Faith Works 12-8-18

Faith Works 12-8-18

Jeff Gill

 

Christendom, Christianity, and Nativity

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When I get to talk to David Woodyard about civil religion and the state of our country, he likes to remind me about the distinction between Christendom and Christianity.

It's a useful distinction, one that points out that there's the faith and practices of those who would follow Christ, the prince of peace, and there's the cultural construct of Christian life which we used to think of as "normal."

In fact, if you look just a scratch below the surface, at the entertainment industry, into politics and justice and foreign policy, there was no golden age of our country actually being comprehensively Christian. The idea of a Christendom had some outward expressions, like Sunday closing laws and Prohibition, but in practice we've been a fairly complicated nation from the get-go.

Yes, the majority religious expression has been Christian, but even there, we've been Protestant and Catholic, Orthodoxy common in Alaska in early days and Pentecostalism since Azusa Street in 1906. Our Christianities have been in the way of our Christendom.

For many Christians, the end of Christendom is visible and disturbing today in a variety of ways: everything is open on Sunday mornings, let alone the afternoons, and liquor is for sale as well. Sports programs for youth take place on Sunday mornings, and public displays of symbols of faith have become contentious, whether on school property or in governmental settings.

What David and I agree on, though, and Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon have written at length on the subject, is that the concept of Christendom can be bad for Christianity. If we Christians, of whatever tribe or faction or denomination, start to assume that the government or the schools or our Biblical epic movies are teaching our faith for us, and we can slack off and let someone else do it for us for free, we lose control of the message. So if the culture changes – and culture is a changeable thing, we've learned in the last few decades, haven't we? – then our Christian formation changes and we can't do much about it.

While my views on the so-called "separation of church and state" are complicated and would take longer than I have in a newspaper column, I do think that Thomas Jefferson was not being disingenuous when he said that it was for the good of the churches more than to benefit the state that he wanted to keep them separated. European Christendom is still paying a price for having state established churches, even if the property upkeep for leaks in the steeple is done through tax dollars.

Churches in America today have an advantage over at least most Christian churches of fifty to seventy-five years ago. There's not even a hint of belief that the city, county, or state government is going to teach our kids the Bible; we have no reason to think that the basic tenets of our faith are going to be communicated from the Oval Office; movies and TV have no interest in religious orthodoxy and we all know it. If we want an accurate sense of our spiritual basics to be transmitted to seekers or children or grandchildren, we need to do it ourselves.

Which is why I think it's a sign of healthy religiosity, and a vital Christianity in Licking County, that there are living nativities going on all over the place. I see signs, I get mailings, and people email me asking if I'd promote their church's live nativity whether in house or drive through.

Twenty years ago, these were fairly unusual, but year by year more churches are doing them. So many that I'm actually not going to list any here, for fear of leaving someone out! (And yes, my own congregation is doing one…)

But I think the new popularity of living nativity presentations is a good thing. South Succotash United Methodist Church might do theirs differently than St. Somewhat's Catholic Church would, and I suspect adherents of each would learn something about their own Christian traditions by seeing how another body arranges and offers the old, old story.

So go visit a few. See a bunch of them, and think about what they're trying to tell you. Because it's a story that has shaped human history, and empires and governments, and you and me, whatever your faith. We can all learn from a good manger scene.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he has been a wise man and a shepherd, but never an angel in a nativity pageant. Tell him how you fit into the story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter. 

Faith Works 12-1-18

Faith Works 12-1-18

Jeff Gill



Stewardship and frictionless spending

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'Tis the season for shopping, and of course it's generally assumed that as a pastor and preacher I'd have something to say against rampant consumerism and wasteful spending in a season that should have a better reason than just buying stuff.



Well, sure. But that's too easy. And only a part of the problem.



Art Rainer, a Christian stewardship consultant and author, recently shared three "scary money stats" in his blog: first, that 40% of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency. Other than a credit card, there's no backup capacity.



Secondly, Rainer notes that in 2018, the amount of student loans INCREASED to $1.5 trillion. And he notes that student loan debt is not just a Millennial problem. Did you know that Gen Xers have the highest average student loan debt, at almost $40,000?



His final scary money stat is that 33% of Americans have $0 saved for retirement (and 23% have saved between $1 and $10,000). Two-thirds of Millennials have nothing set aside yet, and the oldest of them are pushing 40.



Now, let's argue that people who attend church services regularly tend to be a bit more organized, have more of plan in mind and in action than the general population. We'd like to think so, wouldn't we? And I think it's true . . . but not entirely so.



So I should assume, if you cut those stats in half, that on a Sunday you're preaching to a room where 20%, one in five, can't come up with $400 cash in an emergency. That Gen Xers (call 'em 57 to 37 year olds) in church have around $20,000 or more in student loan debt hanging over them, and the Millennials if you have them in worship, age 35 or less, are right behind them. And over 15% of your parishioners have literally zero retirement savings.



I'd guess most preachers and church leaders would, on reflection, not dispute any of those projections into their congregation. Add in that the older folks in many of our churches may be more stable, a bit more secure, but feel responsible for adult children who are Boomers or Gen Xers or Millennials that fall right into those scary stats, and you can see where this overall financial picture impacts church life.



What do we do about this? Obviously there are many reasons for them, and one is simple lack of money. If you don't make much, and life costs lots, you won't be able to avoid becoming one of those scary stats. The goal in general is to get to where you make more, control costs, and "come out ahead." "Ahead" being getting out there with savings and plans for your financial future, so your income is ahead of your expenses.



For years many clergy in counseling with newly married couples or families in a variety of fiscal challenges would recommend "the envelopes." It was a simply system of committing together in a household to taking the paycheck when it came in, cashing it, and sorting the dollars into envelopes for "tithing/church giving," "retirement savings," "emergency fund," "rent," "food," "clothing," "entertainment," and so on. If you ran out of bills in an envelope, you didn't spend in that category until the next pay period or month.



Many young couples reported that "the envelopes" helped them get into good habits of controlling spending and disciplining their financial practices. Few keep it up forever, but it's a great way to start out. The problem, of course, is that our economy is pushing all of us in many ways to frictionless spending. There's nary a paper dollar involved in most purchases, between credit and debit cards, tapping your phone or scanning bar codes. We order items through apps and on a browser, and the envelopes are as quaint as, well, writing a letter and putting it in an envelope.



Some financial services companies are offering apps that hearken back to "the envelopes," letting the user create categories of purchases online, and you tag each interaction like clicking through your email, sorting them into various virtual folders which you can place a limit on, so the bank app tells you that you are reaching the maximum for your "eating out" budget, for instance.



One way or another, though, the challenge for most of us is to become conscious and mindful of our spending. The commercial marketplace has a vested interest in keeping us unconscious and unmindful of how our earnings are flowing back away from us into their pockets. This is where the question of frictionless spending is a spiritual as well as an economic issue.



Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; the first three years of his marriage, he and his wife wrote down everything they spent and went over their lists at the end of each week. Tell him what has worked for you in not being a slave to your money idols at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 12-6-18

Notes from my Knapsack 12-6-18

Jeff Gill

 

What makes us a community?

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We share, many of us, a zip code. 43023.

 

It binds us together if only to confirm at gas pumps that we're using a legit credit card.

 

There is a happy geographic accident, united with school district boundaries, which ties together Deeds Road to the south, Dry Creek in the north, from Highbanks Valley Court to Carmarthen Way, from Hardscrabble Road to the Welsh Hills.

 

We have residents of the village, and the not-village, people who live in the old village, and the newer outlying portions. Heading east on Newark-Granville Road there's village and township, and you have to look closely to know which is which.

 

And yes, some are "Granville" and others are "Newark" address, but the school district makes for a different sort of embrace. Township versus village doesn't mean the same thing when Union Township, let alone the city of Newark, becomes part of the communal whole. And then there's the "great wall" and odd boundaries down towards Heath which always make me squint to make sense of what's Granville and where is not.

 

There are those who have lit the luminaries and sung carols along Broadway, and people who have never seen the Christmas Candlelight Walking Tour; we have long-time village core residents who have made a point of leaving town for many years when the Fourth of July comes along, and others with more tenuous links to "the real Granville" whatever that might be who have stomped trash cans at Bluesfest and walked around selling water for the Scouts at Wildwood for fireworks. Some of us have helped build Wildwood twice over, our actual address shifting between the two experiences, but always feeling a tie to this place, this community, this village writ large.

 

I am concerned, as I've said, about a small but meaningful trend to moving out of Granville, however defined, once your children complete their educational round and receive their high school diploma. It doesn't sound like a sign of health for a community for people to casually want to leave when they've gained a narrow sort of benefit for living here, as important as a good school district can be in college admissions.

 

On the other hand are so many signs of life and health and overall vitality that, quite frankly, many communities whether larger or smaller would love to have on their balance sheet. We have vital, active faith communities in Granville – little known in the village, let alone in the county, is that rates of churchgoing in Granville are higher than anywhere else in Licking County – and the parent commitment to schools is still strong, plus the involvement in things like the Chamber of Commerce or Farmers' Markets or service clubs like Kiwanis and Rotary: it's amazing, and wonderful, and a good sign all around.

 

Granville has much going for it, however defined. Narrowly or widely, and I recommend the later, we encompass a community where community is valued, and celebrated, and supported. Any shortfall or complication I would identify is only because I want even more for us, and perhaps because I see so many social trends at work around the country pushing against local community strengths and solidarity that I want us to hold onto everything we can, because the storms ahead will swamp all sorts of places.

 

We are doing fine here in Our Fayre Village, and even when I mock our bubble with the moniker of Brigadoon, it's to make sure we stay aware of the bubble we've create for ourselves, in a hyper-individualistic, de-centered culture heading into 2019 and beyond. Granville is my adopted hometown, and perhaps its that sense of adoptedness that makes me want to hold onto our community unity all the more fiercely for having gained it secondhand.

 

Or as wiser and wittier people have said before me, I'm not from here, but I got here as fast as I could.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about what brought you to the Granville community at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-29-18

Faith Works 11-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

The time of worship

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What time is church?

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, and not without reason, that "eleven o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week in America."

 

When I was younger, and less aware of the realities of racism that Dr. King was trying to address, I remember my first reaction was "but 11:00 am isn't when church is?"

 

My church growing up always had Sunday morning worship at 10:30 am, and like most things we grow up with, I assumed how me and mine did it was the normal way, the right way, the way everyone did things. Then I went out into the world.

 

And truth be told, I mostly saw other 10:30s, but learned that the scope of the Lord's goodness, a wideness in God's mercy, extended to even 11 o'clock. Alrighty then.

 

Now, I also come from a very Biblically oriented tradition, and the curious fact is that you can't find any Biblical basis for that sort of time conformity. The day for worship among early Christians moved from the Jewish Sabbath to "the first day of the week" when Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus in the garden, and which we call Sunday in English speaking lands. But that was at dawn.

 

Other than Easter Sunday, and precious few of us at that, no one does worship at dawn.

 

Many traditions have a Sunday evening service, and did back in an earlier day when you rode to town with a dinner basket, attended morning worship, ate under the trees, and had a second round of preaching before riding home. Over the years, as automobiles caught on, the evening service moved back to 6:00 pm for those who continued that pattern.

 

And in that sequence, you can see why 11:00 am or maybe 10:30 makes sense. If you have to get up, milk the cows, feed the chickens, clean up, and ride a few miles into town, it had better not be until 10:30. Two hours of preaching, a leisurely lunch, maybe a turn around town, a 3:00 pm prayer meeting, then home by dark.

 

Yet like summer vacation in school calendars, we still follow a vaguely agrarian timetable on Sunday morning.

 

Quite a few of us, as our members have developed the more complicated schedules of work in 2018, have added services. An 8 or 8:30 am early service, Sunday afternoons are coming back, and many have a Saturday evening service. Other "non-traditional" worship times are getting more and more common; weary preachers are all too aware of the fact that we're also doing more services sometimes just to reach the same number – or less – in worship, but that's what happens as the 24/7 culture and rotating shift schedules eat away at our personal options.

 

I have to admit I've been trying to explain to some of my fellow believers who bemoan downturns in worship attendance that it's not a simple lack of faithfulness, or a devaluation of church that pushes down attendance at the old familiar 10:30 or 11 am hour. It's for many a question of work, or lose your job. The idea of Sunday being sacred is something you're welcome to believe personally, but it's not going to get you out of your four days in a row ten hour shifts, then four off, with Sunday just one more column heading on the time sheet.

 

What's a church to do? Part of it is to remember that there's nothing sacred about one particular worship time. Obviously, the counterpart to that is teaching and preaching about the importance of setting aside time to come together with fellow believers (Bible verses available on request, but there's many!).

 

Some tell me reading this column is their church. I honor the intention meant by saying that, but it does pain me to hear. This is a wonderful chance to converse, and for me to share some thoughts, but it's not a worship experience. My email and messages become a kind of community, but in the narrowest and most limited sense.

 

The challenge moving forward into 2019 and beyond is for faith communities to wrestle with exactly that, though: how to expand forms of community that look different than we're used to. We don't milk the cows on Sunday before riding a horse into town; we may have to find creative ways to use technology and communications to maintain community between chances to physically be present with each other. But it can't be just the virtual! Actual community will always be at the heart of how we come together in unity.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's glad to respond to any number of questions by email, but he's also likely to tell you to go to church, too. Write him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter. 

Faith Works 11-17-18

Faith Works 11-17-18

Jeff Gill

 

Sometimes, you just gotta preach

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Look, I am a preacher, but in this column, I do my best to not be preachy.

 

The running topic of "Faith Works" is how faith and belief and religious practice shapes and moves and informs our life together in Licking County, and in general I avoid sectarian claims and particular assertions. You can come hear me on a Sunday or Wednesday if you want, and that's more what you'll get, but here we're looking out across the Newark and central Ohio landscape.

 

But sometimes there are some things I just want to proclaim, to get a little bit preachy at you for the good of your heart, if not your soul.

 

You should be thankful.

 

Seriously, it's good for you. As a Christian pastor, I have particular reasons for thankfulness, but there's a baseline reality that's accessible to us all: we are here, you are reading this, there are options available to us while we have breath, and for that and maybe a bit more, we need to be thankful.

 

I believe that thankfulness is as essential in a longer term way as breathing is for right now. If you have your breathing restricted, your energy and awareness and general well-being can be impacted; if you stop breathing long enough, you will die. On a different timeline, if you stop being thankful, it starts to hit your thoughts and understandings like a blood oxygen level below 95% starts messing with your head.

 

And a complete absence of thankfulness can kill you dead, even if your body is still walking around for a long while after that.

 

There are always reasons to not be thankful. Stuff you don't have, health that's not at what it should be, people who let you down, problems that are coming which can't be avoided. Sure. I've got 'em, you've got 'em, we all have them.

 

This is where service to others is so crucial to having a thankful heart. I have this conversation with people in hospitals all the time as a minister: there's always someone down the hall worse off. It's true. You can dread being in their shoes all night, or you can be thankful for what you have, where you can go, the hope and time you have. It's a choice, really.

 

You may have heard that Scott Hayes and the Licking County Jail Ministry (LCJM) have launched a new ministry of their own, outside of the Licking County Justice Center.

 

It's on S. 5^th St., and it's called Vertical 196 for the address; some of us know it as the old Red Cross building. Vertical 196 is a day center for homeless people.

 

You may not know that, for all sorts of practical reasons, homeless shelters have to ask all their guests to leave for the day, 8:30 am or so, and not return until about 5 pm. The Salvation Army shelter on E. Main St., the St. Vincent Haven on Wilson St., other emergency shelter programs on a smaller basis in the community all have to impose such rules. But where does a homeless, if sheltered person go during the day? Let alone a person who is homeless and unhoused, making their own shelter somewhere by the rivers or stairwells of our city?

 

Vertical 196 is a partial answer to this question. They completed two weeks of operations yesterday, and they have seen 35 to 45 people for lunch every weekday they're open, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.

 

Scott is chaplain for the LCJM, and he's excited about how this extension of that ministry is involving even more people to make the meals, serve and sit with the guests for lunch, and help with expanding the outreach program they offer. Soon they'll add laundry and shower services for guests, and with five church teams at work to start, he's hoping to add enough committed volunteers to go to a 9:00 to 4:00 schedule.

 

Their immediate needs, though, are XL sweatshirts and sweatpants. The idea is folks can wear them while washing the clothes they came in with, and take them with them as another layer for the walking and searching and sometimes sleeping wherever they may go.

 

Vertical 196 already has evening programs for a variety of audiences, such as a Celebrate Recovery group with a meal on Thursdays. They also plan to be open as usual on both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day with a meal, and warmth. You can ask questions or offer to help through Scott@JailMinistries.org.

 

If you go there, though, you know what people who are homeless say about it? They are thankful. And I'm reminded to be thankful, as well.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.