Faith Works 1-21-17

Faith Works 1-21-17

Jeff Gill

 

Faithfulness and trust part of the problem

___

 

If people don't believe that congregations can be faithful, whose problem is that?

 

Right, it may not be always or even often true, but the old "perceptions are reality" line kicks in with a vengeance here. If church folk just keep saying "we are constantly seeking to follow our Lord as best we can" and others don't believe us, then there's got to be at least a portion of the burden on our shoulders: we have to prove it. We have to show our faithfulness to God's call on our lives every day.

 

And yes, even just one failure along the way has a lasting and wide impact.

 

There's another side to this dilemma of credibility and witness for people of faith, and that's trust. Not much of it out there these days.

 

I don't trust the media, and I are one. I mean, look where you're reading this, right? But I know much of TV and online and even print media is focused on stirring up worries, anxieties, even fears, since that's what makes you keep watching, turning the page, clicking and clicking further into the website.

 

I don't trust those who call me. My landline (yes, yes, let it go, I have reasons) means I get, do-not-call registries aside, lots of "survey" and solicitation phone messages when I get home. My cell is starting to get spam calls; at the church, especially in the afternoon, the phone when it rings is always some poor cold calling sales guy pushing copier supplies, curriculum, cleaning gear. Click.

 

I certainly don't trust my email anymore. I have six addresses I have to check regularly, and they all are a source of ongoing frustration. Spam blockers and screening tools and filters all take time themselves, and yet the flood of skeezy messages I need to not click on continues to grow.

 

I don't trust politicians. And I know quite a few, actually, some of whom I consider friends, and many of whom I think more highly of than they themselves might realize. But I've been about the work of "lobbying" since I was a teenager, in my home state of Indiana, in West Virginia, and here in Ohio. I've been to the rodeo, and know most of the clowns, and the bulls. Sometimes, you step in it. Sometimes, folks try to hand it to you and call it a bouquet of flowers.  That's how the process works at times. So you look for yourself before you step.

 

In fact, I don't trust my own denominational structure. They're working hard, and trying to hold together a long-standing set of assumptions not to mention properties, and juggle declining giving with increasing expenses (as are many local congregations), but I've heard presentations on how "things are looking up next year" so long I can whisper the next lines to myself as they speak. They can read trend lines and balance sheets as well as I can, and they say what they say and do what they believe they have to do. I respect what they have to do, but I'm careful about taking them at face value. Or to be blunt, I don't always trust them.

 

But I certainly don't trust consultants and experts anymore. They've sold more sunshine than anyone these last few decades to church groups, and get out of town before the rain gets hard. They have this year's big thing in a new package, and they know we're willing to overlook our qualms and quash our doubts enough to buy another round of advice and slate of suggestions . . . which will be forgotten by the next year, except for the file drawer half filled with the unused workbooks and partial bag of leftover keychains.

 

You can add your own. We do not trust. Not Professor Harold Hill who just got off at the depot, not Rev. Eric Camden, and not even President Josiah Bartlet. We want to trust, so we love those idealized figures perhaps a little out of proportion to what they can actually teach us . . . and then actually feel betrayed if the actors doing the portrayal don't live up to our needs.

 

And it ends up in our not trusting God. Or at least we mistrust the fabrications we prop up in God's place. And the hope I see in this untrustworthy era is that we might just knock down enough of those false fronts, fake gods, and start to relate to the real One behind them all.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's not offended if you don't trust him implicitly, either. Tell him about where you put your trust at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 1-12-17

Faith Works 1-12-17

 

Jeff Gill

 

 

Where can we find faithfulness?

___

 

As the old year ended, I was honored to be asked to do some teaching at a young adult gathering at my denominational camp & conference facility.

 

Those gathered were college students and entry-level workers, some starting out on careers and others in grad school. They had chosen to spend a festive season together, and at a church-oriented event.

 

So I was startled, and am still thinking, about an exchange I had there. After my part of the program, I stayed for more of the day to get a sense of the group and their vision for the Christian community of which we're a part. During a portion led by another pastor, we were doing an exercise where we were taking turns asking questions out loud, and responding to each other.

 

Now I am, obviously, some decades past being a young adult; my partner in the first step of this activity is a leader among this group. My question voiced to this person, and the larger group in a circle around us, was this: how can the church be faithful in the year ahead?

 

And without a moment's hesitation, the answer came back: the church will not be faithful. The church has never been faithful. Only faithful Christians will be able to make a true witness themselves in their communities.

 

I was, I will admit, stunned speechless. And the exercise was not one where we did a bunch of back and forth, but I did listen, and I (obviously) have continued to reflect.

 

"The church has never been faithful." It's a hard assertion to argue with, even if I had the opportunity. Hypocrites and self-servers in the organizational life of the Christian community gathered as "church"? Oh yes, I've seen it. Too often.

 

But to be perfectly fair, I've seen more than a few individual Christians speak and act and live in a manner I could only, with hesitation and hope for grace, call un-faithful. Emphatically so. Which is why I am hung up on the firmness of the assertion that it's "the church" that is so far beyond hope or grace itself, as a community, as a gathered body.

 

The anti-establishment strain in American society became a loud public voice in the 1960s, and has ebbed and surged, but mainly surged, ever since. A sociologist or historian would rightly point out that the roots of this anti-establishment, anti-institutional (and anti-intellectual) current flow back to 1776 and even before that, woven into our DNA as a nation, a part of our social assumptions.

 

And yes, I'm an ordained minister of my tradition, a part of some of its official processes (our Commission on Ministry meets in this coming week, affirming new ordinands, reviewing commissioned ministers, sometimes even removing standing from clergy). I know our failures all too well, historically and currently.

 

Yet I still have hope, and trust in God's grace to work through institutions as well as, maybe even more efficiently than through particular persons. Saints are handy, but the capital-C Church, whether you focus on the congregational expression of church or the larger judicatories (regions, dioceses, conferences, etc.), is where the saints are equipped. I do believe that faithfulness must be found, and can be detected, in the gathered community; if our faith is only in Christians as scattered and individual persons, I fear the disappointments and divergences would only grow larger than not.

 

The young adult's sense of "church" (or "Church") is something I, and we, will have to keep wrestling with. I think there are cultural reasons for such a settled and certain belief – I should note that the entire room, or the half of it I could see, nodded in agreement with the statement made to my question – but I also think that there are problems in our own theological self-understanding within some Christian communities. There's a confusion about what it means to talk about "the Body of Christ" at work in the world that we may be paying a price for in the functional outcomes of those muddled or contrary assumptions.

 

To be blunt, I believe in the significance, if not the priority, of the congregation. Too many "church" leaders see congregations as the problem, when I would argue they are in fact the solution. Here too I have to smile and agree: yes, I'm a parish pastor. And very content to be one. The local faith community can be faithless at times, no doubt, but it also can be forgiven, and redeemed, and renewed.

 

 

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

 

Notes From My Knapsack 1-12-17

Notes From My Knapsack 1-12-17

Jeff Gill

 

This village of ours

___

 

 

Winter strips away all the externals of nature, and even of culture to some degree, and leaves us with the bare bones.

 

Those bones may be wrapped in coats and scarves of snow and icicles, but there's a sparseness and openness to the terrain, the neighborhoods, the homes when all the leaves are gone and vantage points are all the more commanding, from above or below.

 

This village of ours sits on a geologic bench of sorts, above the creek and below the ridgetops. Thousands of years ago, the receding glacier edge crept north and west, while floodwaters carried outwashes of gravel and occasional boulders of granite down into the ancient rocky valleys, filling them with debris.

 

The first surge of deposition was followed by a long, chilly season of drainage, with the water pooling and then pouring out, forming Black Hand Gorge to our far east, and bending around into a new draining to our west and south. What we call Raccoon Creek today, once the Raccoon Fork of the Licking River, simply cut a new course through the same valley from west to east, just continuing on to the east a little farther with the Licking River now finding an outflow beyond the gorge and into the Muskingum River, on into the Ohio and the Mississippi all in good time.

 

Those names came later, of course. The first human occupants of this village of ours came just after some 12,000 years ago, as best as science can tell. The classic fluted projectile point, or spear tip (awaiting a hardwood shaft to be hafted upon) of the Paleoindian period has been found within the boundaries of today's Granville, and not far away, south of Heath, a butchering site for a mastodon left marks on bones of flint tools.

 

For many generations, thousands of years, people lived and developed their culture while raising their young (not always in that order) here in what today is this village of ours. Scattered traveling bands became seasonal settlements which turned from simple gathering to sophisticated tending of the landscape. The archaeological record shows signs of early agriculture in this region some two thousand years back, the selection of seeds and the care of their harvest and storage showing that a modest society was becoming a cultural force, with uniform units of measure, the weaving of fabrics, the observation and anticipation of the movements of the heavens.

 

This village of ours has a proud history back to 1802 and 1805, in writing and records, but the landscape shows in softer, subtle symbols how much was recorded and passed down from eras far before the Welsh and New England settlers. As the moon comes to full in this new year, and you see the hilltops and valleys in new contrasts around you, I'd invite you to look more closely at this village of ours, which we have as a gift, a trust from ages past, and which we will need to care for more gently in years to come.

 

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

Faith Works 1-7-17

Faith Works 1-7-17

Jeff Gill

 

Tangible actions vs. spiritual understandings

___

  

Welcome, 2017; the new year has begun, and the completion of twelve years here with this "Faith Works" column.

 

Aimed as it always has been at people of good will, no matter what their particular belief system, we're looking together at how faith works in the lives of Licking Countians. We're a more diverse group than demographics might lead you to think, but this is a predominately Christian community, and even our atheism tends to be Judeo-Christian in outlook.

 

I try to make no bones about the fact that I am a Christian, indeed even a Protestant pastor, with all the assumptions and expectations that might come with that role; my training and experience and practice are out of that background, and they make for a certain lens through which I focus my interests around faith and religion and spirituality.

 

What I hope I am able to do in this space, and I offer up these sorts of reflections every year or so as a reminder, is to create a forum for mutual understanding and communication between varieties of religious experience, as William James might put it. My first editor at this, Michael Shearer, was interested in how we might create a platform for not just the 25-30% of local residents who are active members of churches, but an opening through which the 70% who don't express their faith in that way might see and be seen as well.

 

If my email and the occasional piece of written mail are any indication, this column frustrates both those certain their is no such thing as a spiritual side to life, and those who are absolutely certain that there is but one way to comprehend and relate in practice to the divine intention, and they have it down pat. It's risky to say if I'm irritating both those camps, I'm doing this right, but it does seem to be a good sign.

 

Truth be told, sometimes I say good things about groups that I don't agree with, and I also feel like I need to poke hard at my own side in debates and discussions. I come out of the mainline/oldline Protestant tradition, which has not had a good century; my formative influences have been evangelical enough for me to speak the language, but my life in ministry has tracked with the rise, fall, and resurgence of a political religious right whose assumptions leave me disgruntled at best, disturbed at worst.

 

And for everyone who says to me — and yes, I hear this again and again — that they don't need to attend worship in a building or join a church to know God, I hope I've been consistent in this space in saying "you're right . . . but do you?" God is "out" there, but a worship service is for me and many a necessary tool to sharpen and refine my spiritual meanderings if left to my own internal devices. Churches are indeed full of hypocrites, of whom I am the foremost (sorry, Paul). But it's that jostling and rubbing of shoulders and opinions and certainties that helps me become more aware of how my personal faith can become a private obsession, drifting farther away from the true good, from God alone.

 

So there will, as long as this column runs, be a bias towards what is sometimes dismissively called "organized religion." Those of us who practice it always chuckle at that phrase, since we know just how organized we are. (Sigh.) And I am acutely aware that more and more, the words "religion" and even "church" provoke some strong reactions. One of the areas I hope to explore in 2017, with those of you both inside and outside of those terms, is why this reaction continues to gather strength.

 

Because in my own experience, the church as an intentionally gathered body of believers has worked pretty hard in the last generation to be more accountable, less hierarchical, and truly faithful to the teachings of Jesus. But I hear from those who are at work in congregational life who claim a faithfulness to Buddha, or Muhammad, or simply to HaShem, Adonai . . . that there's an anti-institutional urge in today's culture that pushes against us all.

 

That's one of the reasons that, though my faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is firm, I am more than willing to be open in dialogue and discussion and the occasional debate with those whose experience is different than my own. I think we all might learn from such conversations in 2017!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what conversations have been fruitful in your faith life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-31-16

Faith Works 12-31-16

Jeff Gill



Resolution and repetition

___



Jacob Little is a stern and striking character in Licking County
history, and one of our sources for it.



He wrote a history of Granville for publication in the 1840s when
there wasn't much yet to tell, you'd think from the perspective of
2017, yet his detail and engagement as a pastor with the events of his
village and county make the forty years he covers come alive.



He was also famous for his New Year's sermon, which every January
First was preached to, we're told, a packed house. Keeping in mind
there were no bowl games on television back then (or televisions), he
didn't have much competition, but the story goes that folk who weren't
even members wanted in on the spoken narrative because Rev. Little
named names.



That's right, he looked back over the previous twelve months, tallied
up the sins of the people and the community, and then talked about
them as the new year began. With specifics. Like referring to leading
citizens (by name, mind you) in saying that they "did not draw a sober
breath in twelve years."



The tale is softened a bit by hearing that this announcement led to
said citizen's sobriety, but a modern preacher can't read that and
think "wow, lawsuits."



Parson Jacob stood and delivered from 1827 to 1865, but truth be told
he was somewhat unceremoniously hustled out the door at the end of his
tenure. Perhaps some of those less favorably impacted by his preaching
were in favor of his departure.



It does make me think. As a pastor, as much as a preacher. What hard
words need to be preached? When is a stern and stark statement the
most loving sermon to speak?



I can also reflect as a historian over Little's legacy: he tallied up
dances held, parties with liquor attended, distilleries established,
and admonished those who broke the Sabbath by firing up their smithies
and applying adzes to lumber. Yet other than some celebrations of
membership rolls increasing for temperance societies, the tally tends
to grow in a direction opposite Little's desires. Some categories he
appears to just give up on. Perhaps he helped lay some groundwork for
Prohibition, but we all know how that turned out.



And in our more information-driven age, we have a confused but higher
standard of proof expected. Rev. Little would add up offenses using
pre-teen informants he'd gather up for a few pennies and send to add
up evidence. Not that phone surveys seems to work much better going by
the last election cycle, but that's some shaky ground to stand on to
condemn persons, let alone parishioners by name.



If I were to "go Little" in a New Year's sermon, I'd be tempted to
draw together some information that's well confirmed, and talk about
what I might infer from it; or what people of faith in particular and
people of good will in general might do in response.



Licking County currently has right around 350 children under 18 "in
care." That's not a record, but it's up. Opiates and heroin are
considered to be a big reason as to why, as employment and wages are
improving, families might be going through more stresses to the point
where the authorities have to step in and take custody. How can
Christians work to make a difference in this area on addiction and
recovery? How can churches and other groups in the county work
together more effectively to help keep families from reaching that
drastic event?



Recently, we had a man in the county arrested on the road for his
ninth "operating a vehicle under the influence" or OVI offense. I've
heard a great deal of conversation and condemnation of the fact that
this could happen. According to the Sheriff's jail census earlier this
week, we had 272 of our family, friends, and neighbors in the Licking
County Justice Center across Christmas weekend; but of those, only 8
appear to be OVI offenses. Meanwhile, of all the offenses that did get
folks in there over the holidays, I'm told by folks in a position to
know, were violent and abusive and criminal acts triggered by
intoxication, whether by drinking or through drugs. What might
intervene in a life to help them make choices better than the ones
listed under "Charges"?



Numbers can only tell us so much; the souls behind each statistic have
a story. It may be a story that needs to change, but it needs to be
heard to help write that new chapter, perhaps in a new year.



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