Notes From My Knapsack 8-15-19

Notes From My Knapsack 8-15-19

Jeff Gill

 

School is beginning again, always

___

 

While writing newspaper columns is one of my favorite hobbies, I am employed other than tapping away at my keyboard. One of those vocations I serve is that of mediator, and I am employed by the county Common Pleas Court system to provide mediation services, mostly in regards to youth and families.

 

We had a meeting recently at Family Intervention Services downtown (years ago, we were in the now demolished county Children's Home on the East End), talking about online education and how we as a court interact with families, helping them get their students on track for a high school diploma. And talking about the changes we've had to adapt to in the last few years about testing, graduation requirements, and open enrollment, it got me to thinking.

 

When I began working for Judge Hoover and the Licking County Juvenile Court in 2005, there was no Facebook. There were no iPhones, none; "candy bar" cellphones were popping up in student bookbags, and occasionally early flip phones, but they were expensive and rare.

 

Tablet computers were essentially non-existent, laptops unusual, and my desktop Dell ran Windows 98 SE. E-cigarettes did not exist, and we still handled unruly cases based on a complaint from a parent that a child was swiping their cigarettes. We'd still take one down at the courthouse, but as far as I know such a stand-alone complaint hasn't been made in a decade.

 

For my first dozen or so years, I was an un-official resource in our office helping explain computers and devices and platforms and apps to our staff . . . now, I'm playing catch-up along with everyone else, as newer staff is more familiar with technology but newer developments keep us all back on our heels. But my office computer is all the way up to Windows XP!

 

Online schools didn't exist, not as they do now. Credit recovery was a by mail thing. Our vocational education was at a place called JVS, now known as C-TEC, and the offerings were fewer than they were now. Home schooling was an option, but if you wanted to participate in your school district's extra-curricular it was effectively not an option.

 

Today, as the 2019-2020 school year begins, for the vast majority of students school looks, on the outside, largely the same as it did for their parents, and even for their grandparents. Student registration and the handbook is online, and Mom and Dad complain about not understanding the way they teach math nowadays, but in general you go to a building in your geographic area, walking or by bus or dropped off at the door, find your rooms and take your classes and get grades and aim for graduation in the twelfth year after kindergarten at around age eighteen.

 

But in 1970, a school district that graduated 50% of the students who began first grade with a diploma was considered successful. Today, a district that graduates 95% is just crossing the threshold of acceptable. Not until 1975 was the education of children with disabilities a legal requirement; Licking County was an early adopter in the 1950s, but many students in outlying areas were missed and it wasn't the school's responsibility to find them or educate them until after '75.

 

We are educating more children on more subjects with a higher level of success than ever before. And as the environment children are being raised in changes, we're going to see the school environment continue to change. I suspect in another fifteen years we will see changes in the nature and structure of schools that will surprise even me.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's fascinated by what's changed and what hasn't in education in general. Tell him what changes you think are coming at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-10-19

Faith Works 8-10-19

Jeff Gill

 

The Church's One Foundation

___

 

Thirty years ago, we were worried about instability in the Soviet Union while welcoming the dawn of democracy in Russia. As I graduated from seminary, we watched uneasily the Tiananmen Square protests play out in China, and by the time of my ordination service hundreds had been killed in the suppression of that gathering, with a like number executed for promoting it, possibly including the inspiring Tank Man whose identity and fate are still unknown today.

 

Thirty years ago, the first cracks were appearing in the Berlin Wall following the rise of democratic representation in Poland through Solidarity, and other Warsaw Pact countries began to take down their barriers to free movement across national borders. Mid-August 1989, the final outcome in Berlin where so much tension had played out literally my entire life (the wall and I were born within a few weeks of each other in 1961) was still more than somewhat in question. F. W. deKlerk was voted into office in South Africa, but few saw the end of apartheid coming soon, and most feared a bloody and terrible end to white minority rule. Bombs were still going off in Northern Ireland, and that conflict seemed to have no end in sight, either.

 

Thirty years ago, the World Wide Web was being started by Tim Berners-Lee in Switzerland at CERN; the first commercial dial-up connections were available before the end of the year for businesses, but as Thomas Watson of IBM had said years earlier, how many households would want a computer? Apple came out with its first notebook or laptop type computer, but most of my seminary classmates were using computers with maybe 4 MB (even commercially you couldn't get more than 2 GB unless you were the Pentagon).

 

Thirty years ago, savings and loans were closing fast, ultimately a third of all of them across the country. People were anxious about the increase in illegal drug use, and Pres. George H.W. Bush's drug czar, William Bennett, asked him to approve a temporary ban on the importation of semi-automatic rifles, which was done after 34 children and a teacher were killed in a schoolyard in Stockton, California. Health insurance premiums went up that spring across the country an average of 18%, triggering talk of a health care insurance crisis, with many denominational plans hit with increases from 23 to 40%; as I approached graduation from seminary, the seniors were gathered together for a workshop on clergy and church approaches to health care insurance, and were assured that increases of this size couldn't continue indefinitely.

 

Thirty years ago, electrostencil machines entered the church office where I worked, and you could put original art alongside of text and cut a stencil (can you feel the excitement, kids?) right off of your page, from which you could run hundreds of copies through your mimeograph machine. Oh, and we had a small desktop copier secondhand but the supplies were expensive so we just made a few copies at a time on it. The newsletter and bulletin were mimeo produced; or you could find a copy shop with a professional copier to make hundreds of pages, but usually at 10 cents a page, fifty cents for color. Answering machines were rare in church offices, but since even small congregations had a full time secretary (plus a full time custodian) it really didn't matter. You heard that pastors of big city churches had beepers, which sounded cool.

 

Thirty years ago, I was ordained to Christian ministry. My home congregation and the church I served in seminary plus a UCC church I had some wonderful history with jointly sponsored me, and I was blessed into the work of sharing the Gospel through preaching and teaching ministry. I had some vague general ideas about what the future would look like; I'd had a preliminary interview with a church in Ohio looking for an associate pastor, but I kind of figured that I'd end up staying an Indiana preacher. My eight years of student ministry in a campus ministry and through seminary had given me a healthy sense of what the Hoosier State had to offer, and it seemed like enough.

 

But a month later, I'd drive a 20 foot U-Haul truck across the Indiana-Ohio line on my way to Newark. Turned out I was wrong about some of my assumptions about the future. Of all the things I was sure of then, about only one thing has remained certain: the church's one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he arrived an associate minister, and now is a senior minister, but he doesn't know that much more than he did then. The difference is that he knows it: tell him what you think you know at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-3-19

Faith Works 8-3-19

Jeff Gill

 

Looking along the midway

___

 

Sometimes I worry that I've written a column before.

 

And I know for certain I've at least noted something of this sort in previous years, if not the whole reflection: I go pretty much every year to the Ohio State Fair at least once, and the Hartford Fair, our independent fair that includes Licking County, multiple times each August.

 

In fact, tomorrow I'll be helping lead an ecumenical worship service at the Hartford Fair, at 8:30 am in the Natural Resources pavilion on the northeast corner of the fairgrounds. Those with fair animals residing on the grounds for a week or more, concessioners, and even just passing visitors get a chance to stop and pray and give thanks and share community, out there north of Croton.

 

We get 4-Hers and carnies, cooks and ticket takers, parents and children and grandchildren, all glad to have a chance to include an act of worship in this week set apart, but a fair week which is one of the central parts of many people's lives.

 

That's always rewarding to help offer, and I'm looking forward to it, but there's also the whole experience of "walking the fair." You can also call it people watching, but for me as a Christian minister it has another overtone.

 

Out along the midway, whether in Columbus for the state fair or at the Hartford Fair closer to home, you see everyone. You pass by, you stand in line, sometimes you end up talking to people who are from everywhere, at least from among our everywhere. And many of them don't want a church service, aren't church goers at home, and quite a few have never seen the inside of one in person.

 

God loves them, every one. There is a divine purpose for each one to find and fulfill, or to reject and ramble away from that, in my faith, I believe causes God to simply come up with a new plan and purpose from that point forward . . . and on and on until we take ourselves into the presence of God at the end of all things, and we see and hear the greater purpose of everything, ourselves included.

 

How am I, how is the church, how might a witness to this hope and anchoring understanding be made to those I'm walking among? I don't have these thoughts as much in a mall at Christmastime, though I could. I might experience the same evangelistic tug at a football stadium or basketball arena, but it's at the state and county fairs that I always know that prayerful realization will walk along with me.

 

These are the people for whom Christ died, and many of them think no one in this life or the next care for them even enough to give up a minute of prayer for them, let alone lay down their lives for them. There are joys outside of the church, and many are celebrated at the fair, but a joy that lasts beyond the cotton candy delights of this life is something that I would argue everyone is looking for, in one form or another. How do we communicate effectively "the faith that is in us" to those looking for what it is we've been given . . . especially when that search is taking people into some pretty problematic dead ends and false corridors that will not come out where they want to go.

 

I know my limits as a preacher and a pastor. Some can hear a person like me speaking and teaching where others would give me a look and immediately dismiss what I have to say. We're each given a certain audience to which we're best suited, and we can all grow in understanding those to which we're not familiar, but few of us can, like the Apostle Paul, be all things to all people.

 

And some of my fairground reflection is not so much to seek the absolute answers for my ministry, my sharing of Good News, but to be chastened and reminded of my own limits, of how each church fellowship might just have its own unique place in God's plan.

 

In the middle of diversity and complexity and even more than a little confusion, I look for those small openings through which God can do great things.

 

And I make sure to have some fair food. God's at work along the food trucks, too.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he invites you to come to church on Sunday morning at the fair if you want! Tell him about your summer in faith and life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-27-19

Faith Works 7-27-19

Jeff Gill

 

Church meetings can be more than agendas

___

 

Even among those of us who take the clear teachings of holy scripture very seriously, it's not a highly respected passage.

 

Acts 15:6 says "The apostles and elders met to consider this question."

 

That's right, having church meetings is in the Holy Bible. And the next words in verse 7 are "After much discussion . . ."

 

By the time you read this, I'll be home from my religious tradition's "Y'all come" gathering that's held every other summer, a "General Assembly." Some denominations have very strict rules about who comes, and who votes, and may be a bigger church than my own but have many fewer in attendance.

 

We had over 3,000 people, clergy slightly in the majority but not by much, together for four worship services, two with communion, dispersed last Sunday morning across the region to different local churches (and almost always communion there), and nine hundred and seven business sessions.

 

Okay, I may be a little high on the number of business sessions. There were over a hundred workshops across three afternoons, and I took two in as an attendee, and did two long afternoons as a workshop leader myself, on my tradition's history and polity.

 

Trust me, I have been and can be jaded about stuff like banquets at conference centers, and tech complications in meeting rooms. I feel a stiff smile fading on my face after a couple of fourteen hour days and long walks through seemingly endless corridors.

 

But I come home from Des Moines having heard inspiring preaching, from getting the Bible opened up for me in new ways (I have to look up some information on the Sheep Gate when I get home!), and from having had communion and also communed with people I just would not have met had I just stayed put in Newark, Ohio.

 

Though I did keep running into people who were from Licking County, who grew up in Newark, who had been past the giant basket building, who had connections to me and us and ours in ways I wouldn't have known unless I went to Iowa to find it out.

 

It really was inspiring, for me as a Christian, to experience my unity with Haitian preachers in Miami and pastors who lead Hispanic congregations on the Mexican border, with women and men new to ministry and those who have been mentors to me since before I even was ordained thirty years ago. I also got to travel with my dad, as we've done for three other General Assemblies (I think this is my ninth or tenth); he just turned 85 and through his eyes I'm learning something about the challenges of accessibility in a convention center and sports arena – oh, the stairs! The endless, ubiquitous stairs . . .

 

My faith tradition stretches across the United States and Canada; while they are Americans, the Christian Church in Puerto Rico has been an "autonomous national church" for many years (a long interesting story of polity and history). Miguel Morales, the leader of that church, came to express in many different settings and meetings within our assembly, the appreciation and stories of the faith at work in that island nation.

 

Miguel explained that Hurricane Maria was unique not because it was a hurricane, but because normally a hurricane hit the north side of their large island, and the southern side would keep electric and open roads, and help the other half with recovery; in the past a bad, big hurricane might strike the east end, while the west would remain intact and be the engine of recovery for the whole.

 

Hurricane Maria, as we saw in a striking projected satellite radar image, ran right over the center of Puerto Rico, and took its time passing over. The entire island took damage, severe damage. And as you have probably heard in the news, they've had their own problems with governance.

 

Rev. Morales said again and again that our relief and support agencies of our shared church fellowship called him BEFORE the hurricane struck, and got aid to him and his churches BEFORE any governmental assistance arrived. I knew a little of this story, but I heard the whole narrative in full, and it made my assembly.

 

Not just that we helped each other, but to hear about the resilience and renewal felt in so many congregations which lost everything, and realized that in their faith they still had everything necessary. The generators rushed there by our Pension Fund and Week of Compassion agencies were incredibly important, but it was a kind of communion, then and felt again now, that gave them hope.

 

Attending this meeting gave me hope, too. I hope to bring some back to Newark with me.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he is really ready to go home. Tell him how you experience fellowship at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-18-19

Notes from my Knapsack 7-18-19

Jeff Gill

 

Looking at the Moon

___

 

July 20, 1969, I was on my great-aunts' porch in Chicago.

 

They had an enclosed area, surrounded by windows, a former porch that was more of a cold room in winter and a very hot one mostly in the summer, except long after the sun went down and especially when the wind was in the east, and blew in off of Lake Michigan, just a block and a half away.

 

As little kids we were not quite understanding what was going on, but picking up from the adults how important it really was. I was seven, nearly eight, and besotted by America's space program, so I might have had a little more direct investment in it, but I'll admit the small black and white TV with a loop and rabbit ears on the back, blurry even without switching to the lunar images, kept the majesty at arm's length. I kept watching, though, because my beloved great-aunts, a pair of never married schoolteachers back when that was a thing, were riveted to the story, and so was I.

 

We switched back and forth from Walter Cronkite to Frank Reynolds, and honestly I'm not sure which we were on when Neil Armstrong finally came out and made his cautious journey down the last steps into history.

 

What I do recall that Sunday night was leaning out a window and looking at the Moon overhead, and thinking "there are people up there." It made the lunar surface closer, somehow.

 

In the last thirty years, I've done many tours of the Newark Earthworks, and had more than my share of opportunities to simply enjoy and reflect for myself on the grounds, the lines the earthen walls inscribe towards the horizon, and the arcs of Moon and Sun from their rising to their setting. Somehow, two thousand years ago, Native Americans living here were able to record and project and plan those movements so that they could encode into their walls and alignments the movements of the heavenly bodies.

 

And I've wondered often: did they wonder, those Native American scientists and leaders and everyday people, if other humans could ever stand on the surface of that circle? Did they envision it as a sphere; how clearly did they project its orbits?

 

The comparison of the only other octagon and circle connected earthwork in all of North America, just sixty miles southwest of us in Chillicothe, offer a tantalizing hint that, in their adjustment of the geometry of the octagonal figure, they understood enough about latitude that they may well have known they stood on a sphere. Two thousand years ago, not far off of when Egyptian and Greek scholars first calculated the same reality from solar geometry across a comparable stretch of landscape.

 

And if the Earth was a sphere, it wasn't that big a leap to infer that the disk of the Moon was in fact the face of a sphere in the skies. They might well have known that here in Newark back then: but to somehow travel across the heavens, and stand on it and look back at us?

 

Yet it's still hard even for me, a youthful space program fanatic, to imagine that we did it, and the living memories of those who did are passing us by. It's amazing, incredible, and perhaps will again become unbelievable.

 

My hope out of these fiftieth anniversary observances is that we find out how important it is for us to believe not only in the reality of the moon landings then, but the importance for the human spirit in landing there again, and learning more about the neighborhood in which we live.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he was not quite eight when he watched Walter Cronkite explain the blurry pictures on a black and white TV. Tell him how you remember that night, if you do, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.