Faith Works 2-3-18

Faith Works 2-3-18

Jeff Gill

 

Stuff from the dunno-maybe file
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Every so often, as life and work get busy, a hard working columnist goes to his idea file and looks at the bits and scraps he hasn't used yet to create a entire piece out of.

 

And reads through the recent string of notes and asks: is there a full idea here worth developing?

 

Idea: Carey Nieuwhof talks about how there are pop-up restaurants and pop-up theatre performances going on in many corners of our culture – what about a pop-up church service?

 

Thought: while I get the general issue at hand with holding a "celebration of life" when someone has passed on, there still needs to be acknowledgement that the person has died. And it's hard. And some folks need to know it's okay to grieve. The happiness-industrial complex is hard at work telling everyone we need to be positive and upbeat and chipper, but sometimes you just need to be able to cry. Maybe a funeral isn't such a bad idea.

 

Quibble: when the music samples a piece that contains a riff from a theme with an echo from classical roots, isn't there something to be said about having a common base of knowledge about those older genres and forms?

 

Double quibble: are we really well served by having so darn many translations out on the market of the Holy Bible? I'm not arguing for going back to King James Version 1611 and nothing else, but 47 seems a bit much. I just don't know.

 

Inspiration: we talk so much about sunrise or sunset spiritual experiences, but have you ever watched the moon rise? It can be a stirring experience even in the middle of an afternoon.

 

Theological reflection: the whole gluten-free question when it comes to communion is both tough, and easy. I'm a Protestant, so the issues at hand aren't the same for me, but I understand the affirmation in liturgical churches for elements that are closer to what Jesus was talking about, with wheat ground and baked, grapes picked and crushed, ending up with the loaf and the cup. At the same time, why not a rice wafer or non-alcoholic juice? The discussion and understanding of the symbols can still be the same…

 

Idea: why not learn and grow from each other as churches, not by doing a pulpit exchange where the preacher alone goes from one place to visit the other, but a congregational exchange? The preacher and music team stay put, but the worshipers en masse rotate between two facilities. I think there's a great many things that might be learned that way, starting with everyone not having "their" seat in the worship center!

 

Thought: as someone who is deeply versed in the language and culture of events thousands of years ago, I am so over "Breaking News." I mean, seriously.

 

Meditation: listening to sports stars or recording artists thanking God or Jesus or however they choose to acknowledge their higher power when they've won, some of which sound more sincere than others, but how would I really know? The fact is they could just thanks agents and managers and family, but they chose to add or even lead with that word of thanks. I should just appreciate it more than I do, but I can't help hearing some special pleading there.

 

Further meditation, same theme: it would be very instructive to ask the losers, the second place finishers, the other nominees, to give speeches. How many of them would have something to say about the Lord then, and what would it sound like?

 

Inspiration: people who email me just to say something in a column spoke to them. Letting readers know how much I do appreciate it, even if my answers to emails tend to be very short. (Note: you can't do this as a column, it will sound like you're fishing for compliments.)

 

Column idea: extended essay on how and why and when we fish for compliments in everyday conversation, in life in general, at work, even with those we love.

 

Ongoing note: how are the social transformations of a cashless society, autonomous cars, delivery at home, and "streaming everything" going to impact corporate worship and congregational life?

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he has a large backlog of half-baked ideas which he tries to not inflict on you until they're mostly-baked. Tell him your column ideas at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.    

Faith Works 1-27-18

Faith Works 1-27-18

Jeff Gill

 

Seminaries, bookshops, and the Hallmark Channel

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We all know, I trust, that the Hallmark Channel is marketing fantasy and lovely imaginary scenarios.

 

Right?

 

This past Christmas season, many new viewers chose to turn to the Hallmark Channel for their reliably upbeat, happy-in-the-end, stories of romance and love conquering all. Including economic realities.

 

Among their regular tropes of secret Santas and well timed snowfall and perfect outdoor décor, in their dozens of annual new releases they also frequently save a charming small business. Yes, Christmas themed shops, diners, and independent quaint little bookstores.

 

No one has done more for independent book shops than the Hallmark Channel. I lost count how many of them they saved from bankruptcy and closure this past year. In fantasyland, that is.

 

Kicks Mix Bookstore in Newark and Readers' Garden in Granville are among the 10,000 plus independent book shops around the country; with the closure and consolidation of some of the big chains like Waldenbooks and Borders, that number may well be going back up. We have twice as many bookstores today in the United States as we did when World War II ended, but certainly fewer than a couple of decades ago. Barnes & Noble, plus our new neighbors at Amazon, have shaken up the landscape of bookselling.

 

Any bookstore owner or employee can tell you (and yes, I was once one myself, more than once in fact) that it takes hard work to keep such a retail outlet going, and even then there are no guarantees. Unless you own a struggling bookshop in a Hallmark movie!

 

I'm bringing all this up because I have a strong interest in the fate and future of seminary education. I'm an ordained minister in my tradition, which in the last 75 years has meant I earned a bachelor's degree and then went on to get a Master of Divinity or M.Div. It was residential, meaning I went somewhere, lived (part of those years) in student housing, and in my case it was 90 credit hours and a thesis defense at the end. Ordination is the work of the church, but the M.Div. degree is the work of the seminary.

 

And seminaries are closing. Fast. Overall, residential seminary enrollment has dropped by a quarter to a third over the last decade, while online programs have doubled. Distance learning is rapidly being adapted into ministerial formation programs, but the pressure on what were often already financially stressed institutions for graduate education has become immense.

 

A few years ago, some liberal seminaries in New York and Boston and Chicago began to show the strain, or announce outright closure timetables, and there was much ideological finger-pointing . . . but in the last year, conservative bastions like Moody Bible Institute and Fuller Theological Seminary have closed extension campuses and slashed staff at their main institutions. Seminary education, as we've known it, is shaking from the very roots.

 

My own seminary sent out fundraising materials that included the, to me, shocking news that they are reliant on endowment funds for 56% of their operating costs, and another 20% from grants. Is that sustainable? We'll see. Other seminaries I've been used to working with through my church, and supporting students, have sold their campuses and gone "virtual" or are facing recognition or even accreditation pressures. Most of them won't even share their endowment fund draw information, which makes me think . . .

 

Because, and I know this will sadden some of you, life is not a Hallmark Channel movie. But working with religious organizations over the years, I worry that we have too much hope, too many expectations that are not really based in faith but more in wishful thinking, that some white knight will ride in, some "bequest will mature," that dollars will rain down miraculously and save the bookstore.

 

Or seminary.

 

In fact, that's rarely how God works, even less so for bricks and mortar. So I worry about seminaries and how we look at seminary education and how we as churches do ministerial formation. I want my own denomination to refocus on formation, spiritual and professional, but my time and energy keeps getting taken up with institutional survival and structural salvage.

 

But that's why I am oddly so inspired by what Trinity Episcopal Church is doing in the heart of Newark. Their building, they came to realize, could not be saved: but the church could be. And it's through the church that God saves people, not through buildings (or institutions). Images of Christ are nice, meeting Jesus in the life of faith is central.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he still enjoys a good Hallmark movie from time to time, just as a break from it all. Tell him what you see changing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-18-18

Notes from my Knapsack 1-18-18

Jeff Gill

 

Statues on a bridge

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Just before the new bridge in downtown Newark was finished, I was heading back to Granville down Mt. Vernon Road, south towards the city and ready to veer right towards home.

 

The deck had been laid down, and the pillars were now built up; it was earlier in the fall, and a mist was coming up with sunset.

 

Those pillars were striking, arrayed five on each side of the now wider and more pedestrian friendly passage from Newark's heart to the north side, above the Ohio Rt. 16 expressway beneath.

 

I've not been there, but from evocative pictures I've seen I was reminded, in a funny way, of the Charles Bridge in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, across the Vltava River. It's on my own personal bucket list to see and walk across, not the least because of the grand statuary that lines the sides of this historic 15^th century structure.

 

The Charles Bridge has 30 statues, most from around the year 1700 and memorializing figures who are today mostly unknown, even to Europeans. But for our bridge at the center, so to speak, of Licking County, if we didn't have the lightposts that are now there, how would I complete that initial eventide imaginary vision? With ten pillars just right for figures in bronze, who would belong there?

 

Here's my list – it will never be so, but I enjoyed thinking about what historical personages from Licking County's legendary past I'd immortalize. Your list may vary, and that's fine! Tell me by email who your ten might be. Mine, in rough chronological order:

 

1. Mary Harris , the "Whitewoman" of Coshocton fame aka "Wakatomica," but likely the first European to see these creeks and valleys. Born at the end of the 1600s, kidnapped in the Deerfield raid of 1704, and matriarch of a Native American family when 2. Christopher Gist came through in 1750, the first to leave a written record specifically mentioning landmarks in Licking County. 3. Rev. David Jones, whose missionary tour of the Ohio Country in 1773 was in part to get him away from angry British Loyalists; he wrote of his passage through our region (Jones' narrative was in Thomas Jefferson's library at Monticello), and commended many of our first settlers to come here in 1802 and 1803, returning to preach in 1807 for local Baptists and others.

 

4. Jonathan Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, passed through our area again and again in the first decades of the 1800s, likely slept in what's now the basement tavern of the Buxton Inn, and is buried in Fort Wayne, Indiana even though the bulk of his career was spent between Granville and Newark up to the Mansfield area and back again.

 

5. Fr. Jean-Baptiste Lamy, missionary priest was active in Licking & Knox Counties in the tumultuous 1840s, and was tapped for his good work here to become Bishop of New Mexico, himself already in bronze in the heart of Santa Fe. Ohio claims eight presidents to tie us with Virginia, but actually we can lay claim to a ninth, 6. Edward Roye, born along Mt. Vernon Road just north of this bridge we're discussing. He was seventh president of Liberia, but hey, he became a president after starting out here!

 

Can I tell you my other four honorees next time? Thank you!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; give him your list of ten persons worth making into statues for our land of legend at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 1-20-18

Faith Works 1-20-18

Jeff Gill

 

A personal & pastoral thought on #MeToo
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I have no #MeToo story to tell.

 

What I do carry with me is thirty-plus years of sitting, as a pastor, with women in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, in hospitals and nursing homes and living rooms, listening. Hearing story after story after story of being the girl from the country, from a farm, from a constrained circumstance of some sort, and being asked to come to town and be a maid, a companion for an older person, an employee, a boarder. I would guess these stories in my hearing began with a starting point around 1915, rattling down through the decades with peaks in the Great Depression, during World War II, and shortly after war's end and soldiers' return.

 

The stories I'm thinking of almost without exception involved men long dead, which I suspect has much to do with the fact that I've heard relatively few from women closer to my age, about men more recently and who may well be alive. The accounts shared with me by the dying or fearful-of-dying, the post-surgical recovering and the newly moved into nursing care, in moods always reflective and rarely bitter, but often punctuated with anger that never lasted long, were about how they were "taken advantage of" as the phrase usually is applied.

 

To my ears, the words "raped" and "molested" often came to mind, but the circumlocutions and roundabout phrasings clearly had at least a mental familiarity -- as for their spokenness, I usually had the impression this was the first time the story had been told aloud, though I would have no way of knowing for sure.

 

They were usually teens, sometimes in their twenties; it was often the man of the house itself, not a stranger, not a tradesman. Hints and indications would set the scene of daytime at work on nighttime intrusions, but the stories were almost always told me in a spirit of "you can't be too careful," or "this is how I learned to not trust appearances" and of course "sweet words can hide bitter thoughts."

 

I watch the rolling wave of revelations from media, celebrity, religion, politics; I talk to my son about how surprising some names are, and how unsurprising others sound, but if everyone knew, then how could they . . . ?

 

And I think about those stories, told from a perspective of decades past, but with a hint always of how some things aren't as easy to get away with for men, but in general . . . rarely did anyone ask me to do anything in response, and almost always they asked for my confidence, confessing the sins of others though they were. I've granted it almost without exception because there's no one to charge, no score to settle, usually not even any family member to ask for confirmation or apology for not believing them (and rarely had they told a soul at the time). What I think they wanted me to know was how hard women have had it, and a sense from me that I would work to prevent such things in the future if I could.

 

In too many of the stories, there was a marriage not long after the imposition. Not all, but often. Those men, always long deceased themselves, would have their apologies made for them by their victim, later their wife, but still in some way that girl wanting to hear their own forgiveness, to have any fault relieved from their part. But if I was too harsh in my condemnation of the perpetrator, I'd quickly hear a defense (call it a rationalization, but clearly the years had made the story complicated in their own minds) and a request to understand "him."

 

I have no #MeToo story to tell. And the ones I've been more directly engaged in more recently are not mine to tell, some with more justice in the outcomes than others. Like any parish pastor, I have developed a healthy sense of just how complicated life is. But I know that my willingness to believe "her" story and understand "her" hesitations and anxieties -- that's been shaped by the stories I've been entrusted with. They came to me from women now passed on, but those stories in my mind are daily reminders to me that this is a vast and widespread cultural and social and historic problem which we have much to repent for, and a long way yet to go.

 

They too, have a story for this present moment, if only to say it's not a recent issue, just a new willingness to talk more openly about what never should have been a young woman's "guilty" secret.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; as a minister he hears many stories, only some of which can be shared. Tell him what story you'd like told at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 1-13-18

Faith Works 1-13-18

Jeff Gill

 

Praying for us all

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Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther did an interesting thing as 2017 concluded.

 

He asked some 200 faith community leaders across his city to "pray for peace" as our neighbor to the west dealt with the deadliest year in their history, 143 homicides in the calendar year (and then a new killing barely minutes into 2018).

 

With New Year's Eve a Sunday as the year ended, the mayor sent out a letter asking for prayers in worship as 2017 wound down to a close, saying "The new year should be a recommitment from all corners of this great city to the safety and well-being over every resident in every neighborhood. I believe that through prayer, dialogue and thoughtful actions we can make this year safer for all."

 

What does it mean for a community leader to ask faith communities to pray together?

 

When Twitter has a hashtag for your effort, #prayforpeace, does it make for a stronger spiritual reality?

 

Ideally, when believers in a higher power or heavenly realm or revealed religion choose to work together, there are both spiritual and practical outcomes that make the effort for unity worthwhile. As a Christian, I am told that wherever two or more are gathered, there my Lord will be, also – and these days I take the word gathered fairly broadly. Physical gatherings have a felt power of oneness, but there are times when an email burst or social media outcry bring people's hopes and intentions together in a way that seems very close to tangible.

 

Most Western faith traditions would argue that while God is not bounded by our intentions, there are many indications that our prayers, our petitions, our intercessions are welcome to the Lord, and have a focusing or multiplying or magnifying effect. In both the Hebrew Scriptures and Apostolic Writings, the Christian Testaments Old and New, there are times when angels and visions from on high are telling we mere mortals that our prayers, especially the prayers of the righteous, the faithful, have an effect. I think of it as opening up a window, or the shutters, so that the light already shining from above can enter into a room; likewise prayer makes a way into a situation where our own hesitations or anxieties close doors that God would rather not kick down.

 

Those would be some of the spiritual effects; on a more immediately visible level, calling different communities of believers to common prayer is likely to directly trigger work side by side. If you pray to the Divine with one voice, why wouldn't you labor with one heart in the vineyards of this world? When you know the church down the street is praying for the same desire, for peace and harmony, it's not a stretch to say "let's knock on their door and talk about how we can make that unity visible!"

 

I've had the opportunity to be part of ecumenical, interfaith efforts in many ways through the years. When Ohio was preparing for our state bicentennial in 2003, a group of writers and religious leaders came together, with Sikhs and Native Americans and Lutherans and Buddhists and my own Disciples of Christ tradition all co-operating to tell the story of "Religion in Ohio: Profiles of Faith Communities." (You can still read it, alas not in e-book form.)

 

When I was in college, Lafayette Urban Ministry brought prophetic voices together to challenge harsh forms of providing public assistance; in seminary I got to help put on workshops for the Near Eastside Church and Community Ministry Project about housing and violence prevention; in every community where I've served we've had councils of churches or ministeriums or ministerial associations that gave different religious leaders a place to find support from each other, and allowed an idea from one church to be fed and nurtured by many – that's part of the story of how the Licking County Coalition for Housing came to be, back 25 years ago.

 

So I salute Mayor Ginther for his request, and would add my own prayers, along with encouraging those of the congregation I serve, to the call #prayforpeace. Columbus needs it, Newark needs it in our own ways, and the whole hurting world needs more than a little peace.

 

Pray with me, and I believe we both will be blessed by having done so, together.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's praying for you. Yes, you. Pray for him as you will, and offer any more concrete thoughts to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.