude, homily, offertory, responsorial, collect (no, not that), proper (uh uh), diaconate, cantata, Pentecost.

 

And then, as if those weren't enough: redemption, atonement, intercession, incarnation, epiphany, transubstantiation, adoration (well yes, but), confessional, sacramental, evangelistical, connectional, and covenantal.

 

Yes, church folk use some specialized terminology. The first set was architectural and object names in churches, the second set are terms used in worship services, and the third are theological words. Wait, do I need to explain theological?

 

Maybe so. And yet . . .

 

In fields like architecture you run into cornice and architrave and footer; if you go to concerts, you expect to hear about concertmasters and thaumaturges and tunings; anyone who stays past the final credits knows that movies have animation supervisors and gaffers, grips, best boys, and "assistant to Mr. Spielberg" along with various wranglers and caterers. It doesn't put us off of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," so why do we worry so about how language and lingo can keep people out of our temples?

 

One difference is that you can enjoy the movie or concert (in fact most people do) without ever understanding what a continuity person does, or all their colleagues. The technical language is kept neatly off to the end or a quick nod at the beginning, but the bulk of the group experience is open to those who have not a clue about the central role of a cinematographer.

 

In church life, we've been accustomed to keeping the lingo and in-group labels right in the middle of things. There used to be assumptions that most people just knew what this all meant, but it may have been that people just used to be more tolerant of those in authority talking over their heads.

 

Not any longer.

 

My own weakness is "narthex," which is a handy word for the room many would call a "lobby," the space usually the width of the worship space, or auditorium, or sanctuary if you wish, that is separate from a vestibule, which is where you can take off and hang up your outer & dust-covered vestments. The narthex used to be a working part of the church proper, where those preparing to make a confession of faith would worship, until they formally became members of the body of believers.

 

Adding to the muddle is that this technical language can have different meanings in divergent traditions. Most low-church Protestant congregations I've known call the general seating area (usually filled with bench-type seats, or "pews") the sanctuary, while more liturgical traditions refer to the "nave" while the area up around the pulpit and lectern (reading stands from which prayers and preaching are done) is called the sanctuary.

 

And in Orthodox churches it has an even more specific definition!

 

There's also a chicken and egg question here: is it that faith communities have technical language that is why people don't go to church, or is it the increasing numbers of people who don't go to church that makes faith language so problematic?

 

I'd make an omelet here and just note that there's room to stir up the whole question. In-group language reinforces those who are in as in, and increases barriers to helping new people feel included and involved, so it's a problem to be considered and edited carefully.

 

At the same time, in worship there are acts and ideas that simply don't just translate into everyday terms, and even when there's an outward similarity, it makes sense to suggest the differences intrinsically between a table and an altar by using separate terms.

 

The process of teaching and sharing "this is what we mean by redemption" can be a good way to integrate a visitor into the community, and a few questions in that visitor's mind as they leave I doubt will make them decide "next week, I'm going somewhere I know the names of everything."

 

But if they leave thinking "those folks like it that outsiders don't know what's going on, and aren't interested in helping people figure it out," I can give you a new technical term.

 

Non-returners.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what church term has always puzzled you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-31-14

Faith Works 5-31-14

Jeff Gill

 

On the public square, virtual or otherwise

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Something is happening in downtown Newark.

 

Right now, it's the Strawberry Festival. Michael Harris and his merry Kiwanian minions are keeping the ice cream and shortcake shoveled out to waiting customers with lots of berries on top, and across the Courthouse Square, the Squonk Opera is putting on amazing shows today and tomorrow thanks to the work of the Midland Theater crew.

 

Just this past Wednesday, inside the Midland, a series of short films by Newark High School students were shown to rousing and sincere applause from a countywide audience, hundreds who came to be inspired and impressed by what youth can see and share and cinematically express. Teachers and staff from NHS & the CTAG program, like Doug Swift and Travis DeFraites plus indispensible volunteer Jace Delgado, along with the Project Main Street team out of the Sparta Restaurant, Chris Ramsey and Stephen Fowler, were cheering them on (and I was getting tweets from Josh DeVoll about his son Grant being born as we were sitting there), plus a healthy contingent of Denison staff and faculty: there's just a spirit about that kind of community gathering that was present in that grand old room.

 

And on Tuesday before that, across the square and over one more street, word comes from Sarah Wallace of a dream fulfilled for Gib Reese, young at heart but feeling the years enough that he couldn't be with us to see it, but a Farmer's Market and renewal of the Market St./Canal St. corridor there from the parking garage (which will get its own face lift) over to the Old Jail, which is showing signs of new life of its own.

 

The week before, Denison had a full faculty retreat, arguably the first time that august institution has had an "all invited" faculty retreat since the first four professors sat in a room together in 1831, and it was held in downtown Newark. Not just at the Metropolitan (their base), but in spaces and places all around downtown, including the Advocate boardroom. Faculty walked from session to session saying "something is happening in downtown Newark," and I think they're right.

 

Downtowns will not be again what they once were. Everyone understands that. It won't be the retail and entertainment hub around which the entire community revolves. Retail is dispersed, first to outlying shopping centers up Mt. Vernon Rd., then down in Heath to malls and big boxes, now onto your sofa and the internet.

 

Entertainment and public gatherings still happen downtown, but they're no more central than is the multiplex in Easton or Weathervane Playhouse up off Price Rd. After a period of centralization, these functions of government and shopping and amusement are now distributed around the landscape, and are available literally in your home.

 

Once, as central cityscapes were the hub of a community, it only made sense for faith communities that wanted to make a statement and play a role in the shaping of a town to be downtown. Granville embodies this perfectly, the main intersection bracketed by four churches. Newark has steeples & church towers jutting up just around the edge of Courthouse Square on all four sides, keeping an eye on what goes on there and ready to offer a reflection, a comment, a prophetic statement.

 

But my own congregation, Newark Central Christian, made a decision after their 1946 fire to move away from the center, and relocated a mile up Mt. Vernon, just a step ahead of the first shopping plaza in this area barely another mile north. Those leaders in 1951 saw that the role of "central" places was changing.

 

Now we see new churches building out in the countryside, not feeling disconnected from the community or their communities. Web pages and social media and cell phones mean that the downtown location has no natural advantages over a rural location, and in fact can give your message and membership a wider reach – you're not just seen as part of one city or village or school district, but can relate to all of them.

 

People joke about Heath having no center, and that's simply true. In some ways it's the mall, other ways the school complex over on Licking View, during the summer it's the water park. But what is more physically true for the civically younger Heath is now practically true for all our communities. There is no center.

 

Putting the challenge before churches: how do you become a center? Because it doesn't happen by where you put your building. But by the same token, even a downtown church can become a center today, if it wants to.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he'd argue that the center is always wherever the Gospel is proclaimed. Tell him where you find a center (or how to build one) at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-24-14

Faith Works 5-24-14

Jeff Gill

 

To place a memorial

___

 

In the hymn "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," there's a line that gets fixed in some newer hymnals.

 

The original words by Robert Robinson in 1758 included, in the second verse, "Here I raise my Ebenezer…"

 

Sometimes spelled out Eben-Ezer, the word – actually a phrase – in Hebrew means "stone of help." We hear of it in the Bible in I Samuel, where in the seventh chapter a memorial is set to help the people remember a victory in battle and the price paid to recover the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines.

 

Samuel wants the people to remember what God has done for them, and so he sets a stone upright, and gives the place a name. An Eben-ezer.

 

There was a precedent for this just after the people of Israel entered the promised land across the Jordan River, after the passing of Moses on Mount Nebo and under the leadership of Joshua. At a place called Gilgal, Joshua orders that from where the nation crossed the river, twelve stones for the twelve tribes be taken out of the river bed, and set up on the high ground beyond the crossing – a memorial place. A tool for remembering.

 

The line in the hymn gets changed both because we don't know the narrative of the Bible so well any more, even in church, and because people blink and look puzzled and ask what this song has to do with Scrooge (who probably knew where his first name came from, even if it was an archaic Puritan usage even in 1830s London). But the idea remains, and in truth is too common for us to think of as unusual.

 

Monday is Memorial Day. Many of us will go to places set apart, where stones have been carved and set up and blessed by prayer and processions. I will be offering up an invocation and benediction in the morning at Granville's Memorial Day observances, which have been held consistently since 1868 . . . which in this part of the world is a long time to persist in remembrance.

 

Maple Grove Cemetery began with Civil War committals as the historic Old Colony Burying Ground, started in 1805, was filling up. Some wander after the Memorial Day program, with bands playing and young people reciting "In Flanders Fields" and "The Gettysburg Address," just a few blocks west to the older, even quieter place of memorial and memory.

 

All over Licking County, veteran's honor guards and buglers will work to cover all the active cemeteries they can, even if it's no more than to fire a salute, play "Taps," and say a prayer. It is how we remember, in between the picnics and the parties which are also a part of the commemoration. Perhaps not all who attend them stop as long as some would like to remember the sacrifices made on battlefields and in encampments far from home, but I think it's also worth noting that for those who serve and they who "gave the last full measure of devotion," their desire was that their family and friends and descendants would someday be able to get back to joyful picnics and quiet evenings watching birds sing.

 

The hazard, of course, is that if they died so that we could return to everyday life unafraid and undisturbed, then in the pleasures of the everyday we may forget how we got back here. Which is where Eben-Ezers come in, or memorial stones, or well-cared for cemeteries, or parades of Scouts carrying the Flag and musicians in step playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

 

That's what Joshua and Samuel and Lincoln and Mrs. Julia Pierpont had in mind, when they gave us Gilgal and Eben-Ezer and Gettysburg National Cemetery and a May observance at Richmond, Virginia's Hollywood Cemetery in 1866. That's why one of the young people at Maple Grove will read Gen. John A. Logan's "General Order Number 11" of 1868, which established a date at the end of May "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country."

 

We will celebrate, we will enjoy this weekend, but we will also remember. It requires some helps, some assists, some stones and markers, traditions and rituals. And we remember better together, so we will gather.

 

And remember.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him how you remember what should not be forgotten at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 5-22-14

Notes from my knapsack 5-22-14

Jeff Gill

 

The graduation season

___

 

We just had commencement addresses this past week at Denison here in the village, and up the road at Kenyon; the news out of Columbus let us know what was said at Ohio State's spring graduation ceremonies in the Horseshoe.

 

Next, high school grads here in Brigadoon and in communities and school districts all around will be marching across stages after having heard some salutary words from esteemed fellow students and school board members and the occasional local dignitary.

 

That's a large amount of advice to wedge into one season, floating out above the heads of the gathered graduates and families, drifting in snatches and soundbites into the media ether, and as a regular columnist who is often asked to share opinions and perspectives, this time of year leaves a scrivener like myself two options: I can avoid the topic altogether, or chime in as if someone's asked me to pile on.

 

Yep, pile on it is!

 

Graduates of all sorts, I do believe I have some useful advice to share. It's not meant to contradict any graduation counsel you're hearing from other better qualified speakers, and I trust will complement their guidance. They will tell you, variously, to follow your dreams, do what you love, give your best, and marvel at "Oh, the places you'll go," and that's all worth taking into consideration.

 

I'd just like to add: pick your extra-curriculars as carefully as you do your classes.

 

This isn't about your social life, per se; I'm not talking about deciding which party to attend on weekends (or, perish forbid, weeknights). I'm asking you to think about your chess clubs, your intramural teams, your bands and bell choirs and campus ministries, your honoraries and yes, in part, your Greek organizations too.

 

Obviously, this is more aimed at high school grads heading to college than post-secondary commencements, but not entirely. If you spent college spending your non-classroom time just on a random cycle of parties and shopping and TV viewing, it's not too late to adopt a menu of extra-curricular activities, although in whatever community you're moving to after the diploma, it's called "life" now.

 

Taking a language is important, and becoming math literate as well as being exposed to the Western Canon along with the Voices of the Oppressed is all part of a solid core, whether you're a humanities major or a science and engineering scholar. You need to get bang for your educational buck, and there are lists for your major along with academic counselors to speak to about all this. Academics are Job One in college, no doubt.

 

But your extracurricular involvements are where you are likely to meet people you'll stay in touch with your whole life, not the row of people you sit next to in Accounting 200; the skills and activities in those clubs and scheduled events you freely choose to get into are ones you are much more likely to be using in your forties and fifties than tensor analysis or the anatomy of melancholy.

 

That doesn't mean all of formal education has to seem relevant, and always serve you in a practical manner. It's a network of knowledge all its own, right down to quadratic equations and the social structures of revolutionary movements. But to play a musical instrument, to speak in public with comfort and even style, to walk in the woods and know something about the plants you pass by . . . you'll keep doing that.

 

And those student societies whose busy work can, with a small amount of ironic detachment, seem so meaningless and frivolous itself . . . you learn there more than in classroom projects the give and take and internal negotiations that you'll use in understanding everything from the PTO to your homeowner's association someday.

 

Choose your extra-curriculars with care and attention. You are almost certainly starting involvements that will stay with you all the days of your life.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's still glad he decided to get involved in a campus ministry at college 33 years ago. Ask him why at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-17-14

Faith Works 5-17-14

Jeff Gill

 

Where the world's attention is turned

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In Nigeria, some 276 girls have been kidnapped.

 

You've probably heard about this by now, and perhaps good news about their location and circumstances have reached us here in Ohio by the time this is in print. Or it may be that more dire information will make it out of the backcountry where they are being held by Islamist militants of the "Boko Haram" brand (they don't seem to be an organization as much as an ideology).

 

More likely, we'll still know nothing.

 

In an era when we can get breaking news from cellphone video on the "cat attacks dog" front, there are still vast areas of the globe, and of human life, where we don't know much. We're accustomed to knowing everything and anything when and how we want it, assuming we know how to spell some search terms for it.

 

At the same time, we worry out loud about privacy . . . and then wonder who's listening. Data mining and encryption security and federal collection of connectivity information are both part of the world of transparency and the deep shadows of the security state.

 

Which is where, ironically, drones come into the picture.

 

Many have protested, including in not a few religious bodies' general meetings last summer and no doubt more of them this summer, about the use of drones in our wars and assassinations around the world. Collateral damage and authority to use force mingle with the simple, unforeseen strike in the public debate, even as pilots in Nevada take out suspected terrorists with a satellite connection and a single keystroke.

 

How can such a system be governed appropriately? The military assures us there are protocols and procedures that ensure that the fatal keystroke is executed only when the level of certainty and the justification for such an act are carefully coordinated. Rogue drone pilots are simply not possible, nor are free-fire zones from the sky. Perhaps.

 

But then we encounter an area of darkness, one of these zones of ignorance and impotence for a nation, for an audience. Where are the girls, why can't we find them, what can we do to rescue them?

 

And what we seem to want in such a time are drones, and special forces, and all the powers and principal actors that in quieter hours we want to see under careful control and carefully delimited authority. We don't want drones everywhere, except when we do; we don't want governments to see everywhere or be able to project lethal force anytime, except when we've decided that in this particular case, we should.

 

The problematic nature of that formulation is obvious, but it's not new. We want a military that is strong, but under civilian control; police who are there when we need them, and we don't need them noticing when we are in a hurry in a "Strict Enforcement" zone. It's a tension we're all used to.

 

The bigger contradiction here is that we're currently deeply, and sincerely concerned, willing to see some edges blurred and boundaries crossed, because we're aware of 276 or so girls who have clearly been the victims of cruelty and injustice.

 

Then we hear about a slightly older woman sentenced to hang for being a Christian in nearby Sudan. Shall we send a drone to blow up the gallows before they can execute sentence? She has three days to recant, we're told.

 

And what about that other group of 200 plus girls subjected to violent oppression in . . . well, that's the thing. What about the situation we haven't heard about? That isn't in a media spotlight? It could be in Zimbabwe, or Indonesia. Sex trafficking and forcible marriage: who do we need to bomb, again? Which international signal eavesdropping should we exert to listen in on movements of women in northern Myanmar or southern Thailand, and do we need special forces to break up those rings?

 

Or should we send a SEAL team to Toledo, Ohio? Okay, that's ridiculous I know. We have laws about the use of armed troops within the United States. But how many girls misused and abused have to be gathered together before we're ready to break laws to make justice?

 

I don't know what we need to do in Nigeria. Not. A. Clue. But we should ask ourselves where the impulses of faith and the challenges of ethical standards can and should shape our global understandings, and the power we want to put behind them.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; send him your solution for world peace at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-10-14

Faith Works 5-10-14

Jeff Gill

 

Washed in the water of life

___

 

You will not find much in the way of doctrinal debate here in this column.

 

There are a number of reasons for that, starting with the fact that there's usually a clergy column on this same page or nearby, and there this paper welcomes local pastors to speak very specifically and directly from their own particular faith tradition.

 

This column has a slightly different purpose, being a running dialogue for the width and breadth of our area, with particular attention to the 70% or so who don't attend or are members of any church . . . but many of whom have an interest in faith and matters of belief in general.

 

I suspect there are about as many regular churchgoers reading this feature each week as there are committed non-attenders or skeptics, but the point is that "Faith Works" is not where I make vehement statements about which tradition is correct.

 

There is a subject I've gotten a number of questions about, though, in the lead-in and follow-up to Easter, and that is baptism.

 

Full disclosure: I am a pastor in a denomination where baptism by immersion, or "dunking" is the norm, and we practice what's called "believer's baptism," which means we don't baptize (sprinkling or dunking) babies. One should choose to make this step, we assert, based on our reading of the Gospels and Acts.

 

So what I have to say is unavoidably colored by the fact that I was born into and raised and baptized myself into a tradition with a particular perspective on how God works through this act, and if we didn't think our practice was valid and well-rooted, it would be odd for us to persist in it. Which is a fancy way of saying "we believe we're right."

 

But even among those who affirm and practice believer's baptism by immersion, there's a bit of a debate. When, some ask, does the forgiveness of sin and redemption of the believer take place? Is it at the moment we say "yes" to God's grace, or is it when we are immersed in the water as Jesus was by John the Baptist?

 

That's an easy one. The answer, I'd say, is neither. We were forgiven on the cross, just outside of Jerusalem, about 2,000 years ago, by Jesus: and in that atoning death, our redemption was made complete. "It is finished."

 

Our part in that? It's negligible. As the song says "It's not about what we've done, but what's been done for us."

 

So I'm not entirely patient with arguments about "when you are truly saved." Look to the cross. That's always the correct answer, I've found. Now, if someone makes a confession of faith, and then keeps avoiding taking that last step to seal their membership in the visible church, if they are unwilling or uninterested in making any kind of public witness of their faith, I can see where one might want to ask "was their confession of faith valid?" Maybe not.

 

What I am quite confident of, though, is that God works through all things, and particularly through certain acts testified to in scripture. Baptism is one of those, communion the other most clearly significant (and various traditions would add ordination, marriage, and so on, calling them all "sacraments"). To be crudely theological, "something happens" in baptism. I can't entirely explain it, and I'd be reluctant to try to trace it in thick, dark, solid lines. Exactly how and for whom God works wonders in the act of baptism is still a bit of a mystery.

 

But I think it is more than "just" a commemoration, or a mark of membership in a congregation only. Something happens in baptism, something amazing, something wonderful. Check out Steven Curtis Chapman's song "Dive" for what I mean.

 

And I can honor and salute my infant baptism friends and fellow believers across Christendom in that, when you baptize a baby, there's no question about whose initiative, who is in charge, who is the active party here. A baby simply receives baptism as a gracious gift of those who love that child, and God is entirely the agent of change. In those traditions, something called "confirmation" celebrates the role our "yes" can play in fulfilling God's intentions for us, reaching back for a baptism that just happened to happen earlier.

 

Baptizing new believers into the waters of life is one of the great joys of my work as a pastor. Helping people think about what baptism means is a close second!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your baptism at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 5-8-14

Notes from my Knapsack 5-8-14

Jeff Gill

 

Every walk is an adventure, or can be

___

 

Our weather in all its springtime glorious confusion at least allows for the possibility of walks.

 

Threats of ice and snow will keep all but snowshoers at home, yet the mere threat of cold and even rain shouldn't stop a devoted stroller from hitting the trail.

 

As you might hear from Scout Troop 65, and many avid adventurers or at least Everest Gear customers will tell you, there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

 

Some wear ponchos, or have hi-tech rain coats and pullover pants, but I tend to just stick with a cap to keep the droplets off my glasses and a sturdy jacket that's rain resistant. It's enough to keep a drizzle from bothering me, and just absorbent enough to convince me to find shelter if it really comes on to a downpour.

 

Out at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico last summer, we had our pack covers and mandatory waterproof rain jacket and pants, made necessary by the 10,000 foot elevation possibility not just of rain but a hard shower combined with major temperature drops, where a soaking can lead even in July to hypothermia.

 

We only used it all on the trail once, in a brief series of spattering rains that petered out before we got to the campsite, maybe twenty minutes all told; but out backpacking, raingear is like a parachute. You may never need it, but when you do, it had better be there.

 

Closer to home you can take some measured chances, and only worry about having to cut short your walk. The hardest rain I've walked in the last few weeks came down out of a sunny sky, the kind of shower that some mark by saying out loud "the devil's beating his wife again." It's a saying Germanic in origin, and who knows what it originally means, but I recall older leaders saying it at camp while the rest of us kids looked for a rainbow, the other common outcome of a sunshine shower.

 

Every good long walk includes something of every other walk you've taken in it. I've noticed that each exertion up a hill, curve of trail, or opening of an unexpected vista triggers a cascade of memory, some visual and others more visceral, scent or sound, of other hikes I've gone on.

 

The multifloral rose and garlic mustard have nothing in common with juniper and sagebrush; and there's a big difference between the air at 750 feet above sea level and 12,441 of 'em, but when you're walking up a steep slope, there's a slip and a steadying sidestep, and suddenly you have a vivid memory of a stretch of trail.

 

I may be in Ohio and in 2014, but cresting a hill and seeing a particular curve of the next valley, and the angle of the trail ahead, and I recall hiking with my dad in the 1960s at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana.

 

And settling into a steady stride with blue skies above and a certain pattern of the crossing clouds across the sun, and there's a flash of heading up to Fort Adams on Mackinac Island.

 

Someday, I trust, this walk just finished will be brought to mind by the angle of the sun in early May, a quality of the wind and clouds, and the sensations of movement forwards. Every walk contains every other walk, I believe.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your favorite walk at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-3-14

Faith Works 5-3-14

Jeff Gill

 

On acknowledging limits

___

 

President Obama said something interesting about foreign policy and domestic achievements on his recent Asia tour, as he was preparing to come home.

 

He noted: "You hit singles; you hit doubles. Every once in a while, we may be able to hit a home run."

 

It's a small observation, but it reminded me of a thought I had just a few weeks ago.

 

I've been a student assistant minister and an associate pastor and a plain old pastor, so I've been around many more Easters than I've necessarily preached for. And there's working on your message for a Maundy Thursday or a Good Friday, or for the Sunday after Easter (often called "Low Sunday" in many churches, as the rubber band of attendance snaps back after Easter's packed aisles), and then there's praying over your text and plan for preaching on Easter morning itself.

 

So while I may have been in ministry and preaching semi-regularly for thirty-some years, I've only preached the Easter message maybe fifteen times.

 

And it was this year, finally, when I realized something. It feels right, it seems necessary, that when you step into the pulpit on the morning commemorating the central event in the life and history of your faith tradition, you need to swing for the fences. This one needs to be not just good, but the message this particular morning needs to go yard. Out of the park. Grand slam, baby.

 

Which is what I've tried to do in years past. In the middle of all the other necessities and distractions of Lent and Holy Week, I focused relentlessly on the text for the day (you've got four different resurrection accounts in the gospels, plus Paul's recaps, so it's not like you just preach on the same passage every year, unlike Christmas and Luke 2 or Pentecost and Acts 2). I'd dig into it, parse a little Greek, open myself up to the Spirit's leading in (probably too little) silent reflection and prayer, and work up an outline and often a manuscript, even though I never take the full outline let alone a manuscript into the pulpit with me on Sunday mornings. I worked it, is what I'm saying. Worked it hard, and aimed high and swung hard.

 

So it's no wonder that I often left the still lily-scented, now empty sanctuary after many Easter mornings with a certain sense of "meh." I proclaimed the glory of resurrection, the power of God's good news for us reaffirmed by that act, and built on the gospel to open up a path forward for we who believe, but all things considered, the impact of the sermon just felt like it had fallen short.

 

Which, to be honest, it probably did if the standard is "home run." But did I make contact? Did the message fly and move people across the bases towards home? What if, Jeff, the sermon was a solid double?

 

There was, decades ago, a legendary manager (I think it was John McGraw) who sent a batter up to the plate with instructions to bunt. The player saw a pitch that felt good to him, and he swung full out, and hit a grand-slam home run, four runs in. He trots across the plate and back to the dugout, expecting congratulations, and faces an angry manager who tells him he's benched for the rest of the game. "Why, Coach?" he asks. "Because I sent you up there to bunt."

 

Does that seem crazy? Well, yes, a little. But the point is: you can't count on a home run the way you can a bunt. Next time, that's gonna be a strike out.

 

Likewise, it's not that there's anything wrong with preaching a strong gospel message on Easter morning. Duh. But the need to hit a home run is MY need, not God's. In fact, on Easter morning, God might have a whole bunch of other ways in mind to reach people. My sermon isn't the whole deal.

 

And in fact, each Easter before the service, I'm in the back with those preparing to be baptized at the start of the service (we baptize adults by full immersion in our church), and I always tell them this. Sometimes, people come up out of the water with an immediate, amazing feeling. If you don't, don't think your baptism "didn't work," or that you did something wrong. Give it time; God is just getting started.

 

Next week: more about baptism, which is a sermon all itself.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your Easter joys still blooming at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-26-14

Faith Works 4-26-14

Jeff Gill

 

In defense of growth

___

  

Should congregations and denominations want to grow?

 

To some of you, this may sound odd. Isn't that what every organization and institution wants to do?

 

In fact, there are some cogent arguments against growth, and some of them are rather wide-spread these days. As is often noted, growth for growth's sake is the ethos of the cancer cell, and simply to grow and multiply is not, itself alone, a healthy thing.

 

And while consumerism today is often in pursuit of an ever-expanding market share, and that much desired next-quarter profit report going up, up, up, that kind of expansion and increase may be destructive not just to the environment, but to the participants.

 

So it can be within religious traditions. I once was asked about goal-setting, and a church officer thought about his workplace practices and said, without rancor, "shouldn't we just tie your pay to Sunday attendance?" I answered, hopefully in the same congenial tone, "that's an interesting argument, and if I went out and rented a bus and offered a free lunch, I'll bet I can double attendance over the next month. What do you say?"

 

The idea died for lack of a second.

 

And in truth, if you just want to pile up more bodies and pack rooms, I am entirely in sympathy with those who question the long-term sustainability and immediate justification of using pop culture and shock value to fill seats.

 

Even the previous pope, Benedict XVI, said something about a smaller church being a faithful church, more focused and more authentic. Size isn't everything. I'd agree with that.

 

What I find myself leaning back away from, though, is the tendency to valorize shrinkage as a sign of faithfulness; a trend to point at growing churches and to presume "they're just using tricks and fads" without checking out the content and formation going on there more creditably. A dying church is by no means a more committed congregation, nor are all booming worship centers preaching a gospel I'd recognize or impacting the lives of attendees in any meaningful way.

 

For many religious bodies, the 21^st century is a confrontation with challenges. Worship attendance is down, membership is dropping for many denominations whether oriented as liberal or conservative (so-called in any case, since there are always variations within), and the authority of religious leaders and teachers is small and shrinking whether you think that good or ill.

 

Which makes it tempting to make a cult of contraction. It's happening anyhow, so let's make it a good thing, a sort of reverse Chicken Little ("hey look, isn't it GREAT that the sky is falling?"). And growth, increases in attendance and membership and giving and serving, is rare, so why make it a standard?

 

And I am acutely aware of my own need for caution here. We are blessed at the congregation where I serve that we have a solid history, a strong ministry under my predecessor, a not-so-old building which isn't needing major repairs or suffering from decades of deferred maintenance, and plenty of passionate leaders. So we are in a position to grow where other similar churches may be ministering and serving with twice the effort for half the outcomes. I see it all around us.

 

Yet I want to say a word on behalf of growth. We've heard Jesus' command to "Go therefore and make disciples" and are doing so, which sets us up for "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" and that way we get some wonderful opportunities for "teaching them to observe all I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20 is where our marching orders come from.)

 

Growth is how we can tell if we're sharing a good news message that is reaching people. We aren't reaching everyone, maybe not even everyone we should, but if we weren't seeing any response, I think it would tell us we are going about it the wrong way.

 

Likewise, we have financial struggles like most churches, but not so much that we can't share out from our fellowship a tenth and more of what we receive, and live out as community what we teach to persons and families. A shrinking church can't do that, and even if we sold the property and rented space, we'd be hard pressed to maintain that outreach.

 

Growth may not be the only sign of God's active presence, but I believe it can certainly be one of them.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you see growth in your own life at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 4-24-14

Notes From My Knapsack 4-24-14

Jeff Gill

 

What should a graduate know?

___

 

Let's start with one basic assumption.

 

There will never be complete agreement on a list such as what I propose here, nor do I expect to (more on that at the end).

 

I've posted and published reading lists before, both for college for general knowledge. They can start the most interesting discussions, and also arguments, or discussions that turn into arguments. And I'm sure folks have come to school board meetings with lists in hand, asking for curriculum redesign based on their sense of a sort of list of what's to them non-negotiable.

 

What I have in mind is more of a "knowing list." And not facts or figures per se (Avogadro's number, Pi to fifteen digits, how far is the Earth from the Sun, when was the Battle of Gettysburg), but certain competencies.

 

There's a TV ad that shows a very young woman struggling to change a tire in an empty parking lot, and at the end, her dad steps into the frame saying "See, you can do it." That's a good example right there: being able to change a tire. I'd add change the oil, but nowadays, maybe I should settle just for how to add oil.

 

What else do I think a high school graduate needs to know? How to introduce strangers to each other. A basic skill, that like a parachute you may not use much, but when you need it, it's best to have it on hand. Which fork to use is not so crucial, but how to make a toast, that's necessary. They should know to defrost and roast a frozen turkey, and how to make a roux, plus a few steps from there (breaking eggs one-handed is optional). How to buy in bulk, and store it once you have. How to sharpen knives, how to swing an axe, how to re-wire a lamp or switch. They should know, from excavation up, how a house is built, whether they ever own one or not.

 

Math: what I would like to see graduates know is how to read a budget, a profit/loss statement, and be able to make sense of five years' worth of financial reports whether of a retail operation or a non-profit. They should be able to format a spreadsheet on a computer, balance accounts on paper, calculate costs for a business operation using invoices and timesheets.

 

Somewhere between numbers and entertainment is the knowing of how people can use statistics to lie to you. Proportion and median, visual means and numerical measures, weasel words and basic definitions.

 

They should know, if not how to spell Korzybski, why it is that "the map is not the territory." With William Least Heat-Moon, they should have a sense of what a "deep map" is if not the nature of a PrairyErth itself.

 

I'd want them to know as many of Shakespeare's 37 plays as possible, some of his 154 sonnets; Isaiah, the twelve minor prophets, and Luke's gospel. They should at minimum know something of the blues, of jazz, and of bluegrass. The Upanishads and Rumi, and at least one language not of their birth. They should know what mass is, in both the Catholic and Newtonian senses.

 

For those keeping score at home, there's no way this is a curriculum, and that's my point. This is not a list for teachers or administrators, either. It's for parents. For them to edit, to augment, to consider.

 

What I want my son to know by the time of his maturity into the world on his own? 'Tis my responsibility. School is grand and glorious, but they can't do it all, and shouldn't try . . . or be expected to try. At home, we hope to make sure our child knows certain things. And it's at home that he will learn most of them.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him what you want young people to know before they launch out into the world at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-19-14

Faith Works 4-19-14

Jeff Gill

 

A story of no account

___

 

No one would consider the word of a single, unattached woman as being worthy of stature in a court case, or even in conversation.

 

Certainly, Mary of Migdal, the Magdalene, has an interesting story. But alone? Her? With her reputation? Come now.

 

Apparently there's testimony from not long after. Simon, the Galilean (don't laugh, yes, he's from the Galilee), now known for some reason as "Rocky" or Petros in Greek, this Simon Peter claims to support Mary Magdalene's word.

 

Come now, though . . . let's think about what's at stake here.

 

We have a single woman with the hint of prostitution hanging around her shoulders, making outlandish, unearthly claims. Then, at her instigation (I'm just repeating HER version of events), Simon the Petros come to the tomb of this Jesus to see what the evidence of the corpse has to say to him and his people.

 

A body which they now say is missing.

 

Supposedly, there are others involved. Some additional women with the "lady" from Migdal, a few other unemployed fishermen from Galilee straggling along with Simon to Petros. All of them as disreputable and questionable characters as are the instigators they follow.

 

They dig their own trap. With enough hangers-on, you can carry off a body and hide it in another valley, beyond the network of roads leading into the Holy City. Towards Bethany, or down past Ein Kerem.

 

To be fair, that doesn't explain the Roman guard set by Pilate. Perhaps they fell asleep, and waking up to find their task bungled, they fled rather than face the procurator's wrath. We should ask up at the Antonia if those soldiers have been accounted for, and get their tale. But if they are truly missing, that answers the question well enough for me.

 

Each time one of these revolutionaries goes missing, there's another furor, but it always dies down. How many have we seen from our perch here in the Sanhedrin? One after another, every third or fourth Passover, the anger and frustration of the people with Rome (and to be perfectly candid, with us) boils over, riots begin, fires are set, arrests are made, certain victims die horribly so that the population does not suffer generally, and everyone quiets down, goes back to work, and forgets.

 

Never mind you'd shouted that you'd die for that cause or a particular Barabbas or whomever along the dusty margin of a road, screaming your lungs out until a detachment of armored legionaries trots by high up on horseback. Your shout lasts no longer than an echo making its way into the wilderness, fading and forgotten before the minute, let alone an hour is over.

 

This group of believers seems a bit more persistent. They continue to shop their tale around the marketplace, and some of their number are heading back to Galilee where hapless old Philip can contend with stories in his district of a dying and risen Messiah. Soon enough the labors of fishing and mending and getting by will dull their enthusiasm and fog their memories, or they will latch onto yet another claimant for the throne of Herod.

 

If I thought a mentor of mine had died, especially died that way, it would cause me to rethink everything they'd taught me, and likely toss it all out of my mind before it contaminated the rest of my logic and learning. Of course, even if one of my wise and insightful teachers died at the hands of Roman justice, but then walked back into my study to face me, and challenge me, that would make me sit up and take notice. It's the kind of proof that would go beyond logic, beyond debate in the assembly or details of learned commentary. Rising from the dead, that would make a statement, it would indeed.

 

Which, I suppose, could explain the Jesus followers' strange behavior, if only . . . ah, well. Time will tell. Most such ideas have their day, and are forgotten in the night that follows. Let's see what a new sunrise brings.  What remains is what endures.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him a tale at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-12-14

Faith Works 4-12-14

Jeff Gill

 

Special services and Sundays

___

 

 

Christians who have given up things for Lent are in the last few days of their discipline: pray for them!

 

Whether it's stopping enjoying or indulging in some treat, or adding in some new extra practice, the forty days of Lent are a good time to test out ways to focus our spiritual skills. In prayer, in lifestyle, in actions, when you want to make a change, forty days is a good stretch of time to find out if it can work for you.

 

If you actually count out from Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, to Easter, you find yourself with 46 days. That's because Sundays are not "fasting" days, but always feast days. Sunday is to be a celebration, an occasion of joy. Margaret Mead was given to reminding her fellow Lenten pilgrims "No feast, no fast!" By which she meant that the one accents and supports the other.

 

So if you give up something for Lent, you can enjoy it on the Sundays. Sorry to anyone who didn't know that earlier in Lent!

 

The point is that the Christian church made their day of assembly and worship the first day of the week, not the former Sabbath on the last day, the seventh day as marked in the story of Creation as God's day of rest. Rest and Sabbathkeeping is another subject, but our Sunday is really meant to be the weekly cause for rejoicing that (spoiler alert!) Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.

 

Just as the Christian year cycles from Advent & Christmas to Lent & Easter, so each week is meant to recapitulate the journey to good news. The women went to the tomb with their anointing oils and spices "on the first day" of the week, and the power & significance of the Resurrection in the early church is testified to, among other ways, by the dramatic and significant choice to shift the day of worship to what, in English, we call Sunday.

 

That's right, every Sunday is a little Easter. And then we have the rest of the week.

 

Holy Week, or Passion Week in some churches, begins tomorrow. Each day has a significance and commemoration of its own, even Tuesday. But it begins with the processional celebration of Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, and goes on through the more common observances of the night of Thursday this week, or "Maundy" Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday, and then Easter itself with many congregations having a sunrise celebration, that being when the Resurrection was first realized by Mary Magdalene and Peter and the others.

 

My congregation is gathering, at least those willing to set their alarms a bit early, at 6:30 am on Easter morning atop Horn's Hill. It's not an obligation, and some would even point out that the Bible never calls for such a service. You can say that about having a weeknight worship on Thursday or Friday noon.

 

What it's all about, in the end, is finding sustainable ways at different points of the year to keep on lifting up all of time, every day, as God's time. In the end, Revelation says at its best, all ground will be holy ground. We are not there yet, and we can't accomplish any of it by force of will or an excess of worship services, but step by step, where we're going is to let all time and space be holy. That's God's intention, and we start to feel very close to that intention during Holy Week.

 

May that understanding start to last beyond a day or a week or a season for us in our Easter season this year!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you find holy ground and sacred time at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 4-5-14

Notes from my Knapsack 4-5-14

Jeff Gill

 

Uneasy earth, hopeful soil

___

 

 

Heading back from the high school along New Burg Street after dark, as we so often do in these weeks of play practice pick-up, the Lad and I heard the spring peepers.

 

Down by Ebaugh Pond and the marshy woodlot across from the middle school, the sound gets ever more deafening as April unwinds. Clearly large numbers are behind the swelling chorus, even if their size is tiny. You can feel the multitudes in their song.

 

Striking to realize: they were, not long ago, frozen solid. Yep, these little fellas make it through a couple of winters after their tadpole phase. Eggs and spawning and hatching all going on great guns right now, but the adult population doesn't all die and they sure can't migrate. So these amphibious wonders just deal with it: their biochemistry is such that they can literally freeze solid, and come back for another vernal orchestration once winter releases its grip.

 

The water is everywhere now, the ice and snow having melted and the showers steady; flowers are coming, snowdrops and crocuses and spring beauties starting to appear, and the second wave is all green spears and shoots of vitality if you know where to look. More flowers, more color, more life.

 

Beneath the life is the not-quite-not-life of the soil. Below even the organic mulch-ness of the various soils we find in modern Licking County, so much of it a thin O-horizon left after logging, old school agriculture, or outright scraping off of top soils built up so painstakingly over the last few post-Ice Age millennia.

 

There are stretches of that native soil that Jesse Munson so memorably tasted the night before arriving in downtown Granville in 1805, and said "this is good land, it will grow much." And plenty that's been ruthlessly planed off to sterile clay-laden subsoil's, with the barest inch or two of top soil imported and spread after the work of construction and development is done.

 

Whatever is below the grasses or mosses or fallow pasturage where you walk, it is likely to squish beneath your feet. Unless you stick to pavement, or are on the sandstone ledges around Sugar Loaf park, there's little solidity to the solid ground. You need to watch your step, and take care of your footwear if you get out beyond where the sidewalk ends. Saturated soils are everywhere, and at least our glacially compacted and deposited slopes are not as unstable as those in parts of the West, where solid ground became a slippery wave of destruction, of death.

 

Here, our soils are ready to bring life again to the landscape. The trees are pulling hard through their fibers to draw moisture back up and to fire up the buds to unfurl into leaves, the sap is indeed running (has already run the best it will, sugar-wise), and every perennial, all the shrubs and bushes, is filling out if not showing green yet.

 

And as for yellow – the forsythia is playing coy with us this year. Forget the weather predictions, because this year the rule book (which the plants don't pay much attention to) is out the window, and the windows are all up so it's safe to throw them hard and far.

 

When will the yellow fringe rule the hedgerows and sidewalks? Are the daffodils and forsythia going to make their statement with the fervency we expect of them? Time will tell, but the time for last snows is past. The sky may threaten, but Winter, we are done with you. Begone.

 

Spring, welcome. Come sit a spell.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your signs of spring at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-5-14

Faith Works 4-5-14

Jeff Gill

 

On going to church, part two

___

 

In Edgar Guest's essay "Why I go to church" of 1928, which I quoted extensively last Saturday, he also said "I go to church because I want my children to go to church. I want them to know something more of this life than business and sport. I know only one institution that will teach them that they are divine."

 

And he adds, as a parent himself, "The church will interfere with their pleasures at times, but their mother and I sometimes have to do that, and we hope that they will love us none the less because of it. The church will mystify and puzzle them now and then. But all things that are worthwhile demand something of us in sacrifice."

 

Children are often the reason people come to church who haven't for a long time, if ever. Kids ask questions that parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles would like some help with in answering, and they tend to be questions of a sort – "where are babies before they are born? No, I know that, I mean before they're in their mother's tummy?" – that church is supposed to be ready to deal with.

 

Those are all reasonable and practical reasons to go to church, whether this Sunday, or these next two special Sundays as Christianity experiences Palm Sunday & Easter, with the week between being called "Holy Week" in many places. From one Sunday to the next are often special services, including Maundy Thursday & Good Friday.

 

I'll talk a bit more about those unique and non-Sunday services next Saturday, and I get to preach at Second Presbyterian on a Wednesday noon this week, Apr. 9 (another one of those special services that come with greater frequency this time of year, in this case a downtown Lenten series). But I want to wrap up this extended reflection on why I go to church with my main reason for returning week after week, whether it's my job to preach or not.

 

It's glory.

 

I go to church to experience glory.

 

Do I find it every week? Nope. "Glory" in worship and in life is like the distinction C.S. Lewis made between happiness and joy. The kind of "Joy" he was talking about was a sort of experience that you almost can't quite pursue, and definitely can't force, but you also know once you've been in the midst of such joy, it's enough until the next time. Happiness is something that's nice, and comes and goes and if you mostly feel that way, good for you. But joy, now . . .

 

And that's what I mean by glory. They may actually be two words for what can be the same thing, like lunch and dinner, or wife and friend. Glory is . . . well, when you suddenly realize "all shall be well," when you see a connection and then realize it points you to the connectedness of everything which is One, or when the harmony and tone of a resolving chord at the end of a song goes on just long enough to lift your heart, even as you know that note will end but your memory of it will endure.

 

Glory is the sweet spot of God and time and you, when the swing and the impact tell you with absolute certainty, long before the ball goes over the fence, that this hit is going yard.

 

And yes, when you are preaching or leading public prayer, it can be in that moment of wild exhilaration that comes just as you feel the skid start to slide you sideways, and then you just as smoothly even out and power right around the turn, in the groove.

 

But it can also be the glimpse of light through a ruby red chunk of stained glass that catches a mote of dust, which swirls and dances and reminds you that you are no more than that, and yet you are so much more than that, in the light of the One you come to worship.

 

Glory is not limited to the hour of worship. It may come outdoors on Tuesday, or at a meeting on Thursday, but it's through the regular practice of and participation in worship that I believe my heart is made ready to notice, and take in, those moments of glory that give my life meaning.

 

That's why I go, anyhow.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him why you go to church (or don't) at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.