Faith Works 8-15-15

Faith Works 8-15-15

Jeff Gill

 

"Go Set a Watchman" Asks Us To Look

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Harper Lee's long awaited second novel takes its title from Isaiah 21:6: "For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth."

 

The church in Maycomb where Jean Louise Finch returns, a young woman of 26, is where she hears these words, but not where she finds clear vision. As happens today in many churches, including where I preach, the Bible may speak to a listener entirely separate from where the sermon goes… and that's fine. Sometimes it's even better.

 

"Go Set a Watchman" is, to sum up my own reaction, a remarkable production of a first time novelist. Yes, I said this was Harper Lee's second novel, as published. Apparently what we received this summer was her first full-length written fiction, of which Tay Hohoff, her editor in 1957, said "the spark of the true writer flashed in every line."

 

That is a true statement. It is also true that Hohoff felt there was an even better book in Harper Lee, and led her through repeated drafts, which culminated three years later in "To Kill a Mockingbird." What could confuse is that the earlier novel, published second, takes place later than the setting of the first.

 

I think many reviewers have overthought that complication. If "Go Set a Watchman" had come out ten years (or twenty, or thirty) after "Mockingbird," and to be perfectly fair had received a bit more loving attention from a Tay Hohoff or other thoughtful editor in the last third or so, I think it would have been welcomed as a worthy and equally weighty follow-up. The two books together read well as a unit, something I wanted to do before writing anything about the one.

 

It had been a very long time since I'd read "Mockingbird," and I was acutely aware of the presence of Gregory Peck and Mary Badham and Robert Duvall across the printed pages. The 1962 classic movie version of the story has, for many of us, swamped our recollections of the book.

 

I'd never tell you to forget the movie, and we can't. It was a very important movie for many of us in the 1960's, in darkened school auditoriums or late night rebroadcasts, helping Americans think about racism and community in new and personal ways. The town of Maycomb is quintessential Alabama, but also recognizable in almost any corner of the country; what happened there in the story, film and novel alike, helped make connections between what the nation saw in newspaper headlines and TV footage, and the places where we live.

 

But the moral heroism of Atticus Finch was also what many of us "white Americans" deeply desired to see writ large, for ourselves and for all of us. An admirable, principled lawyer and politician who taught children to think about what it meant to walk in someone else's shoes, and who said when asked why he did the unpopular thing that "I do my best to love everybody."

 

That lovely, loving man is present as Scout's father in the book, but he is intensified and magnified in the film. Gregory Peck is saintly and confident in his goodness in ways that the Atticus Finch on the page is not, quite. And the lines between the middle aged father Atticus in "Mockingbird" and the elderly leading citizen Mr. Finch in "Watchman" are, to me, quite clear, and compelling.

 

The older Atticus is burdened with years, with physical pain, and with concern for his community. He is also a racist.

 

As am I. As are most of you reading this. If we make, consciously and unconsciously, assumptions about individuals based on stereotypes about groups, if we have sweeping generalizations in our hearts and minds that tend to be the first layer we see of people in front of us, we're dealing with racism. In 1957, Harper Lee wanted Alabamians and Americans to see this, and talk about it.

 

"Watchman" probably couldn't have been published in 1957. She and her editor worked back to a younger Scout, and a story more in keeping with the needs of 1960, and we got "Mockingbird." The fact that she wrote the more burdened and weary Atticus first, to my mind, only heightens Harper Lee's achievement.

 

Atticus says things in "Watchman" that are both racist, and utterly in keeping with who he is said to be: a man who wants justice in his community, equal treatment before the law for everyone regardless of race, and as to people of other races… well, some of the quotes most disturbing to folks who say they don't like the idea that this, too, is Atticus Finch: they're things that Abraham Lincoln said, too.

 

We should take both Abe and Atticus in sum, and see them in full. They are, for good or ill, who many of us are at our best. And who should want to do better.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about books that have helped you see more clearly at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-8-15

Faith Works 8-8-15

Jeff Gill

 

Measuring progress on multiple levels

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In many non-profits and social service agencies, there's a tool for tracking how things are going that's been borrowed from the business world, called a "dashboard."

 

It's a tool which is basically a set of graphic images, clever graphs or designs of data presentation that resemble fuel gauges or speedometers, that you get at regular intervals. A "dashboard" is a quick scan access of the question "how are we doing?"

 

It also is a response to the modern truism "we become what we measure." Or, as has been said in fields like community policing or social justice "if it isn't measured, it stops mattering."

 

For a business, you can have a dashboard that tracks sales, obviously, expenses, staffing and absenteeism, and in more elaborate versions, ongoing customer satisfaction surveys. And the question is whether these metrics are going up, or going down; are things getting better, or are we heading backwards from where we want to go?

 

I'm not aware of many church bodies that use a dashboard, but I'm sure they're out there. For a larger faith community, it can be a good way to check-in without just dumping numbers on people. But what would go on the dashboard for a church?

 

Actually, most congregations do have a sort of dashboard mentality already. In general, folks want to hear at board or cabinet or session meetings: how is attendance doing, what's going on with giving, where is our total membership? You can refine that down to tracking how many baptisms per month or quarter (and how many deaths or departures to transfer out); some might track sub-categories like Sunday school or midweek prayer meeting attendance.

 

Attendance, giving, membership: those are the implicit dashboard items for most church leaders. They don't tell the whole story (giving may be up, but if expenditures are up more, then you might be missing something!), but it's how we shape our narrative. Or, "what's measured is what's meaningful."

 

So the question gets asked "what else can or should we be measuring?" What other gauges should go on the dashboard?

 

One suggestion I've heard is to put mission and ministries beyond the church walls up there along with attendance and membership figures. How many meals did we serve last month, or in the previous quarter? What percent of our members participated in a mission or evangelism project of the church? How about the percentage of total budget or income that goes to outreach and mission? Have we reached 10% for the congregation, or has that been slipping back a percentage point per year for a while?

 

And even the "satisfaction" measure used by some businesses might have an interesting potential in a religious community. How might you randomly inquire of a sample each quarter "how are you being fed by your involvement here?" Or even more challenging: a regular survey in the wider community: "what do you know about our congregation?" Could that be done in a way where you could track if those efforts to share your message are doing better, or not so much?

 

For Christian communities, the call is to "go, baptize, make disciples." We can measure miles traveled in our going, certainly we can tally the baptisms of the newly faithful, and disciple-making activities may need attendance sheets or evaluations that tell those in charge how they're working and serving those who participate.

 

Are attendance, membership, and giving your major dashboard instruments where you worship? Can you think of other ways to keep track of where you're going, and how fast you're moving, plus where the fuel gauge sits, for your church family?

 

This is an instrument panel that's going to continually be rebuilt, even if the main dials in the center stay the same.

 

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

Faith Works 8-1-15

Faith Works 8-1-15

Jeff Gill

 

What comes out of an education

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Through the recent general church meeting I was part of last month, you could often hear "they didn't cover [blank] in seminary!"

 

And that was usually true. You can't cover everything, and the point of a seminary education is to give you the tools of ministry and some proficiency in using them, not to talk you through every possible usage of them. That's an entirely different column.

 

But it did get me to thinking about what I did learn, earning a "master of divinity" degree, an M.Div., at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. I have some vivid recollections spurred by seeing and talking to many of my former professors in Columbus, which started me recalling the things they taught me that have been "sticky."

 

These may not be what they want to be remembered for, and I guarantee it's not all I recall, but these are what first come to mind a quarter-century later, largely because they're the learnings that have most often come back to mind in the years since (and the ones I've most quoted to others, as well). The names may not mean much to most of you, but I've added their "field" after each name.

 

Brian Grant (counseling and pastoral care): If you are going into ministry to resolve your family-of-origin issues, if you're looking to the church to be your ideal father figure or to resolve your mother's emotional absence, then run away, run away! And go work on those issues for yourself first.

 

Clark Williamson (theology): If you don't like how I'm asking these theological questions of you now, in a nice sunny classroom in the middle of a weekday, wait until you get asked the same ones by a grieving parent in an ER waiting room at 3 am.

 

Ed Towne (theology): Would you say that from the pulpit, I wonder? And if not, why not?

 

Michael Kinnamon (theology and ecumenism): Always engage with the best of your dialogue partner's viewpoint, don't home in on their weak points. They're used to defending those weaknesses, defensively; dialogue grows when strength meets strength . . . you'll get to your own weaknesses soon enough.

 

Newell Williams (church history): In regarding a religious tradition, ask in their framework three questions -- what is sin, what is salvation, and how do you get from one to the other?

 

Bernie Lyon (pastoral care and counseling): If your witness is not disciplined, it will be an uncertain, unclear, unhelpful witness to your time and place. Find the disciplines of thought, study, prayer, and praise that will allow you to have a witness that will bless your world.

 

Sue Kidwell (also pastoral care): That's very interesting. Tell me more!

 

Keith Watkins (worship): Worship is an approach to Almighty God. If you move any distance at all, God will close the rest of that gap, even if all you can do is turn in God's direction.

 

Gayle Sarber (music and sacred arts): Oh, for pity's sake, just sing out! We'll get it pretty with practice, but just sing out!

 

Rufus Burrow (Christian ethics): If your analysis of a time or place or person does not take into account the viewpoint of the minority, the perspective from below the level of power and authority, you see nothing but what you expect to see. If you say, historically or personally "there's no minority viewpoint involved", I suspect you simply do not see them.

 

Les Galbraith (librarian): I do not understand how people can graduate with an M.Div., and when I see them cross the stage at commencement, I think "I don't recall ever seeing them once in the library!" The librarians should get a veto on final graduation.

 

Al Edyvean (dramatic arts): If it is not in you, I can't make it come out of you. But it's all there in you, I promise you that. We shall look together into our depths.

 

Charles Ashanin (church history): That reminds me of something an angel told me once . . .

 

Gerald Janzen (Hebrew and Bible): That reminds me of a Robert Frost poem . . . 
(Okay, and "Take from your storehouse what is old, and what is new, and find in that combination the wisdom your moment is seeking.")

 

Marti Steussy (Biblical interpretation): There's always a story. Always. Find it, and *listen*.

 

Ron Allen (preaching): JEFF, DON'T HOLD BACK!!!

 

Well, there you go. Is that what I got out of four years at CTS? It has always felt like I got at least as much out of it as I put into it, which was never as much as the community deserved, but it was a blessed season.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about what you remember from your own education in life and spirit at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-25-15

Faith Works 7-25-15

Jeff Gill

 

Not Just a Job, an Adventure

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So, I'm exhausted. But the good kind.

 

You know, the kind of tired you are after having 4,000 house guests enjoy their stay, not break anything, engage in lots of active, even contentious conversation without any ugly arguments breaking out (not complete agreement, but civility and even love reigned supreme), and now they're gone.

 

That kind of tired.

 

It's good, and you're feeling the satisfaction of work worth doing having been done, and it's also something you're not so secretly relieved you won't have to do again soon.

 

As I mentioned last week, my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had their biannual General Assembly at the Greater Columbus Convention Center; it ended Wednesday night (and I'm writing it as we're about to all turn into Thursday colored pumpkins.

 

We had a Methodist speak to us to wrap-up, but that's not unusual for our folk, we were ecumenical before ecumenical was cool. Adam Hamilton of the Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City area, a noted author as well as pastor, came to provide some workshop leadership on the last day and to preach us onto the road, and he reminded me to tell you something.

 

I love my job.

 

Perhaps some of you might say "do you call being a minister a job?" Good question, maybe you shouldn't, but the tax form and the census ask me to put something down on the form, and I write "pastor." I do an odd variety of things in the community, and there are those who know me primarily in other roles, but for over thirty years my main public role has been that of a set-apart ministerial leader in my church, a parson, a padre, a preacher.

 

I am an ordained minister, which means I have the full professional background and the degrees and certificates to show it, but I am also the called and installed pastor of a congregation, which in one form or another I've done since the 1980's, which is getting to be a long time. It's a vocation that has its challenges, and people can end up seeing the hard parts more than anything else: the hours, the expectations, the fishbowl (for my family as well as me), the pressures of sermons and situations where most folk look for the exit and we're trying to move closer to the heart of the crisis.

 

Yes, it's hard work. So's being an obstetrician, or a plumber, or an exterminator. Judges, deputies, elected officials, garbage truck riders: lots of ways to have a role in life that usually also has something to do with making a living that asks for much from the one doing it.

 

What I also get, that few see, are the rewards of being present to and with and for people in the most important moments of their lives. Some are incredibly painful, and a pastor has to see clearly that pain while also helping everyone see past it; some are so full of joy you can barely recall the moment for the tears of happiness and daze of exhilaration…there too, you have to help maintain perspective, or at least the presence of mind to tell the groom softly "okay, now turn and take her hand."

 

We share words that bring life even in the presence of death, and tie generations together in good times and bad. We receive confessions of faith, and admittances of guilt, and offer assurance of pardon that is inconceivable even to the person seeking it. We get to bring people together, often as simply as shouting "let's pause and say grace, shall we?" and we minister to those who think they are so alone they can't believe anyone is saying to them "are you alright?"

 

I love my job. It can be hard, and it can involve simply long periods of waiting (which for me, is really hard), even as the stretches of tedium can unexpectedly be broken into by moments of utter panic where, consciously or not, others expect us to keep our heads and know what to say or do. Which we sometimes pull off, and other times try to stumble through our own anxiety while keeping our footing enough to give those around us someone to hold onto.

 

And when my work is good, and I see hope abound and lives transformed and God's grace praised, it's all gravy (as Raymond Carver says). Gravy and pie and a hot cup of coffee, and eternity a beautiful landscape ahead.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him what you love about your calling at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.