Hey y'all --
Double/double for Thanksgiving week so hard working editors can get dinner with their families next Thursday; below is this week (19 Nov.) and next week's Faith Works on down for 26 Nov., and below that is the 20 Nov. Knapsack with 27 Nov. at the very end. New posts in December!

Peace,
Jeff

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Faith Works 11-19-05
Jeff Gill

Together We’re Thankful

This week, starting tomorrow night, most of Licking County has somewhere nearby a co-operative worship service, planned by a group of pastors and churches to mark Thanksgiving week.
One of the things I’m most thankful for is the strong spirit of collaborative effort that marks church and society in Licking County.
I’ve lived enough other places to say with certainty that this ain’t always so. For churches of different denominations and traditions to worship together, the common sense of identity has to be stronger than the narrow differences between them. Important differences in some ways, but not so much as to prevent shared thankfulness.
Sunday night, Nov. 20 is the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association’s Community Thanksgiving Service, at Lakewood High School’s auditorium at 7:00 pm. Drawing on Jacksontown, Hebron, Buckeye Lake, and on down towards Thornville, musicians, readers, youth, and pastors will offer up a time to reflect on how fortunate we are and help others in need.
Tuesday night, Nov. 22, the Granville Ministerium offers up their ecumenical worship at 7:00 pm in First Baptist Church of Granville; I hear that a group called "Revved Up" will have some special music that night.
The Newark Area Ministerial Association ushers in Thanksgiving Eve with a 7:00 pm service on Wednesday, Nov. 23. They invite worshipers from all around the area to gather at First Baptist Church of Newark just off the OSU-N campus at 1000 Granville Road, and suggest a food item or canned good for the Food Pantry Network, while a cash offering will be taken for the Newark Area Campus Ministry.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a few other shared services were taking place this next week. Your church bulletin may have word of programs I’ve missed.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years having organized and led a few of these is that there are always a number of folks who attend a Community Thanksgiving Service who don’t attend any other worship programs most of the rest of the year. There’s a quality of non-partisanship that goes beyond even your typical ecumenical endeavor when the fourth Thursday of November comes around.
It may be the roots in civic society from Washington’s first declaration of a "Day of Thanksgiving" to the more direct ancestor of our autumnal festival with Lincoln’s proclamation during the Civil War. It could be the contrary nature of those Separatists who came across an ocean to worship and live as they chose (historical footnote: Puritans were a later development, so Baptists have as good or better claim on the day than do Congregationalists). Even if they didn’t actually have big buckles on their hats or carry wide muzzled blunderbusses, they were brave, determined, and really, really stubborn.
Or we may have a wider base for this communal observance because whatever your flavor of faith, everyone knows that "it could be worse." Even when we feel profoundly sorry for ourselves, we know that others need our help, the help that only we are in a position to give.
But I’d like to think it has something to do with the fact that we are made to be thankful, somewhere deeper than our DNA, to acknowledge that each day is a gift and we can be blessing to others. Whatever your belief about the source of our ethical urges, we all feel a calling to caring on some level, and that starts with our own thankfulness for . . . whatever. You know what’s working for you, and how it isn’t all because you make it happen all on your own.
So come on out sometime this week, slip into a back row if you must (there’s more room to be inconspicuous down front, actually), and join your fellow citizens in saying "Thank you," and in giving others a reason to say so themselves.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; what are you thankful for? It’s not too late to tell me a tale at disciple@voyager.net.

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Faith Works 11-26-05
Jeff Gill

A Pilgrimage On a Modest Scale

Prayer and fasting were likely not spiritual disciplines in use last week; grace at tables by nervous heads of households, perhaps, but saying "no" to temptations of the flesh and the deadly sin of gluttony not so much.
Whatever you ate, and regretted, you need exercise. Pilgrimage is another of those ancient practices of the devout which is in fashion again – at least to sit on the sofa and read about. Travelers to Santiago and Lourdes and Tibet have come home to share stories of rocky paths leading to a unique destination, if not full enlightenment.
If you aren’t ready for long treks on mountain trails or on your knees across the desert, how about just getting some exercise on Licking County sidewalks?
On some walking tours coming up this week, you can not only work off a bit of the holiday excess you consumed, but you will see the insides of a number of churches and ways of worship for yourself, with friendly guides at hand.
First, this Thursday (Dec. 1) starting at 6:00 pm, Newark offers "Sights & Sounds of Christmas - A Guided Musical Walking Tour of Newark's Downtown Churches."
There are tickets, which are $5.00, with children under 12 free. All proceeds benefit the Licking County Food Pantry, which will also have their seasonal post up at the Gazebo on Courthouse Square. You can get tickets at all branches of Park National Bank, or at the Greater Licking County Convention & Visitors Bureau on Second St., or at all participating churches. Those are:
Second Presbyterian Church - Chancel Handbell Choir & Organ
Trinity AME Church - Adult Choir
Trinity Episcopal Church - Flute, Violin, & Organ
First Presbyterian Church - Piano & Organ Selections
Plymouth Church - Hiltner Brothers
St. Paul's Lutheran Church - Jubilate Ringers Handbell Choir
First United Methodist Church - The Sanctuary Choir
St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church - The Adult Mixed Choir

This tour begins at Second Presbyterian Church, but organizers ask that you park at St. Francis De Sales Church just west of downtown on Granville St. Free shuttle bus service is available from St. Francis parking lot to the Second Presbyterian Church.
Then we have Saturday, Dec. 3. The first Saturday in December has long been the Granville Candlelight Walking Tour, and it has grown in recent years to become both longer and wider, now with programs beginning well into the afternoon and closing with a concert up at Swasey Chapel on the Denison campus.
Not only the "four corner churches" but all the downtown museums, Pilgrim Lutheran a few blocks down Broadway, and the college president’s house, Monomoy Place are part of the festivities. The bulk of events are between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm, but look for one of the posters to see the detailed schedule of who’s performing where when.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is the oldest continuously used worship space in this region (since the 1830’s), and well worth your time just to see this Greek Revival gem. It attracts visitors from all across America, along with near-contemporary the Avery Downer House on east past the library. All the churches are open for free, all with music to share through the afternoon and evening, but consider dropping a voluntary offering where you can. Historic buildings can be the very dickens to maintain. . .
Neatly wrapping up all this is Saturday night at Infirmary Mound Park with Licking Park District’s "Christmas In the County" from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. The noted saint and bishop of Myra, Nicholas the Kind (aka jolly ol’ St. Nick) is scheduled to make an appearance along with a number of other musical offerings. Indoor activities abound, but also a chance to walk around Mirror Lake and work out those last helpings of mashed potato while the kids talk to Santa in the Bradley Building by Rt. 37.
And out there under the stars, offer up a small prayer to really get the season started off right.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; suggest a pilgrimage along local lanes at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-20-05
Jeff Gill

Thankfulness: Why Not?

This week, starting Sunday night, quite a few communities do co-operative worship services to mark Thanksgiving week. One thing I’m thankful for is the strong spirit of collaborative effort that marks church and society in Licking County.
Having lived a few other places, I can say with certainty that this is not the case everywhere. For churches of such diversity to worship together, the common sense of identity has to be stronger than the narrow differences between them. Important differences in some ways, but not so much as to prevent shared thankfulness.
Sunday night, Nov. 20 is the Lakewood Area Ministerial Association’s Community Thanksgiving Service, at Lakewood High School’s auditorium at 7:00 pm. Drawing on Jacksontown, Hebron, Buckeye Lake, and on down towards Thornville, musicians, readers, youth, and pastors will offer up a time to reflect on how fortunate we are and help others in need.
Tuesday night, Nov. 22, the Granville Ministerium offers up their ecumenical worship at 7:00 pm in First Baptist Church; I hear that a group called "Revved Up" will have some special music that night.
The Newark Area Ministerial Association ushers in Thanksgiving Eve with a 7:00 pm service on Wednesday, Nov. 23. They invite worshipers from all around the area to gather at First Baptist Church of Newark just off the OSU-N campus at 1000 Granville Road, and suggest a food item or canned good for the Food Pantry Network, while a cash offering will be taken for the Newark Area Campus Ministry.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a few other shared services were taking place this next week. Your church bulletin may have word of programs I’ve missed.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years having organized and led a few of these is that there are always a number of folks who attend a Community Thanksgiving Service who don’t attend any other worship programs most of the rest of the year. There’s a quality of non-partisanship that goes beyond even your typical ecumenical endeavor when the fourth Thursday of November comes around.
It may be the roots in civic society from Washington’s first declaration of a "Day of Thanksgiving" to the more direct ancestor of our autumnal festival with Lincoln’s proclamation during the Civil War. It could be the contrary nature of those Separatists who came across an ocean to worship and live as they chose (historical footnote: Puritans were a later development, so Baptists have as good or better claim on the day than do Congregationalists). Even if they didn’t actually have big buckles on their hats or carry wide muzzled blunderbusses, they were brave, determined, and really, really stubborn.
Or we may have a wider base for this communal observance because whatever your flavor of faith, everyone knows that "it could be worse." Even when we feel profoundly sorry for ourselves, we know that others need our help, the help that only we are in a position to give.
But I’d like to think it has something to do with the fact that we are made to be thankful, somewhere deeper than our DNA, to acknowledge that each day is a gift and we can be blessing to others. Whatever your belief about the source of our ethical urges, we all feel a calling to caring on some level, and that starts with our own thankfulness for . . . whatever. You know what’s working for you, and how it isn’t all because you make it happen all on your own.
So come on out sometime this week, slip into a back row if you must (there’s more room to be inconspicuous down front, actually), and join your fellow citizens in saying "Thank you," and in giving others a reason to say so themselves.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your turkey leftover ideas at . . . wait, no, that’s Trish. Anyhow, tell me a tale at disciple@voyager.net.

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Notes From My Knapsack 11-27-05
Jeff Gill

Walking Off Those Turkey Calories

Eat too much? Uh-huh. Even Hollywood starlets probably ate to excess last week ("Sure, I’ll have a fifth green bean; oh, what the heck, another slice of glazed carrot, too"), and we Midwesterners have an entire culture to live up to.
Personally, while there are many great recipes involving real cranberries to be had, I haven’t had Thanksgiving dinner until I’ve sliced something jellied with the can lines still embossed on the maroon surface. Just me, I guess; thanks Nory! I have a great mother-in-law.
Whatever you ate, and regretted, you need exercise. Of all the general statements I could make, there’s one of the safest to our region. If you live where you are reading this, you could probably do with a bit more mobility in your life. Even those getting geared up for the opening of Deer Bang-Bang Season Monday dawn (and our prayers are with you all, be safe) could do with some limbering up and stretching before heading out on a five mile over hill and dale ramble.
So here’s my prescription, if not recipe: Licking County has some great holiday walking tours coming up this week. Do ‘em all!
First, this Thursday (Dec. 1) starting at 6:00 pm, Newark offers "Sights & Sounds of Christmas - A Guided Musical Walking Tour of Newark's Downtown Churches."
There are tickets, which are $5.00, with children under 12 free. All proceeds benefit the Licking County Food Pantry, which will also have their seasonal post up at the Gazebo on Courthouse Square. You can get tickets at all branches of Park National Bank, or at the Greater Licking County Convention & Visitors Bureau on Second St., or at all participating churches. Those are:
Second Presbyterian Church - Chancel Handbell Choir & Organ
Trinity AME Church - Adult Choir
Trinity Episcopal Church - Flute, Violin, & Organ
First Presbyterian Church - Piano & Organ Selections
Plymouth Church - Hiltner Brothers
St. Paul's Lutheran Church - Jubilate Ringers Handbell Choir
First United Methodist Church - The Sanctuary Choir
St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church - The Adult Mixed Choir

This tour begins at Second Presbyterian Church, but organizers ask that you park at St. Francis De Sales Church just west of downtown on Granville St. Free shuttle bus service is available from St. Francis parking lot to the Second Presbyterian Church.
Then we have Saturday, Dec. 3. The first Saturday in December has long been the Granville Candlelight Walking Tour, and it has grown in recent years to become both longer and wider, now with programs beginning well before dark and closing with a concert up at Swasey Chapel on the Denison campus.
Not only the "four corner churches" but all the downtown museums, Pilgrim Lutheran a few blocks down Broadway, and the college president’s house, Monomoy Place are part of the festivities. The bulk of events are between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm, but look for one of the posters to see the detailed schedule of who’s performing where when.
Neatly dovetailing into all this is Saturday night at Infirmary Mound Park with Licking Park District’s "Christmas In the County" from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. The noted jolly old elf of the Northlands is scheduled to make an appearance along with a number of other musical offerings. Indoor activities abound, but also a chance to walk around Mirror Lake and work out those last helpings of mashed potato while the kids talk to Santa in the Bradley Building by Rt. 37.
You could do all three and still have time to dig out your blaze orange for Monday; that might be good advice for all of us…the blaze orange for Monday, I mean.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; let me know how your first day out hunting went at disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 11-12-05
[Note: Due to a production error, this column did not see the light of print!]
Jeff Gill

Making Visible the Unseen

Big, black garbage bags stuffed full of shoes; dozens in the back of vans and in car trunks.
Slowly, we carry them about the perimeter of Courthouse Square, 1250 of them. Four years ago, when the Licking County Coalition for Housing began this "Homelessness Awareness Week" campaign using empty pairs of shoes to represent people and stories, we had to round up and set about some 700 pairs. Each person, a family member of those who came to LCCH looking for help in staying off the streets, in a home of some sort.
Goodwill provides us a deal on shoes pretty well past unsaleable, but there are (disturbingly) always glad takers. I say takers, but they always ask. People who come up to the informational tent, or even as we’re working, on hands and knees, to ask "Could I give you something for these?" We smile and say no thanks, if they are of use to you, please take them with our good wishes.
They tell us "walk a mile in someone else’s shoes." Just to handle and look at a pair as you set them out triggers a torrent of speculation and wonder. Children’s bright Sunday shoes, well tended but worn off at the heels. A pair of Christmas slipons, embroidery still sparkling, but elastic stretched beyond any good use. Sneakers with torn eyelets.
You really can summon up a whole person from the ankles up just by seeing a pair of shoes. We are also likely wrong, people being the unpredictable and uncategorizable folk they are, which is also a lesson about homelessness.
The clients who come in are rarely from out of county, and those few who are usually grew up here, and returned hoping to find family or connections long since frayed out of recognition, like the straps on a pair of sandals I placed between two sets of down at heel loafers. They have very different stories, these shoes and the people who come in the door of the Housing Coalition, and while elements of the tale recur like reverse fairy tales (no magical godmothers, nor wishes granted), the twists and turns are as various as Appleman Road or Loudon Street or Dutch Lane.
In between working on the "Shoes on the Square" project, which culminates in the 11th annual meeting of LCCH next Wednesday at Noon at Cherry Valley Lodge (tickets through 345-1970), there’s also been progress on another story of our county.
Next Friday night the last grand northernmost moonrise, the astronomy around which our Newark Earthworks are built, can be seen from Geller Park in Heath, just off 30th Street north of the mall. Programs will begin at 6 pm, and the nearly full moon will rise at 6:56 pm. We hope families and all interested folk can come out with blankets and lawn chairs and see this beautiful sight.
Two thousand years ago, from places like the ridges along the sides of the Licking River, and atop Memorial Hill in Geller Park, we have the vast evidence of the earthworks to show that people, very like us, stood and marveled at the predictable intricacy of the heavens. When we stand there on Nov. 18 just after dark, we stand in their…shoes? Moccasins? Tough soled feet?
But we acknowledge that our steps are shaped, if only a bit, by the paths taken by invisible multitudes beating a track beneath us, where we often do not look, or see. That "great cloud of witnesses" are pointing us and nudging us all the time, seen or unseen.
The invisible people in our lives, and how we stop to see them and where they become truly visible to us, are very important. They are important, among other ways, in how they help us see how we should live with those we do see, but take for granted, in our homes and churches and streets today.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about a pair of shoes you’ve walked in at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-13-05
Jeff Gill

A String of Pearls

Way back when, over a year ago when plans began to celebrate the remarkable astronomy of the Newark Earthworks in Fall 2005, an image came to mind.
Not just one big huge "do," which couldn’t have been the case 2000 years ago when the Octagon and Great Circle and other elements of the vast complex we call the Newark Earthworks was built, since those Native American ancestral people lived all across the Ohio River drainage and traveled on foot.
Add to that the uncertainty of Ohio skies then and now, and any one of the 28-day recurring moonrises along the northernmost angle might be worth a full celebration or could be a foggy night to take the moonrise on faith: faith in the ancient builder’s accuracy, still so impressive today.
So our plans were for a series of events and happenings from August to November, with three best viewing weekends as the "big beads" on a necklace of celebration, and other little accents strung between. The last big bead was and is Saturday, Nov. 19, with a public symposium on the Newark Earthworks at OSU-N in the Reese Center from 9 am to 4 pm, and planetarium shows at 5 and 6 pm in the Olin Science Center at Denison University.
All that is still on, thanks to the Ohio Archaeological Council which has planned the event and aimed the talks through the day (nearly a dozen) at the general public, not just fellow archaeologists. But this last major event was tied to the last, best northernmost moonrise at a weekend, reasonable hour.
Friday, Nov. 18, the nearly full moon rises as far north as you’ll ever see it in the sky, lifting clear of the eastern horizon at 6:56 pm, about an hour after dark. The Octagon site, which encodes the key alignment that started a new period of awareness and study of this area, is tied up with a recently scheduled event that the organizers of the Moonrise programs chose not to compete with.
So what will happen on Friday night, as you get home from work or close a week of school, is that you are invited to a further portion of the amazing Newark Earthworks in the City of Heath. Mayor Dan Dupps and the planning committee welcome one and all to bundle up, bring your lawn chairs and blankets, and drive 30th St. to the turn for Geller Park.
Starting at 6:00 pm on the 18th, programming and some ceremony will precede the chance to view the moon rising just before 7 pm, looking from Memorial Hill at a point exactly halfway between the Great Circle and Octagon. This hillside, sloping up from the parking area around the ball diamonds, offers a vantage point that is both spectacular, and possibly part of the original set of viewing points that led ancient Native Americans to construct the Newark Earthworks where they did.
For more about the geometry and studies that have led the planning committee to use this site as part of our final public event of the year, go to www.octagonmoonrise.org for much, much more detail. The conference the next day and the planetarium shows are part of an exciting weekend that draws to a close the "string of pearls" which have shown our region what a treasure is right around us.
Come on out and join the excitement…and huddle close for warmth!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s enjoyed working on these Moonrise events the last year, and his wife looks forward to getting her basement back soon: commiserate with her through disciple@voyager.net.

Greetings! If you came here to find the outline for small group start-ups that i offered in my Saturday Nov. 5 "Faith Works" column for the Newark Advocate, i've moved it over to:

http://epicycles.blogspot.com

The material is about five pages long as a document, and i didn't want to confuse people scrolling down to find old columns. Thanks to all who used it and passed along comments, and it is still free for the use of any group or congregation that wants to try it -- you just can't sell it or put your name on it!

In Grace & Peace, Jeff Gill

Faith Works 11-5-05
Jeff Gill

To Grow Larger, Get Smaller

A church with a million members: not a denomination, but a congregation. In Seoul, South Korea is such a church. Paul Yonggi Cho is the pastor, and while cultural factors of Korean life no doubt play a role, he says the key factor is the realization "to grow larger, we must get smaller."
In New Testament Christianity, the house church and the small gathering is as common as large assemblies in public spaces, and those moments of worship and corporate life inspired Pastor Yonggi Cho’s insight, which has been picked up by megachurch leaders in America like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren.
Congregations like Willow Creek and Saddleback may be tens of thousands in total membership, but both Hybels and Warren affirm the necessary place of the cell group, house church, or study circle in making such growth, or any growth, possible.
To grow larger as a worshiping congregation, you must get small as a church.
Rolling Plains United Methodist Church south of Zanesville has grown dramatically along with the development of "life groups" with special interests like quilting, motorcycles, caregiving, or prayer. Whatever the specific issue that brought the five to ten together in the first place, they meet regularly (it could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly). Brian Law, their pastor, notes "And they have leadership which is both accountable as well as supported by training and guidance from church staff, and they ground their work in prayer and sharing."
The principle at work is that you can’t effectively share the Gospel until you are ready to share your story with a small, safe group – and listen well to their stories, as well. So a small group might spend 25 minutes with some prayer and study resources, and then spend an hour knitting afghans, or repairing porches for the elderly or disabled in the church area, or cooking dinners for the homeless. Reflection and action, in a context small enough to allow some personal sharing, but with support from a larger structure so no one feels as if they are dealing with the big issues when they come along all by themselves.
Many churches have small groups and don’t know it, or have systems in place that could support a vital group structure. Choir practice, if grounded in some prayer and sharing, can become a small group time; fellowship groups, if the gossip is kept secondary to heartfelt communication, can become a life circle; work groups or mission teams are easily able to facilitate some personal discussion and reflection if given some basic tools along with their standard toolbelt.
Small group life is considered by many church health and vitality consultants as the single best indicator of where congregational life is heading. Ideally, there should be one functioning small group per ten in your average worship attendance. If you average 100 per Sunday over the year, there should be about ten small groups among adult classes, choirs, fellowship circles, and support groups. If you have 11 or more, and they really are providing space for sharing and support along with prayer plus their "official" purpose, you’re likely heading in a positive direction.
A warning, and an offer: for every three new small groups you start, two will likely not survive a year. That’s considered normal, whatever the planning that went into starting the groups. There is an alchemy poorly understood to put a group of people together and build community among them; the best sign is when a gathering occurs around a common interest and they come to church leadership and say "How do we make this a small group?"
The offer is simply an outline for a six week study that any kind of group can use to explore sharing one’s story in a safe, secure small group environment. This can be six one hour gatherings over whatever period of time, or twelve 25 minute sessions tied to another hour spent on . . . needlepoint, carburetors, or home repair.
Send me an e-mail to disciple@voyager.net and I’ll send you the outline, as text or an attachment. Two groups in the area are using it already, and I’m delighted to offer it to anyone trying to improve their group process!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; send comments or questions (or requests for the small group outline) to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 11-6-05
Jeff Gill

Feeling at Home

One thing that lets you know you’re at home is being able to play your own music.
For some of us, that means we feel most at home in our cars (which is another column, I suppose), but whether it’s Bach or "Roll Over, Beethoven," we make a space around us by the tunes we fill it with.
"Phil Dirt and the Dozers" are a popular act in the central Ohio region, with regular gigs farther afield. I’ve heard them compared to a Jimmy Buffet concert or listening to a Little Feat show, with dancing down front no matter what the venue. But while I’ve heard about them for years, I’ve never heard them.
That will change for me, and maybe some of you, on Friday Nov. 11. They are doing a benefit concert for the Licking County Coalition for Housing that night at 8 pm in Adena Hall of OSU-N. It will wrap up "Homelessness Awareness Week" which will again mark Courthouse Square with some informational displays including "Shoes On the Square" (of which more in a bit).
For $25, or a table of eight at $200, and refreshments you can buy there which also serve the Coalition’s cause, you can have a great evening of boogeying to the music that makes you feel at home even in Adena Hall, and help provide housing for people from Licking County who need a transitional time and space to get back into a home of their own.
Fiberglass Federal Credit Union is the sponsor of this great evening, and they have tickets available . . . or call 345-1970 and ask at the Coalition for assistance not in finding housing, but in getting your ticket!
You do know that the pollworkers will be waiting for you Tuesday, don’t you? From 6:30 am to 7:30 pm the polling places will be open and the candidates want to hear from you, as do many ballot questions having to do with funding or maintaining a number of important civic institutions. Do your research, ask questions, and vote on what you know – and you can skip stuff you just have no idea about. This isn’t a test, y’know.
What would make an interesting ballot initiative is the deer situation. A few days ago I was passing Fackler’s Garden Center, and a field across the road had, near sunset, at least 47 deer. I had to speed up and couldn’t keep looking, or I may have passed 50; a few hundred yards further I saw eight deer on the other side of the road. These deer looked scrawny and parasite ridden, as well as traveling in literal herds.
Along Newark-Granville Road alone we’ve had numerous car-deer encounters, and the next fatality is only a matter of time; that would be a human fatality, not deer, who already litter the shoulders of Licking County roads from I-70 to Rt. 13 heading to Utica.
While there are refined ethicists like Peter Singer of Princeton and no doubt a few locally who would say I commit a grievous moral error in placing human life higher than animal lives, I’m here to blunder my way into a further offense: I say we shoot the deer.
Shoot the deer. Yep, Bambi’s mom. There are so many, legs propping up the weight of the carcass right at windshield height, and don’t tell me there won’t be many, many asking why we didn’t do this when the first child is killed in a car seat by a hurtling deer smashing through the passenger compartment.
If we had a vote on how many are willing to take the small chance of a crew of carefully screened and selected hunters sent into municipal woodlots to shoot the deer, I think it would win in a landslide. My wife is a trained environmental educator who worked for the National Park Service, and I lead all kinds of nature hikes and woods-walks in parks around Licking County, and want to respect nature. But . . .
But we need to shoot the deer. Not wrap bushes with netting or plant birth control in feed for the packs of cervids who trample through the fields, nor do we need to study the "human-deer interaction" any further.
We need to shoot the deer. Not all of them, but quite a few. We tried importing lions into the wild (wait, that wasn’t a deer management plan?), and we’re spraying gallons of coyote urine around our gardens (how do they collect it, anyhow?), but it isn’t working. They have no predators but radiator grills and windshields, and that ain’t gonna solve the problem without taking quite a few drivers and passengers with them.
Until we get to vote on that one, would you thank any hunter you know getting ready for deer season in a few weeks, since they may be saving your life?
And sure, send your angry "don’t kill the deer" e-mails to disciple@voyager.net. I’ll open them with an asbestos mouse . . .

Faith Works 10-29-05
Jeff Gill

Justice, Public and Private

To Christian thinkers of the classical and medieval period (which is to say millennia and a half), justice was a personal quality, a way of being for an individual.
One of the marks of the modern era is the idea of social justice, where culture and government are called on to shape and make the circumstances for justice as an ideal to flourish.
There is a place for that kind of justice, but the prominence of social justice has blunted the edge of justice as the measure of the human person. Are you just? Whether a judge, lawyer, police officer, or everyday citizen, can you say of your acts, your speech, your choices that you have lived justly?
Rosa Parks represents a key figure in returning social and personal justice to the same level of significance, even if our culture is still trying to catch up with her, decades after the particular act which brought her to national attention and 92 years after her birth.
For those interested in detail, Taylor Branch’s magisterial "Parting the Waters" can fill you in. What bears repeating is what Mrs. Parks never tired of telling audiences: her feet were not tired; she was not at the front of the bus; it was not a white passenger who told her to move.
A hard working woman, she was indeed at the end of a long day, and boarded well to the back of a bus driven by a man who had thrown her of "his" bus before. The rule in Montgomery, Alabama 50 years ago was that if the rows in the front were filled by white people, blacks not only had to board, pay, and get off to reboard through the back door (while paying the same fare, of course), but if the white seats were filled and more whites boarded, blacks in the middle were supposed to stand up and dangle from the overhead bars so whites could sit. The driver was the enforcer of this unofficial but quite formal system.
What Rosa Parks encountered was this: a surge of new riders evoked a call from the driver for seats to open up (exactly how he phrased this is a long standing debate we won’t get into). Three other African Americans quietly rose and moved to the aisle. A white man remained standing, while Mrs. Parks sat quietly.
You know the story from here, but I want to pause and wonder about that guy standing in the aisle. Right, he’d been raised this way in the South and all that, but still: didn’t he feel a twinge expecting a young woman to stand and straphang while he sat down? Did something tug at his sense of, um, justice? Just a little?
I do not excuse the driver, but he was a paid employee where the system expected his behavior, even if all accounts agree he enjoyed that part of his work a bit too much. He was a tool, a blunt instrument in heavier hands. A triple-refined sense of justice, aware of the social and personal dimensions of his acts, might have led him off his seat, or at least to work the rules differently.
But the fellow who stood there, waiting for the driver to "clear his seat" of the stubborn woman who sat there in hat and gloves and steel spine . . . what was he thinking? Did he realize he was standing near the pivoting axis of a changing world, or was he just annoyed at the uppity girl in "his" seat?
Rosa Parks knew that her personal sense of what is right and true and just intersected with a social moment where justice was long overdue, but ready to "roll down like waters." And it is simple justice that history records her name, but consigns to oblivion the fellow who, as it turns out, never got her seat.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; sing your song of freedom or whisper a prayer for justice to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-30-05
Jeff Gill

Best Fall Colors Ever?

Chlorophyll departing the leaves, removing green tints and leaving some natural hues to mix with sugars breaking down, gives you the color riot that is autumn.
Some have noted that the necessary rhythms of cool and warm, rain and sun, tapped out just the right message to call forth the best range of beauty along the treeline we’ve seen in many a year. Too much heat, and the sugars are baked out making everything bland. Frost sets in early, and the green lifeblood flees and slams shut the stem door behind, tugging a quick drop and a short season.
So far, through this time change weekend and doorstep of Beggar’s Night on Monday, the views across valleys and down lanes has been long-lasting and exquisite. If the rain drags down the stock a bit, all the better to shroud the still-growing grass, more green than us mowers might wish.
In fact, out and about you could see last week trees standing in tidy puddles of foliage. Here, a yellow disc framing the sweep of an oak’s limbs; there, an orange splash surrounding the trunk of a maple. Those artistic notes are now as blurred as an artist’s palette after a long afternoon of daubing, since the wind and rain have swished across the spectrum in any wooded area.
You know to set your clock back Saturday night, for sure, and you’ve been nudged to switch out smoke detector batteries as you grant yourself the added hour. This is also a good time to check your bin set aside with canned goods, an opener, a small bottle of bleach, and a pair of flashlights with a radio stored next to a stock of batteries for them.
No emergency kit put away? How many ice storms, hurricanes, and earthquake warnings do you need? C’mon, it doesn’t cost much and pays peace of mind: batteries are the only real expense, and the whole rest of the disaster bin, bin included, can be put together for less than $50 for a family of four for a week. That’s quite a bit of Dinty Moore or Chef O-Boy, but elegance ain’t the question when power and water are out.
Batteries, though, ought to be swapped out regularly with new and the stored ones into the battery drawer, which every household apparently must have today. Anyhow, here’s a good weekend to do it.
So, there’s some advice you probably weren’t looking for; why stop now? There’s an election coming up, and those fall colors may not be as delightful, but they remind us that some important work on our citizenship job description is coming up.
My broadly intended, generally useless opinions are on offer, based more as a report on what I’m intending while not constituting formal endorsement of no one nor nothin’. For Issue 1, I plan to hold my nose and vote yes. This has been run by us voters a few times, and not unwisely we’ve kicked it back; the state needs some money for infrastructure improvement, and it will benefit localities as now written with a bit more certainty. I’d rather not give the Taft administration more cash right now, but I consider it a reminder and an investment in keeping a sharp eye on the next executive, who will be the one to allocate most of it.
Issues 2, 3, 4, and 5 strike me as reactive legislation, of a sort that we can always approve next time, if the energy exists to run it up the flagpole again. I’m less sure that it is bad legislation (which I suspect) than it is a show of temper about current political circumstances. So I call it no, times four.
Issue 6 hereabouts is for the Community Mental Health and Recovery Board, and they continue to need our support, if only because we can help people when it makes sense (i.e., voting yes now) or spend it on Medicaid bills or jail costs after problems become acute and also unresolvable.
Newark has a chance to continue building up their fine school system, which is working through a very well-wrought plan for dealing with the near-future; there are a number of Fire/EMS levies up that also deserve your support.
Dotted about here and there are some competitive races, and I confess I haven’t kept track of them. I can say that Newark's John Uible was a public servant long before he ever ran for office, in the best sense of the term "serving the public," and y’all’d have to be crazy not to put him and Bill Rauch back on council, where they can amiably stare across the partisan divide at each other.
Granville has the pleasure of seeing Deb Tegtmeyer run for village council, who is my friend of long standing, so why should you listen to my recommendation there? Steve Mershon I don’t know half so well, but I like him, so there you go again.
And since Pataskala decided to keep Bernie Brush around (for local color, naturally), I have no counsel to offer there. He's got plenty to say!
Just read the candidate bios in the papers, go to candidate nights, ask them questions on the streetcorners (they really do hang out there, it appears), and don’t forget to plan on voting Nov. 8, 6:30 am to 7:30 pm. And set your clock back, OK?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; get your last minute political rant in quickly to disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 10-22-05
Jeff Gill

Understanding May Come After Respect

Rick Steeves was talking in my car the other day. Granted, he was on a public radio pledge drive, talking about the books that were incentives for the fund pitch, telling you how to travel around Europe cheaply and well.
Travel is one of those lifestyles to which I’d like to be accustomed, but some of what good travel writing – even in a guidebook! – can teach you is how to live closer to home. Finding the romance of the everyday, as well as a good deal for dinner, is useful just down the road and not just in a small Romanian village.
What caught my attention in Rick’s talk was a set of suggestions about respect when observing events that are strange to you: parades and processions, ceremonies and celebrations, whether on Sicily on down the Danube River.
Americans, Mr. Steeves gently suggested, are a bit "respect challenged" (my phrase, not his) in that we often can see the world as a very large version of the Main Street Parade in Disneyworld or the March of the Nations at EPCOT. Assuming that any spectacle is there first and foremost to take pictures of (yes, the Japanese have some issues here as travelers also), and even for us to plant our children in the midst of, we can be ruder than stink without quite meaning to.
Tonight’s Moonrise observance (weather willing, or perhaps Sunday night if clouds press in before 10 pm), starting from the parking lots of OSU-N and shuttling out to the Octagon Earthworks, is one such challenge right here in Licking County. For all the flyers and brochures and trained volunteers and staff all about, we worry that some will, almost out of reflex, start snapping flash pictures as the Native American spiritual leaders begin the procession into the viewing area.
For Native Americans, the simple hand drum and cluster of singers is what a crucifix or monstrance are to many others. Even those whose belief or theology isn’t oriented the same way have some sense that you don’t jump out into the aisle and blind the acolytes and priest holding sacred objects, but let’s not even talk about weddings . . .
Why is the singing around the steady beat of a drum sacred? Candidly, I can’t really explain it very well, even if I had a whole page and your full attention to do it. It isn’t my belief, either.
But we don’t need full understanding to understand that respect for small simple things is right and proper, whether in the old city of Kyoto, Japan or just off 33rd Street in Newark. And I firmly believe that our respect in such situations can carry back into our own worship with a deeper appreciation of what and why we hold certain moments or objects in reverence, whether it’s Grandma’s Bible on the hall table or the table in the front of our sanctuary.
See you when you get off the shuttle bus from OSU-N!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he’s been working hard for months on arrangements for the events described at www.octagonmoonrise.org. Or suggest column ideas for after this long-awaited weekend to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-23-05
Jeff Gill

Whistling Past the Graveyard

This is a good time of year to visit a cemetery.
No, really. Not just for the Hallowe’en ambiance, but because this is the right time, according to many cultures around the world, to pay our respects and teach that same respect to the young for those who "rest in peace."
Of course, one of the tragedies of our modern era is how little peace so many cemeteries get, even those in churchyards or honored with historic monuments. Some tombstones are toppled by age and frost and the steady western winds of this landscape. Many more are tipped by the indifferent and malicious, some youthful and others less so, but united in a strange urge to strike out at those least able to defend themselves.
Folks often say that a society can best be measured by how well it cares for the weakest and most vulnerable. Certainly children and the elderly should top that list, but what about the dead? A community that tends their memorial plots well, in summer and in winter, year after year, is likely a healthy and decent place. Towns with neglected and vandalized graveyards are often one foot in the hole themselves.
And I believe that teaching the young (and old) about the significance and meaningfulness of the records carved in stone about our ancestors and forebearers, and affirming the importance even of markers no longer legible, can have a community building effect that reaches far past the work of Memorial Day and All Saints or All Souls Days, Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 on many Christian calendars.
In Mexico, as is becoming better known, this season of remembrance wraps up with the "Day of the Dead," an outright celebration where tombstones are cleaned, including those adjoining your own family plot if there’s no one left about to tend them. Meals are shared, sometimes even in the graveyard itself, and children are told stories of family and friends who lay at rest there.
Cedar Hill Cemetery is getting visibly better attention these days than I recall from not too long ago (thanks, Kaye!), and Newark’s civic leadership behind Israel Dille, my best friend from the 19th century, built the place as a restful scene for the living to visit as well as for the dead to rest.
Granville has worked very hard on the Old Colony Burying Ground since well before the current bicentennial of the village, and the play "Stones Falling Westward" told a small part of that honorable story of care and responsibility.
Hebron has made their very visible town cemetery much more attractive over the last decade, and Licking Township deserves credit for their attention to and attractive signage for the graveyards under their care.
How has your area taken care of the most vulnerable residents? Who might take a role in tending and tidying and recording the stories in stone of your locale?
The ancient earthworks of Newark represent the mix of success and work yet to be done in Licking County; the "necropolis" or central burying area has long since been destroyed by canal and railroad and commercial development, while we still have some of the majestic monuments that looked across that place toward the rising sun. Still, the question of how to properly handle human remains from that period of local prehistory remains. Whether you join the observance and salute to those long-ago but still visible residents this Saturday night (see www.octagonmoonrise.org for last-minute details), there is surely someplace near you where in this "All Hallows" season you can go one better than a simple candy tribute on "Hallow’s Eve" and respect the honored dead.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; don’t e-mail this week – just check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!

Faith Works 10-15-05
Jeff Gill

So, Did They Worship Nature?

"So, Did They Worship Nature?" That was the question one person asked me after I gave a tour of the Octagon Earthworks not long ago, as a volunteer for the Ohio Historical Society, owners of the site.
I had shared the remarkable story of how recent research had rediscovered a fact hidden in plain sight by the builders 2000 years ago, the Native Americans known archaeologically as "Hopewell." The main axis of the geometric earthworks there, a circle almost as big as the "Great Circle" down by Heath, connected by double walls to a vast, 55 acre octagon, open at the corners with small barrier mounds at the breaks, points to the northwest horizon.
At that spot, the moon rises as far north as it ever does in an 18.6 year cycle. The other openings and walls of the figure point out the other main lunar rise and set points through that cycle. Millions of cubit feet of earth, moved by hand, placed with a modern engineer’s precision to orient earth to sky, for purposes we know no better than we know the name they called themselves two millenia ago.
Which made the visitor’s question a reasonable one, in a way. If there was no seasonal purpose for planting and crops involved (as we suspect for the Great Circle, a story in itself), then was this a religious thing entirely?
Perhaps, but that still wouldn’t make for "nature worship." My daily planner notes that Yom Kippur began at sundown a few days ago, ten days after Rosh Hashanah or "Head of the Year" in Hebrew. Those High Holy Days for the Jewish Faith move about a bit, because the ritual calendar is tied to lunar months. The great observance of the "Day of Atonement" Thursday closes a period marked by solar and lunar periods, but no one would argue that Yom Kippur is nature worship.
Right after Judaism marked 5766 in their new year, Islam began the month of fasting called Ramadan. In my calendar, that began Oct. 4, but it said "tentative," as does the close of the sunrise to sunset fasting Nov. 2. Tentative, because Ramadan does not begin until the new moon appears as a sliver (the crescent you see on so many Islamic flags and symbols), which varies from place to place on the globe. The local imam or ayatollah or leader will actually have to see the arc of moon in the sky to declare the beginning and conclusion of the fast, and the feasting which follows.
And the time of Ramadan moves about through the western 12 month calendar, because Islam uses a ritual calendar based on . . . yep, the moon.
What did the spiritual practice of Native Americans consist of 2000 years ago? We simply don’t know. In western cultures, the role of the world and the relationship of the visible world to spirits and higher powers has been complicated even within Christendom, and "tree hugger" now is the equivalent of the cheap critique of "nature worshipper" in another age. All faith traditions that I’m aware of point out the responsibility of believers to respect creation and the divine purposes behind the gift of life, and like most aspects of faith could stand to honored more in practice than in the breach.
We do not worship the moon or nature to want to mark our lives within the cycles drawn across the vastness of the night sky or across the natural landscape. Chartres Cathedral in France, a monument of medieval faith, has a special set of windows and plates in the floor to track the progress of solstices and equinoxes. Did they worship nature, or Nature’s God, by honoring the faithfulness of the heavenly bodies circling ‘round them?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he has been working for the last six months on helping plan the events around www.octagonmoonrise.org and hopes to see you next Sat., Oct. 22! Or just offer regrets at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-16-05
Jeff Gill

Get Used To Agrotourism

Agrotourism is one of those fancy words that can slip into everyday conversation before you know it.
Maybe you haven’t used it yet, but I have a feeling Licking County will get used to it before long.
Tourism that looks at agriculture has quite a pedigree here. Lynd’s Fruit Farm has been hosting tours and greeting school groups in the fall for many years. I enjoyed being a chaperone with the Little Guy’s class last year, seeing the cider presses and selection conveyors and all the rows of trees narrowing together along the horizon. Other orchards have found that a tour, a chance to pick a bag o’ apples, and a cup of cider can, at a modest admission fee, help to cover the steadily rising costs of being in the agriculture business without being in the corporate orbit.
This summer we went back to visit my old hometown in northwest Indiana, and my folks said "Let’s go to Fair Oaks Dairy." OK, we said, since they sounded like they had enjoyed a recent visit to . . . whatever it was.
After a drive down into prairie country south of the Kankakee River, we started to see large clusters of huge new barns dotting the expansive landscape. Soon we saw signs that made it clear we were already in "Fair Oaks" territory.
What this operation is, a hundred miles south of Chicago and less than two hundred north of Indianapolis, is a giant milk cow operation, with tens of thousands of cows (bulls? Don’t need ‘em when you have syringes and a schedule) regularly climbing onto a vast 72 stall circular carousel.
The turntable was where they got milked, all under our gaze from a disease-controlled gallery only accessible from the bus bay, where we had heard a rolling tour from an area farmer who moonlighted (as so many farmers do all over) as a driver-guide, answering questions and steering us through the buildings and along the roads.
What’s so amazing here is that, on modest reflection, the inquiring mind realizes that a large business, wanting into a good market (Chicago-Indy) near a good range of forage crops and a near endless supply of sand for bedding (think Great Lakes shoreline), saw that their arrival could make for problems. Lots of acres (thousands) and lots of manure (tons) makes for a bigfoot presence in a small farming area. How do we show that we’re god neighbors and help folks see what we’re doing in a positive light?
This is America: the answer is charge admission. Oh, and put in a gift shop (lots of cheese) and a café (mostly ice cream and cheese sandwiches) with a museum only a PR staff could love, but skillfully done. My hat is off to them, and you can check them out along I-65 on the way to Chicago if you want, Buy the Colby and bring me a brick, too.
Have you been to Devine Farms or Pigeon Roost Farm for a pumpkin and a day o’ fun? Agrotourism. Stopped at a corn maze or haunted trail around central Ohio? Also agrotourism of a sort, if we’re talking about a farmer paying some of his bills by adding value to a farm visit with a few stray ghouls and sudden chain saw behind the crowd.
Even the amazing ancient history of the Newark Earthworks can participate. Here’s another fun word: paleoethnobotany. Those who study ancient plant utilization in archaeological settings, or paleoethnobotanists, have shown that this area was one of only a handful of places around the world (six, maybe eight tops) where agriculture began independently.
The selection and cultivation of specific seeds to increase yield and ensure nutrition and storage quality is what makes for beginning agriculture. The odd seed crops along with better known local plants like sunflower and squash are a unique gift of the folks who also left us the Octagon Earthworks, which we’ll celebrate next weekend on Saturday at OSU-N. We see the vast geometric shapes on the land that are left, but their microscopic heritage is no less worth of honor, and someone’s museum display or presentation.
More agrotourism.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he is but an indifferent gardener, sadly. Tell of your sunflowers, squash, and other local produce at disciple@voyager.net, or see what’s happening at Newark Earthworks Day at www.octagonmoonrise.org.

Faith Works 10-8-05
Jeff Gill

Someone’s Doing Evangelism: Is It You?

"Unbinding the Gospel" is Martha Grace "Gay" Reese’s book that I told you about last week, which will be published by Chalice Press next year (www.cbp21.com).
This is the result of years of study under a grant from the Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis. They are nationally the No. 1 foundation for working with the health of American religious institutions and their leadership, so a proposal to examine evangelism in congregations got a warm reception.
When Gay wanted to look at how mainline/oldline Protestant churches did evangelism, specifically to the unchurched, she took seven faith groups (Methodist, Presby, Lutheran (ELCA), etc.). She then crunched their data to find the one concrete indicator that might point her to churches to look at closely. She decided to use five adult baptisms per year over three years, or fifteen over those three years total, as the benchmark. Starting with 30,000 congregations that were non-Southern and non-ethnic, she and her team "drilled down" through the various record keeping methods to find churches that met the "five adult baptisms a year for three years" criteria.
They found less than 150. That’s the bad news.
The good news is almost as surprising. When Gay and the gang analyzed the age of congregations who were doing effective outreach to the unchurched, we all expected the results to be skewed to new church starts. Makes sense, right?
But the median age of the church (not of the members, but since the congregation’s founding) that had those adult baptisms was 96. Not five, or ten (or one!), but 96. Since many Protestant churches in areas like Licking County are 100 and 200 years old, that’s an encouraging dispatch from the front lines. You DON’T have to be a new church start to reach the unchurched with the Gospel.
So what do you have to do? Well, Gay has seven criteria laid out neatly, but you’ll have to get the book to read the tidy version. Let me mush together some of the priorities as I’ve heard her describe them from her site visits and extended interviews with pastors and leaders of these churches.
BOOM: what difference does it make to be a Christian? 150 points off if you need a few moments to answer. Churches and leaders who are reaching the unchurched have an answer, right now. There are different ways to express an answer, but you better have one.
Another image Gay uses: Bandwidth. Churches that do evangelism see everything as evangelism, and they can explain how it’s evangelism, from selecting lighting for the nursery to how to train greeters to teachers for ministry. Narrow bandwidth is seeing just a few things you do as evangelistic.
And relationships are key – how the congregation builds relationships between believers and God, between each other, and with their mission community.
That’s just three points, and the others are pretty important (keeping focus, removing barriers, starting at the right point, support for pastors). Gay wraps up her talks by saying "Evangelism in the mainline context is impossible; it can only happen with miracles." Prayer is the open secret of evangelism, and the key to the door that matters.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher in central Ohio; reactions to these two stories can be sent to disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-9-05
Jeff Gill

Mushrooms and Pumpkins

John Aristotle Phillips was an undergrad C student in physics at Princeton in the mid-1970’s. Sure, he had Freeman Dyson of the Manhattan Project as his advisor, but he was more interested in his pizza delivery business aborning than quantum mechanics.
Then he had a major project due that needed to make a big splash to overshadow his otherwise lackluster acdemic record, so he decided to design an atomic bomb using public record documents.
When John finished his design, Professor Dyson widened his eyes and was vague about whether it would work or not, but the project passed . . . and the government classified it shortly afterwards, which sounds like the Nuclear Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval to me.
Oh, and after some publicity got out about what he’d done, he kept getting late night phone calls from Pakistanis.
I’ve never forgotten that last fact, and how the otherwise ebullient Phillips was unnerved by the interest from a small, poor, hungry country for the design of a superior killing machine. His book, "Mushroom", came out in 1978 and reviewing it was my first paying piece of writing for print. The book is, sadly, out of print, but the reality remains: an average physics major can, with a little diligence and desperation, design an atomic bomb.
Getting the fissile material requires desperation of a different sort, but fellows with guns or box-cutters have proven remarkable adaptable in the last 25 years.
Speaking this Thursday night at Denison’s Swasey Chapel is Sen. Sam Nunn. With the still serving Sen. Richard Lugar (a graduate of DU), they worked hard at creating a program to secure Russian nuclear materials, an effort that is shamefully underfunded and generally unsupported. Since starting in 1991, the program is only half done.
8:00 pm on Oct. 13 you can hear Sen. Nunn, introduced by his friend and colleague Sen. Lugar, talking about this state of affairs and his movie . . . yes, and it stars another former senator, Fred Thompson of "Law & Order" and Watergate fame . . . a movie made by Nunn’s "Nuclear Threat Initiative" organization called "Last Best Chance." It will be shown repeatedly on HBO from Oct. 17, and the more people who watch it, the more public pressure that can be brought to bear on Congress and the Bush administration to secure ourselves from the threat of nuclear terrorism.
If you can get some of the Soviet surplus stuff in your homebuilt bomb, a nuclear reaction may be almost as easy as ordering a mushroom pizza. Let’s make sure we’re not making it that simple. And don’t even ask about dirty bombs. Come hear the senators, watch the movie, and let’s get this nailed down; a Princeton kid showed us the problem in 1978, and I’m thinking we should have it solved by now.
If you want a scare of a more transitory sort, head down to Devine Farms just east of Rt. 37 and US 40, right there on the National Road west of Hebron. The Lakewood Drama and Fine Arts club is running concessions for the weekends through Oct. 30, and they’re getting ready to put on "Meet Me in St. Louis" Nov. 18 & 19 (and I love their new logo with the knight’s helmets in a comic smile and dramatic frown).
Ralph and Charla have the barrel train rolling, plus plenty of other activities especially for small children, and the prices for both pumpkins and other stuff is great – the Little Guy goes for the armband every time, and runs amuck.
And after the children are put to a sound sleep after running around at Devine Farms, you can write a letter to your Congressfolk and tell them the only mushrooms you want to see are on your pizza.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; if you have news or notes to pass along in this space, send them to disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 10-1-05
Jeff Gill

Who’s Doing Evangelism?

Is anyone doing evangelism? That can sound like a silly question,
when door to door visitors, outreach ministries with Bibles and
tracts, and major media campaigns from a variety of groups, mostly Christian, are all over the place.
But among mainline/oldline Protestant Christian denominations
(Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, etc.) this is a
very real question. The gospels of the New Testament encourage
sharing the good news of Jesus as a primary mark of a faithful
body of believers, while showing in Acts and the letters following in Christian scripture many different ways of doing evangelism (an evangel, in Greek, is a messenger who brings . . . good news!).

Martha Grace "Gay" Reese is one of my best friends from seminary who has gone on to do some amazing work not only in parish ministry, but with studies and projects through the Lilly Endowment, a Midwest foundation interested in congregational vitality and religious leadership. She’s from Licking County originally (and I believe she still has some family in the area), but I would have wanted to share her most recent research even if she was from Outer Mongolia. She has a book coming out this spring, called "Unbinding the Gospel", but you get to see a preview right here.
Gay went to seven mainline/oldline denominations and gathered
data to look at churches that are doing effective evangelism.
Having been a lawyer before experiencing a call to ministry, she
was able to organize the very challenging work of taking data from seven totally different church structures and making some sense of it.
To prepare her study and have it be of use to the average
congregation, she wanted to focus down first on non-Southern
churches (where there is growth as much from population
pressure as any other reason) and non-ethnic congregations
(Hispanic and Asian-American bodies are exploding in size
across the 50 states). This gave her 30,000 churches to examine.
Then, given the variation in data reported, to find where evangelism was being done so she could visit there, Gay established a simple criteria. Over a three year period, if a church had an average of five adult baptisms a year, or fifteen over the three years, they could be considered. You can nitpick the definition all day, but this was the one that could be cross-compared and verified from the data available –
and sounds solid to me. When Gay met with a pastors' group, she asked them what they guessed were the number of faith communities that met these marks among the 30,000. "Oh, perhaps a third," said some, "right, about 10,000, but no more," agreed others. A few were more pessimistic, saying "it might be just a few thousand. Some were more skeptical: "Five percent, that’s, uh, 1,500."
Her study found no more than 150. 50 were confirmed, and she’s visited 37 of ‘em, and talked on the phone to many, many more. The fact that this came as a complete shock to the chiefs of the denominations is perhaps a clear sign of where the problem has reached, but not the root of the issue. The clergy gathering spent some time trying to figure out how this simply couldn’t be correct, even though the data around us, let alone in Gay’s study, is abundant.
Good news, which is what the old English term gospel or "god-spell" means, is also close at hand. There are 50 to 150 churches very like the congregations that are abundant across the Licking County landscape, and what they do to generate effective evangelism is not terribly complicated. Gay is curious to see how churches might respond to the positive part of her research.
Next week, I’ll let this Licking County product share her good news with you; for now, let’s mull over how we got to no more than 150 out of 30,000 churches managing five adult baptisms a year.
Reactions? E-mail me at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 10-02-05
Jeff Gill

October is very nearly my favorite month of the year, among many other reasons because it means September is over.
And September is, in my mind, a challenging month because you spend it recovering from August. Yes, August.
December is the time when everyone talks about the financial drain, incessant eating opportunities (whether you’re looking for them or not, all high calorie), and the brutal schedule. All of which are true, but I think August can be harder because it’s the stealth December. We know and expect December to be jampacked frenetic stress-filled activity, but every year August lolls into sight, showing up in the distance as a slight figure obscured by heat ripples. Then it suddenly slams into you like an 18 wheeler out of control leaning across the shoulder throwing gravel even as you dive away.
At least for parents, and all those who work with children, August is not dress rehearsal or prep month: August is show time, baby. Back-to-school sales are July, because retail knows this too. The buildings are open, the letters are going out, the lists are posted, the supply sheet (check the back for more items) is out.
Sure, the Christmas season is often an assault on the credit card for the unwary or profligate, but what about school clothes, new lunch boxes, fees, shoes, doctor visits for getting back into the educational system?
And you’re doing the round of "end of summer" picnics, with all the expense implied by a meal meant to be rustic and simple. Hah, again I say, hah. You can eat at a fine restaurant in Columbus (gas cost included) for what you can end up laying out for picnic supplies, equipage, the items for a dish you rarely make other than picnics (one good side to a rush of them in a row; less waste of partially used ingredients you throw out next spring), and all the little extras you might need to bring or have in reserve.
Then look at what you can spend in a day at Hartford Fair (didn’t we still have a $20 left? No? Do you have any cash?), the Ohio State Fair, and the right true end of August (ignore the calendar) at Millersport for the Sweet Corn Festival. When the elephant ear booth starts taking debit card swipes, we’re all gonna be in trouble.
Fats and carbohydrates? Atkins’ last revenge comes with the usual spread at a potluck or pitch-in, let alone along a midway. Folks always worry – and indulge anyhow – about Holiday Season weight gain. I always feel like I add the most penalty weight right as I’m trying to enter the gate for the Autumnal Sweepstakes; ice cream socials to wrap the summer, the aforementioned picnics, receptions and galas beginning a new school year.
Then fall sports, Scouts both Girl and Boy, a range of activities starting and re-starting in and around school; churches having fall kick-offs, Rally Days, and big pushes to get back into the Sunday School round.
Labor Day would be a respite, except it becomes a straggling, hanging-on part of the August slog that won’t end, with a final flurry of yes, picnics, and other events to mark the end of let’s-get-on-with-it summer.
So to October, cooler air, turning leaves, and a schedule for children and families that has found a groove, of sorts. Homework is restored to a place of honor, if not dinner, and we all know which night of the week is which program or activity, and which one we set the trash out after, before closing the garage door.
Which leads me in a roundabout way to this: one actual delight in October is that you can start the path to an enjoyable December right now. In fact, you gotta do it now.
Wait until mid-November, and you’re just jumping on the treadmill of traditional tedium. The "Holidays," as the culture is calling the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, can be paced and controlled and managed, but you have to plan ahead, budget both time and money, and set limits now so you can enjoy the contents then.
Those who know me will not be surprised to hear the suggestion that you first prioritize religious observances, whatever yours are. Put them on the calendar (trust me, your faith community has their planning done through December) are work out from there.
Set an amount after looking at your income, outgo, and budget (don’t have a budget? Drop all of this paper and go make a rough one right away, or you really will hate the Holidays in January), and figure out how you have to stick with it. Cash in envelopes, one card in your wallet when you go shopping, lists, whatever works for you.
And put family time on that calendar before the shopping expeditions. Mark the day you’ll put the tree up and decorate it, mark the wrapping party with the kids, schedule the Hanukkah gathering with family, and then get the school and Scouts and sewing club schedule and mark them on, too.
December looks much more peaceful from an October vantage point, and using that perspective is how you keep it a season of peace. As to going overboard for Hallowe’en, we’ll talk about that later!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your ideas for a peaceful preparation for the Christmas season at disciple@voyager.net.

Faith Works 9-24-05
Jeff Gill

Time and Timelessness in Worship

England’s vast and towering cathedrals have just under a thousand years of history and tradition built into them. This can be a challenge as well as a delight, for both today’s worshipers and historians, let alone tour guides.
In the 1100’s and 1200’s when most were dedicated and begun, the Anglican world was part of Roman Christendom, what we now call the Catholic Church. In the 1500’s the Church of England chose a different course than the Lutheran Reformation sweeping Europe, but still decisively split with the Bishop of Rome (aka "the Pope," or "il Papa" as father of the church on earth as vicar of Christ in heaven).
Today the Anglican Communion, represented in America by the Episcopal Church, is the tradition holding services in these cathedrals. Occasionally, sometimes with humor and infrequently with a touch of bitterness, an English Catholic will speak of "wanting our churches back," but with 500 years on either side of the usage, which is the right way to worship in a British cathedral?
We have an interesting and even more complicated challenge here in Licking County. While Canterbury and Westminster have not yet reached their 1000 mark, the ceremonial sites of the Newark Earthworks, the Great Circle by Heath and Octagon State Memorial off 33rd St., are acknowledged by scientists to be at or beyond 2000 years of age.
What is the proper way to acknowledge the worship dimension of sites built before written language in this area? We know the descendants of the builders, modern American Indians (some like that label, others Native American, most prefer a tribal name like Shawnee or Miami) still live in the Ohio Valley.
But like the Church of England over just a quarter of the two millennia represented by the Newark Earthworks, the modern version of ceremony and ritual may not accurately image what was accepted practice in the beginning.
For the organizers of the events taking place this fall around the Newark Earthworks, and the moonrise cycle of 18.6 years pointed out by the main axis of the octagon, the answer has been humility.
Humility is really the only reasonable approach to a structure of such age and significance, and humility is certainly called for in welcoming faithful people of so many traditions to a common event.
We know so little for certain about the valley between Raccoon Creek and the Licking River 2000 years ago, but we know that the movement of the moon and sun and stars were of crucial importance for life itself, in farming and harvest and surviving the winter. Rituals that kept the people together, and brought hope for the future, even simply the hope of another spring, had to be at their heart.
Beyond that is speculation, and the hints from living traditions around us still.
October 22 will give the public a chance to share, with humility, in a quiet simple observance of the moon rising at a predictable but irregular spot on the horizon, defined by earthen walls built by hand. Moonrises before and after that date will give Native Americans and scholars a chance to expand their circle of understanding of this monumental site, and of each other.
And if you are humbly interested in learning more, check out www.octagonmoonrise.org!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; you can offer to volunteer to help with the Oct. 22 events during the day or at the Octagon that night by e-mailing him at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 9-24-05
Jeff Gill

Politicians May Not Like Labels, But…

Civics in high school has a reputation for being a less than interesting class, but I’ve been lucky to have some great teachers. Mr. Ciciora was one of them, with a vivid taste for examples that, whether they were his own or borrowed, were told with such flair that they stuck with this student, at least, for 25 years and more.
He was explaining one day the political spectrum to us, from reactionary to conservative to liberal to radical, and told us this story I pass along to you.
Four people were walking through the desert, survivors of a plane crash, one each of the four ideologies I just mentioned. They are hot, tired, thirsty, and uncertain of where they are. Upon cresting a dune, they see before them a spring in an oasis, with a dam creating a small pond.
The radical runs down the slope, and dives straight into the water, paddling about with delight. The liberal is a bit more cautious, walking to the water’s edge, removing shoes and rolling up pants to wade about in the shallows, looking for hazards.
The conservative sits on the bank, and after a bit takes off shoes and socks to place one foot at a time in the water, commenting that no one knows what the water quality or inhabitants of the pond really are, and that caution is in order.
And the reactionary? The reactionary is over by the dam, trying to figure out how to tear it down and restore things to how they were.
Does that make political groups more understandable? I’ve long found myself thinking about the oasis and four walkers in trying to make sense of what political leaders are getting at on particular issues.
One stance more popular than sensible these days is the disavowal of all party labels, claiming that one is an "independent," which covers a multitude of sins.
With all due respect to true independents, Greens, Socialists, and the like, there is a current debate that shows how useful the two major party "labels" can be in understanding political assumptions.
The county commissioners are split right now over the sales tax issue. Some have expressed surprise that the two Republicans, Tim Bubb and Doug Smith, would support the direct application of the increase versus the Democrat plea from Marcia Phelps to let the voters decide directly.
Tax policy aside, this all makes sense to me. Republican is a term derived from the Latin, "res publica," or "things pertaining to the public good." A republican form of government is one where the voters select representatives to handle the "public matters" for them, as trustees, and if they do not like the handling (tax increases or what have you) they vote them out, but don’t vote on specific public things themselves.
Democrats derive from the Greek "demos," or "the people." A democrat wants the people to vote on just about everything they reasonably can – while good people can disagree as fellow democrats on what is reasonable (should we vote on whether or not there’s fire protection, for instance).
As Americans, we live in a democratic republic, combining the best (we trust) of Greece and Rome. For the Republicans to take responsibility for handling a complex question of the public good, and run the risk of losing the next election, they are acting in line with their core principles; for the Democrats to want a plebiscite (Greek, "plebs," or everyday folks like youse and meese) makes equal sense.
Now, I’d like the Dems to explain just what they’d cut if they don’t get to increase revenue for the county, but that’s moving from etymology to hardball, and I’ll leave that to the front pages!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your civics class experience at disciple@voyager.net.

Notes From My Knapsack 9-18-05
Jeff Gill

Easier than You Think

Can you really help people a thousand miles away, who have literally lost everything of earthly value they’ve ever owned?
So far, Licking County seems to have answered with a resounding "Yes," loading trailers with vital necessities, sending those irreplaceable checks, and eating spaghetti at Cherry Valley Lodge (and hooray for all those Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts helping out for that delightful fundraiser).
Church groups are working their usual disaster relief networks, and the American Red Cross is doing their usual great job arriving the usual five minutes behind the Salvation Army, which knows how to get hot coffee into the darndest places right after the storm breaks. (PS – Did you know that the Salvation Army had a truck at 9/11 so fast it got largely demolished when the towers went down?)
Commentators have started to hint at the usual concerns of "compassion fatigue," that Americans will "grow weary with well doing," even though all indicators point to the contrary. Now, if you accuse us as a nation of having a short attention span, maybe so.
It can get a little tiring, though, when the stories pile up of tragedy and loss as hopelessness, and you look at that fifty dollar check and think, "is this just a tiny drop into a deep chasm of need?"
Well of course it is. Just a drop. Like the rains of Hurricane Katrina, made up of tiny drops, too. Put enough little drops together and blow on it, and you get a levee breaching storm surge leaving destruction and devastation in its wake; put enough little drops of compassion together, and you get a countersurge that is already leaving construction and redevelopment in its wake.
What we definitely don’t want to weary of, on the other hand, is the recollection that what we are doing right here in Licking County is actually part of making a difference in the Gulf Coast region. I’ve no doubt told this story too often as it is, but here we go again: when a number of us were working towards the effort that turned into the Licking County Coalition for Housing, and things were going slow and hard, I was part of a youth trip to Washington DC.
Our group, as a church fellowship program, visited one of the largest homeless shelters in the city, smack between the White House and the Capitol, right along our way just a block north. We saw the signs reminding us that most of the residents had jobs, and heard the residents tell us a little of their stories that were temporarily leading through this bleak, but hope-tinged building.
Then we went to the staff quarters, where many of the workers there lived as part of the shelter itself. Carol, the head of the place, told us the story in tones that said she’d run this tape many times before.
And in the Q&A, after a bunch of the kids had asked the usual questions, I asked her, thinking of collection drives and fundraisers, "what can we do to help you folks out?"
Her answer was immediate. "Go home and take care of your own homeless there so they don’t think they have to come here!"
Which is what we did.
And the point for Katrina is: if we support our local Red Cross and Salvation Army and food pantries and that Housing Coalition that did get off the ground, thank you very much, we are reducing the load in other parts of the country, which is just what they need.
So send checks and flood buckets and health kits, but also walk in the CROP Walk Oct. 16, and go to the Phil Dirt and the Dozers concert for the Housing Coalition Nov. 11. When we take care of our own, we are also helping in the recovery nationwide.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at disciple@voyager.net.

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Faith Works 9-17-05
Jeff Gill

Can a Hurricane Blow Away God?

It is certainly possible that consciousness is just an echo effect of memory and reactions bouncing around inside my cranium. I am perfectly aware of the case to be made for how protein chains are chasing each other in chemical tag teams, spiraling into cells and organelles and larger forms from slime molds to humans. And there are some people, like looters of nursing homes while the patients are still in the beds, who embody a good argument for the basic infrequency of goodness and the non-existence of altruism, other than as a cover for protecting the survival of one’s own DNA.
Yep, I know all of that, and have assessed the various narratives that claim to account for the universe as it is, and have chosen to believe in a storyline that includes higher purposes, lasting meaning, and enduring values. That story includes a person named Jesus, who embodies what I think that story says to us. That is where my certainty rests.
I am very aware of, and am respectful of other narratives that present answers to who we are and what we’re here to do. Where I’ve placed my confidence is not where others choose to, and all I can do is live out my understandings and share them when the opportunity arises.
Which comes up because of e-mails I’ve gotten asking "how can you believe in God (OK, in fairness, they typed "god") when he allows something like what happened in New Orleans?" A fair question, but without meaning to be difficult, I think they’re asking what kind of God I believe in, given that this hypothetical "god" must have the power at least to allow hurricanes if the questioner thinks this "god" could have prevented it. Do I believe in a powerful God who is good, but allows evil? Or a loving God who is impotent in the face of nature? (or "Nature"?)
"Stones Falling Westward" helps me answer this question with a question, in the Biblical tradition of the Book of Job. This historical pageant, which I hope gets repeated, was put on in the Old Colony Burying Ground as part of Granville’s bicentennial observances. Nine players and many more supporting crew told the story of Charles Webster Bryant in the last summer before his death in 1886.
He transcribed the tombstones as they faded and fell, even then, and helped create both the Granville Historical Society and was a charter member of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, now OHS. His interest in preserving the past is embodied by those who lay under those stones, talking to him as a friend whether he had known them in life or not.
And he is our friend today as well, having pressed urgently for clean water and effective sewerage long before such causes were popular; he died of a water-borne illness just as the public system came "on line."
Is this story simple grinning-skull irony, despairing hopeless tragedy, or simply the duty of the present to respect a past which still lives within us, accountable to a future we can barely imagine? Do we have duties to both past and future, or shall we live only for the moment as all that we can know and experience?
"Stones Falling Westward" had no sectarian or denominational purpose, but it told Bryant’s story in a way that reminded me of where my certainty rests. No storm or flood or disease can topple that faith to the ground.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at disciple@voyager.net.