Faith Works 11-29-18

Faith Works 11-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

The time of worship

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What time is church?

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, and not without reason, that "eleven o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week in America."

 

When I was younger, and less aware of the realities of racism that Dr. King was trying to address, I remember my first reaction was "but 11:00 am isn't when church is?"

 

My church growing up always had Sunday morning worship at 10:30 am, and like most things we grow up with, I assumed how me and mine did it was the normal way, the right way, the way everyone did things. Then I went out into the world.

 

And truth be told, I mostly saw other 10:30s, but learned that the scope of the Lord's goodness, a wideness in God's mercy, extended to even 11 o'clock. Alrighty then.

 

Now, I also come from a very Biblically oriented tradition, and the curious fact is that you can't find any Biblical basis for that sort of time conformity. The day for worship among early Christians moved from the Jewish Sabbath to "the first day of the week" when Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus in the garden, and which we call Sunday in English speaking lands. But that was at dawn.

 

Other than Easter Sunday, and precious few of us at that, no one does worship at dawn.

 

Many traditions have a Sunday evening service, and did back in an earlier day when you rode to town with a dinner basket, attended morning worship, ate under the trees, and had a second round of preaching before riding home. Over the years, as automobiles caught on, the evening service moved back to 6:00 pm for those who continued that pattern.

 

And in that sequence, you can see why 11:00 am or maybe 10:30 makes sense. If you have to get up, milk the cows, feed the chickens, clean up, and ride a few miles into town, it had better not be until 10:30. Two hours of preaching, a leisurely lunch, maybe a turn around town, a 3:00 pm prayer meeting, then home by dark.

 

Yet like summer vacation in school calendars, we still follow a vaguely agrarian timetable on Sunday morning.

 

Quite a few of us, as our members have developed the more complicated schedules of work in 2018, have added services. An 8 or 8:30 am early service, Sunday afternoons are coming back, and many have a Saturday evening service. Other "non-traditional" worship times are getting more and more common; weary preachers are all too aware of the fact that we're also doing more services sometimes just to reach the same number – or less – in worship, but that's what happens as the 24/7 culture and rotating shift schedules eat away at our personal options.

 

I have to admit I've been trying to explain to some of my fellow believers who bemoan downturns in worship attendance that it's not a simple lack of faithfulness, or a devaluation of church that pushes down attendance at the old familiar 10:30 or 11 am hour. It's for many a question of work, or lose your job. The idea of Sunday being sacred is something you're welcome to believe personally, but it's not going to get you out of your four days in a row ten hour shifts, then four off, with Sunday just one more column heading on the time sheet.

 

What's a church to do? Part of it is to remember that there's nothing sacred about one particular worship time. Obviously, the counterpart to that is teaching and preaching about the importance of setting aside time to come together with fellow believers (Bible verses available on request, but there's many!).

 

Some tell me reading this column is their church. I honor the intention meant by saying that, but it does pain me to hear. This is a wonderful chance to converse, and for me to share some thoughts, but it's not a worship experience. My email and messages become a kind of community, but in the narrowest and most limited sense.

 

The challenge moving forward into 2019 and beyond is for faith communities to wrestle with exactly that, though: how to expand forms of community that look different than we're used to. We don't milk the cows on Sunday before riding a horse into town; we may have to find creative ways to use technology and communications to maintain community between chances to physically be present with each other. But it can't be just the virtual! Actual community will always be at the heart of how we come together in unity.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's glad to respond to any number of questions by email, but he's also likely to tell you to go to church, too. Write him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter. 

Faith Works 11-17-18

Faith Works 11-17-18

Jeff Gill

 

Sometimes, you just gotta preach

___

 

Look, I am a preacher, but in this column, I do my best to not be preachy.

 

The running topic of "Faith Works" is how faith and belief and religious practice shapes and moves and informs our life together in Licking County, and in general I avoid sectarian claims and particular assertions. You can come hear me on a Sunday or Wednesday if you want, and that's more what you'll get, but here we're looking out across the Newark and central Ohio landscape.

 

But sometimes there are some things I just want to proclaim, to get a little bit preachy at you for the good of your heart, if not your soul.

 

You should be thankful.

 

Seriously, it's good for you. As a Christian pastor, I have particular reasons for thankfulness, but there's a baseline reality that's accessible to us all: we are here, you are reading this, there are options available to us while we have breath, and for that and maybe a bit more, we need to be thankful.

 

I believe that thankfulness is as essential in a longer term way as breathing is for right now. If you have your breathing restricted, your energy and awareness and general well-being can be impacted; if you stop breathing long enough, you will die. On a different timeline, if you stop being thankful, it starts to hit your thoughts and understandings like a blood oxygen level below 95% starts messing with your head.

 

And a complete absence of thankfulness can kill you dead, even if your body is still walking around for a long while after that.

 

There are always reasons to not be thankful. Stuff you don't have, health that's not at what it should be, people who let you down, problems that are coming which can't be avoided. Sure. I've got 'em, you've got 'em, we all have them.

 

This is where service to others is so crucial to having a thankful heart. I have this conversation with people in hospitals all the time as a minister: there's always someone down the hall worse off. It's true. You can dread being in their shoes all night, or you can be thankful for what you have, where you can go, the hope and time you have. It's a choice, really.

 

You may have heard that Scott Hayes and the Licking County Jail Ministry (LCJM) have launched a new ministry of their own, outside of the Licking County Justice Center.

 

It's on S. 5^th St., and it's called Vertical 196 for the address; some of us know it as the old Red Cross building. Vertical 196 is a day center for homeless people.

 

You may not know that, for all sorts of practical reasons, homeless shelters have to ask all their guests to leave for the day, 8:30 am or so, and not return until about 5 pm. The Salvation Army shelter on E. Main St., the St. Vincent Haven on Wilson St., other emergency shelter programs on a smaller basis in the community all have to impose such rules. But where does a homeless, if sheltered person go during the day? Let alone a person who is homeless and unhoused, making their own shelter somewhere by the rivers or stairwells of our city?

 

Vertical 196 is a partial answer to this question. They completed two weeks of operations yesterday, and they have seen 35 to 45 people for lunch every weekday they're open, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.

 

Scott is chaplain for the LCJM, and he's excited about how this extension of that ministry is involving even more people to make the meals, serve and sit with the guests for lunch, and help with expanding the outreach program they offer. Soon they'll add laundry and shower services for guests, and with five church teams at work to start, he's hoping to add enough committed volunteers to go to a 9:00 to 4:00 schedule.

 

Their immediate needs, though, are XL sweatshirts and sweatpants. The idea is folks can wear them while washing the clothes they came in with, and take them with them as another layer for the walking and searching and sometimes sleeping wherever they may go.

 

Vertical 196 already has evening programs for a variety of audiences, such as a Celebrate Recovery group with a meal on Thursdays. They also plan to be open as usual on both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day with a meal, and warmth. You can ask questions or offer to help through Scott@JailMinistries.org.

 

If you go there, though, you know what people who are homeless say about it? They are thankful. And I'm reminded to be thankful, as well.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 11-15-18

Notes from my Knapsack 11-15-18

Jeff Gill

 

Community and continuity

___

 

We've passed the most recent school levy, and no doubt will have to face questions of how public education is funded again within a few years, because that's the system our state legislature has created.

 

Property taxes do not increase with land valuation, so there's something called a rollback built into the system. Add in unfunded mandates for expenditures from federal policies, fluctuations in enrollment while square footage and other fixed costs stay the same, plus the overall cost of everything, and you have a system which as is well-known has been declared unconstitutional by our state Supreme Court, but is still the prevailing model.

 

Our statehouse points out, accurately, that they are spending more on education in biennial budgets, and that they keep moving more money to less fortunate districts, which is also true. So a residentially blessed area like Granville has the weird double whammy of having less business tax base to absorb some of the cost of running a top-flight public school district, but we are having state formula funding taken away even as by law the district doesn't see benefit from increasing property values unless we choose to give and re-gift it to them in property tax renewals.

 

So we now have an income tax basis to try to add some stability to our education budget, and reduce the frequency with which the school board and administration is forced to come to the voters for funds. I think it was a good idea, and it's done, or as done as any such voter driven process can be.

 

I wrote my way towards this last request for levy support through our local and state history about education funding, not wanting to make the story about an endorsement per se. That's not what the Sentinel really wants to see these contributor columns doing, anyhow. But I do want to figure out how to do an endorsement of a different sort.

 

What I think needs support and endorsement and a public campaign of some kind, with the involvement of school board, staff, civic officials, business and commercial interests, and indeed all of us, is this: consider staying in Granville. I'd like to make a formal endorsement for a plan I am already acting on myself . . . staying in Granville after my child has graduated from our excellent and high achieving schools.

 

Because it dawned on me as we approached our son's high school graduation that a startling number of the friends and fellow parents we'd been associating with and chaperoning alongside and working shoulder to shoulder by were putting out "For Sale" signs the day the "Graduation Open House" signs came down.

 

I'm still wrestling, almost three years later, with what this means. I know it's true almost anywhere to some degree, and it's hard to find hard data on the phenomenon (I've been trying).

 

But my anecdotal evidence, and general conversational inputs, have all told me it's remarkably common here, and perhaps more than in most places, maybe even more here than in other high achieving school districts. Families come for the schools, and my wife and I have to admit we moved here in the middle of our son's first grade year, and they leave quite often once the kids are off to college.

 

Downsizing makes sense when the nest empties, and it can be hard to downsize in Granville. That's no doubt part of the problem. And taxes are higher here, but not by as much as folks seem to think. I want to continue this discussion into 2019, and ideally carry it into this question: what would it take to help make Granville a place people would want to stay in after the school years are over for a family?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he and his family have lived in Our Fayre Village since 2004. Tell him about why you came, and stayed, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-10-18

Faith Works 11-10-18

Jeff Gill

 

Remembrance Day, and the meaning of "as to"
___

Today, November 10, has a number of meaningful associations for me, and I'd love to write about Martin Luther's or the Marine Corps' birthdays (and have, and no doubt will). But it's tomorrow that calls to me this year, 100 years since 1918 and "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month."

 

In the Commonwealth of Nations, the former British Empire countries observe on November 11 "Remembrance Day" and you'll see on TV and hear about poppies and Flanders Fields as we do every year if you're attuned to such things.

 

In America, we once called it "Armistice Day," recalling the end of World War I at 11:00 am on Nov. 11^th, 1918; after learning the harsh lessons of World War II that the first world war was not "the war to end all war" we adapted the observance into Veterans Day, which it still is (but observed on a federal basis on Monday).

 

Across Europe, the wound of World War I not only was left unhealed to fester into the outbreak of the second world war in September of 1939, it left marks to the present day. I believe the impact of World War I still has an impression on us today, even if it has become a brief pause for modern educational instruction in history, as we hurtle from the Civil War to Pearl Harbor.

 

World War I was four years in length, and militarized some 70 million persons around the globe; barely a generation later World War II lasted six years, and mobilized over 100 million . . . and in each war the dead, soldier and civilian, were nearly uncountable, but in the tens of millions for each conflict.

 

So many were left missing, or unrecognizable, that World War I began the idea, first in Great Britain and Westminster Abbey, of a "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier." It was World War I and its call to service and sacrifice that brought flags into many church worship centers where before this was mostly unknown; World War I began a series of steps into the militarization of civilian life whose scope is still being unpacked and understood. "Preachers Present Arms" by Ray Abrams is still a useful guide to these changes, all beginning with the American entry into the war in 1917.

 

So I understand the desire on the part of many preachers and theologians and leaders in more recent decades to push back against a militarization of the faith of the Prince of Peace. As someone who chose to serve, I also respect the reality that pacifism is a choice many Christians have made as their response to their faith in Jesus.

 

But I have struggled with some of the wholesale rejection of any language that even hints at struggle, or battle, or warfare as essentially un-Christian. And having grown up with "Onward, Christian Soldiers" I missed it as I entered into ministry, finding that more recent hymnals of many traditions have banished it.

 

Where I would point is to a pair of words: "as to." As in, "Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war . . ." Sabine Baring-Gould was writing a processional for children to keep together as they marched in a body across a bridge from one parish he served to another, in a peaceful 1865 England, and Arthur Sullivan, he of "Gilbert & Sullivan" fame, came up with a better tune in 1871 that lifted hearts in Great Britain and quickly around the world. It not only became an anthem for World War I, it was a favorite of Winston Churchill's during World War II, lifting his spirits and something he asked to have played at his funeral.

 

"As to" states that while earthly warfare is a reality we know, it is not an ultimate reality. There are struggles ahead, both personal and spiritual, but the cross of Christ is our symbol of triumph, and the victory we are moving towards is beyond any one battle in this life.

 

The closing verse says it well: "Onward then, ye people; Join our happy throng; Blend with ours your voices; In the triumph song." It is to that end we will in worship at my church be singing this joyful hymn, with a chastened understanding of the evils of war we would leave behind, as we go onward.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he hopes if you have bells you can ring or toll them for two minutes at 11:00 am tomorrow to mark the end of World War I. Tell him about what leads you onward at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-3-18

Faith Works 11-3-18

Jeff Gill

 

A strident season, in faith and life

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Checking a couple of dictionaries, I find that the word "strident" has only been in use from the mid 17th century: it was created from the Latin verb "stridere" which means "to creak." 

 

So a creaking, croaky sort of vocal tone, a quality of sound that's harsh and discordant, became "strident" as it was first used; it's only been since the mid-1800s that we took it to be equally useful as a description of political speech, which is the main way it's used today.

 

Which is interesting to me, having been through a second round of treatment for my vocal cord muscle problems. The injections for spasmodic dysphonia have left me sounding now for weeks what can only be called "strident," which of course no one is calling it. After about three weeks of little volume and much raspiness (but the spasms did go away, it's just that the cure is in many ways worse than the problem), I can be heard fairly normally, but at a higher pitch than normal, and with a strident edge to my voice.

 

In the last couple of weeks I've done a wedding, a funeral, preached twice and taught twice, and apologized I don't know how many times. Everyone has been very kind, extremely gracious, and kept saying "oh it's no problem at all." Perhaps that's true, but there's a difference, and I feel the need to give an account for myself, even if you've never heard my voice before. In a way, I'm saying "this is not me."

 

Stridency in the more common modern meaning is all around us. It's a fascinating historical parlor game (does anyone play parlor games anymore?) to debate how much worse it has been in the past. Abe Lincoln was called an ignorant ape by leading newspapers, and it got worse from there during the Civil War; Thomas Jefferson and John Adams didn't exactly play patty-cake in 1800 (do kids still play patty-cake?), and the hard feelings at the Congressional resolution of the election by Alexander Hamilton led a few years later to him and Aaron Burr resolving their dispute with pistols at dawn.

 

I certainly notice and give silent thanks every time there's an ad on TV where a candidate speaks about their own hopes, plans, and qualifications; most of them are commercials to promote the worst qualities, so called, of their opponents. It gets downright . . . strident.

 

As in any escalation, the question is who stops ratcheting up the stridency? Who stops first? And if you cease going negative, and your opponent continues, there's plenty of evidence that's a winning strategy: and whose fault is that? If we reward that behavior, we'll get more of it. That's a parental commonplace, and if moms and dads know it, then voters should, too.

 

Does a strident tone in politics tend to creep out into other forms of communication? I think it does. I dreaded the coming of this season for some time, and the last few weeks have reminded me I did so with reason. Yes, in church life, in community conversations, in personal communications, I believe the overall tone of interactions is getting more strident. And there's little sense that anyone seems to feel they need to give an account for themselves before launching into a strident statement. Is that because they're not aware of what they are sounding like? Is it that they believe their stridency is self-evident, and self-explanatory? I do not know, I just know that there's a tension in the air, and a loss of individual identity and empathy, as a general strident tone has taken over much of our dialogue.

 

So of course, I simply pray for peace, and seek to give an account of my own strident voice when it sounds different from how I usually speak.

 

Speaking of peace, next Sunday (a week from tomorrow) is the centennial of the end of World War I, Armistice Day years ago, and more recently transformed into Veterans Day. But it was at "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918 that "the war to end all war" came to an end. It is appropriate to ring bells at 11 am on November 11, and especially so this year. I plan to interrupt our second service for bell ringing and silence at 11:00 am, including this solemn remembrance in our worship. Newark's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1060 hopes that any church with bells could ring them for two minutes at 11:00 am next Sunday, and I join them in this invitation.

 

But tomorrow, don't forget to fall back one hour!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your ways of coping with stridency at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.