Newark Advocate 2020

Newark Advocate 2020 PROUD Magazine

Jeff Gill

 

In 1820, James Monroe was President of the United States, Ethan Allen Brown was governor of Ohio, and Newark was still six years away from being incorporated as a town.

 

Native Americans of the Shawnee and Wyandot tribes still lived in the northern and western parts of the state, often traveling through Licking County, which was just twelve years old itself. Five years earlier in 1815, the original log courthouse was replaced by a modest two story structure, but Courthouse Square around it was still marked by ponds and bogs, surrounded by mostly log structures barely more ornate than pioneer cabins.

 

And it was in 1820 that "The Newark Advocate" was first published, in a simple sturdy brick building on the square. This intrepid business venture was the brainchild of Benjamin Briggs, a native of Pennsylvania who arrived in Newark's earliest days to make his mark, find a career, and start a newspaper: one that is today the county's oldest continuously operated business.

 

Briggs owned and edited "The Advocate" for thirty-six years, and as a sign of different times and journalistic expectations, he was elected mayor of Newark twice, and was voted at different times to both the Ohio House and Senate, as well as postmaster. His was a vigorous and partisan editorship, advocating for development projects like the Ohio & Erie Canal or the National Road through Licking County, or local efforts such as new church buildings and improved streets downtown.

 

In the early 1800s down through the first part of the 1900s, newspapers were almost without exception partisan, and "The Advocate" was a Democratic Party paper. Through the decades, other party and constituency publications flourished – at one point Newark had over twenty newspapers with names like "The Rasp" or "The Constitutionalist" or "The Reveille and Woolgrower"  – but after World War I the rise of a more dispassionate journalistic ethic led to a bipartisan "Advocate" overshadowing the other party-oriented papers, like the "Newark North American" or "Newark Express."

 

"The Advocate" has outlived its competition in most cases by outworking it: the paper was the first in the county to go from monthly to weekly to daily, and has been a daily for a majority of its publication history. An early adopter of electronic media tools, the news now arrives by email and on browser windows as much as it does on doorsteps or in driveways. Social media and online reading make the entire news environment a constant, never-ending opportunity for readers to connect and advertisers to reach audiences.

 

Advertising along with subscriptions has been the heart of the "Advocate" business model since Briggs' days as editor and owner. After many decades of private ownership, the formation of the Advocate Printing Company saw the business into the Twentieth Century, and "The Newark Advocate" is now part of the USA Today Network. Whether in the print product or the online version, newspaper ads are still a major part of each page, and looking back through the two hundred years of history you learn almost as much from those ads as you do the articles about who we are as a county.

 

The first hundred years you see many advertisements for horses and carriages and the equipment and services that go with them; in the second hundred years, cars and trucks are well represented in the ad sections, while you have trouble finding a livery stable. Through the 1800s, clothiers and haberdashers and milliners are common in the corners of each page promoting their wares; today, banner ads online and sidebars are focused on very different retail angles, from electronics to home delivered groceries.

 

But in the editorial content itself, you hear the spirit of each era speaking both to their subscribers, and also as that "first rough draft of history" credited to journalism. Sometimes that voice is cracked and flawed – The Advocate sadly did not endorse Abraham Lincoln in either 1860 or in 1864 – but you can also hear calls for justice in the 1960s through Op-Eds, and editorial invitations to renewal and re-invigoration as Newark has navigated the end of one industrial era and the beginnings of our information age.

 

Benjamin Briggs, the first editor (and reporter, and circulation manager, and advertising executive, and pressman), was said in Hill's 1881 "History of Licking County" to have been "a clear, forcible writer, much given to the use of strong Saxon words that vigorously expressed his ideas, and he never wrote without having ideas to convey. . . When he chose to be vituperative he generally succeeded." But he was also "identified with every project that tended to the advancement and welfare of the place and its people," and left for Washington an honored representative of Licking County's interests. Today's editor, Benjamin Lanka, wouldn't expect to run for political office while still holding a position of journalistic trust, but he and his staff still honor clear and concrete writing, condemnation when called for, and praise whenever possible. With a volunteer community Editorial Board, "The Newark Advocate" still has strong words and straightforward suggestions about what can improve and enhance the everyday lives of people around today's Courthouse Square.

 

From the Briggs era to the present day, you can't help but notice how the interests of "The Advocate" have always "tended to the advancement and welfare of the place and its people."

Faith Works 10-26-19

Faith Works 10-26-19

Jeff Gill

 

Treasure in jars of clay

___

 

Let me share some shocking news here. I am unapologetically a pastor of a Christian congregation, what's sometimes inaccurately called "organized religion." Jesus is amazing, but his church has made mistakes. Big ones. Over millennia. We've signed off on slavery and misogyny, oppression and exclusion, Crusades and witch burnings. We're still arguing over what the Boss actually meant when he said "Love one another," which really shouldn't be that hard to interpret.

 

But I'm still a Christian, a preacher, and a minister of a local congregation. Because the core values and central mission of Christian faith still speak to me of eternal things, of lasting value, of enduring hope . . . and are worth handing along to others.

 

It's the time of year when a number of organizations, sometimes called "parachurch" groups, are doing their fundraising or mobilization activities, and there's one in particular involving shoeboxes and Christmas gifts that always attracts a great deal of social media furor about the rightness of working with that group and its current executive director (spoiler alert: he's not the first leader of that organization, nor will he be its last). And we're getting ready for the Christmas season, with kettles and bell ringing and Angel Tree efforts already under way, and there are people with concerns about those groups and their policies, past or present, as well.

 

I am, at heart, a historian as much as a preacher, and I'm aware of the sins of the past perhaps to a detail even beyond what the detractors are focused on. My own congregation and regional church body has some doozies back a century or even less than half a century ago. To do good we've allowed ourselves to be bad, let alone wrong. Yet as the old saying goes, if I found the perfect church, I'd ruin it by joining.

 

Yes, by sharing the Good News (in Old English, "godspell," or Gospel) through any organized church I'm running some risk of passing along some of our more flawed and foolish errors of the past, contaminants of the container, not the contents, and I might not be gifting others with the purest possible word of life -- but without those clay jars and woven baskets of churchly construction, I would have less of the outpouring to offer up to those without. Without hope, without grace, without peace.

 

So I use some bruised reeds and cracked pots to carry the water of life -- Samaritan's Purse, The Salvation Army, the Christian Church in Ohio, even (good Lord help us) Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) right here in Newark. We have much to repent for, many reasons to seek redemption, but these broken buckets and flawed vessels are what we have at hand to work with. The house of this world is burning, on fire my friends, and you might tell me "there are more fitting containers further away!" but I'm working with the tools I have at hand to quench the flames. I know the lineage of this equipment, I'm aware of the compromised history, but I'm still going to take them to the river, wash them in the water, dip them deep in the flow, and pass along what refreshment and restoration I can.

 

Anyone who wants to stand off to one side and criticize the bucket brigade as flawed and foolish and failing may do so. I'm going to step in line, pass along what I'm handed, and do the best I can with what I've got . . . and will upgrade as I'm able. But to say this isn't the best that can be done, so stop all work and stand around talking about how we could do it all better -- you can have that conversation on the sidelines, but I'm going to work while we have light, with the tools at hand. Work, while night is falling. [John 9:4]

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's entirely in favor of repentance and redemption, even for organizations. Tell him what you'd renew from the past at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Notes From My Knapsack 10-24-19

Notes From My Knapsack 10-24-19

Jeff Gill

 

Candidates and platforms and primaries, oh my

___

If you're reading this to find out definitively whom to vote for, feel free to move along.

 

We just had a major invasion of politicians and media and consultants and various primary season folk just down the road in Westerville. John Kasich has colonized Otterbein but was keeping his head down as the Democratic Party blue wave crested. David Pepper, the state party chair spoke passionately if unconvincingly about how Ohio was turning blue.

 

Late October, it's true; most of us are turning a little bluer, huddling against the western winds and watching warily for the first snows. The Old Farmer's Almanac claims it will be a snowy winter ahead.

 

But first, for all the furor about the candidate who will run against the Current Occupant of the Executive Mansion, we have our own election coming up on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

 

I'm showing my age by making a point of the day, because we're heading towards 50/50 on early voting versus day-of ballot casting. By the time I get in line at 6:30 am, a quirk of mine, the election may be done, but there's a special quality to joining fellow citizens in the pre-dawn grey and shuffling forward to find out what electronic atrocity will be inflicted on us. The Luddite and pragmatist in me wants stubby lead pencils, a broadsheet with boxes to X, and a sturdy wooden box with a slot on top and a lock on one side. That's what I'd presume makes of a re-count a worthy exercise, and the sacramental act of casting a ballot would feel less like swiping at the register at Ross' Market.

 

Forget the foolishness in the national news and the pseudo-debates on the television (seventy-five seconds? What would Demosthenes do with seventy-five seconds?), and turn your attention as a citizen to politics with personal application. We have levies to renew, candidates to affirm or reject, and for many in the village and township, some extra effort in writing in a candidate, something most of us haven't done since we last voted in disgust for our pet dachshund over the options on the ballot.

 

Don't be afraid, it's do-able, but it takes a little more time and attention and effort, and that's exactly what should be part of voting, in my humble opinion. Write in a candidate for township trustee, and may the best scrawl win, I say. How's that for even-handed partisanship?

Truth is, we don't have many contested races; locally, the school board forces you to make a choice of three out of four, and county-wide along with the Senior Levy replacement there's races for both Municipal Court Judge and Clerk. There's been much discussion in recent years of the lack of people running for offices, and the general flabbiness of democracy you get when there's not a vigorous contest between competing views on the issues.

 

Some of the lack of candidacy may trace back to our general lack of attention to elections. An informed citizenry can become an engaged citizenry. Some of the advertising on the air right now about ballot issues and petitions is intended to make everyone feel anxious and confused about what's going on around the electoral process, and enough of that can create disengagement.

 

Get informed, ask around, talk to people, and vote, early or often. Okay, not often. Hey, I grew up around Chicago.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not running for anything. Tell him about your interest in the democratic process at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-19-19

Faith Works 10-19-19

Jeff Gill

 

Reading in the early morning light

___

 

We've still got two weeks until time change and setting our clocks back an hour.

 

Getting up is now increasingly an "in the dark" sort of thing, and I have to make a confession.

 

When the sun is up earlier, I tend to be more active, more likely to get up and go and have gone before the sun is even entirely going. And that changes my routine.

 

The safer part of my confession is that I probably do more morning Bible reading in the winter months than any other time of the year. Which obviously means . . . yes, I know.

 

My prayer and devotions tend to stay fairly stable around the calendar, but just sitting and reading scripture is more likely when the mornings are both dark, and cold. So I've got a huge disincentive to go outside and move about (which creates its own challenges, health and fitness-wise), and reason to enjoy the living room lamp and a soft chair and the warmth of my home. Terrible reasons to read your Bible, but there you go.

 

As a preacher, I probably read more of the Bible in any given week, let alone year, than most people. But the parson's challenge is to actually go deep, read slowly, and dig into how the words and the Word are speaking to you. We've read some of these passages so often we could skip actually looking them up, and then . . . you see the problem. And it is a joy, in fact, to stop my assumptions and earlier expectations in their tracks, and to catch new inferences in old passages. The rags torn away from Lazarus as he leaves the tomb; the healing first aid done by the Samaritan on the road in Jesus' parable; the missteps and justifications of David in front of Nathan the prophet; Deborah sitting at peace under her tree, overlooking a valley in the land of promise.

 

Even so, the temptation is to read for use, to commit what they call in seminary "eisegesis" which is the opposite of "exegesis." Exegesis is to "draw out" from Biblical texts meaning and application, while eisegesis is to "read into" the passage what you brought to it in the first place, to insert your assumptions into the words so the Word of God becomes just the words of Jeff. Not so enduring, if you catch my drift.

 

One way to avoid that temptation? Prayer, yes; prayer first and last for a preacher. Prayer to get you opened up to the word and world of Holy Scripture and turned away from Jeff World; prayer to let God speak through passages that have been proven Godly and Godward directed over millennia; and prayer for the humility to let God speak through you in a sermon, or as the Bible says, "Lord, I am not worthy."

 

Prayer, and there are other ways and means; for many ministers, the original languages are not just a source of meaning but a process of deliberation that tends to weed out your own verbiage. You can quote the Greek and Hebrew too much as a preacher, but it's a useful exercise just to get you to slow. Down. Focus. On the words. One at a time.

 

If you aren't into languages, fear not. Centuries of good Christians couldn't even read. They let the Good Book, the library of faith gathered and sifted by the Holy Spirit over three thousand years and more, be read out loud to them in worship, and re-stated in hymns and anthems, and made visual in art and architecture. There's more than one way to read the Bible. That's why I'm comfortable with those who read on tablets and phones as much as in well-worn volumes in homey quilted carriers or sturdy leather cases. Our Bibles do tend to reflect something of ourselves, and what you carry, what you will carry around and keep close, is going to work just fine.

 

I could do a whole series of columns on translations (and think I have, actually), but the best translation is the one that keeps you reading. And my preferred version in my teen years wasn't my college Bible, and now I find myself leaning towards a couple of translations that hadn't been done back then. The point is: keep reading, and reflecting, and inviting the words to speak to you, to let the Word of God at the proper time be made manifest, to become vivid truth, in your life.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he should probably read the Bible more. So should you! Tell him what truth you've seen manifested in your life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-12-19

Faith Works 10-12-19

Jeff Gill

 

Making adjustments on the field

___

 

For those who've found my last few columns depressing, I do apologize!

 

My intention has not been to sound negative, but to be candid about some changes that are not so much happening as have already happened around us, and to be honest about how these social changes are impacting church life.

 

While my niche here is to speak to people of faith in all sorts of settings, I know the biggest chunk of readers are involved and active with local churches. My own calling as a congregational minister, a parish pastor, means I'm particularly attuned to what's going on in those circles. And I think a little candor about some changes and their implications, while possibly painful at first, can get us to a healthier spot.

 

Any time of year, but especially during an Ohio autumn, it can be both tempting and risky to engage in football metaphors. Especially because while that's popular with some, it can really turn off quite a few others . . . but I hope you'll bear with me.

 

As any casual observer knows, there are upsets in football, pro or college. "On any given Sunday" is a catchphrase of the NFL that you never know when a struggling team can catch a winning team by surprise, and end up with a win. (This should give hope to Browns fans, anyhow.)

 

And in the college game in particular, you might see a highly rated team bobble a bit in the first quarter, but then come storming back to win by a landslide. It's said that the coach has "made adjustments." Making adjustments is, I'd argue, the big difference between a good team and a great team, and it might even be the main distinction between a winning and losing record. You prepare all week in one way, and then the opponent comes out with a new formation or a surprising spread, and if they're running right through you, or stopping your entire offense, you can't just keep doing what you practiced. If it's not working, you make adjustments, right?

 

Or you can yell and scream and shout and tell them to do better while doing the same thing, and maybe it will change. Probably not, though. You drop back another linebacker, you shift the blockers on the sweep or pitchout, you make adjustments and find out what DOES work against the team you're actually facing, not just the one you had up on the blackboard in the locker room.

 

My point these last few weeks has been to suggest that churches, like many other institutional expressions of ideas or ideals or hopes, can be slow to make adjustments. If it worked last week or last year or last decade (or half century ago) then it should work now. Three yards and a cloud of dust worked for Woody, right?

 

Until it doesn't. If you keep running the same play, and you don't make three yards, but get stuffed at the line of scrimmage, or even start getting thrown for a loss, you need to mix it up. Change the patterns. Make adjustments.

 

Many churches are still running "three yards and a cloud of dust." If it worked back in the 60s and 70s, if it stopped working then it's because the players weren't executing, because the line isn't blocking right, or the ball carriers need to step it up, right? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe our blockers are simply going where the defenders ain't; perhaps the tackle is being made even as the handoff is happening, and we're losing ground. Time for a shift.

 

It's great advice, except there's no single answer that explains "make an adjustment." You have to size up the opposition, your own strengths, and adjust accordingly. There's also resistance to adjustments in church life because of an assumption that our ways are timeless, and our truths are enduring. That's true of the Gospel, friends, but is it equally so about our worship and welcome and invitations?

 

A good old phrase is the theological equivalent of "make adjustments": in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. Congregations can struggle with what's essential to their witness, but is architecture or order of worship an essential? Can there be liberty in how we present and communicate and even market ourselves to a wider community, whose means of communication have changed drastically over the last few decades?

 

And as we experiment with our adjustments, let us show charity, caritas, love to each other as we make mistakes, and get up, and try again.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's made many mistakes. A partial list can be obtained at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.