Faith Works 11-13-2026

Faith Works 11-13-2026
Jeff Gill

Wisdom on the road, in worship elsewhere
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In many years as summer began, I have written a column with variations about going to church. Going to a worship service, that is, when on vacation.

With my spouse now retired, we’ve taken some trips in the off-season, what’s called the “shoulder season” in fall and spring. We may have miscalculated our October venture to Moab, Utah, hitting a fall break week that saw large numbers of families within the state visiting, but it was all good.

Truly, Arches National Park lived up to its billing; I did get up to Delicate Arch, the iconic formation of the area and of the state, but not at sunrise. The crowds made it less worth the extra effort, and in truth my midday trip was pretty people-heavy, and if you have never been there, the slog up a bare rock face ends after a couple of miles of heavy-breathing ascent at two narrow ledges not quite wide enough for people to pass each way, though they do, with a sheer drop on one side and a steep cliff on the other.

Then the final opening out to the amphitheater which ends with Delicate Arch, but I learned on walking towards it that the curving void all around from cliff face entry to the arch itself is a sharp slope down to a very long drop… and it started raining as I got there. So I took my selfie and turned for the long walk back downhill.

It wasn’t quite what I had expected, but it was reality, and it was good. Different, but good. In the same way, we went to a church service in Moab on the day before, a Sunday.

The Episcopal diocese of the state was having their annual convention, so the priest in charge and a number of lay leaders were gone, making the service at St. Francis parish a little different than usual. The sermon was a letter from the bishop, read by a member of the church, which was spoken well and the message actually quite effective. When I heard we’d hear a letter read out loud, I braced myself for a bit of tedium, but it was much more of a worship experience than I had anticipated.

It’s that sort of thing that is behind my regular exhortations in whatever season to all of you: try attending a worship service when you take a trip. Vacation shouldn’t be a break from God, you know; a break from God is kind of a contradiction in terms, theologically speaking.

Sure, it can be awkward, but that’s part of my point. When you are out of your routine, your assumptions, your comfort zone, you notice things you wouldn’t otherwise. And you might be open to experiences you’d otherwise miss.

Almost any time I’ve done this, I see things that are negative lessons, too. There are modes and manners of greeting visitors that, as a visitor, I know aren’t how I’d want us to do that back home. (Frankly, the whole “would visitors stand and introduce themselves” during the service is in my opinion a really bad idea, though quite common.) But I never fail to see ideas or approaches or even turns of phrase that I think “this might be worth bringing home with me.” I pick up fliers and note things in the bulletin or on the screens that I think “that works nicely.”

And the whole experience of worship is, well, different. It’s me in God’s presence in ways that don’t happen when everything is what I’m used to. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with familiarity and comfort in general, but being a visitor a time or two a year helps you see a visitor come into your own church and suddenly, in a moment of clarity, see what your space and experience looks like to them.

To be, in a word, more hospitable.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he really thinks you should try it on vacation. Tell him how you’ve experienced being the stranger at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 11-12-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 11-12-2026
Jeff Gill

The architecture of politics and the drama of character
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One of the hazards of writing a column with a long lead time is that events can not only catch up with you, they can run laps around you.

I had done a couple of pieces in a non-specific way during the recent (and intense) political season which, to be honest, were meant to show my biases and interests without getting blatantly political myself. I was talking about the Colonial Revival and Greek Revival roots of the modern Oval Office as it was created by William Howard Taft and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and why over-decorating isn’t just a matter of taste or fashion preferences. Baroque is a choice, and it comes with certain implications about hierarchy and authority.

But as I was wending my way to a point, or so I hoped, the entire field of discussion was co-opted by The Cheesecake Factory.

Now, the social media team for that fine institution, whose outlet in Easton I have celebrated more than a few family birthdays in, has to have had an interesting few weeks. How to capitalize on the attention, without running the risk of alienating potential customers? As Michael Jordan famously said when asked to do political endorsements for a friend of a friend, and after saying “no,” added “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

Indeed they do.

If you had asked me before this all blew up what description I’d put on the decor philosophy of The Cheesecake Factory, I’d be hard pressed to answer. It’s eclectic at best, chaotic from certain angles, and a mash-up of Egyptian capitals and Atlantean figures with strange sconces and unusual ceiling features. Baroque style implies some kind of prevailing design principle, if repeated to excess, but from menu pages to crown moldings the restaurant challenges any one description.

As the initial statement had it from Barack Obama, “what’s with all the gold?” And he made some hay out of the fact that the retorts from fans of the current Oval Office occupant all focused on the chain eatery comparison, and not the first half of his jape: “it’s like Saddam Hussein opened a…” Et cetera.

Saddam Hussein famously had a gold toilet; while many have claimed or just assumed Donald Trump had one in his “penthouse” at Trump Tower (whose lobby and escalator, which I’ve seen in person, has plenteous gold ornamentation), there is literally zero evidence he has one. But you can’t debate the amount of gold ornament added to the Oval Office. Each filming of a new visitor to that location in the West Wing, every press availability, seems to show more gold “stuff” glued and attached and painted on than before, to where you wonder how this all concludes.

And there’s some hint that presidential staffers have been inquiring about applying historic structure status to the Oval Office as it is — remarkably, like many D.C. places you’d assume had it, there are no historic preservation restrictions on the entire White House complex. The goal seems to be to prevent a future occupant from applying a putty knife and a new coat of paint to the formerly austere interior, let alone on the colonnade walkway and Rose Garden, locking in the current appearance for years to come.

Does it matter? I think it does. As a village with an investment in Greek Revival architecture, I think at the very least it’s worth discussion.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not a big fan of the Baroque, unless it’s Bach. Tell him how style communicates character to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 11-6-2026

Faith Works 11-6-2026
Jeff Gill

So now what? Thoughts post-election day
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By the time you see these words, we may have most of the state and national election results figured out. We may not, entirely, either. One thing is for sure: the television ads will have ended.

I can report, with my frequent trips to Indianapolis, that watching long sequences of negative political ads about people you know nearly nothing about is almost as exhausting as having them go by when you know at least something of the figures in dispute.

My own personal history in this county, and around our part of the state, has given me what’s actually quite a privilege: I have met quite a few political leaders, talked to many of them, and have closer friends who know them even better. So our growing trend to deeply personal attacks lands painfully, at times, in the overall flow of broadcast advertising.

Yet my regular ventures into an adjoining state, and a recent week and a half in a state two time zones away, have shown me the negativity itself is what’s wearing. I label it and internalize it a little differently when the people are known to me, but the grey cloud over my head or the tight green knot in my stomach is about the same when the names and faces are complete and utter strangers.

Which is why, aside from the fact that this is a column intended as part of the faith coverage of the news, I just am not a candidate endorser in general. My editors would no doubt flag it if I tried to name names in this space, pro or con, but I’m really not tempted. If you know me more personally, you know I have political feelings and civic thoughts, and I post those elsewhere, but even at that I’m not as highly partisan as some might think I should be.

At heart, I’m a pastor. And I don’t think anyone’s present felicity or future hopes is really served in any meaningful sense by having the right political affiliations. I can imagine exceptions to this (no Godwin’s Law violations will be seen here this week), but in general, politics aren’t life. They’re a part of living, and sometimes even quite important, but I don’t see one’s specific vote for this candidate or that, as something you need to hear about from me.

What we all need, I believe, whatever your particular faith orientation, is a cleansing break with negativity. Too much of that is bad for the mind, the spirit, and I’d even say for the soul. Those who don’t believe human creatures have immortal elements to their being, a soul as usually defined, may read on elsewhere, but I’m thinking of you, too.

Obviously, sunny optimism is not a rational perspective in all things at any time. Ask a Ukrainian about that right now. I’m not pushing the agenda of Doctor Pangloss (look it up!) or of Pollyanna (book or Disney version). But I am certain as a Christian believer, minister of the gospel, and man of faith, that to be always looking for the worst in anyone is going to put a kink in your psyche that will create backups for your soul’s digestive system.

Can you find something awful in almost anyone if you peer closely enough at their life story? Again, I’m a minister of many decades standing. Of course you can. It takes work sometimes to find the bright spots, but they’re there. In almost anyone.

My post-election commendation to one and all is to put some effort into brightening your outlook, in seeking out the positive, in sharing some good news with another person where you can. This is what we need, all of us.

I salute the bumper sticker I saw the other day in this spirit: “I hope something good happens to you today.” That’s the attitude we can all be blessed by.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s ready to watch some Christmas movies, truth be told. Tell him how you brighten up at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 10-30-2026

Faith Works 10-30-2026
Jeff Gill

An appreciation of clergy, always in order
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October is soon ending, with time change this weekend leading us into All Saints on Sunday.

Before we fall back one hour, I’d like to make my own bow in the direction of Clergy Appreciation Month, observed by many traditions in October.

I never met my mother’s minister, the one who baptized her as World War II ended, cared for her in a hospital distant from her home, and was given leave to return in 1958 to marry my parents. Rev. Myrtle Park Storm graduated from Eureka College and was ordained in the first decade of the 1900s when few women were; she traveled the state of Illinois as an evangelist, and later after her marriage served settled pastorates in Kansas and Carlock, Illinois among others.

Her faith formation was important to my mother, and I know her teaching for me has roots in Rev. Storm. She died when I was not quite four, but I never met her; her influence was significant in my faith and ministry, all the same.

I barely recall Rev. Percy Thomas, who also died the summer before I turned four; he welcomed my parents into membership at the church I grew up in. He was born and raised in Wales, making his way to this country in a story I keep meaning to learn more about. Rev. Thomas had a long ministry in Steubenville, Ohio before his call to Valparaiso, Indiana, but his Welsh accent and courtly manners I still remember, if faintly.

The first minister I have clear, specific memories of is Rev. Thomas Alston, who came as Rev. Thomas retired and conducted his memorial on the latter’s unexpected death the next year. Rev. Tom preached sermons that included stories about what he learned not just in the Bible, but working in the pickle factory of his hometown as a young man. His faith was practical, applicable, pungent (and not to everyone’s taste).

When Rev. Alston moved on, Paul Porter came to town; Pastor Paul taught my cohort’s class preparing for baptism in 1972. I am not sure, but think he is still serving in retirement down in north Georgia. He tried to balance the desire for relevance asked by many with the staid traditionalism of the church of my youth; the late 1960s and early 70s were hard for many clergy.

Pastor Paul left, and I ended a youth representative on a pulpit committee looking for a new minister, a learning experience which has been useful to me in more ways than I can count. We ended up deciding to recommend the congregation extend a call to Rev. Dr. M.W. Robert Craig; much of the controversy of those times blew away once we had him and his family in residence, another lesson I learned (lots of promised turmoil never actually comes to pass).

Bob Craig arrived as I left for college, and while I never got to hear him preach much, he liked to recommend books to me (he got me started on Victor Frankl, for one), and was pleased I ended up attending his seminary in Indianapolis.

At Purdue, joined with University Church, an ecumenical campus ministry with a pair of ministers: Don Nead, a Presbyterian, and Ken Ewing, an American Baptist. There I ended up “on staff” joining the music director I’d taken an interest in, so Joyce Meredith was “in ministry” before I was! At UC I became a student assistant minister, or SAM. Don tended to supervise the SAMs, and in butting heads with Don I learned quite a bit about multi-staff ministry contexts.

Joyce and I married at UC, then went on to seminary, and there I served under Rick Powell as a student associate; Rick, his wife Jayna, and his brother Jim all showed me much much more about how ministry as a calling can work out in and through one’s whole life.

That’s just a few of the many ministers I appreciate in this month, and have valued through many years of my own ministry.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he could keep going with this list! Tell him what ministers have been examples for you at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 10-23-2026

Faith Works 10-23-2026
Jeff Gill

Consent and “rules about such things”
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In talking around a current horrific story, from a few years back, out of a college not terribly far away, we run up against the question of consent.

If you have been in recent years to a parent orientation for college students, you hear about consent. When I went through what in 1978 was still called “freshman orientation” it was not on the agenda, but I know students in the last couple of decades are certainly talked to about consent. Whether they hear the lessons, about appropriate relationships or binge drinking or plagiarism, let alone more recent confusion over the proper role of artificial intelligence (we’ll leave super intelligence for another day), that’s clearly a different story.

College students, or young adults whatever their personal situation, are products of their environment, which is why when it comes to adult beverage consumption, it raised my eyebrows at first to learn higher education starts their substance abuse education literally in the middle of the admissions process. But it makes sense: if a student starts binge drinking in high school, a university can only do so much once they show up. Similar issues arise as to math skills, but I digress.

Some of you have communicated back to me how or where you learned about appropriate relationships and consent, and the only commonality is the diversity of places and circumstances you’ve shared. Some said they learned what a gentleman is and does in DeMolay, others from uncles at hunting camps, one young man credited his baseball coach, and thankfully (to me!) church settings come up in a variety of ways. Men’s faith formation groups with father and son activities, youth group programs both in the local church, or at regional or national conferences, as well as simply talking to their minister: all of these are places where some of you report learning in relatively specific, particular terms, what is appropriate, what is right, what is properly done in your interactions with others.

I appreciate the way that so many of you have agreed that teaching “no sex until marriage” is not enough, not all on its own. It is certainly one place to start. Frankly, it’s not as bad a guideline as modern times has made it out to be. That’s a subject for a book let alone a series of columns longer than this format would support, but at least approaching intimacy with the baseline assumption that you wouldn’t do anything with someone you couldn’t at least imagine you’d marry might slow down a wide range of bad choices.

Secular society may want to consider any sexual expression as a mere physical experience, like doing calisthenics or working out, but I think most people realize it’s much more universal an experience, and one that’s intensely revelatory for everyone, much more than running a marathon or bench pressing a new personal best.

But that’s the gap higher education has to navigate. The social conventions, observed or not, around who can or should have sex with whom, are nowadays more recreational than sacramental, so there’s a (irony accidental, but useful) hands-off approach which officials tend to take as to monitoring what effectively adult persons do, and whatever they choose to do… as long as it is between consenting adults.

Which is why, preacher though I may be, I thought first of “High Society” and Frank Sinatra’s character saying to a hung-over Grace Kelly that he had found her eminently attractive the night before, “but you were somewhat the worse — or the better — for the wine, and there are rules about such things.”

In other words, a person could in certain circumstances say “yes,” but an ethical let alone religious person would know the proper answer is “no.” Consent may be given, but opportunities can be, even sometimes have to be refused. Religious guidelines offer a way to understand how that can be true, which purely emotional or physical reactions will struggle to comprehend.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got great respect for religious traditions which take on these subjects. Share how yours tries to communicate interpersonal values at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-22-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 10-22-2026
Jeff Gill

From Greek Revival to Baroque, a cultural journey
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When considering the architectural style of the Oval Office, whose history we looked at last time, there’s a transition from the Greek Revival influences in the White House complex as a whole to a Colonial Revival influence in what Taft and finally Franklin D. Roosevelt embodied in their executive office design.

In Granville, we have a scattering of Greek Revival buildings, enough that we get almost as much attention from cultural tourism around architecture as Newark does for the Louis Sullivan jewel-box bank on Courthouse Square.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Avery-Downer House where now resides the Robbins Hunter Museum are two gems on Broadway, although we have a number of other homes in the village that embody that period of design. The former Beth Eden up on campus, now Reese House, is a late evocation of the earlier style, built in 1901 and considered Federal Revival (akin to the Oval Office and West Wing design style), but is often called Greek Revival — that is technically an 1820 to 1860 architectural term.

This is why the Executive Mansion (Teddy Roosevelt named it the “White House” in 1901) is considered a Neoclassical design, but again, with new influences in the extension of the West Wing (we are not going to talk about the East Wing, no we are not), and the modifications culminating with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Oval Office as it is in outline today.

So, Neoclassical, Greek or Colonial Revival, let alone Federal Revival: who cares? Well, we care because architecture says something. If you aren’t sure about that, you should sit on a church building design committee some time. Oh, it says something.

Modernism has its fans, but to be perfectly blunt (and I’m two columns in, almost done with this week’s installment, with more to say in another two weeks) modernism is a close kin to budget building. To build a Swasey Chapel today would take immensely more money even adjusted for inflation, because craft work is valued more, and it should be said more justly. Skilled labor was cheaper in 1922, let alone 1822, so ornamentation and detail costs more today. In many cases, especially public buildings but also often in church structures or other traditionally decorative types of architecture, a modernist aesthetic goes along with cost control and keeping a project under budget.

We’re still not sure what Modernism “says.” Some of us think it says “blehhh.” (That’s with three h’s, by the way.) Don’t even get me started on Brutalism, which is affordability meets concrete. What does it say? Well, the name says quite a bit. Brutally so.

Baroque, on the other hand, isn’t just ornamentation run riot, it says something symbolically to both the conscious and the unconscious. A dense florid accumulation of twirls and swirls has a history and narrative all its own, and frankly American ideals have never had much in common with the Baroque template of design. We just don’t do Baroque, except for maybe Bach, and that’s late Baroque music, dangerously close to a different subject altogether.

When you decorate a space with Baroque ornamentation, you are seeking to overwhelm, to hyper-stimulate, to create a sort of emotional intensity in the experience. Not to inspire or move one to reflect on simple rules and essential values, but to be reminded you are less than the room and space and central figure in that office.

That’s why Taft and later Roosevelt went for a more Greek Revival vibe in the Oval Office they appropriated from the Palladian echo in the White House ovals. They wanted a simpler, more egalitarian design, in which people could reason together.

You can see where I’m going with this, I hope. More to come.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not a big go-for-baroque kind of guy. Tell him what architecture says to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 10-16-2026

Faith Works 10-16-2026
Jeff Gill

Looking for the rules, or maybe just how to apply them
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After a few weeks of public discussion about an issue, I can’t always resist the temptation to be a preacher about things. Even in a general purpose, wide-spectrum setting. So let me talk about movies for a moment, but starting with a play.

Philip Barry was a Broadway playwright during the era of O’Neill and Sherwood, Kaufman and Hart. He wrote a play for his friend Katharine Hepburn, who appeared in it on the stage, and then a movie adaptation of the modestly popular show which did very well up on the screen.

There’s a particular line I have in mind from “The Philadelphia Story" (1940), spoken by the character Mike Connor, as played by James Stewart, to heiress Tracy Lord, indelibly played by Katharine Hepburn, about dimly remembered events of the night before due to drink:

"You were extremely attractive, and as for distant and forbidding, on the contrary. But you also were a little the worse, or better, for wine, and there are rules about that.”

You may know the scene better from the musical reimagining in a Newport setting, “High Society” (1956), with Frank Sinatra as Mike the reporter, and Grace Kelly as Tracy the bride-to-be, but the key line is delivered nearly the same. After Tracy asks if she was cold and forbidding to him during her champagne haze, Mike replies:

“Not at all. On the contrary, but you were somewhat the worse — or the better — for the wine, and there are rules about such things.”

(By the way: about artificial intelligence, which so far ain’t too super. AI has tried to tell me twice over that it was C.K. Dexter Haven who said it, portrayed by Cary Grant in 1940 and Bing Crosby in 1956, but good old Dexter, who would get the bride back in the end, was simply an approving witness to the exchange. I told AI this, sternly, to which it said “of course you are correct” which makes you wonder, doesn’t it?)

Anyhow, this scene proves that even seventy, let alone eighty-six years ago, people were aware of the relationship between alcohol and consent. “There are rules about such things.”

Thank you, Mike; and thanks to Frank and Jimmy for delivering the line so sincerely. There are rules about such things. But where are these rules to be found? How do we learn them?

Obviously, not all men, and we’re talking about men here, learn these rules. The rules exist, so either they weren’t taught, or were not learned. I think back, and I have to admit: I don’t recall my father telling me this, not in so many words. It didn’t come up in church, or through the Scout troop, or in a college class. It is a subject in new student orientation now, but it wasn’t in 1978; in many professions and certifications rules such as what Mike the reporter was talking about are included in an ethics or boundary training. The jury is still out on what kind of training effectively communicates what Sinatra and Stewart seemed to know (and yes, I’m aware that there’s some question as to how well Frank applied this rule in real life).

Biblically, most preachers would say this is covered by general teachings about chastity and fidelity, although the question of consent within a marriage is still relevant. Our local legend Victoria Woodhull was both highly effective in communicating, even through Victorian era norms, and notorious in certain circles for speaking up on behalf of mutual consent even (or especially) within a marriage relationship.

Pre-marital sexual intimacy is still a fraught subject even within many religious traditions that are otherwise considered fairly conservative; a number of groups that would surprise you historically didn’t consider an engagement confirmed until the prospective bride was pregnant, which complicates this whole question.

Consent, though, is still key. This may take another essay to reassemble.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s counseled quite a few couples both before and after marriage. Tell him how you’d teach the young at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 10-9-2026

Faith Works 10-9-2026
Jeff Gill

Small is beautiful, if that’s what you like
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When I talk about the upsides and struggles of smaller churches, I know I’ll get email.

I also know what I will hear most often, which is how much people who like those sorts of churches like them. Which is true, and in line with much of Christian history. The “parish” however defined has been a core model for local faith community life across generations, a fairly tight geographic area with plenty of family and neighborhood connections undergirding the relationships within a congregation.

One big problem here, though, is like what you hear when you poll or survey in any form a community about retail. People will express significant preferences for “Mom and Pop” stores and family style restaurants; often they will even say they’ll pay more for such experiences. Except when tested, they don’t.

Big box retail comes in, marks down 5% or 10% below the Main Street locally owned store, and the tide turns. Chain restaurants and fast food show up on the edge of town, and the downtown diner sees traffic drop off. That’s how malls hollowed out urban cores, and then major discounters gutted the malls, and now online ordering and to your door delivery start to rattle even the supercenters.

Likewise, the historic churches built a block off of courthouse square or parallel to Main Street, almost all with no parking off-street, took a beating as retail moved to the margins; A-frame worship spaces popped up in the suburbs, then the giant worship spaces which dwarfed the kinds of sanctuaries many Boomers grew up in, sometimes in the malls that were themselves starting to lose retail tenants.

If you have a faith you were raised in, and a taste for having a church family, you can be an adult or even an empty nester and like a moderately sized building with just enough people each Sunday to challenge your ability to remember names. Yes, there’s a bunch of us, and quite a few of you also still read newspapers (even print versions!) and aren’t put off by the word “Faith” in the header of, say, a column.

There are also not a few people who are interested in spirituality, but didn’t grow up with or perhaps chose to not stay in a faith tradition from your youth, maybe even stayed away from such weekly gatherings for a season or two of your life, but read about prayer and meditation and God with interest. Some of you read here, and email me occasionally. And tell me how you’d prefer an anonymous space in which to gather with like-minded others over a pew-furnished room with a couple dozen people who all turn to look at you as you enter.

I think there’s a desire for family style church, but it’s not for everyone. That can be hard to hear: it shouldn’t be. I like to remind my peers that in the halcyon days of blue laws and Sunday closings the average weekend in most communities saw maybe 40% of the population in church. That leaves 60% choosing otherwise. Today, it’s closer to 20%, which is a halving to be sure, but it’s not new to see a solid majority of our neighbors deciding not to attend worship.

The big question for me about church size is that the rise of megachurches has not swept in as many new attenders as we once thought the seeker-sensitive model might. If a windowless space for image projection with excellent graphics, and a quality sound system for a skilled praise band and solid preaching, would bring in even 52% of the population, I’d set aside some of my hesitations and sing the praises of that approach.

I don’t think it’s bad, I just don’t see it making the difference we once anticipated in reaching new audiences, in changing hearts. But neither is business as usual. What comes next?




Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s more familiar with family style traditional than not. Tell him how you think worship is most effective at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 10-2-2026

Faith Works 10-2-2026
Jeff Gill

What small can’t do, what large can’t do either
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We were just talking about size and local church life; I have my own biases as to what the “right size” is, but I’ve lived long enough to know my personal preferences aren’t cosmic let alone divine truth.

I read years back something in a ministerially oriented publication that most clergy are best at serving a congregation about the size of the one they grew up in. That may be true. There are complications here in application: for one thing, I saw in the 1980s a significant move to seminary training of people with no church background. A generation earlier that would have been both more unlikely, and also the ordination system of most churches wouldn’t support it. But many ministers I know today didn’t grow up in church.

There’s also something about the averages that makes this hard to assess, about being best at what you’re used to (which sounds like a truism when you put it that way). I grew up in a congregation which saw 150-200 most Sundays, with Christmas Eve and Easter up over 300 to 400 some years in the 1960s. That church, like many of its type, is down to closer to 50 a Sunday now.

Myself, over the years I came into a number of churches which may have had hundreds or even a thousand “on the books” as members, but in the crucial “how many show up” metric, they were 100 or so most Sundays, 200ish for the big days. I helped get most of them up to the 150 neighborhood on an average, but found getting past that and staying there, well, challenging.

Is that because I’ve served traditional style worship type churches my whole time in ministry? Surely that’s part of it. Could it be I just don’t have the gifts and graces to get a congregation to push past the discomforts and challenges of growing over 150 a Sunday consistently? I’m probably not the one to answer that question.

The mid-sized church, nowhere near mega in any way, but larger than a “small church,” is what many observers note is steadily vanishing from the American religious landscape. Like retail, to make a dangerous comparison, the old Mom & Pop stores on Main Street, or even more hazardously, corner taverns, have largely vanished, and we have the extremes showing growth: big box retailers, and very small boutiques. The middle is hollowing out.

Ryan Burge, the noted demographer and analyst of mainline religious trends and wider faith developments, wrote earlier in this year a book about just this: “The Vanishing Church” by Brazos Press. In it he talks about the hollowing of American Protestant Christianity, and what it means for the national discourse in general. I commend it to your attention if you’re interested in churches of the sort we’re discussing here.

His last two chapters invite us to think about first “How Polarized Are We, Really?” (which is pretty bad, if you ask me, but there’s still a pretty large middle ground) and finally to stand on hope, affirming that “Not All Is Lost.”

Middle-sized churches all over the Midwest, which is all I can speak to personally, have gone from 150 a Sunday to 75 or even 50. Small congregations of 40 are more like 20 or 12. They can’t support a full-time minister, which is what they’ve been used to since not long after V-E Day, even though the historian in me notes it wasn’t a norm for the century before the Depression (which like COVID, complicates all sorts of statistics).

Should they all just close? I’m with Ryan: no. But many will. The moderate center has a place, but it’s going to have to work differently. Let’s come back to that idea, and apply both some hope, and practical thinking.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s preached in almost every sized church you can think of, and what’s in common is key. Tell him what you think unites faith communities at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-8-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 10-8-2026
Jeff Gill

Oval Office design and national self-image
___


Why does the United States look to an office shaped like an oval for its pivot point of power? It's an interesting question to consider. Architecture is how we express ourselves both artistically and politically, in Washington or in Granville alike.


The presidential Oval Office as we've long known it was designed, architecturally, in a Colonial Revival style — not quite a pure Greek Revival — featuring prominent neoclassical architectural elements such as the fireplace, built in symmetrical bookcases, and the ceiling cornice.

In our nation’s history, Greek Revival design in the early 1800s, such as we see much of in Granville, was meant to express the new American nation's democratic and classically rooted ideals. We wanted to show how our new nation had deep roots in classical model, in Athens and Plato and Aristotle, in Demosthenes and Sophocles.

The later Colonial Revival began in our centennial year of 1876, and stayed popular through the early 1900s, a design meant to both offer comfort and reassurance, along with patriotism, merging Greek Revival, Federal, Georgian, and other past American styles into a single modernized approach for early 20th-century applications.

Swasey Chapel here, begun in 1922 & dedicated in 1924, is in sum an eclectic Colonial Revival structure, with hints of Moorish Revival in the bell tower, echoing the Stanford White 1890 "second" Madison Square Garden tower element. (As an aside, the fourth and current MSG is echoed architecturally in Herrick Hall's roof design, another interesting Manhattan echo on the Denison campus.) The Giralda Tower in Seville, the specific inspiration for the progression of architectural orders you see in the tower from top to bottom, was also copied in 1919 with Chicago's Wrigley Building, a possible inspiration.

Colonial Style took all this vertical language into a more Georgian brick and masonry exterior, attached as more of a meetinghouse whole to the horizontal nave, which itself is more of a Stuart Revival interior, albeit with the use of classically Ionic capitals on the columns.

The West Wing's Oval Office leans back even more into Greek Revival, or at least it did. Theodore Roosevelt's wife pushed for the West Wing itself to be built, getting the executive branch out of the family quarters on the second floor of the White House; Ohio's William Howard Taft built the first West Wing Oval as his personal office in 1909 at the end of the building extension. This was fully demolished in FDR's time to build in 1934 essentially the structure we see today on television, with access off the colonnade for his wheelchair, making the White House one of America's first handicapped accessible office buildings.

The shape is a nod to the former office space for many presidents, going back to John Adams, in the Yellow Oval Room upstairs, directly over the more formal but also oval shaped Blue Room, a first floor reception hall. And it is said James Hoban put this ellipse in the middle of the Executive Mansion after seeing in Philadelphia the President's Home for George Washington, where a bow window with three frames was built out from the sitting room on the first floor, for the Father of our Country to stand in during receiving times for the first president. This windowed arc followed the office of the presidency into the White House design, and then over into the West Wing, becoming the Oval Office.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s intrigued by what we say with architecture. Tell him how buildings and interiors speak to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 9-25-2026

Faith Works 9-25-2026
Jeff Gill

Size, scale, and seeing other people in church
___


We were just talking about hyperscale data centers and megachurches and the right size for a faith community.

It’s not a simple question. I am used to hearing people say an ideal church is one where everyone can know everyone. In this part of the Midwest, congregations of 70 to 100 a Sunday were once quite common, a hundred such or more in this county in the mid-1900s.

The idea that a religious community is best in the smaller range is echoed by a debate I’m on the edges of in a different context, about schools and education. You can find quite a few smart educators who will say the idea school system has about 150 to 250 tops per graduating class, which fits my experience and I’m happy to agree with that. This would mean a high school of 600 to a thousand.

But my beloved spouse graduated from an urban high school where her graduating class was some 1,200 students, and commencement was at the state fairgrounds. She isn’t a highly extroverted person, nor from financial privilege, but she states that her high school experience was just fine by her. This slows me up from saying a high school as a whole should never be larger than a thousand students in the building.

My own personal experience and preferences makes me think a Christian local assembly should be about 100 to 150 a Sunday, and if it got larger, should probably split off to found new churches, to maintain the human scale of personal relationships. But in 2026, and not just recently, to have a full time ordained minister with a full time compensation including health care coverage of some sort requires you have (generally speaking) 150 to 200 a Sunday. Anything less than that, and you’re probably not really offering a full time compensation package.

So economics pushes the idea of a larger church, even if you can’t all know each other, more like 200 or more a Sunday. Yet I’ve had conversations both recently and years ago with folks looking for a larger church simply because, well, they wanted to attend somewhere that was big enough that everyone didn’t know them, and know their business. They see a small congregation, and they suspect they’ll be a trustee in half a heartbeat just because they have a pulse and two brain cells to rub together.

In fact, back in the late 1970s, my relatively elderly great-aunts started attending a very early non-denominational mega-ish-church in the Chicago suburbs (Christ Church Oakbrook, you can look them up), in large part because they wanted to go somewhere two retired teachers could attend and not be dragooned into teaching Sunday school. The size, and yes, the relative anonymity was attractive.

And not very long ago on a community board, a person asked the social media throngs about churches to attend, mentioning “it needs to be big enough I can just kind of fit in without standing out.” Yeah. Okay.

Look, it’s easy to snark. Those of us used to smaller, more familial congregations might say the urge to blend in and be anonymous in a larger church is a subtle sort of sin itself, a desire to not have to serve and just be one among many. But if you’ve served long and well, and want to just worship: a bigger worship service can be very soothing.

I am not saying everyone attending a mega church is just wanting to fade into the woodwork, but it’s part of the appeal. Even more so is the guarantee that a big church has a big youth group, and youth often crave the comfort of numbers, too.

What is the right size for a church of whatever type? How can we know what’s the right size for us?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s still thinking about size and community and anonymity. Tell him what you think at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 9-18-2026

Faith Works 9-18-2026
Jeff Gill

Mega is a matter of opinion, in data or discipleship
___


Data centers aren’t new to artificial intelligence becoming a point of public debate; they’ve been going up in Licking County since 2019.

Back then in the “beforetime” pre-COVID, the Advocate talked in that year about our having “a data center.” Now there are at least fourteen operating in the western half of our county, with 20 more planned and moving forward. Ohio has at least 160, maybe 200 working now, with around 100 of them in the Columbus metro area (which includes us).

They’re going up so fast it’s hard to get a solid read on how many are up and running, and there are both large and small data centers, even if the small ones would look pretty big next to, say, your house.

Dozens of them are “hyperscale” or large-scale data centers, which is where the rhetoric threatens to collide with reality. I’m going to say the average data center is really big compared to having a child care center built nearby, but our profusion of distribution centers since 2010 is to my eyes hard to tell apart.

Called fulfillment centers or distribution or logistics centers, they tend not to be called warehouses, and are pretty mega (but I definitely never hear them called mega-warehouses). From the outside, they look grim and overwhelming on the landscape, horizontally dominating the view along I-70 and US 40 and now all along Rt. 161 three and four deep.

One concerned website says that Licking County is “the definitive epicenter of Ohio’s data boom” with “massive, multi-gigawatt facilities” for half a dozen entities in the New Albany area on our side of the county line, Microsoft building them soon in Hebron and Heath, and Cologix in Johnstown. Lancaster and Sunbury are getting looks, but we are definitely the epicenter of this technological earthquake.


This eruption, and the difficulties in both defining what we’re talking about, and measuring what’s happening on the ground, reminds me — as you might expect — of the explosion of megachurches in the 1980s & 1990s.

What is a megachurch? You can search around for a standard definition, and find a fair amount of variation. One of the more common is any single site where a thousand or more attend each weekend for worship. Central Ohio began to hear about megachurches in the 1980s with Rod Parsley and World Harvest Church just to our southwest; Parsley was mentored by Lester Sumrall who with others like Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart had brought worship and television together into televangelism.

But megachurch status doesn’t necessarily require a TV feed, and now even small congregations can pull off streaming video. Mega when it comes to churches is usually contemporary worship music in a large open facility, without windows to facilitate video screens and projections systems. Almost any megachurch started small at some point, but their defining characteristic is size, and aspirations to get larger. Jersey Church, which is interestingly also in the Licking County part of New Albany, has the stated goal of getting over 5,000. Spring Hills Baptist Church, Cornerstone Church, God’s Acres are all up there, Heath Church of Christ and More Life Church as well, with others working into that category.

I always like to note that Catholics listen to these discussions with some bemusement: many, even most parishes will have a thousand or more each weekend coming to Mass. But they are rarely called megachurches.

Like hyperscale data centers, you can find a fair amount of debate around whether the development of megachurch-ness is good or bad. Those within them say they are successful in reaching people for Christ, which is the only real measure worth considering.

Size does many things well; the question is what still might benefit from smallness? In faith or discipleship, and even in technology?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s preached in a variety of settings and would hate to name a favorite. Tell him what you think about size and speed and efficiency at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.


One source used:
https://stopohiodatacenters.org/licking-county

Notes from my Knapsack 9-10-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 9-10-2026
Jeff Gill

Anticipation, the unexpected, and new understandings
___


With the 25th commemoration of the 9-11 attack on the United States on Friday, we look back at the day, and the times in 2001.

I do remember much of that summer; I was directing church camp sessions, driving across Ohio, listening to radio discussions about the disappearance of Chandra Levy in Washington, shark attacks off the Florida coast, Art Bell was back on late night talking about crop circles and EVPs (don’t ask).

The morning before 9-11, Monday Sept. 10, I recall a fellow on the Today Show talking about cheap bookings and how to pack for travel, and said to my wife “the world must be fine if this is all they have to talk about.” Don’t take morning show programming as a measure of global health.

Now we all notice with a chill, not with delight, when a fall morning dawns cloudless and blue. It brings that morning back, and the confusion that came with it, some of which is still with us. A substantial chunk of the Islamic world hated us, which should not have been news, but was to many. Sayyid Qutb had been dead thirty-five years, executed by his own country, but his writings against modernism and secularism had only grown in popularity across the Islamic world since his death.

A social media feed which has been around a while has become rather interesting this year, with the header “25YearsAgoLive” now keyed to 2001. You get a sense of both our obliviousness, and the hints that were coming, about Islamic terrorism and the precedents of the USS Cole bombing and the World Trade Center attack in 1993, all which could have given us more of an awareness something was coming.

And it all makes me think about what we know, easily and readily can know today, that will look in another 25 years like another case of “how could they not see that coming?” It’s all too like reading historical documents about an obviously well-read and humane doctor, who applies leeches or refuses hand washing before investigating wounds. He didn’t know what he didn’t know, even if in retrospect it was knowable.

Another thing social media is teaching us effectively is that adding more information to our awareness is not the same as being smarter, not how we can end up making better decisions. There’s a reason wisdom and knowledge are traditionally considered very different things. We know so much stuff now, but I can’t think of anyone who would be willing to declare that in 2026 we are all that much wiser.

It would be nice, though, to feel wiser about the world. Not a defiant, assertive, over-confident, smarter than thou sort of tone, but to rest calmly in clarity if not certainty. To be able to look at who is standing where and with whom, and anticipate what our interests require as a nation.

I’ll be honest. I don’t think we’re wiser as a country right now. And I worry the next attack will, like 9-11, again catch us off-guard. We are more aware that there are people out there who don’t like us, but as much because we’ve given them more reasons to be angry and resentful.

It may be that wisdom is for individuals, and rarely for nations. But if any nation can be wise, I’d like it to be ours. I think it possible, but we’ve got a ways to go. That’s what this 9-11 has me thinking about.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not worried about shark attacks, anyhow. Tell him how you seek wisdom at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 9-11-2026

Faith Works 9-11-2026
Jeff Gill

A lasting search for light, and hope, and faith
__


By the time I got to a television on Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon had been hit by Flight 77, the South Tower of the World Trade Center had fallen, and Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania.

I had been in a long meeting in downtown Newark from 7:00 am, but thinking on my way there just how beautiful the morning looked. The first deaths took place at the hands of hijackers shortly after 8:19 am, but it was the impact of the first jet over Manhattan’s streets at 8:46 am which became marked as the beginning of what we now just call “9-11.”

By 10:00 am in a crowd of Denison students at Slayter center, we watched a number of televisions all displaying the same station, the same clips of the impacts of Flights 11 and 175 in New York, the distant plume across the Potomac from Washington, D.C.

The collapse of the South Tower was suspected, but it happened so quickly, and with so much smoke and dust hurled into the air, even the network anchors weren’t certain. At 10:28 am we all saw it, all too clearly, as the North Tower fell. The crowded room grew silent for a few moments, then the buzz of quiet discussion grew.

We’ve been talking about that day for twenty-five years now. Even for those of us without personal connections to lower Manhattan, to the dead on the flights, at the Pentagon, there’s a visceral reaction if you were alive and aware that day in 2001 every time we’ve had a crisp, clear morning with starkly blue skies, cloudless and deep. It’s not the same feeling we had before 9-11. It left a mark, a wound of sorts.

Now a quarter-century later, many of us have been to the Ground Zero Memorial, even to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We’ve watched documentaries and films, heard the last voicemails referenced in “Love, Actually,” seen the impress of 9-11 on our national awareness. Of the world, of Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamic terrorism, and now in Iran and Yemen and Gaza.

We have scar tissue. It is an unimaginable event that’s now part of our everyday consciousness, and of a sort that threatens to overcome our best impulses, our hopes for the future, even our faith in divine benevolence. Yet another case of “if a loving God could…why not stop…” even if the list was long already.

How do we as people of faith deal with incomprehensible evil? We can reason our way into it, contextualize the circumstances, even psychoanalyze the cold-blooded killers who knifed flight attendants and pilots even more brutally than the execution of the passengers who died with them in four horrible crashes. It doesn’t help much, but we do it. Trying to make sense of things.

John 16:33 gives us a window out, or forward, but knowing “in this world you will have trouble” is little comfort, even twenty-five years on. Small children who lost parents that day now have children of their own, and they have to figure out how to tell the story.

There are geopolitical and partisan politics all engaged by the events started in motion by 9-11, and that day’s events are still used to justify today all sorts of agendas, self-serving and otherwise. Where people with a religious belief have to start is in the middle of the tragedy of that day. We ask why our free will is such that anyone can choose such an evil, and how good can come out of those results.

In a short setting, I can only report my return again and again to the opening of John’s Gospel, and his assertion “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Some translations say “has not overwhelmed it” and others choose “has not put it out.”

But the light still shines. I stand in that light, even today.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got memories still unsorted. Tell him your recall of that day at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.


https://millercenter.org/remembering-september-11/september-11-terrorist-attacks

Faith Works 9-4-2026

Faith Works 9-4-2026
Jeff Gill

Work, for the night is coming
___


Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer in a conclusive sort of way. There’s a Monday holiday (for some of us) and the turn to September.

It is meant to honor workers, and work.

A Presbyterian pastor of the previous century wrote around the 1894 founding of the federal Labor Day:

Let me but do my work from day to day,
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
When vagrant wishes beckon me astray—
"This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; 
Of all who live, I am the one by whom
This work can best be done in the right way.”

Henry van Dyke invites us “in field or forest, at the desk or loom” to find an appreciation for the work that is ours to do. Indirectly, he admits this is easiest to do when we have a sense of ourselves in the work that we are doing, when “I am the one by whom this work can best be done in the right way.”

Which is harder when your work is a job. If it’s just an hourly wage, what pays the bill, you may be more interested in not getting fired than in excelling at what you do.

The preaching commonplace is to exhort people to do whatever they do with a sense of vocation, whether it’s sweeping floors or assembling widgets. And the hearer standard response is “easy for you to say, preacher.” Which is true. Most of us in ministry came to the vocation with a sense of calling, of being set and guided and anointed towards this work. That is a reward in its own right, and one not available to many in their workday jobs.

For me, the bigger question is one of vocation, how any of us can feel called to a particular sort of work. But I always think of my childhood scoutmaster, who had personal business cards, which said “Scouter by choice, steelworker by necessity.” Mr. E took great pride in doing his work at the steel mill with excellence, but it wasn’t his vocation. His vocation was leading young men in learning about nature, leadership, and their own capacity as adults. That was his calling, and his choice.

Labor Day I think is a social vocation of a sort, a calling to all of us to value the work which makes our lives possible. I’m in the middle of a transition with my mother and her care, and we’re saying good bye to a number of people who have cared for her in the last two years. Most of them have what are considered menial jobs, with mopping and emptying and lifting and carrying a big part of it. But there are people who find ways to offer the human touch, the kind heart, the personal presence even in the middle of getting the trash taken out or cleaning the room.

That’s a vocation in its own right.

There are the roadside workers I pass going back and forth along the interstates, orange vests and hard hats in blazing heat. Signs ask us to slow down and take care; every year I see ODOT sharing sad news of maintenance workers killed as drivers race to their next appointment, too fast and not noticing the people forced by their jobs to work steps away from traffic. A distance an inattentive driver can cover in a millisecond.

Our Labor Day calling is to be more aware of workers of all sorts around us, to be thankful for their labors, to show appreciation when and how we can, sometimes even just by slowing ourselves down, to take their lives into account.

Happy Labor Day, whether you get the day off, or not!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he often works Sundays. Tell him what you believe is your vocation at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 8-28-2026

Faith Works 8-28-2026
Jeff Gill

Church life and the “old folks,” whomever they may be
___


In 1902, the Fourth Street Church of Christ in Newark, Ohio announced they would hold “Old Folks’ Day” on Sunday, June 15th.

None of the articles leading up to this special worship occasion specify what would qualify one as a member of “the old folks.” There is an hint of Proverbs 16:31 with the note that this effort is intended to bless "these dear ones on whom rests 'the snow of many winters.’”

The penultimate announcement encourages “the old folks” by proclaiming “Front seats will be reserved for them. The sermon will be addressed especially to them. The songs will be the old ones they love.”

But the main emphasis is on access, and transportation, with a special committee formed to help those who “are unable to walk,” and requests for help in conveyance with an emphasis on such assistance being “round-trip, both to and from the service.”

Conveyances in 1902 would have been largely interurban cars, which would have required stepping up and holding on as they rolled along on their rails, or horse and buggy travel, which is also not exactly what we’d call “handicapped accessible” today. Henry Ford’s Model T was six years away, and we were over a decade before the assembly line would bring motor vehicles into the price range of more middle class families.

As for the ability to walk, I suspect they’re not talking about fully immobile people (who also had a much shorter lifespan due to pneumonia and other ailments which penicillin could fight, but not for another forty years). “Unable to walk” looks to mean more like “unable to climb stairs,” and 1902 had them everywhere.

The average downtown church had an elevated sanctuary, with a dozen or more steps up to the auditorium level, because they had no air conditioning, and did I mention all the horses? It was basic common sense for a public space to be elevated well above street level, if only for the dust (and much of that dust was powdered… material). If you wanted to open windows to ventilate, you didn’t want them to be at street level.

And it was just assumed in general that, in 1902, when you got old and started to have trouble getting around, you stayed home. (And died all the sooner of pneumonia, due to lack of physical activity.) There were some older people whose vigor was notable, and who still came to Sunday services, but they were exceptional.

Oh, and the average life expectancy in the first years after 1900? About 48 years of age. Now, child mortality means the average is pulled low, and there were not a few people who made it into their 50s and 60s, but fewer in total.

One of the biggest changes, in fact, of church life in the last century and a quarter is around the place and role of . . . old folks. In 1902, a special effort for a singular Sunday was needed to get a few dozen from their homes, often living with adult children, caring for them in their last years. In general, older people just didn’t come.

Today, after Social Security (first benefits in 1940) and Medicare (first benefits in 1966), along with hard work by unions and others to create a robust pension program for workers, whose life expectancy went from 48 to 68 by the time of Social Security, to 79 today (women average older, men a bit less), older members of churches not only attend, they give. In 1902, few if any lay leaders were retirement age; today, in many churches, most are.

Churches are still sorting out what it means to have a major influence in their leadership be the perspectives of those who are retired. Historically speaking, it’s not that long ago no one in leadership had that perspective. Is there a balance to be struck?

The fact that this column is set to run on what will be my 65th birthday is an entire coincidence, I’m sure!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s up to speed on Medicare, thank you very much. Tell him what you know about aging at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-27-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 8-27-2026
Jeff Gill

Education in modern American culture generally speaking
___


In the 1990s, I taught early American history at Fairmont State in West Virginia for five years.

I was an adjunct, initially replacing a sudden death among the faculty of a coach who liked to teach at 8 am three times a week or once a week for three hours on Wednesday evening. So my office hours were in the college cafeteria after the early ones or before my 6 pm to 9 pm offering.

Spoiler alert: I was younger then. And learned some things I did not know. Which was well over three out of four conversations I would have were not about course material, it was about how to stay in school when all their family was saying “you’ve had your year, or two.” The biggest factor? Grandmas who said “it’s time to come home.”

Were economics a part of it? Sure. But not all. I made friends with a state senator who told me about how much grief he got from his mother and four brothers over going to college. It was doable for him, but they just thought it was stupid.

This is why universities have emphases for “First Gen” students; sometimes faculty and staff who were first generation to college in their family will have a special sticker on their door, to let today’s “First Gen” know there’s someone who gets it. I’m third gen, but I married a first gen. She’s taught me a few things about that passage.

But I also recall going into a vast hall at Purdue my freshman year (as we still called it in 1978). The person who spoke first said “look at the person on your left, look at the person on your right: only one of the three of you are graduating within the next four years.” Truth be told, he almost sounded proud of it. Turns out the state legislature had passed some years before a very popular requirement that they admit anyone from the top half of their high school’s graduating class. Purdue’s response was “okay, we have to take them, but we don’t have to keep them.” Do the math: that dean was telling me they had a 33% retention rate. A third left during Christmas break or after one year. Today, that would not fly; then, it was accepted.

And as I’ve told here before, but I keep coming back to, my grandfather retired as a school superintendent in 1968. The town homecoming parade made him grand marshal, Mom and I riding along with him. He got a plaque which I still have, and in presenting it they noted among his achievements was that he consistently graduated 50% of his students from high school.

When I referred to that years later, Mom said “that can’t be right, everyone I went to school with graduated.” But I have all the yearbooks from his years as principal and superintendent, and through the 40s and 50s: first or second grades had 75 to 80 kids, eighth grade graduation saw about 50 names, and her class like those before and after her ran in the mid- to high-20s. He worked his tail off through the 60s to get his earlier 35% graduation rate up to 50%.

Today, we would not accept what my Grandfather Walton was honored for. Our cultural expectations have changed. Where are we now? I’ll say more next time.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s worked in and around public education for many years, including campaigning for school levies. Tell him about cultural changes you’ve seen at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.  

Faith Works 8-21-2026

Faith Works 8-21-2026
Jeff Gill

Classic literature and scripture meet current events
___


There’s still much to be said about “The Odyssey” as a literary classic.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, are a pair of Homeric narratives coming down to us from somewhere before 700 BC; they are stories of war. The Trojan War is a long siege and final destruction of a city variously known as Troas or Ilium, but ultimately people came to know the whole city-state simply as Troy. It was undefeated, until it was.

So the story of the conflict, across ten years, is the Iliad, and after the citadel of Ilus and city of Troas fall, the Odyssey is ten more years for Odysseus to make his way back home. If you saw “The Odyssey” the film does what many retellings do: it takes pieces out of both to make the story work for the current audience.

And this is where many of the complaints about Christopher Nolan’s version being “woke” I think miss the point. The Iliad and Odyssey have always been about going to war, and coming home. Each era has its own more immediate history around what it means for a community to send people off to war, how that affects those left behind, and what it means to return (and ask Agamemnon how that went).

We look at the impact and meaning of returning from searing experiences in our own particular way, using terms like PTSD and moral injury which did not exist a century ago, but these stories tell us how the lived experience was quite similar, whether you had bronze or aluminum, Greek fire or white phosphorus.

Written a few centuries later, the playwright Sophocles hearkens back to a Theban War, proposed as events centuries earlier than Troy. In his Theban Plays, a central character is Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, whose brothers die in a civil war. In the play that bears her name, the new ruler Creon decrees that those who fought him and died shall not be buried, on pain of death to any who do the corpses that honor. Antigone defies this command, casting earth on her beloved brother’s body, and will die herself… as will the ruler who set these cruel bonds.

Her story lives on in many forms, including a Twentieth Century opera, all tracing back to Sophocles writing in around 400 BC. In his time, he was trying to communicate, using history as his setting, something of the consequences that result from implacable hostility and lasting un-forgiveness. Sophocles wanted to tell a story about mercy and compassion by showing a world without them.

So it is fascinating to me as a Biblical preacher to look in Second Samuel, chapter 21, at events from around 1000 BC. It is the account of Saul’s concubine Rizpah, whose sons died in the tragic aftermath of the fall of the house of Saul, and the rise of David to the throne of Israel.

As executed lawbreakers, it was customary that after being hanged, the bodies would stay out in the open as a public warning. To bury them was a crime. We are told Rizpah on learning her two sons had been killed, went to their place of execution, “took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night.”

On hearing of this mother’s act, King David is moved. He not only gives permission to Rizpah for the burial of her sons, he takes steps to see to the respectful committal of Saul and all of his sons and grandsons who had been killed in the recent past. Mercy begetting mercy.

Homer, Sophocles, Samuel: all ask us to put ourselves into these ancient stories, and learn lessons for how we should act today.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s interested in history, but you knew that. Tell him what parts of history intrigue you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 8-14-2026

Faith Works 8-14-2026
Jeff Gill

A trip to Kentucky, a look back to 1801
___


I came to Cane Ridge to commune with spirits.

The Cane Ridge Meetinghouse was built in 1791 by the local community out of blue ash logs, that wood so rot and termite resistant the two-story timber structure still stands.

It’s still wood, though, so in 1957 the caretakers reached out to churches of my religious tradition, with our roots to the Great Revival there in 1801, and collected enough to built a Bourbon County limestone structure over and around it, the Cane Ridge “shrine” of sorts.

My mother went with her parents in 1953 on their way to Mammoth Cave; when she got married in July of 1958, she took my dad to Cane Ridge for his first visit, and was shocked when they pulled in to see the old log church was gone. Word hadn’t gotten to her of the protective structure, but she often told me the story of how startled she was. I tell that story for her, now.

I last was at Cane Ridge with my father for a churchwide event in 1999; I went back in 2001 for the bicentennial events around the Great Revival, and camped on the grounds, sleeping in my backpacking tent. This time I stayed in a motel down the road.

Walking up to the shrine, and cemetery alongside where Barton Stone and much of his family is buried, I thought of my mother’s story, and my father’s, and the deeper stories of separation and loss alongside the gathering and celebration which made Cane Ridge a name in American history, a sort of Pentecost for this continent, and the returns we have made to seek the Holy Spirit at work, and the spirits of those who brought us here.

Sitting up in the balcony, which now has stairs (if steep and narrow), we are reminded of how people of color, free or currently enslaved, were separated up into that upper gallery, to which you gained access by climbing a ladder from outside. Some years later, as even that much closeness was a matter of concern, the ladders disappeared, and segregated churches were established.

On the way to Cane Ridge, another old church building of our tradition, but of brick, and built in 1857, spoke to a different sort of distinction: two front doors. The men’s entrance, and another for the women, and in those days seating was divided inside.

Barton Stone’s friend and colleague Alexander Campbell began to break this distinction down at Bethany, West Virginia, having a number of daughters and after long preaching tours, was unwilling to sit away from his wife and children. The Bethany Church had two doors and a divider in the center of the pews, but Campbell sat where he would in the 1840s & 1850s. It was only after the Civil War, and many men feeling like Campbell did, that the two door tradition ended.

Women’s places, racial division; today, our main distinction was a request for those physically able to go up the steps into the balcony, opening seats for the less able on the main floor. I was happy to surrender my front row seat to clamber up, and to commune with the spirits there.

When I came and sat with my father, we were in the balcony then, too. I sat where we had been. In the gallery, I talked to a woman I’ve known for years, a Black woman who said she wanted to sit up here, and think about ancestors. We agreed they were present.

A friend had the opening message, and began with prayer: she opened it by saying there are hundreds of us here today, but let’s double or triple our attendance, and invoke the spirits, our ancestors, by blood and by belief. We prayed, and after the “amen,” she asked: can you feel them present?

Indeed we did.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s still reflecting on that journey last week. Tell him where you feel close to ancestors at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-13-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 8-13-2026
Jeff Gill

What may yet develop in Licking County
___


Are you familiar with the “Old Deluder Satan Law of 1647”?

The quaint and majestically named law was passed in Massachusetts, requiring any community with 50 households or more to open a public school and hire a schoolmaster. The Puritan culture of 1647, which admittedly was a year or two ago (as in over 350 of them), was one which valued literacy highly, because the reading of the Bible was central to the dominant faith.

Massachusetts was an early and ongoing center for encouraging the development of public education. It was a core cultural value. This was true even before 1805, when a wagon train set out from that region to establish Granville, Ohio that year.

Granville has been interested in public education since before it began. It’s a part of our community culture. And that’s where there’s a tension within the recent developments around developments.

The now withdrawn developer says they needed to build their houses in the Granville school district to be able to sell them at the stated price. They’re selling smaller homes in the $300,000s within Hebron, whose downtown is closer to the intersection of Canyon Road and Seminary Road than even Heath High School. The supposed $500,000 plus homes they wanted to build, which would bump to the $700,000s if they were larger and on bigger lots (hence fewer on the same acreage), had to be in Granville schools, not Heath or Lakewood nearby, both a stone’s throw away, closer in each case than to Granville’s core. Why?

Looking at the most recent Ohio Department of Education report card data, which is for the 2024-25 school year, the most obvious difference is size. The reported headcount for 2024 in Granville was 2,454, and it’s closer to 2,600 now, with the entire Heath district at 1,527 (lower now, we’re told), and adjoining Lakewood Schools at 1,598 (ditto).

That isn’t why developers are looking for access to acres within Granville’s boundaries, though. And I’d note there’s plenty of nice land right across Canyon Rd. which could become Heath housing, but there were great efforts attempted — and may yet again, by someone, in some way, to do the same thing differently — to get to the more awkwardly situated but unambiguously Granville schools property west of Canyon. So there’s a compelling reason, to a developer. What is it?

You might say graduation rate. That's a good guess, but on first blush, not so much. For 2024-35 Granville had a 98.7% grad rate; Heath a 92.3% rate, with Lakewood 95.1%. Yeah, different, but is it so much of a difference to explain the contortions everyone was doing to make a development work where they wanted it?

Look into other public data the districts reported, and you’ll see the key. Granville had 84% of their students go to college. Heath, 62%; Lakewood, 41%. That’s huge. And not in public data, but anecdotally, the community culture issue looms large in that even with the lower rate of enrollment, students from Heath and Lakewood look like they do not complete within six years at the same rate Granville students do.

That’s community culture. That is NOT to say everyone should go to college, not at all. But Granville’s community is oriented around that goal, and Heath is not in the same way. I know plenty of youth from Heath and Lakewood who went to college, to excellent universities, and succeeded, but I’m aware of the downside percentages. So are developers.

So are potential homebuyers.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got a bit more to say about community culture and education. Tell him what you think about them at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 8-7-2026

Faith Works 8-7-2026
Jeff Gill

An odyssey through The Odyssey for Christians & Ohioans
___


This is not a film review.

For one thing, I don't do film reviews. You’re welcome.

I do want to invite a conversation about “The Odyssey” because Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic epic after “Oppenheimer” is based on Homer’s over three thousand year old tale, and people interested in the Bible are in many ways naturally interested in ancient texts. Or should be!

Homer wrote in Greek, but the language of the Illiad and the Odyssey is known as Epic Greek, or unsurprisingly Homeric Greek, which is very different from the Koine Greek you learn in seminary to read the two thousand year old New Testament. The somewhat contemporary Old Testament of the Holy Bible of most Christians is in Hebrew and a bit of Aramaic (which filters into the background of the four New Testament gospels, long story), and Biblical Hebrew is to the Hebrew of today’s Israel what Homeric Greek is to Demotic Greek as spoken on the streets of Athens today, at the foot of the Acropolis… which was not even built until centuries after the Odyssey was composed.

And I say “composed” because the scholarly consensus is that the Homeric works were part of an oral tradition of bards and poets before they ever were written down. The oldest text of the Odyssey is, interestingly enough, in Manchester, England, and is dated to when the Athenian Acropolis was a century old, but centuries before the birth of Christ. There’s a number of questions of editorial transitions from the oral traditions to a “final” written form.

All of which puts in context that you can read “The Odyssey” (Homer’s, not Nolan’s) in a number of English translations. The first one I read is Murray’s 1919 version, and at least three others down to Emily Wilson’s 2017 edition. Each makes different choices about how hard to try and replicate the rhythm structure of the original Greek poetry, and how to translate unique words with key roles such as how Odysseus himself is described: is he complicated? Tricky? Many minded?

All of which shows how hard it is to take an ancient language and find a common expression for modern understanding which can be read by many to their mutual improvement. The Odyssey has been an anchor of a classical education for generations, in part because it helps teach the underpinnings of this challenge in ways that avoid the potentially more sectarian issues around Biblical translations.

What can startle, though, is when you get reminded of how the world of Homer’s Odyssey stands behind the world of scripture. In Book 10, describing an almost impossible challenge, the poet notes “but with the gods all things are possible.” Hello, Matthew 19:26, and also Ohio’s state motto since 1959. There are echoes.

Likewise, the running theme of Homer’s works is how the gods of the Greek pantheon are constantly interfering in human activities, but most often in the person of people one already knows. You are told in Nolan’s version that this is why “Zeus’s law” of hospitality exists, because you never know when you might be encountering one of the pantheon.

Which sounds suspiciously like Hebrews 13:2? "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

And again in Ohio terms, a reminder of how pervasive Homer’s poetry and mythology once was in education: the term in classical Greek for what’s called “Zeus’s law?” It’s a single word, one you know. Xenia. The entire code of hospitality and prudence in a world where divine presence could be anywhere, in anyone, is wrapped up in that one word: xenia.

Which early settlers in this state thought would be a nice name for a new town. It turns out there are odysseys all around us.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s impressed with the movie, but interested in the poetry. Tell him what inspires you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 7-31-2026

Faith Works 7-31-2026
Jeff Gill

The password is death, he said cheerfully
___


If I just wanted to collect eyeballs and readership, talking about personal finance and elderly relatives would give me a completely different theme than the ones my editors expect me to follow.

Last week I was trying to cautiously explain how a power of attorney does not necessarily give you the right to request “transfer on death” status for bank accounts or other fiscal instruments. Some very specific POA’s do, but many, even most do not. Here we repeat the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or certified financial advisor. Get professional advice for key decisions.

However: I can tell you that TOD is very helpful on the event of a person’s death, but a POA goes “poof” at the moment of death. Take a POA to a bank after someone dies, and if it doesn’t already say TOD for your involvement, there’s no power in that power of attorney. None. Count on it.

Also, count on this. You will die. Okay, now we’re back to the theological content you count on in my columns! The truest thing I can say is that you. Will. Die. It’s guaranteed. No one gets out of here alive, et cetera.

Jesus saves, but he doesn’t help you access someone else’s savings account; likewise, you may have faith you will see your loved ones in a time to come, but that faith isn’t a password (unless your password is “JesusSaves#1” which is not mine, so don’t try).

The second of the two items I have recently felt moved to share with you all, my faithful readers, is that not only is POA very different from TOD, but the relatively recent assumption that a “password notebook” will help you access a parent or spouse or Uncle Fester’s accounts is largely no longer what it once was.

Welcome to two-factor authentication, and the need to have not only the right password, but if you can’t use the Touch or Face ID settings, the ability to use the right phone number for texting or enter the email account from years ago all becomes a tragic necessity.

Because the grimmest thing I’ve learned in the last few weeks from my friends & colleagues dealing with all this is that a corpse’s finger cannot be used to trigger Touch ID. A deceased person’s face is different in key ways so that Face ID isn’t going to go “ding.” Yes, I've talked to multiple people who have tried. I can only imagine the doubled pain of having to go in to a funeral home before calling, stand at the casket, and try to… yikes.

Jake Tapper had an interview on TV recently with former US Senator Ben Sasse. Ben is dying. He has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which is responding to treatment, but that’s giving him time with wife and kids, it will not save him. The cancer is everywhere. As Ben says in this and other podcasts and interviews he’s given since his December diagnosis: “We are all on the clock.” Every last one of us.

Not tending to last matters like how someone who is not us is going to get into our personal accounts, subscriptions, and payment mechanisms after we die, is tantamount to pretending that we aren’t going to die. Or that it will come on our schedule. Ben Sasse is spending part of the precious time he has left on earth to tell people like you and me: “Redeem the time.” Think about what you are doing, and how those you love will have to get along without you.

If you died tomorrow — and you might, friend — how will what matters to you be cared for? How will your mortal expenditures stop, and what will your eternal investments reward? I thank Ben Sasse, a number of funeral directors, and not a few bank staffers, for the reminder that death changes things, irrevocably.

We can be ready, or we can pretend it won’t happen. But it will.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has no intention of dying any time soon, but who does? Tell him about timetables and Face ID at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-30-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 7-30-2026
Jeff Gill

Monetizing culture, eroding value, building houses
___


There is so much that’s wrong with the proposed housing subdivision in Union Township south of the Village of Granville.

Whoops, getting my facts straight is going to be a challenge. I mean, in the City of Heath, since they’ve annexed over far to their west. Once annexed by a municipality like Heath, it’s not “in the township” in the same way. Consult a lawyer for details.

South of the Village of Granville, but within what was established decades ago as within the Granville Exempted Village School District (GEVSD), which is a different legal entity entirely. Lots of the wrong things that get said in online discussion and even in person trace back to the understandable confusion about how “Granville” is both a village and a school district, but they are not the same thing. Not for taxation purposes, not for zoning, not for any number of things. Hold that thought, but hold it as two different entities.

Many useful critiques have been made, though, and there’s a website in opposition to the development which has smart people saying all the right things, along with some excellent media coverage, at least of the meetings that are open to the public, a debate I’m not getting into.

What I’d like to point out, and this will continue in my next column, are some things I don’t see or hear touched on as much, but bother me.

Top of the list: this “gift” of land for a school in the middle of the development. I will continue to call it a “gift” because gift it ain’t. You know the phrase “heads I win, tails you lose”? The developers are offering the gift of acreage right smack in the middle of the proposed 500-some house project. Handy, eh?

But mark well: the Granville school district is under a high calibre gun with that tract. They have to start the process of building this school fairly quickly, or once the developers have sold about 60% of the potential total of homes, a clock starts, and GEVSD has a year to launch building or the land goes back to the developer AND they can build out another 20% or so on that very land.

Think it through. The “gift” says GEVSD either builds a school to help the developer sell the back half of the development, which it most certainly would do, or else they get to hold the potential of even more students piled onto their headcount. If the school board and voters say “hey, let’s be prudent and see how this goes” they could either be pushed into a rushed deal, or get a harder hit in student count steepness. If they go ahead and build the school as the development starts, they’re literally helping fill it by doing so.

Heads they win, tails we lose.

So it’s not a “gift,” it’s a co-optation of school demographics to get Granville schools to help them sell houses by constructing a southern elementary school. Neat trick, huh?

My next column will involve numbers and percentages. And through them, a glimpse of something about “culture.” How do we look at our schools, and why? But as a down payment, let me note this: GEVSD last year had 2,454 students, while Heath City Schools had 1,527, and Lakewood Local just to the south 1,598. Granville’s student count is increasing, but the latter two neighbor districts have been shrinking. Why the rush to put students into the district already stretched thin?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not normally big on math, but it tells a story. Share your views with him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 7-24-2026

Faith Works 7-24-2026
Jeff Gill

Planning for mortality, as we must
___


There are troubles common to us all. I Corinthians 10:13 is instructive in this regard.

One of them has to do with aging family members, banks, and legal documents.

Let me say clearly right up top: I am a minister of the Gospel. I am not a lawyer, accountant, or financial adviser. You can find them out there as you have need. Clear so far?

I may not be a lawyer, but I know there are legal complications about aging and debility and dementia I have had to become familiar with over the last couple of decades. In church life as a pastor, as a grand-nephew and grandchild and son or son-in-law, I’ve gotten to know a great deal in practice about, say, how and when you have to renew a driver's license, which is a subject I haven’t written about for a while.

And I had no intention this July in the current sequence of columns to write about powers of attorney and bank accounts, but I posted something on my social media last week to which I’m still getting reactions and responses. This is beyond even the feedback I got when I wrote about shredded chicken sandwiches (if you weren't there, don’t worry about it).

First and key item I have no hesitation about telling you all: a power of attorney in your hands for another person effectively goes “poof” when that person dies. Your ability to manage or control business affairs changes drastically upon the death of a person for whom you may have a power of attorney. You can take that to the bank, as it were.

Which is where this gets sticky. If you go to a bank to do something with the accounts of a person for whom you have a power of attorney (or POA for short), you will learn that alone gives you now absolutely no authority at all. Post-mortem, you’re in the hands of probate, an executor, and so on (which varies by state, so Ohio law may not apply in another state the same way).

Folks are sometimes shocked to learn this, and thought they had what’s known as “transfer on death” or TOD status. This is where my counsel is limited, but know this, friends: not every POA allows you to get TOD on a bank account even while the individual you’re concerned about is living, and they are not equivalent when they die.

In fact, you may not have a POA, but a TOD works to allow you access to funds and to make transfers. Details here I leave to the professionals. But if you are thinking ahead, have a POA for someone ailing or declining, and that POA doesn't specifically allow you to assign beneficiaries (and many do not), you can’t get a TOD applied to an account without that person’s involvement and signature.

My father-in-law gave his daughter a great gift: she came to visit once, early in our having to step in and take care of shopping and cleaning and errands while he still lived independently (and drove, but I said licenses are a later tale for us to consider). He had gone to each of his banks, multiple because like a good Depression child, he believed in multiple banks. But at each he had done the TOD paperwork, and all she had to do was sign and take them around to the respective branches.

That’s the ideal situation. But if you have an aging loved one who trusts you with a medical power of attorney, maybe even a further limited POA, yet the accounts are all in their names only, if you want to simplify how those accounts are handled, you are likely to need their willing participation.

What I’ve learned is that as a person goes into cognitive decline, still relatively functional but with large gaps in thinking or recall, that last step may be hard to impossible.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s been through a bunch of this stuff and hopes to be of service to those just starting. Tell him your story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 7-17-2026

Faith Works 7-17-2026
Jeff Gill


How would you like to be remembered?
___


One of the more unsavory aspects of our current and ongoing social media world is how it responds to the death of significant public figures.

The old Latin tag “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” literally translates “of the dead, nothing but good” and has been elided today into “do not speak ill of the dead.” Anyhow, as I said, that’s old. And Latin. It ain’t the internet. Trust me on that, if you are a print reader here only. Speaking ill of the dead is what it does “best.”

Now, if you are very online, you might be wise enough to check some of the accounts retorting the most harshly to anyone having the nerve to speak well of someone recently deceased. In brief, there are a LOT of bots out there. Accounts that don’t seem to have actual human beings behind them, with thirty followers and following three, but a string of posts and images, mostly of the most paranoid or hostile or both sorts of responses. Robot accounts, or bots.

There are famous figures who when they die are just going to get criticism. Nixon comes to mind, and Kissinger. Sure, it’s part of being in the arena, and both had public decisions worth critically reviewing.

But Nixon died in 1994, when the internet wasn’t even a thing to more than a very few of us. Kissinger carried on into a new century, and passed away in 2023 at the age of 100. And his death brought the bots out in force, not to mention the many a bit younger than him who were old enough to remember some of his foreign policy initiatives. Now, there was a bunch of what was said about him that had me thinking people confused Kissinger and Robert McNamara, who died in 2009 so before the more general social media environment had really gotten going. In any case, if someone said anything even slightly positive about Henry, they got a torrent of angry responses.

Today, it’s pretty ugly. Uglier. Public figures dying just get slagged online, and I think the social media surge influences some of the older school media accounts. Obituaries are more critical in print, on air, and commentary panels more pointed. You may say that’s an improvement, a step towards increasing truthfulness. It’s hard to tell, and I’m open to it.

What I do find instructive in the most recent tidal surges around a sudden death is how they show us what “being your own editor” looks like. Sen. Lindsey Graham is not someone I’ve met, nor is he a politician I’ve been a big fan of, but he’s certainly been a major figure in American political life for some thirty years. His turn against and back towards President Trump galvanized a great many viewers of his career, towards two opposite poles in most cases.

Yet if you know how to sift and sort your feeds, there’s a very interesting person coming across in the many personal stories and accounts following his death. Many state a sort of opposition to start, but then tell a human, compelling, usually amusing story. Somewhere in the middle of the humor and the hubris is a person. I feel like I know Lindsey Graham a bit better now than I did before he died, and I also realize how little I can know even about a very public figure.

In the last few months, I’ve done a few funerals; part of that process is talking to people about the deceased, in preparation for at least some of what you say about them. Occasionally you hear them from the dying person themselves, who knows you will be speaking of them after their passing. There are common threads that arise, and fragments of other aspects you learn not always known to all. Out of it, you assemble a eulogy.

Which can make any of us ask: how will you be remembered? What stories do you want told about you, while you still have life enough left to shape them? You are writing those stories right now by how you live, and leaving your mark on others.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s done a few hundred funerals and eulogies. Tell him what stories you’ve been glad to hear at gravesides at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.