Faith Works 1-12-19

Faith Works 1-12-19

Jeff Gill

 

Great is Thy Faithfulness

___

 

Thomas Chisholm wrote the words to the familiar hymn in 1923; its opening "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" is usually in quotes, because it cites Lamentations 3:23. Both Jeremiah in Lamentations and Brother Chisholm knew plenty of trials and tribulations, and their declaration that God is faithful is not in contradiction to hard times, but a reminder to us that even in the midst of sorrows, the Lord has promised to be faithful in love and mercy.

 

George Beverly Shea, the great singer for Billy Graham's revivals, introduced the still-new hymn (not published until 1925) in an English evangelistic meeting during 1954, and they realized they had a devotional hit on their hands. Preachers know it's up there with "Old Rugged Cross" and "In the Garden" as a most requested hymn for memorial services and in traditional settings.

 

It's about God's faithfulness, of course, but also a call to our own response. About the Lord, the song reminds us "There is no shadow of turning with Thee," and to us it says "Morning by morning new mercies I see / All I have needed Thy hand hath provided / Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!"

 

And with that reminder of what is "enough," we are called to our own faithfulness. To be consistent, faithful, and reliable in our worship and devotions, both between us and God, and among the believers in service and witness.

 

Which is where the modern problem arises. What is "faithfulness" today?

 

Not so long ago, it was being in church. Every Sunday morning, in not a few places in the evening as well, and often Wednesday nights, too. If you checked those boxes, you were a "faithful Christian."

 

Not to kick that model to the curb too casually, but it's not the model we see at work today. There are still those who, as the saying goes, "are at the church any time the doors are opened," but that's a faithful remnant, indeed.

 

In leadership, the old assumption was that faithfulness equaled attendance, but if you limited leadership in most faith communities today – and I have enough conversations across the map to know I'm speaking even beyond Christianity here! – to those who are there no less than, say, 50 weeks a year, you're not going to have much of a pool to draw from.

 

And a common concern among lay and clergy leaders is how to do some of the basic functions of church life that used to be so simple: weekly or monthly teams, rotations set at the beginning of the year, servers and ushers and deacons and so on. Often the person in charge for the day has more gaps than check marks on their table of organization; meetings struggle to reach a quorum.

 

As a minister myself, I have some residual sympathy for those who say we need to increase expectations. There's something to the lowered expectations we have in general to personal accountability, in faithfulness, in the world today. As a boss who's trying to make sure a shift is filled or a counter staffed: even in the workplace it can be more of a problem than it ought to be.

 

But as a pastor, I'm acutely aware of the new stresses on younger workers – it's a two-sided coin. Companies and chains love "just in time" staffing, not just supplies, and people don't know their work schedule more than two weeks out. It's not always lack of commitment, it's lack of certainty that makes planning so hard for youth group outings and teaching schedules and so on.

 

Add in more leisure, cheaper travel, and the simple fact that people are much more mobile, and you get something I've remarked on before here: you might have no fewer worshipers, but if a church averaging 100 a Sunday doesn't lose any members, but they come three out of four weeks consistently, your worship attendance average drops to 75. It looks like a quarter decline, but is it?

 

Well, it is in terms of getting things done every week. Those tasks that require, well, faithfulness. It's not just about attendance pins or checking off names, but about knowing how to get the simple tasks of ministry accomplished.

 

Faithfulness in most things is a gift, and one we have to decide how and if we'll bring it. I can live with faithfulness looking different to those around me today than it did to my grandmother, but it presents certain challenges. And not just the practical ones. Faithfulness brings "strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow."

 

How can we understand faithfulness in our common life today?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's usually in church on Sundays, but you'd expect that, wouldn't you? Tell him about faithfulness in action at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 1-5-19

Faith Works 1-5-19

Jeff Gill

 

How many times do I have to tell you?
___

 

Jesus famously said that we should forgive seventy times seven.

 

Infamously, Biblical scholars point out that the passage is not meant to teach that forgiveness runs out at repetition number 490, but that seventy times seven is a numerical expression of "more than you can really imagine."

 

Kind of like how we used to think about a million of something. A million times or a million years were formerly a big deal, but when it's a joke in a movie for a villain frozen in time to demand "one MILLION dollars," you realize a million isn't what it used to be.

 

So Jesus' seventy times seven is overridden by modernity's million which in turn takes a back seat to "billions and billions" . . . but the point is the same all along: you can't really imagine those amounts. Actually, how well can any of us hold the concept of seventy in our heads, let alone times seven?

 

We won't even get into "six hundred and sixty-six" with all of its various claimed and potential meanings.

 

On a smaller scale, it's a commonplace of presentations that people need to hear something seven times for it to really sink in. Seven sounds like a good number, but I've never found a published study that nails this down more than as a well-meaning anecdote. Like seventy times seven and forgiveness, I think hearing or seeing a piece of information seven times is more of a concept than calculus. The real point is that you rarely can just tell someone something new and count on it sticking with one announcement.

 

It doesn't work for me, that's for sure. I need to be asked, I need to write it down, I need it on my calendar, I need to put it on the office white board, and probably add a scribbled sticky note on the computer monitor. But that's just five times, and it probably calls for a couple more reminders to go from "somebody asked for it" to "it is finished."

How many times, in which forms, over what span of days, does it take to get a piece of information communicated? What does it take you to have "learned your lesson"? If it's something we want to hear, hope to learn about, the magic number can be one. Once is enough for the willing ear. It's the itching ears listening for something other than what you're saying which have trouble hearing the word you have to share, even the second or third time around.

 

When you have an event or program or change in the usual pattern in a faith community, how do you put it out there? You can announce it on Sunday morning, include it in a bulletin or announcement screen, add it to the newsletter, put it out in the weekly e-mail to everyone on the list, and place it on a bulletin board . . . which makes five times, but is that enough? You could add the news to the congregational web page, Facebook page, and Twitter feed, which takes you to eight – definitely past seven times! – but what if not everyone sees the same social media accounts, or misses a Sunday in worship? There you are back down to four, or even (horrrors!) three, and people saying "but no one told me… I didn't know about it… why wasn't that announced?"

 

This is where the seventy times seven comes in. Not as in announcing something 490 times, but in praying for forgiveness! Because in community life, it is hard to hit that elusive "tell 'em seven times" standard.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's a big believer in repetition. Also in telling people the same thing in multiple forms again and again. Tell him what you think the "magic number" of communications is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-3-19

Notes from my Knapsack 1-3-19

Jeff Gill

 

That was the year that

___

 

We were talking in Bible study recently about the past year.

 

These are church people, and we're used to taking the long view, and seeking the bright side. But there was a general consensus that 2018 is a year we're all ready to see move on. Let's give 2019 a chance.

 

What I'd like to say, though, is that we really should avoid writing off years. As we all know, you never want to say "well, it couldn't get any worse." I'm not even superstitious, but that's a bad, bad, bad thing to say.

 

And every year has its challenges, just as there isn't a set of four seasons go by without at least something to be thankful for.

 

A couple of decades back, Queen Elizabeth II in her annual Christmas Message talked about an "annus horribilis" which is Latin for "it was a really bad one." This year, the 92 year old monarch struck some lovely notes (it's worth looking up online, just five minutes) showing that you can always come back from an "annus horribilis."

 

In earlier ages of humankind, when calendars and almanacs were the preserve of the priests and kings and queens, the average bloke talked about a year being "the sixty-sixth year of the reign of the queen" or "the year when King Uzziah died." The year 1816 became known generally as "the year without a summer" thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia and resulting global cooling; 1833 was "the year the stars fell" thanks to a memorable Leonid meteor shower in November that marked for decades how that year was remembered.

 

When tragedy strikes, it marks more than a day or month. When someone important to us dies, that loss colors a long stretch of our lives just as a volcanic plume can tint sunsets and skies for months on end. So that death becomes a landmark in our mental map.

 

It's also just as possible for a good day to become the measurement for a whole year, a turning point in one's life: the year you got married, the year your first child was born. Graduating from school or returning home from overseas service, those are year markers that stick up above the stubble of day to day events.

 

What was 2018 for you? Not so much a bad year or a good, but what made this last 12 month stretch particular to you? In twenty years, if God grants them, how will you look back on it? Would it help your attitude and intentions if you intentionally think about how this year is going to become memorialized in your mental map?

 

Because one way or another, 2018 will be something to you, in general. Maybe the year you missed the fireworks at Wildwood Park; it could just be the year you started going to the Farmers' Market on Saturdays. Perhaps you had a great event stand out from the passing days and leave you a guidepost for future comparison; bless you if this last year brought a harder change in your life that will cast a long shadow.

 

This was the year that . . . that something. What that was for you will probably set the table for the year ahead, but it's almost certainly going to be memorable for its own reasons, which we'll all discover together.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's glad for some of the harder lessons of 2018, but . . . anyhow, tell him about your year at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-29-18

Faith Works 12-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

Too much Christmas? Or maybe enough.

___

 

 

So, how much Christmas did you have? Too much, not enough, just right?

 

Goldilocks may not be a happy camper this time of year. Just right is a state of balance that few can achieve. The Three Bears may include in one house out in the woods the full spectrum of plenty, scarcity, and satisfaction, but as many have wondered, the odds are good that Goldilocks would get eaten by bears before she could complete her testing of chairs and beds and porridge. Anyhow.

 

I've listened to plenty of people say that Hallmark Channel movies are too much. Well, so is CNN. Ads at Christmastime for cologne are too much, but so are the calorie counts. And in the end, your excess may be my standard practice; my over the top could seem too little too late to you.

 

But it keeps seeming as if excess has become part and parcel of the Christmas season, from Dickens' "Spirit of Christmas Present" and his cornucopia of plenty, to the last few ad circulars in this paper (or the pop-up ads online at our webpage).

 

On the other hand, falling short at Christmas time is the tragedy of all tragedies; to be left all alone, to miss your connections, to not get the gift you fervently hoped for, those are the plot points for holiday films that speak of disaster. Only a last minute miracle, usually involving the right thing showing up out of nowhere, can save the story, or the hero.

 

Is there any miracle that could possibly occur, though, to allow us to have enough Christmas? For enough to be . . . enough?

 

Christmas Day is 24 hours long, like all of them; we may wake up early, even before dawn, say 6:00 am, and struggle to stay awake to 10:00 pm or so, making the Christmas we experience about 16 hours worth. It winds down slowly, and there's always a wistfulness to realizing that Christmas Day is ending, and won't be back again for another 364 days.

 

But isn't that true of Dec. 29^th? Why is there no bittersweet sense as we realize that it, too, is coming to a close as the streetlights flash on and the sky darkens? Dec. 29 will then be just as gone, for just as long, until the year makes another 364 day round.

 

Sure, other days don't get you presents. But some do! And any could. This is all why it's a commonplace saying to wish for Christmas joys and the spirit associated with the day to last all the year round. "If only every day were Christmas!"

 

Every day already is, I think. Not just by keeping your tree up (I leave mine to Jan. 6, another story there) or leaving the lights stapled to your eaves right into Fourth of July, but in the precious gift that is any day in this world. It is irreplaceable and unique and unrepeatable.

 

What we do with Christmas in all our over-the-top festive excess is a way of putting a pin in our mental maps, tagging the day memorably so we might have some of that specialness carry over to the rest of the 364. If one day that is, after all, exactly like all the others can be made that special, then maybe it means they all have the same potential.

 

And in the same way, it would be good if we could learn from our occasional lapses into excess, or those moments when we find events falling short of expectations, and not hang onto having gotten too little or too much Christmas, but let those ends of a celebrational spectrum remind us that there is a happy medium, a place in the middle of "enough." Enough is possible, and could be a goal any time.

 

Part of the mystery and, yes, magic of Christ is how his life is a message to me, from humble birth to sorrowful death, out of his incredible arrival and unexpected return, about both the value of every person, and the meaning to be found in each day. And his way of love and life tells me something about the possibility of finding "enough." That the person I meet, the resources I have, the moment I am in, could be enough, and not just a stepping stone to the next encounter, to more stuff, to a later event when things will really be enough, then.

 

Christmas, and season after it, is a good time for me to reflect on when and what is enough.

 

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

Faith Works 12-22-18

Faith Works 12-22-18

Jeff Gill

 

Room at the inn - a story that might have been

___

 

After the pre-flight safety briefing, it was time to sit and wait.

 

She was my seat-mate, but I hadn't actually related to her at all. She was much older than me, and came in almost as the hatch was being closed, clambering past me to the window seat. I wondered how often she'd have to get back out past me on the aisle.

 

The overhead light was almost out of her reach, and I offered to help adjust her vent, which apparently was blowing cold air on her.

  

"Thank you so much, young man. Those always frustrate me."

 

"Happy to help."

 

"What brings you out flying terrifying heights into the air?"

 

So I found myself talking to a woman that, it turns out, lives not two miles away from me. We were both flying back home from family visits, each for our own purposes of supporting relatives who had just suffered tragic losses. She seemed better equipped to provide that sort of moral support that I thought I had been.

 

We talked about family and parents and aunts and uncles, and I realized she was talking about the start of the Great Depression, and World War II. She was born in 1924, and her husband had piloted some kind of landing craft across the Pacific, sending cryptic postcards all postmarked "San Francisco APO."

 

Me? I remembered when MTV started, and the day Challenger exploded. But then again, so did she.  And she had met both Orville Wright and Buzz Aldrin. "Well, I shook Orville's hand, anyhow. Buzz I got to talk to. He's a hoot!"

 

"This is going to be a quiet Christmas, but I think I'm about due," she said. "Last year I was with my late husband's family in Pittsburgh and they about deafened me. What are you going to do?"

 

"Well, not much." Honestly, my plan was pretty much non-existent. I had moved to central Ohio the year before, my parents had moved twice since I finished college, and I'd ended up living in Licking County just because the house I rented was the first click on my web search that wasn't already under contract.

 

"If you want some egg nog that will tell you what day it is on the 25^th, you can come by my house. My great-niece doesn't like it much, and her kids aren't old enough to taste my recipe." It occurred to me that this meant she was a great-great-aunt, which was not a title I'd even thought of existing until just now.

 

We made good time, landed and the usual scramble for luggage and the aisle began. I realized, thanks to my newfound friend, that there was an upside to just sitting and waiting until the pack had thinned out. We chatted until the aisle cleared, then I reached up and got her bag and mine down from the bin overhead, and we marched at her pace down the rows of seats and out the tunnel into the airport.

 

In the concourse, she stopped and so did I, helping her re-sling her bag as she dug out a, yes, flip phone. "I'm going to call and get my great-niece to come and get me, but it's been nice talking to you!"

 

To my surprise, I heard myself asking "would you mind if I gave you a ride home and saved your great-niece a trip out so late?" In the end, she still had to call her to tell her not to worry about coming to the airport, but we made our way to the shuttles, the lot, and into my car and down Route 161. We reached her house, and I carried her bag in as she unlocked the door.

 

She insisted on making me coffee before my trip home, which I pointed out was less than two miles away. But I did welcome the pause. There in her home, surrounded by pictures of family, all of whose names she rattled off any time my gaze flickered in their direction, and knick-knacks each of which carried a story of their own.

 

By the time I got up from her table, it was late enough that I needed that coffee in me. But I promised to come back in a few days for a Christmas Day visit.

 

"Not until after 11 am, though. I always watch the Christmas parade past the castle in California; took my kids there the year it opened." I assured her I would not interrupt her time with those magical mice. "I want you to come by, though. There's always room at this inn."

 

Driving home, I thought about family. This was a family time of year, but I'd always felt on the outside of those sorts of things. For her, it was as simple as an invitation, and family was created right there in an acceptance of the offer. Anyone who wanted to celebrate Christmas was family to her.

 

Could it be that simple?

 

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