Faith Works 1-19-19

Faith Works 1-19-19

Jeff Gill

 

Milestones and vantage points

___

 

This week I begin my fifteenth year of writing this column for the Newark Advocate.

 

You've gotten about 725 "Faith Works" columns, and adding in a weekly piece called "Hebron Crossroads" in the old "Community Booster" which became a biweekly "Notes from my Knapsack" in the Granville Sentinel, there are over one thousand newspaper columns somewhere on the hard drive of my computer.

 

I'm typing on my fifth laptop, and the files have (I think) been transferred from device to device, so they're probably all there. It's surprising to me how infrequently I go back to check what I said before, but there are times, and even questions that come by email about "that piece you wrote back in 2011 about…" which cause me to troll the digital depths to find what I once said.

 

The first ones I wrote for us here were done on, I kid you not, a tangerine clamshell iMac, fondly remembered but long gone. I've cobbled them together in three homes but many more locations, a few under deadline pressures even on my more recent smarter (they tell me) phone with one finger. I've composed them on vacation, on the road, one literally in a cave, a few in cabins, a couple of them sitting near if not by the Grand Canyon.

 

But I've written all of them thinking of you.

 

This is the tricky question of column writing, I think, and I suspect it's true of all columnists (I've only discussed the craft with a couple of fellow practitioners) let alone religion column writers. It's a practice very closely akin to preaching, something else I have done weekly for time out of mind. (Okay, that's a lie, I've been preaching consistently for thirty-seven years if not weekly, somewhere around 1,500 pulpit messages delivered plus 250 eulogies at funerals.)

 

When you preach, you open up God's word in the Bible, and you try to open up yourself to God's Living Word in the living Christ at work in you, and you attempt to, well, interpret that word to the world around you.

 

Which means you have to be attentive both to God, and to your audience. If you are very attentive to the Lord, but give little thought to who you're trying to communicate with, you can have a clear sense of what the Divine One is up to but put it across poorly. Granted, you can also spend too much time wondering what the people need, or want to hear, and not tell them what God is nudging you firmly to say. It's a constant balancing act.

 

And in terms of preaching, it's a public high wire act. You go up into the pulpit without a net, so to speak (this is why many preachers prefer to use a manuscript, which is the closest thing to a net you've got under you sometimes), and walk out across the falls in public view. You don't want to fall off on one side into being too esoteric, so Godly as to be incomprehensible to the people listening over the roar of the worldly waters; you also don't want to fall off on the other side, so proud of communicating vividly and clearly you don't say anything shocking or disturbing or even about the Lord at all. So you want to put your feet very carefully, one step at a time, until you return to the solid ground of "and now let us turn in our hymnals to . . ."

 

Likewise, column writing. Sure, I like for people to like reading these; I suspect my editors through the years (I literally can't tell you how many, but they've all been incredibly supportive and helpful, from Michael Shearer who first invited me to take up this challenge, to Ben Lanka today) want readers to look forward to opening up their paper or webpage and read this week's entry.

 

You are a very diverse and complex congregation, though. It's not as if I can just sum up one image of a "constant reader" in my mind, though the emails you send help me develop a bit of a picture. In my thoughts, in my prayers, I do think about you . . . and what God is asking me to challenge you with, invite you to consider, present as the word in this space each week, for as long as Gannett has the patience to give it to me.

 

And I pray that it is, even when it's not a perfect column, always a word of life to you in your own living.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's hoping he's got another fifteen years in him of column writing, but wonders what the format and media will look like in 2034! Tell him what you are hoping to hear at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.