Faith Works 11-4-22

[Note to editors down the line: his name is spelled THEODOR, and if you add the final E you will be incorrect! For Herzl or Gaster…]

Faith Works 11-4-22
Jeff Gill

Debts and appreciations and an anniversary
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When it comes to the question of why we did something, even something in retrospect looking like a major decision made on the merits, it's hard to give too much emphasis to any one person or factor, let alone to ourselves.

How many of us have had occasion to look back at a choice we've made and ask ourselves "why did I do that?"

Grown-ups take responsibility for their decisions, I'd say, but that's not quite the same as how we then can learn from, and even teach others, about how we came to make them.

Forty years ago last week, I made the decision to go to seminary and become a parish minister. I was already a student assistant minister at a campus ministry, had been called to serve as a deacon in my home church, and preached a few times for the congregation and Fellowship of Christian Athletes services. Someone (another long story) had very specifically asked me years earlier about whether or not I'd considered a call to ministry, but I had at most thought about it as one option among others, and still not really the primary decision I was likely to make, or so my thinking had meandered over the previous two years.

What I was interested in at the time was anthropology and specifically folklore. Professors in my major had encouraged me to think about grad school. Ministry was still running a distant second.

Knowing my interest in comparative mythology and folklore, one of our campus ministers, Don Nead, a Presbyterian minister himself, talked to a scholar in residence over at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic campus ministry, Art Zannoni, who was part of bringing a noted scholar to the Purdue Hillel Foundation. (We were a pretty ecumenical outfit all around, as you can tell.) Don and Art arranged that I would get a chance to speak to this distinguished and somewhat intimidating speaker.

Theodor Gaster was best known in this country for a popular book on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in England he was a scholar respected on many fronts. His father was Chief Rabbi of England, who named him for Herzl, and their household had people like Winston Churchill, Vladimir Lenin, and Sigmund Freud dropping by; it was said Arthur Balfour wrote the first draft of his declaration that gave shape to Theodor Herzl's dream for Zionism in their living room. He had degrees from the University of London and Columbia, and taught basically everywhere: but he considered himself a folklorist.

The meeting, I should note, wasn't my idea: it terrified me, and I was afraid I'd come off the proper idiot in two shakes of a Hebrew manuscript. But the arrangement had been made, the day came (November 2), I walked into the Hillel Foundation at the appointed hour, and suddenly I was seated facing him, both of us with cups of coffee. He asked my interests, I shared them stammeringly, and he replied kindly. He asked how I came to be familiar with Hillel, and I explained my role with the ecumenical campus ministry.

"Oh, so have you considered going into the ministry?" said Gaster. I said yes, but I was attracted to folklore studies.

"Any fool can become a scholar of folklore, my boy, but if you have any sort of call to pastoral ministry, that you should do. I implore you, give that serious thought. The world needs more of you, not more of me. You can always do folklore on the side." And we continued as if the matter was settled.

I guess it was.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; any foolishness he's gotten himself into is his responsibility and not that of Gaster, Nead, or Zannoni. Tell him about unexpected influences you've had at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 11-3-22

Notes from my Knapsack 11-3-22
Jeff Gill

Developers gonna develop, it's what they do
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With all due respect to Taylor Swift or 3LW, I wrote a column two decades ago in reference to an infamous local character, saying among other things "developers are gonna develop, it's what they do."

That's why we call them that: developers. They want to develop properties and real estate and ideas, and they take risks, and I have some respect for them.

Wary respect.

Because developers gonna develop. Which means while they might go on at length about public spirited ideals and hopes for the community and all sorts of good intentions, when they get indignant if someone even suggests they're going to make money — millions, that is — from their idea, I get wary. It's based on hard experience. They aren't there to help support the comprehensive plan or even necessarily to improve the lives of everyone (some, maybe, themselves, definitely), they are developers. It's in the name.

Granville has long attracted the attention of developers, large and small. Small or large, they have something in common. They want to develop a parcel and make a bundle, and will wrap that bundle in a great deal of communitarian language, but it's all well and good as long as you remember developers gonna develop.

For over fifteen years I've been an appointive officeholder in Our Fayre Village, the last decade as chair of one of your official panels, and I'm here to tell you that there are few pieces of open land in the village that we haven't entertained proposals for and requests for variances to allow developers to push the edges of what our zoning and use guidelines call for.

And here's the main thing: for many of those open areas we have voted in favor of providing variances more than once, and they are still open. Financing is the final vote, if you will. Village residents vote on council and levies, council crafts a comprehensive plan and ordinances and sets up community panels like the Board of Zoning and Building Appeals or the Planning Commission, those formally empaneled citizens vote again . . . but if the bank won't float the loan, if the investors don't pony up, that last vote is crucial.

Sometimes developers, little local ones or larger regional entities, say the village is hostile to development. Frankly? I chuckle every time I hear that. I watch staff work overtime to help make a better presentation out of a scribbled request, I've presided over many outlandish expectations being dropped on our doorstep, and in general we've bent over backwards to make a proposal happen. We believe in allowing property owners to achieve maximum enjoyment of their holdings within minimum impact on neighbors, as defined by village ordinance and Ohio judicial standards.

What's going to change, though, is that the money is heading our way (has headed, is coming in hot and fast). And not-so-great ideas may not have that last check and balance of investor oversight weighing them down from floating off into la-la land.

Which means we all will have to be judicious, thoughtful, and mindful of what kind of community we are trying to create here. Developers? God bless them all: they're here to develop. Trust them to do that, whatever else they say. Building community is going to be a shared task.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been on a few municipal commissions over the years, and heard way too many developer presentation. Tell him what you're skeptical of at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-28-22

Faith Works 10-28-22
Jeff Gill

Ministry in transition, online or up close
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Many denominations have a "Week of the Ministry" in October, or some sort of ministerial appreciation month this time of year.

Preacher, padre, reverend, evangelist, elder . . . the terminology for the person can vary, but in our area there's a fair amount of consistency to a few aspects of what it means to talk about ministry.

If your local church is part of a larger church body, or denomination, there are probably pretty firm guidelines for what it takes to be ordained. From the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church to Protestant ministry, many functions of ministerial work are reserved for someone who has the formal recognition of a diocesan bishop or conference board of ordained ministry or regional commission on ministry.

Presiding at communion is often a function of ordained ministers only; my own tradition is somewhat unique in that almost anyone can preside at the table, but even for us you'll most often see an ordained clergy member at the table. There's usually a sacramental understanding that links ordination and presiding at the table, and frankly the less sacramental the theology of a tradition, the less restricted you'd see for the function of presiding.

Baptism similarly is often performed by the minister, regardless of the sacramental theology of the church involved, but more and more often you'll see lay members ("laity" simply is a general term for anyone not ordained) involved in baptism . . . and in fact most sacramental traditions have major exceptions allowed for any believer to do baptisms under certain circumstances.

Then you get into weddings and funerals, the first of which is also linked to a presider's status with the State of Ohio, and the latter being something anyone can do, but you'll find many friends of couples willing to do a wedding but not so many lining up to offer to conduct a funeral service, so again that becomes a de facto ministerial function.

But I've mentioned ordination a number of times as the effective "gateway" into a ministerial calling. In the last century, that's become an act, a sort of churchly blessing on the person called to ministry, which is offered after not only a course of study (some church bodies require a college degree, many a seminary degree beyond that), but a process of discernment in the local church, the wider church, and usually with a "laying on of hands" by leaders who stand in relation to the historic witness of the church from the apostles on down to today.

Ordination is considered a once given, always held sort of blessing; one can be ordained but not be granted standing, which is a sort of licensure or certification which many traditions review annually. You can lose standing for whatever reason, and get it back; ordination is fairly permanent, but if some cause leads the wider church to rescind that, it's what people call "defrocked" and rarely is restored.

I've been asked if I'm "still a minister" since I'm not currently serving in a pulpit, other than as a supply preacher. Well, my ordination is still valid, and my standing has been renewed up to the present time, I just am not serving a "call" as a parish minister. But yes, I think of myself as a minister.

What my ministry is largely involved in these days is supporting a nationwide online program to serve commissioned ministers, who may never be ordained but have a commission to serve a specific church or task. Ministry today is a flexible, online and off-line, in person and at a distance calling; I'm trying to flex with it!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's teaching ministers from California to New England these days. Tell him how you're learning new things about ministry at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.