Notes From My Knapsack 6-6-18

Notes From My Knapsack 6-6-18

Jeff Gill

 

Five years, and some lessons still coming

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In some ways, you're lucky you haven't heard about Philmont every two weeks for the last five years in this space.

 

Except I suspect you really have been.

 

It will be five years ago next week that a group of Scouts from Granville headed late one night up to Lake Erie, the Amtrak station in Sandusky, and the beginning of a cross-country train trip to New Mexico and the fulfillment of a long standing dream of mine. I got to be part of a backpacking trek with my son, spending ten days in the backcountry traveling around 100 miles up mountains and down valleys at Philmont Scout Ranch.

 

Philmont 2013 also happened to be the 75^th anniversary of the establishment of the place as a high adventure camp for the Boy Scouts of America, a gift of oilman Waite Phillips. Phillips was not the Phillips 66 guy (they were relations), but he made a fortune in the early oil business, he had a taste for the Old West, and a gift for generosity. 2013 was also the 50^th anniversary of the gift that added Baldy Mountain to the acreage, New Mexico's second highest peak at 12,441 feet. We rode the Southwestern Chief to Raton, New Mexico and right into a big summer . . . for forest fires nearby, smoke in the air, strange colors in the sunsets, and massive rearrangement of schedules.

 

The Scout motto is, after all, "Be prepared" and we adapted, adjusted, and overcame our challenges. My son outhiked me most days, but I was also dawdling to take pictures, write down notes in my little pocket booklet, and just to absorb as much of the experience as I could.

 

I think my son appreciated it; at least he said on our last day "Dad, I want to come back in 2038 for the 100^th anniversary!" So he had to have enjoyed it at least a little.

 

For me, getting to the top of Baldy Mountain was a personal achievement, but getting to do it with my son (okay, he got there five minutes ahead of me, but you know what I mean) was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments.

 

The trek as a whole, though, was filled with a bounty of all-of-your-lifetime moments. For instance, I came to a whole new appreciation for water, clean water, drinking water. I literally have never drunk a glass of water the same way since those ten days.

 

And while every crew is different, and our crew had our conflicts and tensions as any group of ten males is likely to have on foot for a hundred miles, we looked out for each other, supported one another, and grew together across those fifteen days of travel and trek and the train back home. I have been involved in community building and leadership all of my life, but since that summer I think about group building and setting collective goals very differently than I did before.

 

And I came to deeply respect the man whose vision gave us this tool for leadership development. Waite Phillips was a gusher of aphorisms, most of them still quite quotable, but one of my favorites will round this reflection out: "What is really important is what you learn after thinking you know it all."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's still processing what he learned on the trail in 2013, and has more to say next time about that trip! Tell him about your road scholarship at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.    

Faith Works 6-2-18

Faith Works 6-2-18

Jeff Gill

 

How long, O Lord? How long?
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Psalms, II Peter, Habakkuk. They all ask it, in different forms, but a similar statement:

 

How long, O Lord? How long?

 

God sees things in the light of eternity. We are a little bit more short-term in our mindset than that, earthly creatures that we are.

 

How long?

 

To us, a year is a long time. To the Lord, a thousand years are like a day, or so the Bible tells us. We lack the perspective of a tree, or a rock, let alone the divine viewpoint of forever. Twenty minutes or two hours wait drives us to distraction, but that's not a long stretch of time in the cosmic view.

 

How long, O Lord?

 

I've now been in parish ministry for over thirty years, and so much has changed in that time. The historian in me makes me often skeptical of those who argue for "it's never been worse!" (or better) but the rate and amount of change in society, within our culture, driven by technology, in the last quarter-century or so, does seem to be without precedent. I reserve the right to disagree with myself later!

 

And this week, I cross a very interesting horizon, for me at any rate. I will have been the pastor of the congregation I serve for more than six years. I have never been at one church for more than six years since I was a child growing up in my hometown congregation. There, I had eighteen years of continuity . . . but as a minister, I've served in a number of churches for four years, once for five, and once before for six. Never have I been part of a congregation as a called preaching and teaching elder in ministry for more than six.

 

If some reading this think "well, he can't keep a job" I would understand! But when I was in seminary, we heard often that the average time at a church for an ordained minister was just over four years. It was even presented as a sort of positive to us, the experience of newness both for the preacher and the people in the church; I've heard more than a few lay leaders in congregations say "really, I'm not sure a minister should stay more than five or six years." And denominational leaders would state, with varying degrees of affirmation or regret, that 4.4 years was a standard tenure for serving clergy.

 

I've done some looking around for research, studies on this in recent years, and according to LifeWay Research this has crept up to six years more recently. In their analysis, I'm on the bubble. There's a mix of opinions and study on this question, and many consultants argue that nothing major can happen to transform a ministry or a congregation until about seven years in service. That makes a great deal of sense to me, actually.

 

In your first two years, you can make all sorts of changes and get away with it. The "honeymoon" it's called. Among experienced preachers, the third year is often called "the year of crisis," because that's when the forces of inertia and resistance start to push back. Make everything the way it had been, or slow up the transition, or just go away – these things do indeed happen around the three year mark. You either start to put down roots, or feel the cold winds of winter settle in around you, blowing your plans into icy frozen pauses.

 

Keep in mind that "average" is as likely to mean half at two or three years and half at ten or twelve. If six years at a church as preacher is the norm, you may find lots of six year tenures, but I suspect you find more short-timers, and a handful of long-term ministries.

 

I'd like to optimistically talk about the role and opportunities of long-term ministry next week . . . if I still can! But as I pass the six year mark into this new territory for me as a minister, I've got a few ideas about what this transition means, not just for the church I'm part of now, but for congregations in general.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's lived here for many years, but has been in a regular pulpit now for six years. Tell him what's changed since 2012 for you in faith formation and leadership development at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter. 

Faith Works 5-26-18

Faith Works 5-26-18

Jeff Gill

 

Memorials across the landscape

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This weekend marks the 150^th anniversary of the formal establishment of Memorial Day.

 

It was begun by General John Logan of Illinois, in his role as head of the nation's largest veteran's organization following the Civil War, the Grand Army of the Republic. He put out "General Order No. 11" on May 5, 1868, asking that all the posts and communities where the GAR was active mark May 30, 1868 as a day to decorate the graves of those who had died in "the late conflict."

 

Terms like "the Civil War" or even "Memorial Day" were not yet set in stone; this weekend only became a federal holiday in 1971, one of the controversial "Monday holidays" established that year. May 30 had been a state holiday in many places all across the United States, more to the North and former Union bastions than in the South.

 

But the roots of Memorial Day go deep, and even into places like Richmond, Virginia. Waterloo, New York is given credit for the first formal ceremony of commemoration to decorate graves and set up memorials in the month of May, starting in 1866; many places had a sort of "Decoration Day" well before the 1860s, a community affair to pull the early spring weeds, plant flowers after the last frost, and generally commune with the dead.

 

"Decoration Day" was the first capital-D name of what Gen. Logan and the GAR started, but Memorial Day it became as World War I and II added their burdens to our roster of the fallen. And in places like Granville, they are thankful they can record a Memorial Day observance by the community in unbroken sequence from the official 1868 beginning.

 

Memorial Day is a solemn observance that focuses on sacrifice, and those who gave "the last full measure of devotion." Veterans Day grew out of World War I's "Armistice Day" on November 11, to salute all who served, but this occasion focuses on the dead, and our intention to honor them with our remembrance, and a renewed devotion to work as communities and as a nation to create a world where such sacrifices must no longer be asked.

 

I'll be in a well-tended cemetery on Monday, and I honor our Veterans Alliance and today's American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars and Vietnam Veterans of America and others who will briskly cover the county, from nearly sunrise to the noontime conclusion of these observances. Even some of our smallest and today least used or visited cemeteries will have an honor guard, a salute, a prayer. Wherever you can go in your area, and stand silently, offering your presence, know that the family and friends of those killed in action appreciate beyond measure all who take the time to be present, and to share in their sorrow.

 

When I ministered in West Virginia, there were in my county a couple of Revolutionary War era markers out in now fallow fields, where settlers fell in raids during the 1770s, or where a frontier outpost once stood and nearby, soldiers were buried in unmarked graves. Each year, because of the example my dad set for me in remembering and marking Memorial Day, I'd get some flowers and go out and mark these 1777 & 1778 decaying monuments.

 

One year, I parked by car by the road and picked my way through the stubble of the field, wondering if it would be plowed this year as it had not the last few. I crested the rise, and came to the marker, about head high with a bronze plaque dating back almost a hundred years itself . . . and at its foot, a bouquet of fresh flowers. No card, no note, but I didn't add one when I placed mine, either. I had no idea who had gotten this same idea, and made the effort to make visible their remembrance.

 

But I know this: I felt much less alone in that field. And to that person, who I pray still takes some flowers this weekend to that spot now many hours away from where I'll be praying with hundreds, I offer my thanks for how we can come together to make a memorial in our hearts, the kind that God promises to preserve forever.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he will be offering prayers at 11 am in Maple Grove Cemetery in Granville for their 150^th Memorial Day. Tell him where you will be for Memorial Day at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes From My Knapsack 5-24-18

Notes From My Knapsack 5-24-18

Jeff Gill

 

150 Memorial Days in Granville

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Monday, the village of Granville will mark our 150^th Memorial Day observance. The parade will step off from Broadway and Main about 10:40 am, head to Maple Grove Cemetery, and at 11:00 am our community will remember those who have lost their lives in this nation's service.

 

150. It's a round number, the sort we mark without wondering why the 149^th or 151^st doesn't get quite the same attention, but one hundred and fifty occasions to do something as a community does seem to call for some sort of public comment.

 

1868 was a year when the Civil War was three full years in the past. Those intervening springtimes had seen cemeteries from Waterloo, New York to Richmond, Virginia welcome family and friends to tend the still fresh graves of their loved ones lost in the battle to preserve the Union. In early America, the tradition of a "decoration day" existed before the 1860s, a time to go to the church yard once the frosts were past and it was safe plant flowers, or just to pull weeds. With the sacrifice of the Civil War, this informal pattern began to become a special sort of day, with communities planning to come together and pray and sing and speak to each other.

 

So it was that on May 5 of 1868, General Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic asked all the members of that nationwide veterans' association to locally observe May 30 as a day to be "designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." He didn't call it Memorial Day, though that term was used fairly early on; most now called it, in capital letters, Decoration Day. As Decoration Day, it quickly became a state holiday around most of the country . . . and believe it or not, Memorial Day was not a federal holiday until 1971, when it also was made a "Monday holiday" along with a few other holiday adjustments. Some of us still have a nod in our hearts and a prayer of our own when the calendar shows May 30, the "traditional" date as Gen. Logan established.

 

I'm honored to be asked back to offer the invocation and benediction for this program, which is indeed our own 150^th in Granville. Other wars have come and gone, seasons of change have passed through, but we all stop whatever else we are doing and come, in subdued and attentive throngs, to honor those who have died in harm's way. We've not missed a year from the start of this tradition, and are quite certain as a village that we have done so for 150 years running.

 

Much of what is said and done will be familiar; if you've been to one before, it will be much the same, yet it's always different. New names on the "Last Roll Call," different young readers, honored guest speakers.

 

If you've not noticed, one subtle tradition of Memorial Day speaks to what we want to remember with this commemoration. The American flag is, from its first raising on Memorial Day, at half-staff. Then American Legion Post 398 & the Sons of the American Revolution will salute the flag, and our honored dead, with rifle fire and solemn attendance at their posts, buglers from the Granville High School Marching Band will play "Taps," and then the flag will be raised at or just after noon to its rightful place at the top of the pole.

 

We begin the day, with the lowered flag, in sorrow, but we conclude and depart will a lift to our banner and our hearts, looking to the heights for hope – praying as one people for peace.

Faith Works 5-19-18

Faith Works 5-19-18

Jeff Gill

 

If you want to make God laugh…

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Plans aren't really anything that the Bible teaches against.

 

There is that aside in James 4:15 about always qualifying our future expectations with "if the Lord wills," and folklore debates whether we're talking about Native Americans or a small watercourse "if the Creek don't rise."

 

Even so, planning doesn't strike me as being a lack of faith. Not planning isn't an excess of faith, either, or so I'd say. Making a plan requires a certain amount of confidence in a number of possibilities, a hope for your future that allows you to project forward a potential that you can begin working on today.

 

I've read that procrastination is really an expression of insecurity and anxiety about one's own capacity to do something well. In this line of thinking, we procrastinate so we can say afterwards "hey, that wasn't my best effort, I could have done better, but I just didn't have the time." Or didn't take the time. A psychological self-inflicted handicap that keeps us from truly trying our best . . . for fear that when we saw what our best really was, it wouldn't live up to our own cherished image of what we're capable of.

 

In that sense, planning is precisely an act, a leap of faith. Faith in action, faith that, well, works. If you set out to anticipate what you want to get done, lay out a plan for it, and mark your progress against it, you do set yourself up for the possibility of failure. You may make plans you can't fulfill, even with your best efforts.

 

This is where the real impact of faith on planning comes in, with forgiveness. If we can imagine ourselves as forgiven even if we don't succeed, if we can forgive ourselves for falling short or do so with others who disappoint us, then we can take the risk of making plans.

 

But it's consistently amazing to me how rare making plans actually is. For people, of all ages, for organizations of any kind, and that would include churches.

 

I work with youth in a variety of settings, and no one is really all that surprised that a juvenile, a teenager, a young adult doesn't have much of a plan for the future. They tend to be very much taken up with the moment at hand, and for many of them, future planning means next week. It's about a seven to ten day horizon we're working with as we talk about their "plans."

 

But many, maybe even most adults have more of a thirty day horizon. This month, and spilling into next month a bit, but not very much about next year, or a couple of years on. If I'm talking about you, the good news is that you've got lots of company!

 

The bad news is that lack of planning, of anticipating the future, is pretty much a sign of anxiety and fear. If you have nothing but doubt and hopelessness about your future, then you certainly wouldn't want to spend too much time in your head "going there." So you live day to day, and stick with the challenges you think you really can cope with. The future, not so much.

 

Planning for next year and the next stage of life and around big transitions ahead can evoke its own range of anxieties and fears. "Dostadning" is a Swedish name for "death cleaning." It's a decluttering discipline and a form of preparing for downsizing that's catching on in some quarters, but certainly provokes a fair amount of negative reaction, too. "Dostadning" takes a basic willingness to admit and face the reality that you may be moving towards restrictions, smaller spaces, fewer rooms to store stuff in; it can also touch on your desire not to make your children or heirs or friends have to go through the painful process of sorting through and throwing out lots of your stuff.

 

It also requires you to concede that someday, you will die. Is that a prospect you can face?

 

Swedish idioms aside, I think there's a great deal about planning, or not planning, that is rooted in our basic sense of ultimate purpose. As in, do I have one, and are my values something more than what I own, the stuff I have, the accomplishments to my credit?

 

Faith and planning have a great deal in common, and one supports the other, step by step, day by day. From now 'til forever!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he has made unsuccessful plans before, and is still willing to make new ones. Tell him your plans at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.