Faith Works 7-26-24

Faith Works 7-26-24

Jeff Gill

Trust as the technology of faith in action

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Preachers ask people to trust the Bible. What I think we wrestle with as ministers today is how people do find the Bible . . . interesting. I really do believe people feel the pull of ancient texts, timeless traditions, deep truths. The Bible is interesting, and even holy to many people. 

What they resist is being told to trust it. And that lack of trust is not so much with whether or not the divine can be channeled through scriptures in a book, but in the human persons interpreting it.

We started this extended meditation with the challenge of technology and apps and connections. Do we walk away from smart phones and tablets and online worship to find a more reliable path to faith in a loving God who is involved in our lives, or can they be used as tools to understand for ourselves and interpret to others what we mean by Heaven, Hell, and "the last things" of eternity?

Where I want to land this series of reflections is exactly here: I don't think it matters. You can go full-on Amish in your relationship to technology, or you can be a highly online internet savvy technophilic believer. It doesn't matter. What does matter given the broad trends in society to day is that question of trust.

Church folk want to communicate to people in general and those seeking truth in particular: you should trust the Bible, trust Jesus, and trust God. All good messages. But to deliver that message? To get the average inquirer to contemplate that course of action?

I'll tell faith communities what I have to tell young people all the time. Trust has to be earned. Maybe the Bible shouldn't have to earn trust, but if believers are the first, or sometimes the only Bible people will "read," then it's on us to turn the page. Maybe Jesus is someone you should trust without question, but to get to that place, you have to hear about who Jesus is and what he does. Paul puts it this way: "So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17)

God's gracious initiative is the starting point for all faith. Yet I'm evangelistic enough to add that the Body of Christ is responsible for getting that word a fair hearing, and not overshadowing the message with our actions. In today's world, the initial deposit of trust that's needed is overdrawn when it comes to institutions of any sort, religious ones included.

Do we want the Gospel heard, and understood, and believed? I think the most effective evangelistic strategy is to earn the trust that opens the door for faith to enter in. Congregations need to earn trust, clergy need to earn trust, church institutions need to earn trust. In many cases, they may not be the ones who caused a lack of trust, but it doesn't matter.

Many of us remember when preachers and religious groups were trusted simply because of who they were. It may not be fair that trust is no longer granted as freely, but the reality is trust today has to be earned, in open and honest dealing, with financial transparency and accountability, and in all things with a humble understanding that trust has to be earned.

If we as believers live lives filled with hope, encouragement, and upbuilding those around us; if in our living there is love shown to those in need, healing offered to those in pain, and joy and hope abounding — then people will ask "what gives you this way of looking at and living in the world?"

That's when our answers might be found worthy, by hearers, of that initial measure of trust which can open up a heart for faith.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows some of you were hoping for a killer app. Tell him how you see trust being earned at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 7-19-24

Faith Works 7-19-24

Jeff Gill

The theology of experience, spiritual and technological

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What is "a community of trust"?

This is a formulation I closed with last week as we were talking about the firehose of information which obscures as much as it illuminates. It's not just "fake news" or deep fakes or outright falsehoods which confuse us today, I would argue, as it is the sheer volume of what's coming at us, beyond our ability to process.

It's no longer enough to know who in our local marketplace knows what's going on, the senior or revered or simply well-connected person. And we now don't choose between Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley for "the most trusted name in news," either.

In terms of faith and practice, we've lost a huge amount of trust in hierarchies and official channels. I could outline the reasons for this at length: it begins in living memory with Vietnam and Watergate, and continues through revelations around abuse of the vulnerable in church and camp settings, enabled whether intentionally or not by power structures which looked out for their own preservation before protecting children.

You can't just say "because the church says so" about much of anything. Maybe, just maybe that line of argument never really did work, but today it's clear to preachers and evangelists and advocates alike that the appeal to authority is not going to open up an audience.

Yet there are many of us who've worked and served in church leadership, from the local to the more general, who would point out, chastened but firmly, that the appeal to experience is not as reliable as it seems. We can be fooled by what appeals to us personally, and in fact, the degree of intrinsic appeal may actually make us more vulnerable to deception. Our experience is, by definition, limited to what we've experienced, and that's a small slice of the reality now available to us.

In other words, we need some authorities in our lives. Dictionaries to settle arguments in Scrabble, weather apps to let us know what's going on over the horizon, news channels to help us understand what we are called to do as citizens in a democracy. Maybe even a Bible for a witness to the much bigger picture beyond our own experience, a Big Picture into which we fit.

Still, we don't know which authorities we should listen to about the Bible, when we're unsure or even more dangerously resistant to giving "an old book" any authority over our lives. I find many people, even unchurched people, suspect the Bible is a source of more than just "old stuff," but when it comes to life application, to taking ancient lessons and using them to define our current experience, they're wary more of who is telling them what the Bible says than they are of the book itself.

Being an ordained clergy person is not enough; being an established church tradition or denomination carries almost no weight at all. Look at how many choose to be married by a friend or colleague ordained for $25 out of an advertisement, not a formally recognized minister. The same sort of indifference increasingly applies to funeral services and who leads them, how they're handled, or what is said.

This is where most churches are finding we are rebuilding the concept of "a community of trust" from scratch. The old logos and relationships are not working on their own to establish trust. But how do we accomplish that in the media environment of today?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he hopes to be a trustworthy source of illumination. Tell him how you decide whom to trust at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 7-12-24

Faith Works 7-12-24

Jeff Gill

Face to face in an electronic age

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There's a cause and effect question I continue to have about contact and communications and technology.

I was talking about agoras, marketplaces recently, and how Paul and the early Christian church would communicate the good news of God's love made known in Jesus Christ through simple everyday personal interactions. Paul, and Priscilla and Aquila, and most of the apostles as they moved out from Israel, did their initial evangelistic work through face to face encounters. Tent making on the edge of the market plaza was a setting where you could sit and work and talk to passersby.

Obviously, Paul and Priscilla and Aquila did not compete with re-runs of "Friends" pulling people home to watch TV, or potential customers walking around head down viewing Tik Tok videos on their phone. Talking to each other was pretty much all they had.

Jump ahead in the history of evangelism, and we can make interesting connections between the invention of movable type and printing press technology and the Protestant Reformation (cheer or boo as you are so moved). Sailing and navigation technology combine with improved machining of materials for buggies and coaches to put populations as well as goods on the move. Did all of this change how we both teach rising generations about the faith of their ancestors, or present the Gospel to new audiences and different cultures? Of course it did.

Then we get internal combustion engines, airplanes, and interstate highways: all drawing closer to our time, while speeding up the pace of change. Television follows radio, cell phones replace landlines, and then the internet. [Gasps for air.]

So I asked last week "Can our apps be at least a part of what saves us?" The pace of change, and the impact on faith communities of all sorts, has some wondering if we need to think very differently about how we use technology, even as even small rural congregations have raced to embrace screens in the sanctuary and learned how to stream services.

It's a mess. But did church leaders think that after Gutenberg complicated how information was shared? Did pioneer preachers dread the influence of national radio broadcasts into parishioners' homes? (Yes, and yes.) Religious faith in general and Christianity in particular has dealt with many such transformations over the last two thousand years. We talk about "Dark Ages" not because all human advancement stopped in the Medieval period, but because many leaders, secular and sacred, thought the fall of the Roman Empire would mean the end to effective communication and illumination . . . which is not, in fact, what happened.

Now we seem to be entering an age of not darkness, but of too much illumination, a light beam of so much information pouring over us it blinds us. We do need sunglasses; the future or even the present is so "bright" we gotta wear shades. Or at least filters, like eclipse glasses to allow only a certain amount of illumination through.

The problem with those filters, though, is who decides what is important information? How do we know which authorities to listen to? Because we cannot learn or even internalize everything that's pouring out over us. And I don't even know how to use all the apps that are on my phone as it is.

This is where a community of trust comes in. We need to start identifying what a trustworthy network of leadership and mentorship and teaching looks like, especially around faith. And I think technology can be part of that.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he is setting up some thoughts, but is still open to input. Tell him where you turn for trustworthy information at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-25-24

Notes from my Knapsack 7-25-24

Jeff Gill

An extended consideration of the life and times of Patrick Cunningham

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Who was Patrick Cunningham?

He's a pioneering figure in the history of Licking County.

Born in Ireland, he came to America early enough to have fought in the American Revolution with the Pennsylvania Militia.

Somehow, he ends up alone, a widower, perhaps twice over, in what will become known as Granville Township by 1801; the next fall, in October of 1802, he helps John Jones bury his wife Lillie before leaving to retreat with his children into the Marietta, Ohio area, as a near neighbor to the east willing to offer the last assistance one can offer.

Within a few more years, he takes it upon himself to dig Lillie Jones back up, and move her remains to Newark, Ohio's newly formalized burying ground, so that the "Nash cabin," once the Jones family home, is innocent of mortuary significance by the time the Granville Land Company settlers arrive in November of 1805. Just to the east the outlines of the Cunningham cabin and orchard can still be traced along the hillside to the turn of the century, hints still visible in today's Munson Springs Reserve.

A year or so after her postmortem trip to Newark, Lillie Jones will be dug up and moved once more, back to the west, to the newly laid out Old Colony Burying Ground, established by Granville's settlers, not the first burial there but ironically the oldest.

Meanwhile, Patrick Cunningham, veteran of the Revolution, has established himself in Newark, and became bailiff and jailer for the newly established Licking County Common Pleas Court after 1808. Now called "Paddy" as the county jailer and bailiff, he resides with his likely third wife at the new county jail south of Gen. Schenck's carefully surveyed Courthouse Square. He will outlive her, and bury her at Newark's Sixth Street Cemetery; his son William, who will fight in the War of 1812 and survive a siege and battle outside Fort Detroit, but will be an early interment at Franklinton's old cemetery in 1815 as he tried to return home, now just across the Scioto from Columbus and not far from lower.com Field today. A son of William, John Cunningham would serve as a deputy sheriff, deputy auditor, and perhaps the earliest attendance officer or "enumerator" for Newark schools before his death in 1884.

Meanwhile, having outlived both children and wives, Patrick Cunningham will end his days in the care of a brother in the vicinity of what is now Hebron, Ohio, in southern Licking County. A son of Theophilus Rees, the first Welsh settler of Granville Township in 1802, with the same name as his father, will become an original settler of Hebron and at the historic Licking Baptist Cemetery off Beaver Run there are Cunningham brothers and nephews and other relatives marked, with a single unmarked grave in their midst likely that of Patrick, living out his last days into his late 80s in that vicinity, buried there in 1832.

Patrick Cunningham would have grandchildren and great-grandchildren who were leading citizens of Newark as Licking County grew, but by 1936 the last of his descendants are gone. Cunningham is no longer a pioneer name to reckon with, but his role in our earliest days as a community is worth remembering.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; tell him about pieces of the puzzle he might have missed at @knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 7-5-24

Faith Works 7-5-24

Jeff Gill

Making connections in a divisive era

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In recent weeks I've ruminated about retail formats and communications technology, and some of you have emailed or messaged me to say "Jeff, you're not talking about faith!"

I get it. I do.

What I'd love to do is spend time in this space outlining spiritual disciplines and personal practices which lead to inner peace and outward work towards God's justice. Maybe I could do a better job of that.

Where today's marketplace is, though, is different.

In the last few months I've had a number of friends and colleagues travel to the eastern Mediterranean and post pictures along with stories from their travels. They put some contemporary images alongside my own awareness of ancient archaeology, and the textual witness. In most Greek speaking cities of the Ancient Near East was an "agora," a marketplace which was where people came to do business, to interact. 

Home was often a compound, a walled enclosure with many buildings backing onto a perimeter barrier and a single gate, and I have friends who in relatively recent years have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, who tell me about such extended family residences.

So combine that more immediate image of a residential enclosure with the ancient world, and marketplace for social interaction which was on the edge of the administrative center, with a central plaza, often a well nearby, and booths set up for short term rental or some in family hands for generations, and downwind a less desirable open end of the three-sided square which was seasonally home for hide tanners and tent makers.

In the middle, an open space, like any courthouse square or main street or "broad way," so to speak, where people on certain days would gather and converse and discuss and even debate.

This was the context, the setting, for Paul's initial teaching and preaching, from the Areopagus in Athens at the foot of the Acropolis, to agoras in smaller cities like Corinth and Thessaly and Ephesus. The public marketplace was a cultural norm and a social technology, like a courthouse square in our more recent past, or a mall very recently.

Today? In 2024 and what is to come, how do we put ourselves in the path of those seeking the way to God, towards hope, in the direction of redemption? Do we go downtown, or the blocks adjoining? That was once the smart way to preach and build and invite: put a church near the center of the city. If we are buying and selling and shopping and investing online, then faith needs to be present, somehow, in those "places" (quotation marks quite intentional).

Yet we do not understand how virtual connections, artificial intelligence, online realities, shape the person, the families, the souls which are the intended focus of faith communities. We just don't. Agoras turned into cities which became malls which are now . . . something else. Churches went from the four corners downtown (look at Granville, for pity's sake) to a ring of steeples a block beyond the retail core to big boxes parked out just beyond the retail big boxes and vast parking areas. It all makes a certain amount of sense, but . . .

Now some suggest we need to create churches, and be faith communities, which are almost Luddite. And I get that, too. We set aside our phones and tablets, and turn back to printed programs, bound books, Bibles in print, not online. That's one way to be counter cultural today. Will it build deeper roots and more lasting institutions? It might, but it might not.

Or is there a way for faith and prophetic vision and religious institutions to create community in the middle of the personalized technology we all carry around with us? Can our apps be at least a part of what saves us?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he is definitely thinking out loud, and that's not always a good thing. Tell him what you think he's trying to say at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.