Faith Works 10-8

Faith Works 10-8-11

Jeff Gill

 

Oh, Why Bother. (Here's Why.)

___

 

 

Let's just sell all the churches and worship in living rooms.

 

Seriously, I got a bunch of e-mail and comments that were variations on exactly that from last week's column.

 

Congregations, especially congregations with buildings and staff (clergy and otherwise) and mailing lists, were given a number of ongoing developments to think about last Saturday. Some of you said "Tomaytoh" while others said "Tomahtoe," but a few suggested we call the whole thing off.

 

Before we dismiss our local, loveable cranks as, say . . . cranks, let's think about that. Why not get rid of the cost and bother and misplaced focus on buildings?

 

One obvious answer is size. Even a small, struggling congregations has 25 to 40 people a Sunday, and it's the rare living room which has the capacity for that many.

 

One of the challenges facing church leadership is that not long ago an average Sunday attendance of 70 was enough to sustain a building and a full-time pastor with seminary training. That number has shot up to more like 120 or more if you're talking about a full salary package with health insurance, and that's not even talking anymore about a custodian and secretary.

 

So churches up to 200 a Sunday in the pews are going to part-time jobs for office staff, building staff, and even for clergy. Meanwhile, if you have "only" 175 per week in worship, you sure aren't going to find even a basement rumpus room in a member's house that will fit you all.

 

Your fellowship can duck the whole building deal with renting space in a school auditorium or catering space that isn't used on Sundays; some new church starts find an older congregation which is willing to make a deal for Sunday afternoons, and that's very common in Ohio for ethnic congregations of Korean or Hispanic members.

 

You avoid certain complications with that sort of borrowed space approach, but you pick up new ones. And until you've worked with it, you can't calculate the very real expenditure of leadership & volunteer time spent in setting up and tearing down in gyms or hallways or theaters every weekend. That time and energy comes out of possibilities that you never quite can plumb, but that loss is not nothing.

 

A truly hard-nosed church building skeptic might say "why not keep establishing house churches, and just never have any one get bigger than can fit, but the growth is in an expanding number of home meetings?" You'll not have an organ or stained glass windows, but you'll have none of the limitations of those walls, either.

 

Xenos Christian Fellowship in Columbus is built along that model, with a few of their home groups here in Licking County. They argue that they aren't a large church with home groups, but a connection of home groups that occasionally has large meetings.

 

I have to count myself a rueful pragmatist on church life. You can focus, as a Frank Viola does, on home groups, or you can be a Joel Osteen and celebrate size and expansion as an end in itself. What I see in Christian history are home churches that grew to where they had to purchase a home, keep it looking that way outside, but gut it out inside to create a worship space (you can online search for "Dura-Europos" to see our earliest example).

 

Once you have social approval, such as under Emperor Constantine in the Fourth Century, you find yourself with an option to set up shop in underutilized basilicas or repurposed temples, and next thing you know you're in a giant physical plant and the report of the trustees is half the monthly board meeting.

 

So moving into old pagan temples left vacant, bad idea (you'll have to put a new roof on in no time); putting up something bigger than a residential home but smaller than a blimp hanger, good idea (though some pastors have blimp-like ideas about what is a sustainable size).

 

Rather than wish them gone, I wonder what would happen if we look at our buildings, our real estate, our gathered fellowship -- with all the parking and sanctuary temperature management problems that these imply, and if you consideration led to . . . stewardship.

 

Perhaps a vital personal faith needs to be tied to the vitality that can, that may, that SHOULD grow from taking seriously a shared obligation: to take care of a classic building, or to carefully select and affirm a staff that's right-sized and well-purposed to your particular fellowship's calling?

 

In other words, annoying though they can be, you probably need a church more than you think. Big-C church and small-c church alike, building-church or sense of membership and commitment to a shared vision-church. If irritation helps oysters create pearl, what might going to church help you to do?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him what (or who) annoys you at church to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

For Winter Quarter 2011

Notes From My Knapsack 9-29-11

Jeff Gill

 

Why is there a Ron Paul?

___

 

Politically, I don't usually want to get into politics.

 

It's too easy to go for the "there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two major party candidates" attitude, yet there's also a perspective which I think we all do well to consider: that our vote for President of the United States may not really be as important as our votes for village council, township trustee, or school board members.

 

So while I nod at "all politics is local" (whatever is grammatically actually correct), and shrug at "the most important national election ever," I am interested in candidates and narratives.

 

Looking back, there's always a story arc to follow, one that often seems obvious as well as clichéd in retrospect, but they are wonderfully resistant to predictability looking forwards.

 

Richard Nixon, the outsider who fought his way into the inner circles of power, but never quite felt like he was truly included, whose insecurities led him to fatal errors. Gerald Ford, the amiable Midwesterner who was a bit out of his depth but married well and made the most of the opportunities that he was given. Jimmy Carter, the rural smart boy who grew up into a know-it-all who actually did know nuclear engineering, but couldn't quite bring that knowledge to bear on face-to-face, human relationships and was tricked by less intelligent, but much cleverer operators in the big city.

 

Reagan, the actor who grew into his roles and inhabited them so fully he sometimes forgot which were parts, and which were personal experience, but who turned out to have not only learned his lines but did the background research on his own.

 

The Bushes, father and son, living out a Steinbeckian "East of Eden" scenario with a whiff of the Prodigal, perhaps giving us an uneasy look at how things went after the welcome home party from the skeptical older brother's view.

 

Bill Clinton, poor boy who strives and achieves and makes good, but brought low by hubris, never quite achieving his full potential. Then there's Hillary – the one national figure who seems to be writing her own story, chapter by chapter, without worrying about stock figures or stereotypes. Love her or loathe her, she's an original.

 

And then there's Ron Paul. No, I don't think he's going to be president. I doubt if he'd make it long as a Rotary Club president. For his stretch of Texas outback, he's the kind of citizen legislator that we all know, deep down, is what Madison and Hamilton had in mind, with all their messy quirks and contentiousness, ideally cancelling each other out in extremes through the true melting pot designed into the American experiment, Congress itself.

 

For some, immersed in the politics of the day, Rep. Paul sounds like some old crank utterly out of touch with reality and his district, and what they need him to do in Washington, let alone out on the stump running quixotically for President. But what he sounds like, to me, is Davy Crockett.

 

Col. David Crockett was a three term Representative from Tennessee, although his reputation is more associated with Texas in the public mind. As Rep. Crockett, he is said to have given a speech on the floor of the House, known to history as “Not Yours To Give,” telling the story of his encounter with a constituent named Horatio Bunce. You can easily find a copy online searching with Crockett and Bunce and the speech’s title. Did events happen exactly as this account puts it? Probably not, but it’s the continuing popularity of the speech that intrigues me.

 

And when you read that speech, you’ll think you’re hearing Ron Paul. And when you search for it, and see how many websites proudly carry a copy of it, you might see why this story is not just history.

 

Who will win in 2012? I've no track record to speak of national elections; my own history is one of support and campaigning for folks like Dick Lugar and John Anderson. You'll recall their administrations fondly, I'm sure.

 

But even as I count out Ron Paul as a credible national candidate, I think the fact that he has the profile he does says something about the story being written politically right now, something about how people are starting to feel about "what Washington can do for you." Sure, air traffic control, national defense, maybe even food & drug regulation (sorry, Ron, you're just wrong there), but federal guidelines that ban bake sales at Granville Middle School? How about "Not Yours To Take."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your political narrative at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 10-1

Faith Works 10-1-11

Jeff Gill

 

An Open Letter to Church Leaders

___

 

Dear church leaders of all sorts, lay and ordained:

 

I'm writing this to respectfully ask, or suggest, or at least give a heads-up to you, for the consideration of the following list of what are not really possibilities, but almost certain probabilities.

 

Can you look at your congregation as it is today, and then envision what it means you need to be doing now (not later, not soon, but now) to deal with the following…

 

Church newsletters in the not-to-distant future will not be viable forms of communication for you. Postal rates will continue to skyrocket, especially for the kind of mailing that we call a "church newsletter." How will you replace that?

 

People will simply not have money or checkbooks with them when they come to church, especially if they're under the age of 60. How does the offering time in worship work, and what does it do to special appeals, let alone the general fund, when that already developing trend becomes the new normal?

 

Most people who read the Bible will do so on their smart phones, tablets, or e-readers. How does this impact worship and Sunday school or Bible study time? Maybe not much, or maybe it's an opportunity to create new relationships between parishoners and the Bible itself, but it's a change that, again, is already happening.

 

(And then what do you present to high school graduates or 6^th graders? Still a "symbolic" hard-copy Bible?)

 

Your congregation, even above age 65, is starting to abandon landlines. Cell phones are being displaced by smart phones (see Bible note above) which are used more for non-phone call related activities & communication than they are for saying "Hello, did I wake you up?" How do your phone trees and directories work when most congregational communication is happening through Facebook group page postings, or Twitter? (Oh, you didn't know that e-mail, yes, e-mail, is being seen as an "old person" way to communicate?)

 

What happens to staffing if new federal law says any employee of 12 hours or more a week has to have health insurance? This is a bit more of a stretch, because no one can figure out where federal mandates and state worker comp guidelines are going to go.

 

Likewise, what happens to your church kitchen if state and county health codes become even tighter on "public feeding" guidelines? Yes, that might well include potluck dinners.

 

More generally, how does your budget look if a) the parsonage/housing allowance disappears, b) charitable deductions vanish from the tax codes, and c) your parish has to start paying property taxes? I'm not recommending or happy about that (non-profits of any sort shouldn't pay property taxes in my opinion, and I can defend that, but it's a whole column itself), but trends are heading that way. If you doubt me, ask your property committee about "watershed assessments" and look at what we've now integrated into the annual paperwork flow. It's all in place but the final addition of some level of property tax billing on that line, now empty.

 

None of this is meant as an apocalyptic or crisis-mongering set of questions. Each likely impact will come with nuances difficult to anticipate, but pretty much all of the areas I've noted are changes already percolating into view.

 

Pretending they aren't happening, or bemoaning their occurrence, is not going to change the fact that things just won't be the same, and that's the one thing that's always been true.

 

Has your faith community stopped to reflect on these developments, and put together specific strategies for dealing with them? I could go on, but that's enough to chew on through the end of 2011.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he's seen a few changes in church life – tell him about yours at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 9-24

Faith Works 9-24-11

Jeff Gill

 

My Strong Deliverer

___

 

One of these days

We all will stand in judgment for
Every single word

That we have spoken

 

Mac Powell of the contemporary Christian group "Third Day" has become one of my favorite theologians. When he writes and sings lyrics, there are layers below the surface that reward continued prayerful reflection.

 

"Revelation" is another song whose lyrics just jolted me up out of my seat the first time I heard it, not that it's saying anything preachers haven't been saying for generations.

 

In the same way, "Trust in Jesus" has nothing really new in it. Call it "the old, old story," but the side of the story that has a cutting edge on it.

One of these days we all will stand before the Lord
Give a reason for everything we've done…

 

The idea of having to give a reason for everything I've done, even for all I did yesterday, is not appealing. OK, it's terrifying. If this makes no sense to you, feel free to move on to the car ads (but why do you want a new car?).

 

And no less bracing is the image of having to stand before one wiser and more knowledgeable than me and hear some of the stupid stuff I've thought and said, let alone try to remain upright before an ultimately wise, infinitely powerful One (and to those who don't think anything other than physical decay happens after death: why are you still reading, anyhow? Is it what W.C. Fields said when caught reading the Bible – "I'm looking for loopholes!").

 

Almost every human culture has some element of "judgment" in it, whether in the next life, or in a returning life as with reincarnation. The idea that the things you do just now have a lasting impact whose consequences are still, in some meaningful sense, yours. In environmental terms, the phrase is "we all live downstream." In a cosmic or spiritual sense, we can't just walk away from our actions.

 

When people start cracking on Christianity, of whatever denomination, for having "created" guilt, my inner anthropologist says "uh, no." The human condition in folktale, mythology, and legend always tells us that the ratty slippers we throw over the mudbrick wall will come back, that the old man at the crossroads we were so rude to will turn out to be a king, or that a weeping swan can become a glorious princess.

 

The particular Christian spin on this is called "the Last Trump," the "End of Days," or "Judgment Day." We say, with varying emphases, that our ultimate destiny has something to do with a final appearance before God's presence, "the Great White Throne" next to the crystal sea as Revelation has it.

 

Jack Chick says it's a movie, but he was a big fan of "This Is Your Life."

 

Unless you're of the "we're just a meat sack of chemical interactions" persuasion, it's hard to avoid some kind of mental picture like that, whether you're a Bible reader (or Jack Chick tract reader) or not. And the truth is, if I'm judged by any sort of reasonable standard, after one viewing, my story is fit only for the trash, kind of like after watching a DVD of "Ishtar."

And what I've done is

Trust in Jesus
My great Deliverer
My strong Defender
The Son of God

 

This is why we keep talking about this Jesus fellow. His story, in brief, is to come and stay long enough to make it clear a) he's speaking directly for the Eternal One, b) he will prove it by rising from a shameful, unambiguous death to equally startling, certain new life, and c) he promises to speak for us when we have nothing to say for ourselves.

 

Thank you, Mac, for reminding me how simple that story is.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 9-17

Faith Works 9-17-11

Jeff Gill

 

Back to Church Sunday: For You?

___

 

Tomorrow, Sept. 18, is "Back to Church Sunday."

 

You may ask, "Sez who?"

 

Well, it's fairly unashamedly a promotional campaign by Lifeway Christian Resources, a publishing house and Christian bookstore chain that is a ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention. Their materials are used by a wide variety of evangelical and mainline Protestant churches.

 

This is obviously a win-win approach, since churches want to invite people to come, and Lifeway knows that if more people come to church, they'll sell more Bibles, books, and other media.

 

Lifeway is also a ministry, and as their president, Thom Rainer points out that in studies, it appears that only 2% of regularly attending worshipers invite someone to come to their church over a year, and over 80% of unchurched people say they are very to somewhat likely to say "yes" if someone were to invite them.

 

For those as challenged by math as I am sometimes, Rainer helpfully notes a little further on that this means 98% of committed Christians never invite anyone to church during a year. Ouch.

 

So whatever your denomination, this is a situation that it's good to have backup for, and the "Back to Church Sunday" effort includes a video you may well have already seen on Facebook.

 

It includes a delightful list of reasons why people don't go to church, and possible answers, including my favorite pairing: Reason – it's full of hypocrites! Answer from an amiable burly pipefitter – there's always room for one more!

 

The tagline is simple: Invite someone.

 

So I'd argue (and suspect Thom Rainer wouldn't dispute) that "Back to Church Sunday" is aimed as much inside the church as it is outside. "Invite someone" is an exhortation not to the unchurched, but to the faithful; to phrase a bit differently, and less diplomatically, "Why in heaven's name aren't you?"

 

There's the tricky conversation that is far beyond any one Christian resource firm or coaching process. It's tricky, but it's awfully simple. Why aren't people who are members constantly WANTING to invite people to church?

 

Phrased that way, there are a few obvious possible answers. One is: people I meet wouldn't really like it there. OK, so why do you? Is what you like something no one else likes? Huh.

 

Or, more dangerously, most people I meet I'm not sure I'd want at my church. Urrrgh. Hopefully it's not that.

 

The usual suspect is the guilty answer: if I ask, and they don't want to, then it will make it awkward for us at a) work, b) bridge club, c) the bar (huh?), or d) in my neighbor's house. Sort of like in high school, where you want to ask someone out, but until you do, it's not like they've said no, but once you've asked, it can't be taken back.

 

And that's hard. I truly don't mean to mock. There's worrying about looking like "one of THOSE Christians" at work, for whom the only subject of conversation is why you should go to their church (and there's really not that many of them), and there's the simple fear of rejection, which I think is the larger obstacle for most.

 

So the simple need, and kudos to Lifeway for helping provide some, is for enough motivation to push within us against that adolescent fear of getting a "no," or even a brush-off, from someone.

 

This is a morning paper, so let me hope that you might just read this, and have an opportunity before the day is over to invite someone, and bring them back to church for this Sunday, and maybe a bit more.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 9-15

Knapsack 9-15-11

Jeff Gill

 

Steps to nowhere, or from somewhere

___

 

We laid Robert Thomas to rest a few weeks ago at Centenary.

 

He was a pillar of the earliest, the 8 am service, and his family is woven back into the history of the village.

 

Pastor Steve noted that his first visits with Bob and his mother was at their home just past Tannery Hill, one door east of Minnie Hite Moody's house. The Thomas home wasn't built in 1809 with foundation stones from Alligator Mound a thousand years old, but it was where his father practiced the veterinary arts for what seems like most of the last century.

 

Dr. Thomas is gone, his wife died with her son living there so she could stay at home to the end, then it was torn down as the westernmost part of what became the St. Edward's property. Only the steps up from the sidewalk and a bit of wall remain, but you can see right where the Thomas home and barn beyond once were.

 

A common refrain at a few recent memorial services I've attended (or presided at) has been the passing of an era, the loss of what once was. "Old Granville" is going and New Granville is hurtling down the newly widened expressway.

 

Perhaps. There are new faces at parent meetings, or filing variances with the Board of Zoning and Building Appeals, where I realize with shock that I'm now the second most senior member of the panel, even though I feel like the rankest newcomer.

 

Having a historian's ear, I pick up stories, and being a storyteller at heart, I like to tell them. No doubt I change them a bit, rounding the corners as most talespinners do, and occasionally filing off the serial numbers like a thief (names changed to protect the guilty, and all that).

 

What I've noticed, though, as I tell my stories, is that those of the Old Granville often start with entering the village as a newcomer: cresting the hill south of town on Rt. 37 and seeing the Swasey steeple for the first time, riding across Clear Run in an ox cart from the east, skirting the valley of Raccoon Creek on horseback.

 

We all came here, except the Native people, and even there we tell the story of a fluted point 10,000 years old, found below a mound on the edge of today's city limits, a connection to those heroic first explorers, the Indian hunters gently walking across the land in search of mastodon and mammoth, walking the retreating glacier's edge on their epic journey from Asia into a New World from the west.

 

Today the newest arrivals are likely to come from the west, whether in a taxi from Port Columbus or with a moving van down Rt. 661 or whatever number we're putting on that road for now.

 

The old, old story of Granville is of an endless parade of new arrivals, and the ones who got here first waiting along Broadway to tell them where the class lists are posted, which flavor of frozen custard is best, or why there's three steps up from the sidewalk into a patch of grass east of town.

 

Look out, you'll soon be an oldtimer yourself if you're not careful; crackerbarrel and pipe optional.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him an old-time tale at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 9-10

Faith Works 9-10-11

Jeff Gill

 

Remembering a Day Like No Other

___

 

Tomorrow the tenth anniversary of 9-11 falls on a Sunday, and doubtless many churches will include moments of remembrance and prayer looking back on that day.

 

Later in the day, Sunday afternoon at 4:00 pm, a block east of Courthouse Square, Trinity Episcopal Church will host what's sometimes called a "Blue Mass," a memorial liturgy based on the burial service and communion celebration of The Episcopal Church's "Book of Common Prayer." It is open to the public, but is especially intended for members of the police and fire services, and their family members.

 

Part of the worship and commemoration is a combined choir, including not only folks from Trinity but also out of St. James Episcopal in Zanesville, St. John's Episcopal from Lancaster, and First Methodist Church here in Newark.

 

If you are looking for an interfaith prayer service, the Ohio Council of Churches and the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio are convening a gathering in the Statehouse Atrium also at 4:00 pm on Sunday in Columbus. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian groups will participate.

 

Another combined chorus will lift up a Community Service of Remembrance at 7:00 pm in Swasey Chapel of Denison University, in Granville. Faure's "Requiem" will provide the basic structure for the time of memory and prayer, with 60 community members ready to work together to provide a solemn, yet hopeful note to close the tenth anniversary day.

 

The performance of the choral work will end with prayers for peace from a number of world religions, and a time for reflection in silence, focused on service to others…a point of unity among the religious traditions of the world.

 

We come to this point, this grim anniversary, with politics and conflict echoing around the world and causing all of us, I think, to crave some silence along with a few well chosen words. Some say it's been only an escalation of hostility and violence since that terror-stained day, and they grieve the world that was lost.

 

I believe we should grieve those who died at the hands of vicious criminals, and honor those who ran towards the smoke and flames to serve others, but my grief for the world of September 10^th is fairly limited.

 

I do not believe God, not the God I worship, wanted 9-11 to happen, or needed it to occur to bring something better out of it. What I do believe God does is work through our pain and our suffering, using the bent nails that we would toss aside to build something better…and when we smash that, God patiently stoops to pick up the pieces and invite us to build again. I believe in miracles, but I also believe that God has chosen some fairly strict criteria in self-limitation for when those may happen, for reasons that are both beyond me, but also make more sense with every passing year.

 

I know when there are times that I'd like to be able to call on what I might call "supranatural" intervention, God does not respond as I would like. When people jump from flames and suffocating smoke, into a hurtling abyss. When priests ministering to the dying are struck by collapsing steel, killing them as well. When you know, you just know there are stairwells being climbed by gasping men in turnout gear, climbing up, as you watch on TV when the towers fall.

 

When friends lose their only remaining child to cancer,;when age takes memory and mind and leaves only motion without meaning; when parents turn away from their own children right in front of me, and cannot be convinced to try again to love.

 

If I were God, I would do things differently, or so I'm saying when I wish things were so. Yet I wonder at what I do not know, or understand, and then I see . . .

 

That they did run up those stairs, knowing what could, would happen; that arms carried those whose legs had given out beyond the ring of debris; that thousands dug through "the pile" long after any survivor might remain buried; that love shone forth in startling ways like the lights which shone up over Manhattan in earlier remembrances. Reaching towards the sky, into the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

 

There's still so much sin and brokenness in the world, and I wish God would wipe that away, too, but then what would be left? We again pick up the pieces, and in so doing start to heal our broken hearts.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story of light shining in the darkness at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 9-3

Faith Works 9-3-11

Jeff Gill

 

What is a Powwow?

___

 

 

This weekend, where Newark and Heath meet, a gathering of Native Americans will take place, called a "Powwow."

 

On the grounds of the Great Circle, part of the Newark Earthworks, just off to one side of the 2,000 Native achievement, a space for dancing and singing will be set apart.

 

The host organization, the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio, has held these gatherings for almost 30 years, with the gate proceeds helping maintain their presence on the south side of Columbus. In that neighborhood where a relocated population of Native peoples came together from a variety of tribal backgrounds, many following work during and after World War II, a woman named Selma Walker put together a community center that is a home for a variety of educational and service organizations, recovery group meetings, and a food pantry.

 

Her daughter, Carol Welsh, lives here in Licking County with her husband Mark, and she is now the director of NAICCO. The two of them work to manage and promote the center, and they have been continuing the tradition of annual Memorial Day & Labor Day weekend Powwows at the Franklin County Fairgrounds, over in Hilliard.

 

This year, with the support and co-operation of the Licking County Convention & Vistors Bureau (who staff the museum by the opening of the Great Circle, just off of Rt. 79), and the Newark Earthworks Center of OSU's Newark Campus, they have come to visit Licking County.

 

The last "official" gathering of Native people on the site to encamp and sing and dance was in . . . 1889. Why 1889? That's because Buffalo Bill Cody's "Wild West Show" was performed inside the Great Circle when it was still the Licking County Fairgrounds, and as a handbill for the show said, the entourage included the "largest delegation of wild Indians ever brought east."

 

Cody said in the Newark Advocate of the Newark Earthworks that they were "the most wonderful mounds in existence." Sadly, no one asked the Indian contingent their opinion, a group that probably included Sitting Bull himself.

 

I said "official" because there was a later gathering, and an "unofficial" encampment at the Great Circle in 1992. The Ohio Historical Society, owners and managers of the site since 1933, had approved an archaeological dig to slice a section of the mound to determine the stages of construction, and to try to narrow down the date after which the enclosure was built.

 

Some Native people were concerned that this act had the potential to disrespect the site, and did not have sufficient input and oversight from their viewpoint, so an encampment sprang up for most of the dig, with archaeologists (full disclosure, including me!) working as Native people from around central Ohio keeping a watchful presence, including a prayer circle.

 

For some of those Native guardians, this was their first visit to the Great Circle, and they came away from the experience both having heard a bit more about what archaeologists were after (we weren't searching for treasure or bones, but data), and having shared their worldview with respectful listeners (I met people I've gotten to work with for the succeeding twenty years). Relationships with the place, and with people began.

 

We don't all agree even now, except that the place is important, and meaningful, and a proper setting to reflect on Nature, our lives, and community. At a Powwow, the sound of the drum is meant to give everyone who hears a connection to the heart of creation, and while there will be spiritual perspectives around the circle that don't agree, the heart of a Powwow is respect and thankfulness, to each other, and to the One who created us.

 

The best way to understand what goes on at a Powwow is to visit one, and all are invited this weekend to the dance circle next to the Great Circle Museum, just outside of the earthwork itself. Grand entry is at 1:00 & 7:00 pm on Saturday & Sunday, and  at 1:00 pm on Monday. The charge is $7 for day entry, $13 for a weekend pass, and entry is just $3 seniors & students.

 

You can come to watch, to hear the drum and the singers, to eat (the food is always good); there are opportunities for everyone to dance when invited by the master of ceremonies, who does a marvelous job of explaining each portion of the Grand Entry. Drum and flute playing contests along with the dancers themselves will give you memories to last a lifetime, and the conversations along the vendor booths may cause you to join in a circle of relationship that goes far beyond even this awe-inspiring site.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he will be in the Newark Earthworks Center booth most of the weekend when he's not giving tours of the Great Circle! After Monday, he will see knapsack77@gmail.com but he will tweet @Knapsack all weekend.

Knapsack 9-1

Notes From My Knapsack 9-1-11

Jeff Gill

 

A shadow on every clear blue sky

___

 

One morning at Scout camp, as we walked down to the dining hall for breakfast, another one of the adult leaders looked up at a deep blue, cloudless sky, turned to me and said "Every time I see a sky like this, I think of 9-11."

 

He's not the only one, is he?

 

Meanwhile, all around us were young men who were one or two or three years old on that beautiful September day. My own son has only the dimmest memories of watching his parents watching the replay that night at home, not of the attacks themselves and their immediate aftermath.

 

It's similar to the fact that I really don't recall when Kennedy was shot, but I have distinct recollections of watching the funeral in black-and-white with my quietly weeping mother, seeing John-John salute his father's casket as it passed (yes, I just turned 50, thanks for asking).

 

Joyce and I were more than three years away from moving to Granville, and she wasn't yet working at Denison, but I was driving to the college from Newark when I began to understand that something had happened that day.

 

The morning had been taken up with a lengthy board meeting at Second Pres for the jail ministry, and as president there were a number of dangling threads still distracting my thinking as I got into my car, and got on Rt. 16 to meet Dave Ball in Slayter Center before a Granville Ministerium meeting at noon.

 

So with my mind stuck between two projects, it only slowly dawned on me that while I had WOSU, the NPR station on my radio, I was listening to Peter Jennings of ABC. It wasn't until I got off at Granville Road that I started to wonder about the length of the news story, that was apparently about some kind of readiness drill in Washington, or New York.

 

It wasn't until I saw Swasey Chapel through the trees across Clear Run that I realized that, quite literally, "this is no drill," and that something unimaginable had not been imagined, but had happened. Today.

 

And once I parked and entered the lower level of Slayter, I saw crowds packed around the overhead TVs, made up of students for whom the skyline of Manhattan was part of their home landscape, and we watched together as first one, then the other of the World Trade Center towers fell. The murmured conversations came to a halt, then began as a halting attempt to find words which tended, for all of us, to trail off into uncertainty.

 

Dave and I went on down the hill to First Presbyterian, where our agenda for the day of housing and homelessness got set aside, and we planned a prayer service for that evening, not knowing yet even what we were praying for, other than peace.

 

I left for home, glad to have had a roomful of pastors to pray with, and to have borrowed the bones of what we planned there, to take back and use to lead a prayer service for the Hebron community. Not six hours later, I stood before as crowded a congregation as I would ever see inside that sanctuary, and leaned on those colleagues from a distance as I led us all in prayer.

 

We still search for words, and support, as we think about that day, now ten years on.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 8-27

Faith Works 8-27-11

Jeff Gill

 

Stupid things I thought ten years ago

___

 

A bit less than ten years ago, I was wrong.

 

Yes, I've been wrong since then, too. And before that.

 

In the wake of the tragic events of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, I was quite certain that one outcome would be a change in the political and social climate.

 

We had just finished a summer full of shark attack hype and groundless speculation about a young woman who had disappeared in Washington, DC; the Chandra Levy case was then conflated into a rehashing of the earlier intern-related Capitol area news of the previous decade which had soaked up an immense amount of political time and energy with the hem of a "little blue dress."

 

I thought, and said out loud and in print, that we all would find ourselves being a little more thankful, and little less obsessed with trivia, and a whole lot more committed to the common good, after seeing the drama of September 11, 2001 play out in front of us. We'd heard the sobbing last phone calls from people trapped in the Twin Towers, counted up the steps climbed by first responders up towards their sacrificial doom, and we'd seen the impassive faces of the perpetrators glare back at us as a challenge to our national spirit, and our resolve.

 

It was such a searing, heart-wrenching experience for Americans, there was no way that it wouldn't turn us towards each other in newly caring, co-operative, compassionate ways. You know, like we've been experiencing since 2001.

 

Hah, he said ruefully.

 

Ten years on, and it's tempting to make the same mistake by going in the opposite direction: we're doomed, this is hopeless, never will we learn. But no.

 

First, churches just can't spend much time worrying about our national culture. 24 hour cable is still trying to scare us into not changing the channel, the political parties want goodies from everyone's pockets to then give to their chosen friends, and no repetition of "We Are the World" is going to change the fact that most pop culture is, was, and always will be largely an endeavor in praise of selfishness.

 

Fads are almost without exception either the direct product of, or the indirect result from forces manipulating the marketplace to advance a message and usually to make money. Join the fad, and you've signed yourself up to help sell something, one way or another. Fight the fad, and you may well find yourself fulfilling the non-Biblical adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity if they spell your name right."

 

Second, people of faith have very little reason to expect transformation of hearts stemming from current events. Show me anywhere in the Bible where a major event in the world (deaths of kings, edicts of emperors, invasions by the opposition) triggered a widespread change of assumptions or attitudes. There was a census that seemed to play a role in triggering events, but the census itself didn't count for much.

 

If souls are to turn, or in the quaint old term "repent," it's only going to happen because someone stands up and points one way and says clearly "this is what's at the end of that road," then points the other way and adds "and there's where you want to be heading, and here's why . . ."

 

Repentance, "metanoia" in Greek, or simply "turning" is what happens as the result of a vision, clearly articulated, and consciously chosen. We need a gracious gift of awareness wrapped around us that makes the right choice possible, but beyond that grace, there is no chance that large numbers of people will make a course change in the right direction just because of one event in another direction.

 

Or at least they might for a little ways, but another loud boom from another point on the compass is just as likely to stampede us all back the way we just left.

 

There are a few hopeful learnings we can gain from the last decade, and some lessons we might gain from looking closely at the incredible sacrifices made that day, in the air and on the ground, in the face of such implacable evil. I want to talk about them in the next couple of weeks, but first I wanted to say this:

 

I was wrong.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; there's no need to send him more examples of when he's been wrong to knapsack77@gmail.com. He's sometimes wrong @Twitter under the tag Knapsack, too.

Faith Works 8-20

Faith Works 8-20-11

Jeff Gill

 

Jesus goes back to school

___

 

 

Some began this past week, some are heading off in the next few days, but it's "back to school" for the community.

 

School supply lists have been checked, and many churches in the Licking County report anxious requests for assistance in getting the full panoply of pencils, markers, notebooks, and backpacks have been at all time high levels.

 

The commentary I've heard and would pass along with a confirmatory shrug of "it's as good an explanation as I can imagine" is that it's not that things are so much worse, as it is that families aren't seeing any improvements in wages or job stability (many low income families work multiple jobs both at the same time, and through the year, so a month's extension or reduction is often a major issue).

 

Such families have adjusted their expenses and assumptions down as far as they can, and have borrowed money from family and friends where feasible, and the reality right now is that there's simply no stretch left in the rubber band or the bootstraps. They have nowhere else to turn, especially for paper goods and other housewares which food stamp assistance can't cover.

 

In that sort of environment (again, I don't know this is an absolute description, it's just what I'm hearing from ministry & social service friends and associates), school supplies can be a source of stress far beyond clothes, uniform or no, or even beyond getting your family fed.

 

When everything is right on the ragged edge, an unexpected bill is huge, no matter what the size. Hearing that, most of us think about a car breakdown or medical crisis, but school supplies are a once a year thing that can't be covered with hand-me-downs or a loaner from a neighbor. You can argue it's something predictable enough that families should budget for it all year, but it makes sense to me that a budget close to the bone doesn't often consider something like what's on the third grade list for your second grader back in January or March.

 

A family that considers an $8 pizza a splurge suddenly runs into a $40 or $65 expense in the doldrums of August, and it can feel like the wheels are coming off.

 

This is why the churches and groups which do a school supply drive are finding themselves both beleaguered, but also blessed. There's a load taken off of a mom who is able to meet her child's needs that's much more than the weight of a fully loaded backpack. It's hope, and a sense that you're not in this struggle alone.

 

I mention all of this because I know the first couple of churches in my general orbit of connection were completely emptied in short order when they announced school supply assistance. There are many more planning to offer such help in the next couple of weeks, and they may be your church, your congregation's community center, or the folks across the street you do VBS with.

 

If you hear they are collecting supplies, and you have a chance to pick up an armload of materials when you're at the store, or just need donations to make some targeted purchases to fill up some niches on the lists, they're serious, and the need is very serious.

 

And seriously: if you wanted to put a Bible at the bottom of those backpacks you were giving out, there's nothing wrong with that . . . and you might have just ensured, with everything else you put in that knapsack, that the parent or child receiving it might just read it in a different light.

 

Because you have shown them, in a way, that you're willing to walk alongside of them. Which changes everything.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your back-to-school story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 8-13

Faith Works 8-13-11

Jeff Gill

 

Lost origins hidden in plain sight

___

 

Last week I laid out my interest in the architectural & organizational setting of the Harry Potter books in Hogwarts, an imaginary place with some very specific real world roots.

 

If you visit Oxford or Cambridge or St Andrews in Great Britain, you are visiting both the origins of the modern university system for higher education, and three ancient monastic establishments as well, an architectural vernacular directly reflected in the general layout of Hogwarts itself.

 

You can easily see at graduation ceremonies the academic robes and mortarboards which point back to medieval monastic tradition, and at a place like Denison University there are a number of official occasions when the faculty wear their robes complete with hoods and other ceremonial headgear (depending on the particular traditions behind the institution where they got their PhDs), all designed to keep the dripping of dank stone ceilings from dampening your head, or your spirit.

 

Simple black monks robes were part of everyday wear for all undergraduates at one time: Oxford required academic "gowns" on students for attending class as late as the 1960s, and still are mandatory at test taking time or for visiting officials of the university, with gowns for dinner up to individual college tradition. The term "town and gown" has to do with the easily identified distinction between students in black robes and the everyday citizens of a college town.

 

All of this is because the great educational establishments of Europe began as places to educate clergy; they developed advanced degrees (master of theology, doctor of philosophy) and began to have their own officials parallel to those found in a monastic establishment (provosts and chancellors and deans).

 

Theology was then known as "the queen of sciences," a comment that would get you a sharp laugh or an angry look in a science department today, wondering what kind of odd joke you're making.

 

What is still anchored in science & technology today is first the monastic structure of undergraduate degrees; freshman or first-year, sophomore aka "wise fool," junior and then senior, four years leading to a baccalaureate or "bachelor's" degree signifying the "laurel" of honors in learning. Additionally, there is another, even more important element of Christian faith and tradition which supports learning and scientific advancement.

 

From the 12^th century foundations of learning, there was much debate over the nature of reality, and questions of the Divine Nature which created and maintains it. Much of the ancient world saw nature as capricious, changeable, and constantly in flux, with the only consistency coming from the orbit of the planets through the constellations of the zodiac, or nervously encouraged through our sacrifices to nudge cosmic forces into paths we could predict. Unpredictable outcomes meant that the sacrifices had somehow changed the balance of the cosmos in the wrong way.

 

Into this hyper-complex, Ptolemaic world of epicycles and wheels within wheels, the theology of western Christendom said "No." The Church said (in Latin, the language which could cross the many national borders and local tongues which fragmented the remnants of the old Roman Empire) that God is consistent, coherent, and wants us to understand clearly how the book of Nature works as much as we were to understand how the Good Book taught us how to live.

 

So on one hand, scholars began to delve into the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible (with some unexpected outcomes, granted), and on the other, monks and friars began to test Nature, looking for immutable laws which were always and everywhere applicable.

 

You could argue that it was this commitment to finding Natural Laws which gave the Christian West the basis for their unprecedented leap into science & engineering proficiency that burst into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; that argument continues, but what doesn't hold up at all is the idea that the Renaissance & Enlightenment were entirely movements that occurred in spite of religious faith, let alone in opposition to it.

 

We do see a split at work in today's world, not only between the scientific worldview and much of what is understood to be a religious worldview of almost any sort, but also between science and the humanities. Some of that division is more apparent than actual, not so much the lived experience of scholars as how it is seen & discussed (I know many religious scientists, for instance), but the problem persists.

 

Which is where I find it very interesting to replay the Harry Potter saga as a sort of allegory, with magic & wizardry as science & technology. When Harry & Hermione stand in Godric's Hollow and look at two tombstones, each with a Biblical quotation on them, they don't recognize the words as such.

 

Yet the words speak to them, and they yearn to understand them.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story you love at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 8-26

Notes From My Knapsack 8-26-11

Jeff Gill

 

A funny name, a fascinating history

___

 

Every so often, you may find yourself having to explain something to out of town, out of state friends and families.

 

"Licking County? Really?"

 

Like many language shifts, the culture and our sense of what's ludicrous, silly, or vaguely off has changed over the centuries.

 

Over 200 years ago, quite a few Licking Creeks and Licking Rivers were named across the United States. It appears that we are the only Licking County, but the watershed that gave us our name, when we were peeled off of Fairfield County in 1808, has cousins in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

 

The origin, most folks know, is in salt licks. When you can identify a spot animals gather, you have an edge in hunting. Today some hunters still set out salt blocks to draw game to a particular spot. Salt licks have a potential commercial application in a frontier setting, where salt supplies have to come over the mountains from long distances, and cost accordingly. A local salt supply can be a real boon for a settlement.

 

Usually, you have less of an exposed area of mineral salts (which would dissolve quickly if exposed, anyhow) than you have a spring with a salt taste, stemming from a geologic source deep below the ground which is carried up by the artesian spring in question. Animals who crave salt in their systems will go out of their way to drink it, just as salty food doesn't taste too strongly salted if you've been out and working up a sweat. The body wants and needs a certain amount of salt, low sodium diets being a modern issue of too much all the time.

 

So a "Salt Fork" or "Salt Springs" is another indication of pioneer interests, and we have plenty of those around Ohio and beyond. Running right through Granville's own Spring Valley Nature Preserve is Salt Run.

 

Currently, the Granville Township Trustees, the Granville Recreation District, and some faculty & students from Denison University are working at returning Salt Run to a more natural flow. A low dam and retaining wall are almost all that remain of the old Spring Valley pool, and they are in the process of removal, which will be followed by some careful planting and un-scaping to give the natural plants and animals a chance to return and thrive.

 

Between the picnic shelter and Salt Run are two low parallel walls of earth. Preliminary research shows that they date to an attempt in 1820 to sluice off some of the Salt Run water and evaporate or cook down useable salt from the creek, which ended fairly quickly when it was determined that the energy it took to reduce salt from solution was not cost effective. There's also another low earthwork further south, deeper in the woods, that has been dated to the Middle Woodland period (c. 2,000 years ago) which may have been related to salt production as well.

 

During the research on all this, I went back to the question "how did Licking County get named?" The earliest note, preceding many later mentions of a conveniently unchallengable possibility of licks in the "Great Buffalo Swamp" which has been submerged under Buckeye Lake since the 1830s, is in the Journal of Christopher Gist, from 1751.

 

He enters what is now Licking County from the Coshocton area, cutting across the eastern half of the region, but with more to say, possibly told him by the noted trader George Croghan or one of the other members of his party already familiar with the landscape, that from "Licking Creek about 6 M from the Mouth, are several Salt Licks, or Ponds, formed by little Streams or Dreins (sic) of Water, clear but of a blueish Color, & salt Taste the Traders and Indians boil their meat in this Water, which (if proper Care be not taken) will sometimes make it too salt to eat." (Wednesday 16 January 1751)

 

Nowadays, the mouth of a river would be the end of it; for the modern Licking River, that's in Zanesville, and six miles up from that barely gets you to Dillon Reservoir, and there's no story that I can find of salt licks or springs near there.

 

Six miles up from where today's North Fork, South Fork, and the one-time so-called Raccoon Fork come together, as forks of the Licking drainage; six miles up the Raccoon fork of Licking Creek puts you right at where Salt Run empties into the larger stream.

 

It may well be, then, that when you hike at Spring Valley Nature Preserve, you are walking near the source of Licking County's name itself!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 8-6

Faith Works 8-6-11

Jeff Gill

 

The Boy Who Lived, Come To Die

___

 

To say that Harry Potter is a Christ-figure is not exactly a stretch at this point.

 

I don't believe I need a "spoiler alert" anymore to note that Harry Potter dies for others in the final movie, eighth of that series, seventh of the books.

 

And yes, there's a resurrection stone involved (or is that a Resurrection Stone?), but I'll leave it at that for the five of you who haven't made it to see the movie yet.

 

As with Jadis, the evil White Queen of Narnia, there's a nasty glee in Voldemort's noseless face, upon finding a point of vulnerability in goodness, which turns out to have hidden deep within that wound a possibility of transformation and inversion which their greed and selfishness kept them from seeing.

 

For Aslan, the allegorically exact Christ-figure of the Narnia books (and movies), it was the revelation that when a willing victim presented themselves blameless as the blood ransom for a traitor, as did Aslan himself, he knew that "though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know... the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

 

For Voldemort, there was the unexpected outcome of someone, out of love, throwing themselves in front of his Killing Curse. The rebound set in motion the plot of all seven volumes . . . and at the end, has the Dark Lord learned anything? Nope. He's so infatuated with technique, in love with his skill and his own magnificent self, that he can't see how selfless love confounds his charms.

 

Is Harry meant to be Jesus? I'm certain I speak for J.K. Rowling when I say absolutely not. But if you look at most beloved works of narrative art, whether books or movies or even many songs, there is a pivotal figure of sacrifice and transformation, whether it's Syndey Carton in "A Tale of Two Cities," Neo in "The Matrix," or Jean Grey in "The X-Men." The Christ-figure is one of the central plotlines of Western storytelling, just like the ever speeding-up assembly line is a central plot device in TV sitcoms ever since Lucy & Ethel worked at the chocolate factory.

 

What fascinates me is not so much the ways Harry Potter carries the mark of life & death on his body, but the symbolism of the place where he goes to be transformed himself. I refer, of course, to Hogwarts.

 

The boarding school to which all the young students of witchcraft and wizardry are sent is somewhere in the Cumbria-Scotland borders, with a deep loch and dark woods and a rocky promontory on which is set . . .

 

Well, is it a castle? Not exactly. There's not much of traditional castle strongpoint architecture to Hogwarts, as the students and faculty realize in their great battle with the Death Eaters. Hogwarts, frankly, is an old monastery, with a church and refectory and chapter house and cloisters and dormitories all tangled around each other on an isolated perch.

 

And that pensieve. C'mon, folks: you don't have to know much of anything about art & architecture to see that it's a baptismal font. A vessel in which you can reconcile past and future, where time and truth come together.

 

I could go on in this vein, but my main interpretation is this: I'm not saying I'm telling you "what Rowling really meant," but there's a way to read this story that is so comprehensive that I have to say this must have had some kind of place in her subconscious as she wrote.

 

In sum, magic is science & technology. In the wizarding world, and in our own, there are those who quickly and readily speak the involuted language of engineering, mathetmatics. Others may not have the knack, but hard work and support can get them there. Either way, there are those who understand how a piece of plastic that looks like a half empty gum packet holds the entire contents of the Library of Congress, and there's all the rest of us.

 

The world of science has its own traditions and rituals, and is woven into almost every element of our world, but the vast majority of it is effectively invisible to almost all of us. And this inner cosmos of science & technology grew out of the great colleges & universities (Oxford, Cambridge, & St Andrews foremost among them all, let alone in Great Britain), which are themselves outgrowths of a monastic tradition that is all but forgotten, except when we don gowns and mortarboards for academic rituals.

 

(Continued next week!)

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story you love at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Knapsack 7-28

Notes From My Knapsack 7-28-11

Jeff Gill

 

Some Things Change, Some Things Don't

___

 

This week our local Boy Scout Troop is off to summer camp. Huzzah for Troop 65 and Granville Kiwanis, their chartering organization!

 

There's a number of images that some of us might have about what BSA camping looks like, but if you've not been involved for years, or only have some loose, media-related scenes in mind, you may have the wrong picture.

 

My troop loaded up on an old school bus, a not uncommon way for Scouts to roll into camp in the 1970's. Troop buses, sadly, with their distinctive paint schemes and refurbished back ends with shelving and racks for gear, are a thing of the past: even the most well-funded troop can't afford the liability insurance, and they've almost all been retired across the country from sheer practicality.

 

Ask today's adult leaders if they miss the adventure of looking for a part on an antiquated school bus from a breakdown that always happens in a wonderfully awkward situation. Not so much.

 

What you may envision is a group of lads trekking into wilderness, chopping down trees and building their entire site out of lashings right down to the latrine – if they don't get picturesquely lost as do most pseudo-Scout groups in movies.

 

"Leave no trace" has been the watchword for some years in the BSA, actually, and long-term (five or six night) camping, while an annual part of every troop's outdoor program, is either at a Scout camp like Licking County's own Camp Falling Rock, a Scout reservation in a nearby state, or a high adventure program around the country like Philmont, which is a whole different proposition (and another column).

 

So not only are the young men of T-65 going to an established camp with a summer staff and designated troop camp sites, even latrines are changing. Groundwater regulation means that the old pit KYBO's are being phased out in many areas, while composting toilets are more and more common. (The legend is that many early Scout camps used coffee cans from the Kybo brand, hence the name sticking to the outdoor outhouses and "kybo tape" being…you guessed it. Now they say it's an acronym for "keep your bowels open," but you know "the rest of the story.")

 

Adult leadership for our 34 Scouts will be five Scouters; each troop brings their own unit leadership, while the total camp of some 300 has a site staff of 35-40 for dining hall, program areas, aquatics/lifeguards, etc.

 

Every adult present at a residential camp has to go through what's called "Youth Protection Training," an excellent program that can be done online and must be repeated every two years. There is additional training for various unit roles, let alone for summer camp staff.

 

Plus each youth & adult must have a physical form (three pages, lots of detail along with a copy of the insurance card), and then there's the "tour permit," a document that is filed with the council office as to the insurance and safety status of each driver. We're going into Pennsylvania this year, so a tour permit out of county is absolutely mandatory.

 

For all the modern trapping of paperwork and safety, the Scouts will still swim and canoe in a lake, sleep in tents (even if made of space-age fabric and not mildewy canvas), build fires (in approved locations), and burn food which will be eaten enthusiastically. Much has changed, and yet much is still what Baden-Powell and twenty-two British boys did on Brownsea Island in the summer of 1907.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 65. Tell him your camping tale at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 7-30

Faith Works 7-30-11

Jeff Gill

 

Now is the acceptable time

___

 

 

Less than 150 days away.

 

No one will thank me for pointing this out, I know.

 

Christmas is less than 150 days ahead, and every so often I like to mention that in July or so, because if you're going to get a grip on the ears of this rough beast and turn it, like the young boy riding the tiger, you need to start now.

 

If you are perfectly content with how you and your household celebrate Christmas, in décor or gifts or traditions, you may feel free to skip ahead to the ads or the Sports section, and congratulations. . . I think.

 

For many, there's a growing discontent through November and December, sometimes erupting earlier in September when the first decorations show up in stores. We don't quite like how we're celebrating the occasion, not just in "the culture" (whatever that is) or at church, but in our own lives: the area we should be able to best control, and yet end up feeling most out of control there, at home.

 

July & August, pastors and church leaders know, is when the mold is carved, when the ingredients are mixed, when all but the final coat of paint is applied. Cantata music is picked and ordered, pageant scripts are considered, costume parts and craft elements are hunted down like a nimrod looking for his wild boar in the woods for the wassail feast.

 

In a more inobtrusive way, we're doing that as we start to idly think, while browsing catalogs or strolling past storefronts, "Hey, I'll bet Millie would like that for Christmas." And so the rut begins to be worn.

 

Before the rut goes so deep the wagon can't turn, how do you get control of the applecart? Tomorrow I get the chance to preach on this, at least a bit, at Centenary UMC in Granville (8, 9:20, & 11, thanks for asking), and I have some suggestions that are relatively painless and potentially productive. You don't have to swear off all gifts, all decorations, every party, just to get your seasonal celebration back on track.

 

There's the ever-popular "remember that Jesus is the reason for the season," but there's two problems with that approach to redeeming Christmas cheer. One is, it doesn't work very well. Years of putting that slogan on bumper stickers and bookmarks make it clear that it works for those for whom it already works, and just puts a cherry top of guilt on the whole teetering pile of non-Jesus-y Christmas stuff. Or to put it another way, if it was going to work, we'd see it by now.

 

The other problem with "Jesus – the reason for the season" is that, as Christians (I'm talking to us'ns, now), we know that Jesus is the reason for every season, and should be celebrated as having entered our world and our lowly estate on every day. Lots of Christmas season sermons remind us of exactly that; Jesus was born that we might live, and that's gift, pure and simple.

 

So why celebrate Christmas at all? Is making it "a day" let alone "a season" actually a problem in and of itself? It can be, but not necessarily. Our Puritan forebearers suspected it was going to end up like this, and if you read the early Licking County histories (before the return of Civil War veterans with those wacky trees they wanted to put in the parlor, like the fellows in Siegel's regiment had in their camp) – there were basically no Dec. 25 celebrations to speak of here in the early 1800's, other than among German Catholics, and even that was low key.

 

Most of what we call Christmas celebration is less Christian than it is a cultural acknowledgement that winter is hard, and long dark nights are depressing, and we need some feasting and lights and gift-giving just to get through it. When you start to separate out the purely cultural from the faithful, it gets a bit easier to figure out what you must do from what you want to do . . . and then sort out what you have to do, or if you do a'tall.

 

Sort it out from your angle, but start sorting now: what kind of Christmas do you want those around you to remember in years to come? Making memories is a perfectly reasonable frame to put around your own picture of that baby in his manger.

 

Just don't let the frame overwhelm the portrait you're putting on display for others to see. If they only see the frame, it's the wrong choice!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your Christmas memory at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 7-23

Faith Works 7-23-11

Jeff Gill

 

What is familiar may not be reassuring

___

 

 

On vacation last week, my family went to church. No shock there, I trust.

 

This is something I regularly commend to anyone who will listen: I've heard marvelous feedback from young people and seniors alike over the years, in parish ministry and through this column, in how one's own experience of worship is seen afresh by way of going to a service where you're a stranger.

 

What's different, even in small ways, can help us get to grips with what's important. We've got that well-known travel writer Soren Kierkegaard to remind us that worship is fundamentally conducted for an audience of one, that is, God (not a program put on for the benefit of the congregation).

 

When we go to a different service, we don't have any reason to expect things to be the way we're used to, or oriented around our tastes, and when those experiences are subverted, we can get a bit more real about how we tend to want worship to focus on us, not God.

 

On the other hand, we need a service that helps us focus on God, so our choices and responses are part of the picture.

 

Our experience last week, though, surprised me in a way that doubles back on these questions. We were in a tourist-oriented, resort-ish community, with a very young demographic on the streets and behind the counters, but probably an older skew if you came back in February. Either way, the surprise in the service was . . . how unsurprising it was.

 

From the moment we stepped off the sidewalk through the red doors, there was nothing unfamiliar at all. Granted, we were in a neighboring Midwestern state, even if it was a long drive away and there were large boats down the block with masts higher than the steeple. It was a mainline Protestant denomination with which we're familiar, and there was much that would have led you to assume most of what made up the service.

 

But it was just striking how we could have been sitting in a pew, singing these songs, looking at the make-up of the parishoners around us, anywhere right here in Licking County. Drop this church in Kirkersville, St. Louisville, or out towards Croton, and they would have fit right in, let alone if you'd walked out the doors not to fudge shops and beachwear stores, but to Perry or Knox Counties.

 

There's something very comforting and (duh) familiar about singing "How Great Thou Art" or "In the Garden" when far from home, and the prayer time joys and concerns, with a few names changed, are almost certainly the ones you would have heard along Rt. 13 or down Church St. in Newark.

 

Yet the question I think we could ask is: why? Why would an order of worship, and even more so the style of worship, be so identical, across eight hours of driving or four decades of churchgoing? And how is that working for us?

 

To which many sigh wearily, and reply "so the answer to share the gospel is to do everything differently? And if so, how often do we have to change? And to what, exactly?"

 

Actually, not at all. What I think the problem is has to do with not so much our worship patterns, but our understanding of what church is for, let alone worship. If a church is doing mission that is deeply engaged with their local context, and that missional life is woven through the entire life of the church, then it won't be a question of conformity to culture, but a healthy interchange from the everyday work of the church back into the worship life itself.

 

I think of a Franciscan parish among the Navajo/Dineh people, where the art and images of the culture were shaded into the familiar stations of the cross and window art. There's a community center down in Buckeye Lake where lighthouses and lake scenes that tie directly into Bible stories fill the worship space. A church plant we occasionally visit when in a suburban area where we have family has literally built its sanctuary into an office park, the horizontal lines of the space echoing the area in a way that reaches out and embraces the world where they are called to serve.

 

What have you seen while worshiping on the road, whether familiar or unexpected, or even unexpectedly familiar? And what does it say to you about worship?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your wayside worship experiences at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.