Faith Works 2-20-2026

Kelly --

I will need your help here for one last step! What follows is 802 words of body text in total, which is long. If you clip the first three paras, that brings me down by 137 words, to a perhaps more tolerable 665 words (not counting title and colophon). If you can run it all, do so with my blessing, but also if you just have to chop those first three paras. If I felt better and started sooner, I might find 150 words elsewhere, but as it is 2 pm, here ya go, and may your editorial discretion work well for both of us...
Pax, Jeff

+=+=+

Faith Works 2-20-2026
Jeff Gill

A preacher with a particular portfolio

___


There are times when it is tempting to do memorial tributes, and I've not done so. Hardly a week goes by when someone, somewhere, with a connection to the life of faith and to religious practice more generally, does not pass away, and so you can lapse into a near-obituary format.

Local figures of note, personal connections, and deaths in my own family: I've done some of each, I hope with judicious attention to how the loss is of even possible interest you, the reader.

Big names with major attention already paid don't tend to tempt me. Their eulogies are usually tended to sufficiently on platforms for everyone to hear or read or react to. But learning of the death at age 84 of Jesse Jackson made me remember, and reflect, knowing his legacy is… complicated.

Rev. Jesse Jackson was a pivotal figure in the Chicago of my youth. He came from the South, having been briefly at the University of Illinois as a football prospect; returning to North Carolina he found his footing, led protest marches against segregation, finished college, and married, then came back to Chicago Theological Seminary in 1964.

Soon he was leading students at this UCC seminary en masse to Selma, Alabama, and famously he never finished his M.Div. receiving a "D" in his last class: Preaching. His faculty mentor said later Jesse never turned in his written work, "he just preached."

From 1965 Jackson was a part of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s work through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his primary representative in Chicago; after King's assassination in April 1968, an act for which he was present, Jackson returned to Chicago and continued to open up the work he had begun under King's auspices and began to carve out his own path towards seeking justice.

That path was at times a rocky and controversial one. He made surprising alliances such as with Mayor Richard J. Daley, before famously not endorsing his son, Richard M., in 1989, in favor of a black third-party candidate. But by that time Jackson had run for president not once but twice himself, and had put himself forward as not just a leader for African Americans in the United States, but as an American leader in the world, negotiating for hostage releases in Syria and talking to foreign heads of state as a near-peer.

To say he was not popular in some circles is to say little, to say more requires an unpacking of the history of racism, let alone of race and politics. But in the fall of 1991 he was hinting at a third run for the presidency, and Bill Clinton was still the Arkansas governor who had spoken too long at the 1988 Democratic convention. Jackson had a shot.

And in that fall I was minister of a church in Fairmont, West Virginia. Jackson was scheduled to give a speech downtown on a Sunday morning, at 8:30 am, and our service wasn't until 10:30 so I decided to chance it, thinking I could always slip away if it started late or went long.

Unique in my political experience, such as it is, Rev. Jesse Jackson got to the podium at exactly 8:30, and finished as scheduled. It was a cold, grey, wet morning, in a town with its own vexed history around segregation; despite strong union support in a coal mining region, the crowd was expected to be small. It was not. Speaking from a platform near the corner of the courthouse, underneath the looming limestone of the business district, to people standing on the pavement growing damp from a steady drizzle, Jackson started soft, and slow.

His passion and his message grew and echoed in that open area, barely needing the amplification. Many in the crowd there were present more out of curiosity than support, as I was, but he gathered us up in his message about opportunity, and fairness, and justice… for all.

Rev. Jackson came to a logical end in his sermon, and concluded with all but a benediction, then left. There was another speech to give in Morgantown at 10 am.

We may not all have voted for him had he run, but he had our attention, and in a sense, our support. For what mistakes he may have made in his life, and they were real ones, I come back to that morning, and the power of his message, and how well he delivered it.

Jesse Jackson never pastored a church. He got a D in his preaching class. But he knew how to deliver a sermon. And telling the underprivileged and dispossessed to believe "I am somebody" is a message very close to the gospel. So Godspeed, Jesse. I'm glad to have heard you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's heard a variety of good preachers in his life, some of them ministers. Tell him who has preached well in your hearing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 2-13-2026

Faith Works 2-13-2026
Jeff Gill

A committee meeting that accomplished something
___


"Nothing useful is ever accomplished at a church committee meeting."

I was present when a ministerial colleague made that comment, and after the service, I had to work my way over to him and say while his general point was understandable, I had an exception to tell him about… and now you.

Yes, many committee meetings in church life can be tedious and confusing and not always get much actual work done. For some people it's a social activity and they can't go on too long, and in other cases it's more about tradition and authority than it is achieving agreement and sharing vision. But when groups of people need to plan and prepare for actual activities, you're going to have committee meetings.

There's a different reason, though, why I have a soft spot in my heart for church committee meetings, especially on this Valentine's Day eve.

45 years ago, in February of 1981, a young woman I knew slightly named Eunice Hanebutt found out I was a member of the Disciples of Christ religious tradition; she was on an ecumenical campus ministry team that was planning a service with a speaker from that tradition — in fact, he was the president of the seminary I would attend four years later, T.J. Liggett.

"If you would just come next week to the worship committee meeting and see if you'd consider being the liturgist for that service next month?" Euny asked. I thought about it — I had never attended this campus ministry at the time, going home for worship or DJ'ing at my dorm radio station on Sunday mornings. Then I said "sure, I'll come."

The precise date is lost to the mists of time, but it was a Thursday night at 7 pm, and so either Feb. 12 or 19. I arrived at the building, and found my way through the halls to the library which had a conference table in it, and the campus minister at the head near the door, with half a dozen people around it extending towards the window, with an open seat near the other end. Next to the choir director.

Now, I knew the choir director slightly: she had co-directed a mass choir between my men's dorm and her women's dorm in something called "U-Sing" which was a campus-wise competition each spring between residence hall choruses and the Greek system's entries. In rehearsals, she was clear and confident; I had moved pianos around at her direction in a basement rec room, and sung with some forty-nine other voices as she led us through our two numbers.

So I sat down next to her; we re-introduced ourselves to each other, and I'm told I made some kind of lame joke, which made her laugh. Yes, reader, I am now married to that woman. Joyce Meredith has heard my lame jokes now for 45 years, and still (often) laughs at them. I was the liturgist that March, and in April we both went together on a church bus trip to Chicago to wander together the Museum of Science and Industry on a Saturday, sharing a seat on our way home back to Purdue that evening. We've been a couple ever since, married almost 41 of them.

And I'm reminded, too, of a line from Charles Williams he wrote to his new friend C.S. Lewis as events brought them together: "My admiration for the staff work of the Omnipotence rises every day." Because in the course of human events, Eunice Hanebutt Hayes, after marrying Brian Hayes, ended up living in Newark, Ohio. We run into each other at different moments, and I know we both are aware of the staff work God is still supervising.

So Happy Valentine's Day to Eunice and Brian, to Joyce, and to any of you wondering if church committee meetings ever accomplish anything. Sometimes, I assure you, they do!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's often reminded of how God is in the oddest small details, along with the grand design. Tell him where you've run into this staff work at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-12-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 2-12-2026
Jeff Gill

Victoria Woodhull knew something about wealth and power
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Victoria Claflin Woodhull has an Ohio historic marker in Homer, Ohio, where she was born in 1838. She has a cenotaph behind the high altar in Tewkesbury Abbey, not far from her final home in the west of England, a religious establishment she and her daughter supported generously.

But Victoria's will was clear that she would be cremated at her death in 1927, and those ashes would be scattered in the Atlantic, halfway between her adopted land and her home, where in 1872 she ran for President of the United States.

In reference to that combination of loyalties, it's interesting that she has a monument, albeit anonymously, on Parliament Square in London, just steps north of Westminster Abbey and in clear view to the east of Big Ben. Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin, her third and final husband being a British banker of note, left Victoria a woman of wealth on his passing, a country home near Tewkesbury Abbey and a town house in London, where her parents lived with her near Hyde Park until their deaths. Buckman and Roxanna Claflin are buried in London, a city their daughter came to know well.

So when a plan came about to erect a statue of Lincoln to mark the century of peace between the U.S. and Great Britain since the War of 1812, a cast of a marvelous statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens placed in Chicago's Lincoln Park was made available in 1914, but on arrival Parliament realized there were no funds to place it on an appropriate pedestal. After a brief controversy, the matter passed: because Victoria C.W. Martin stepped up and paid for it herself.

If you don't know that, you'd pass by unawares. And in fact, the only monument to Victoria Woodhull in this country (as she was most known as through her public career) is in Granville, on the side of the Robbins Hunter Museum, because Robby in 1973 decided this Licking County girl needed to be honored as we headed into the national Bicentennial of 1976, and he built the "V. Woodhull" clock tower over his west door.

I found myself thinking about what V. Woodhull would have to say about our current debates around J. Epstein. I suspect she'd say she was familiar with the type.

Because she was married off having barely reached the age of 15, to a 27 year old doctor who turned out to be a cad, a drunk, and a philanderer (and not much of a doctor). You might ask what her parents were thinking, letting 14 year old Victoria date a man in his mid-20s, and I certainly have. Buck & Roxy are in the county records in 1853 making a final real estate deal in Homer; many stories are told about them, and most aren't true. Which are, we still debate. But poverty likely played a role, just as it did for many of the families who let their daughters go "earn some money" at the Epstein compound. Roxy, for one thing, was illiterate, placing only "her mark" on the documents filed away in Newark. She and Buck had ten children, of which Victoria was the seventh; only six would survive to adulthood.

Victoria's history is vastly complicated by a two word slogan which opens up a wide range of debate and discussion: "Free love." In later life, certainly from 1871, her early reputation as a speaker, spirit medium, and suffragist was overwhelmed by the controversies invoked by her having raised the banner of "free love."

But what Victoria meant by "free love" was not necessarily how many people choose to interpret the phrase. We'll pick this question up next time.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he keeps finding new Victoria Woodhull documents even when he's not looking for them. Tell him what you've wondered about her at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 2-6-2026

Faith Works 2-6-2026
Jeff Gill

Your minister still isn't asking for gift cards
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A quarter-century ago, when I was serving as parish minister in the Hebron area, I had the honor of hosting a guest speaker during the week from the Ohio Attorney General's office. Betty Montgomery held the position at the time, and I knew someone who knew her, and after some contacts were made, a person whose name sadly I do not recall came to speak to our community.

In 2001, the internet was still a' borning, few in our area used it, and e-commerce was still new. The problem then was door-to-door scams, and after a rough summer before, a few community leaders and I wanted to warn our folk in the spring, before so-called house painters and blacktop refinishers coming around made their inroads into the savings of senior citizens.

Now, I am one, and the internet is everywhere, including my lightbulbs and thermostats. Scams still come door-to-door at times, but we have them arriving in our in-boxes and notifications through devices in our pockets and purses. The scammers? They're a world away, but up close and personal in our business, spoofing or masquerading in digital form as clergy, leaders, even friends, and the one mercy is that they're still mostly asking for gift cards as a way of getting at your money. Even the least prepared know not to share a bank account number with a request online, let alone a pin number.

Gift cards, though: oh my.

So in Granville, on a Thursday at the end of the month, Centenary United Methodist Church is hosting at 10:00 am a speaker from the Ohio Attorney General's office, Danielle Murphy, to talk about "Scam Protection and Awareness." It's free and open to any and all, no reservations needed. Pastor Bob has dealt with a few waves of gift card requests in his name to church leaders and members, and this is his constructive step in response.

It is of no little interest to me that the problem doesn't go away, but it changes, and we have to, in the words of Jesus, "be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves." We in faith communities need to do the work of holiness in our areas, but with a wary eye to how sin can creep in and misuse our good intentions. That's what scammers take advantage of, the desire of people to be helpful.

If you think "I know better, I don't need to go" my suggestion is: come and see if you know as much as you think. The tactics keep changing, and the evildoers — that's what they are, wherever they are as they call and text — keep changing their strategies. We have to understand the tools and techniques in part because we can not only not get suckered, we can be alert to how we can help others.

So I plan to attend, and if you are available on a Thursday morning, this Feb. 26th at 10:00 am, I hope you might come as well to hear what the state's legal officers have to say. Betty is retired, and Dave Yost is in the job now; blacktop scams with buckets of used motor oil are less common (but still around), while it's our smartphone that can make us feel dumb. To keep doing the same good things requires some new approaches, and I hope our Attorney General's staff can help local churches and our community protect the vulnerable, and allow us to know how to communicate and share and give wisely.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's curious what scams will look like in 2051. Tell him how you stay connected at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-30-2026

Faith Works 1-30-2026
Jeff Gill

Community warmth in a frigid landscape
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It's worth a little review of how we got an Emergency Warming Center in Licking County.

This is the eighth winter season volunteers have put these together. That first winter, in January of 2019, it was a community response to a predicted -10 degree pair of nights in a "polar vortex" which actually reached an air temperature of -13. By March, six nights were operated between two churches, and we had at least 35 guests overnight between the locations when both were open.

Quickly, the churches & groups & programs involved worked to organize what had been an ad hoc effort. The first couple of winters the threshold for opening up was 0; the task force that organized the work as we shifted locations & tried to improve our coordination moved the threshold to an overnight low of 15, which only lasted two winters as that increased the number of nights we activated to just beyond our ability to staff the overnights. Since 2022 we've set our threshold at an anticipated 10 degree overnight low; the task force gives itself latitude for special circumstances, like extreme wind warnings on nights still above 10 degrees, or a series of nights where a night or two is below 10, one night bumps above, then back to subzero.

We have had four church locations host our program; Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on W. Main got involved early and has been the only location the last five winters. Changes in insurance carriers, denominational affiliation, and in one case closure, have all had an impact on where sites have been located.

This past week over 50 people sought refuge with this community effort (and a number of pets; pets have been welcome since the beginning of the warming centers here). A variety of circumstances bring unsheltered people to the Emergency Warming Center: a surprising number of guests are people who until recently had housing, have a plan for housing relatively soon, but are caught in between and are sleeping in vehicles until a new lease or arrangement is ready. A regular percentage of those the last few years have been senior citizens. A hotel for a few weeks is beyond the budget of many who are caught in the housing crunch.

This past week has been the longest period of continuous operation done by this effort, likely ten nights in a row all below 10 degrees. And there are likely to be more nights later this winter at that degree of cold.

Again & again, people ask me, what does the warming center effort need? And yes, there are practical issues we deal with, and some materials we have to go get, but the core need is for volunteers. Without at least some 26 people confirmed each night to assist, the center can't announce they're open.

The United Way of Licking County (UWLC) provides volunteer coordination for the Emergency Warming Center effort; if you go to their webpage, scroll to the EWC section (or you can volunteer for the daytime Drop-In Center, held in the same building, with a link on the same page) and sign up. You will get the volunteer emails, and can respond as you are able; signing up here does not automatically obligate you, it simply puts you in a place to know when & where you're needed. The last step is up to you.

Many thanks to the UWLC team, the meal support from Licking Memorial Hospital, and Licking County Transit's help, and the faith community at Holy Trinity along with many churches' volunteers. Training is mostly on-the-job; no one serves alone. And for the most part, you are needed to smile, stay present, and often say "I don't know, let's find out what the answer to that is." Someone on your shift has done this before.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he appreciates the many people who come together each winter to make this all happen. Tell him about your volunteer experiences at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.


Link I mentioned:
https://www.unitedwaylc.org/get-involved/

Notes from my Knapsack 1-29-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 1-29-2026
Jeff Gill

Sports and our body politic, active or not
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Having the Winter Olympics start before the Super Bowl seems odd, but so does noting the latter is happening in February. Meanwhile, we're only two weeks and change away from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training.

As sports guys go, I'm not much of one. I watch more than I should, less than most. I played some football, was manager for high school basketball (a nice short cut to get three varsity letters), but I've never been that athletic.

NFL rules about kickoffs today make sense, except I don't understand them; something about reducing injury which is quite creditable, but there's a "landing zone" which I could look up, but haven't. And when the ball goes where for extra points…

Even though I'm from Indiana, I'll admit to looking past basketball for the most part to baseball, which I played in youth league forms to no good end. My church league softball years are behind me, and probably always were. Designated hitters and infield fly rules, though, I don't get. I knew enough about obscure rules to be amused and prescient when they introduced a character named Tom Wambsgans in "Succession."

When we get into March Madness, which lapses into April before it ends, I'll likely have a bracket online somewhere. I have opened accounts at ESPN and CBS Sports and elsewhere; I probably won't find my user name and password making me do it all over again. Yeah, I pick my mascots as much as by my knowledge of the players or coaches (I do know where Gonzaga is located, which puts me ahead of some).

All these sports, and yet we're all getting out of shape, eating too much, and needing some kind of magic pill to lose weight. I'm sure wiser people than I have pointed out this irony, but here deep in the winter of 2026, it feels particularly sharp. We need to go bundle up and take a walk, not cocoon up and double our television time… but will I watch all the curling I can find, to be perfectly honest with you. It's soothing, pleasant, understandable even when I don't quite understand it.

Thwack. I just like how the rocks sound when they hit. Whooosh, plock, thwack.

All of which makes sports another form of passive entertainment, again not a unique thought on my part. What I wonder about is how we can turn this into something useful, beyond the usual "connect your TV to a treadmill" idea. Fans of pickle ball like to talk about how they're a fitness movement with a social benefit, and I salute them for how they're downright evangelical about their sport. The LCCC has a Pathfinders group that takes hikes a couple times each month in different locations. What I think we might benefit from is some kind of creative interweaving of, say, NCAA brackets and power walking, but I'm afraid we'd just end up with people striding down paths while looking at the Olympics app on their phones.

My own winter fitness routine tends to be walking while listening to podcasts on my ear buds, but my tendency is to political subjects, a sport of a different sort. It does keep the heart pumping these days; the politics, I mean. Audiobooks are an option for some; they don't work for me, but I hear plenty of good things from my spouse about them as an adjunct to exercise.

Walking isn't a sport, but it is activity. You can watch plenty of sports and not be active. My goal this year is to increase my activity, and that might require watching less sporting events. Odd, isn't it?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's trying to keep moving this winter. Tell him how you stay physically active at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-23-2026

Faith Works 1-23-2026
Jeff Gill

Faith, politics, and compromise in this America 250 year
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We are celebrating as a country the semi-sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence this year.

1776 was the year, and during the summer a committee of five was called to work on a draft for the Continental Congress to declare their intentions towards Great Britain. Some few still hoped for reconciliation, Samuel Adams wanted a clear and clean break, but all wondered how a collection of colonies could justify their "separate and equal station" to the mother country, and independence from their King.

Of that committee, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York fade quickly into the background, not because of their lack of interest in the subject, but because of the press of other business the assembly had to deal with.

Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was quickly elected chair and chief drafter, some say at the strong encouragement of John Adams from Massachusetts, while Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania anchored the group with his notable wisdom, and relatively speaking, great age (I sigh to note the "elderly" Franklin was 70, which doesn't seem that old to me these days).

Obviously, they represented different parts of the emerging United States of America, and they also represented different perspectives, on politics and about faith.

Walter Isaacson has been speaking for years about the drafting process in June of 1776, and just released a book titled "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," about the Declaration of Independence's key line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

Jefferson's original draft had early on the phrase "we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." Franklin, ever the pragmatist, suggested the truths they were describing were "self-evident," the result of reason and wisdom more than from revelation.

But the more religious Adams said after "all men are created equal," where Jefferson states "from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable" the Massachusetts Unitarian asked him to put instead "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

All of this talk of inherent & inalienable rights stems from a document almost a century old when the Declaration was being drafted in 1776. John Locke wrote "Two Treatises of Government" in 1689, in part to defend Great Britain's "Glorious Revolution" of the preceding year, where William and Mary ascend to the throne, deposing King James II (second son of the late King Charles I, who was executed in 1649, Great Britain having had a pretty tumultuous second half of the Seventeenth Century).

John Locke was a major influence on the Founders' generation, as he articulated views of how the social contract between the governed and the government should work, including the assertion that legitimate governments will always be "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" — a line which goes directly into the Declaration.

Locke's fundamental rights for every individual in a properly governed state in 1689 include "life, liberty, and estate" which becomes "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" in our 1776 telling of the tale.

Locke and the Founders argued for the essential starting point of free and equal persons under the law, whose roots could be found in Nature, and in Nature's God. Franklin eased back Jefferson's assertion's about the sacred, while Adams leaned into our Creator's endowment of creation, while Jefferson used Locke's formulas to describe how the consent of the governed brought this new nation closer to divine intentions.

In 2026, we weave history and theology and political philosophy into our more immediate understandings of how we vote, and what we expect of our elected officials. There may be compromise in our common work to those ends, which is not a concession when it brings clarity of purpose.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been looking forward to 2026 and America 250 for some time. Tell him your perspectives on history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-16-2026

Faith Works 1-16-2026
Jeff Gill

A message for anyone & everyone to hear
___


Imagine we had a fellow going around door to door, talking fast and smiling large, claiming to be a cousin of Prince William who had a plausible if unlikely argument for why you needed to loan him a few hundred or thousands of dollars.

And that this hypothetical person had done this scam successfully not dozens, but hundreds of times, perhaps upwards of some thousands of fleecings, always getting away and never getting caught.

We'd be asking hard questions of law enforcement and the prosecutor's office, who would have done something (in all fairness) after just a few repetitions, but in the case I have in mind are still helpless to respond.

Because I'm talking about messaging or text or email scams, and the perpetrators are almost without exception in Russia or Myanmar or Nigeria and the like. Overseas criminals with a talent for electronic larceny.

We have pages for crime and legal matters, and this sort of thing has been covered by the Advocate and Dispatch before. What I'm most exercised about though is the way faith communities get targeted by these approaches. They're nauseatingly similar in all their forms, but if this is news to you, or at most a vague recollection, let me spell it out.

Somehow, these vile malefactors get ahold of email rosters, cellphone records, or just cull membership lists and are adept enough in online skills to correlate the names of a church's most active members to the correct phone numbers.

They then send emails or texts, but texts are most common, and the frightful characters are well up to speed on how to make the incoming message appear to be coming from a local phone number by area code and even exchange (email scams often can be caught by simply hovering your cursor over the name, and finding the address for what claims to be Spectrum or Amazon or CVS is suffixed "btzplk54.com" or the like).

What is truly vile to me is how they all say they're your minister. They play on your desire to help, to be of service, and use just the right whiff of urgency mixed with a smidgen of how they're busy doing good themselves, so if you could just…

Friends, let me speak as I rarely do for ALL my fellow faith community leaders, whether priests or parsons, rabbis or imams, evangelists or bishops: we are NEVER going to ask you to buy a gift card denominated hundreds of dollars, then scratch the foil off and take a picture and send it to us. NEVER. Not once. It ain't us. Period, end of report.

Then the impostor-criminal will often ask us to only get, say, $200 on the gift card, but then get three or four or eighteen of them. They know the amount which triggers the manager to come out, or loss prevention to step up to our frantic tapping on the kiosk. But never mind all that: texts asking you to buy gift cards and then photograph numbers off of them and send back? THOSE AREN'T US. I promise you. If you get a text asking for an emergency pound of ground coffee, maybe. But gift cards? IT IS A SCAM.

But a bright spot. I was recently near a person who said at a gathering they were in the middle of one such scamming-in-process. I was immediately aware (don't even whisper "gift cards" and "minister" within 50 yards of me), rudely intruded into the conversation, and here's the hope. These scams are industrial scale in size wherever they are being done. We called the person's credit card company, and the numbers hadn't been processed, and the transaction was blocked. Once they do, you can't get the money back, but they get backlogged. We moved just barely fast enough.

Better yet? Don't get sucked in. Your minister is not texting you for gift cards. Tell your friends.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's rethinking his opposition to the death penalty for this particular offense. Tell him about scams you've avoided at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-15-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 1-15-2026
Jeff Gill

America 250 in Ohio has much to celebrate
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In 1976, President Gerald Ford oversaw a grand national celebration of our Bicentennial, the two hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

People then pointed out we had begun to act independently before the document was approved by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and long after Thomas Jefferson had left the country to represent us in France, the Constitutional Convention in 1787 really established our nation.

You could even get bogged down in John Adams writing down that July the Second would be the future celebration of national independence, after the bulk of signatories had put their, um, John Hancocks onto the formal declaration he had helped Jefferson and Ben Franklin to draft. But no matter.

July 4, 1776 has long been the day we celebrate as our nation's birthday. The centennial was an occasion all over the still not-quite coast to coast country; our 38th state, Colorado, came into the union in the middle of the year 1876, though after the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June. Licking County's new courthouse still has tall bold numbers on four sides to hearken back to the founding even as we celebrated the centennial that year.

And yes, I remember the bicentennial quite well. (Sigh.)

So we come to the Semiquincentennial, or Quarter Millennial observation, if you are willing to be that optimistic about our future. 250 just looks significant, and while I like to celebrate history all the time, in any quanta, a 250th feels right. Denison University has a 195th anniversary coming in December of 2026, and a bicentennial in 2031 I trust we'll mark in Granville.

The America 250-Ohio effort has been present and active in Licking County, and around the state, for some time; their executive director Todd Kleismit has been at various meetings in Granville to help encourage us to prepare for this year, and so we have. In the village, we've been working with the Licking County Historical Society on a 250 Passport project that Howard Long has put good work into, and he's been present as Billie Zimmers has helped chair our community efforts, which you'll hear about all year and then some.

The Newark Earthworks nearby got to be one of Ohio's earliest events around America 250 on January 2nd, and with the Granville Historical Society, I get to talk a bit about the interesting question of what was going on here 250 years ago, in the years directly leading up to 1776. Wyandot and Shawnee and Delaware indigenous people were here, and a few others you might not have expected, but I'll talk about that on Wednesday, Jan. 21st in the Granville Historical Society Museum at 115 E. Broadway. Please consider attending!

They will be distributing some of the materials our Granville group for America 250 have developed for this entire year, with special themes and programs each month, with January about "firsts" logically enough. In June, I get to offer some programs about our history with parks and preservation, and you'll hear more about that soon enough, along with all our other monthly themes in 2026.

Like the best history, it will be both fun and educational!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a deep and wide love of history in many forms. Tell him what times past most interest you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-9-2026

Faith Works 1-9-2026
Jeff Gill

More questions than answers as a new year starts
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January 9th is the 113th birthday of Richard Nixon; my brother Brian shares the date, if half the years with him.

Brian also often reads my columns to our mother, which gets complicated if I write about her and the living situation we're working with, so I find myself trying to put a signal in pretty early that this isn't one you want to be reading to her. Like this one.

Mom had been living with our sister Debbie for almost five years when one year ago we teamed up to move her into a memory care facility. It was a difficult decision, but a necessary one. We knew from the start that our mother was having cognitive issues after our father's death in 2020, and one of many things I've learned about the last few years is how the horizon between cognitive decline and outright dementia is a jagged and trackless landscape.

Over the last two years, I went from my father-in-law's last decline, which included a fair amount of visual and auditory hallucinations, to my mother's slide into mental hallucinations of facts that are demonstrably not so, but firmly held by her. Yes, the conventional wisdom is to agree at almost all costs, but some assertions are harder to agree with than others.

What's morbidly fascinating is how our mother's particular form of dementia is convincing. If you don't know her, she can still convince people she's still teaching classrooms full of children, under the direction of her father as school principal (my mother is 90, so do the math), and driving. Sadly, she's also convinced she can catch a bus or train right outside that door, the door over there, if you'll just hold it open one moment…

In some ways, I've been more ready to deal with the oddities of cognitive issues because of some forty years of pastoral ministry. I've had all the conversations, about whether someone should still drive, when you continue treatment, how to handle care provisions in various forms of insurance and benefits, Medicare or Medicaid. Yet it's different when you are dealing with your own parents, no matter how familiar.

And the fact of the matter is that many of these frameworks themselves have changed over the last few years. I knew enough over time to check in with trusted doctors and nurses about what "everyone knew" about how long you could stay in rehab, or what was covered by which; by the time I had to leave full-time ministry in 2020, some of those wise advisors were saying to me "I can't answer that, it changes so quickly now."

I've talked about pieces of all of this through the previous year, and I know it has a certain quality of repetition to it, but I wanted to walk through this to make the same point, especially to the many readers I know I have who attend worship services and look to ministers for answers about practical matters. It's not just them: none of us are entirely clear about how this all works. Hospitalization and rehabilitation and palliative care and hospice, insurance coverage and Medicare options and Medicaid involvement: it all changes so quickly now.

So what's the answer? First, leave assumptions go for the most part. Second, listen closely to what you're being told. Third, keep notes (in whatever form works for you, but a small notebook & pen are invaluable). Fourth: ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. And when caregivers or staff get impatient with your questions? Ask more.

This subject isn't going away, and not just because I'm in the middle of it myself. We all need to learn how to be people of faith working within often blind and unhearing systems. Clergy and church leaders don't have answers, but we can and must help ask questions.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's got questions, as you can tell. Tell him what your questions are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow him @Knapsack on X.