Faith Works 9-21-19

Faith Works 9-21-19

Jeff Gill

 

What we've lost, what we've gained

___

 

Sometimes when I start writing one of these I end up with a piece that simply doesn't fit into the usual newspaper column space.

 

I can try to carve it into pieces that do work in this context, trim it back to a more workable length, or just repurpose it for another setting.

 

This reflection is an attempt to have my cake and eat it, too; a highlight reel of a series of thoughts I've had as I look ahead, for my own congregation where I attend and worship, for Christian church groups in general, and I believe for people of faith or seekers who want to come together under whatever banner. I'm likely to write more about these individual items in time, but overall, these are subjects which I see as helping us understand what's going on with what's often mockingly called "organized religion." The phrase "spiritual but not religious" has a scholarship all its own, but while I honor the intention behind such beliefs, I would not be a parish minister if I didn't think that having a religious affiliation has a certain value of its own.

 

The logo or nameplate or even to some degree the doctrine may not matter quite as much as simply prioritizing working together with others, versus the individual, private pursuit of spiritual understanding. If for you only the personal and private sense of faith is important, what follows will not seem of any consequence, I'm sure.

 

When it comes to church life, we've lost a number of things that I believe we had come to take for granted, which is why we might be a bit myopic about how much we're losing. Membership, for starters. People today do not "like" membership in organizations. Not that long ago becoming a member meant you were becoming something; ditto even smaller commitments like newspaper subscriptions or buying series tickets.

 

And while you might say "well, season tickets are still popular" the news from Columbus, as well as NFL stadiums and MLB ballparks is that they are not. Which takes us from membership to attendance. "Perfect attendance" used to be a very big thing, and now it's actually seen as somewhat unhealthy (don't come to work or school or church when you're sick, okay?). But in general, consistent attendance is simply less valued.

 

Marriage is no longer a central social norm. I could preach or plead or rant, but I'm just observing right now. Expansion of marriage laws aside, the institution is delayed, deferred, and often just plain avoided entirely. Divorce is down, but much of that is because the wedding never took place in the first case.

 

As I've written about previously, I don't think church losses around young adults are due as much to changes in church life as much as what we haven't adapted to: our historic pattern is that young adults would often step away from church for a while, in high school or college, but return to get married and as they started a family. The gap of absence was a couple of years. Now, with average age of first marriages creeping up towards 30, and children later, too, the gap is so wide as to be a chasm.

 

Plus, church weddings are increasingly… unusual. Even churched folk are overwhelmingly choosing non-church locations when they do marry, and many venues require you use their officiant. Another place to reconnect, cut off.

 

Likewise with funerals, a social location where often those who had walked away from faith and church might reconnect, and even re-enter. You may have noticed, and I surely have, that "no services will be held" is more common; what's hard for me is when I know the deceased wanted a funeral, but the surviving adult relatives are all unchurched and say no. And non-traditional locations and settings for "farewells" or "celebrations of life" are increasingly popular, with funeral homes adapting to this demand; the acceptance of cremation making all kinds of options possible that didn't exist before, and most of them don't require a church or clergymember.

 

You can easily imagine how I could write a column on each of those four shifts; singing, reading, summer schedules, sacred spaces, Sundays themselves could all represent additional elements of what we've lost. But my thinking is not entirely mournful, and I'd like to just leave these thoughts as placeholders, and turn next towards what we've gained, and how both sets of shifts tell us something about the future we're making for faith, and for church.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he likes to take the long view sometimes, which means when he says "new" it might mean 100 years old. Tell him about shifts you've noticed in church life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-14-19

Faith Works 9-14-19

Jeff Gill

 

The long good-bye

___

 

There is a peculiar grief you feel when someone you love stops recognizing you.

 

It is a loss, and we've all learned that grief is not just about death, but about farewells and letting go (the Toy Story franchise has certainly taught us this if we didn't know it already).

 

We can grieve over a job lost, a move to a new community, the end of a relationship by mutual agreement. And as a pastor, I am often needing to tell people, when they ask "how long will this take?" the not always welcome answer "as long as it takes." Grief is a process much more than it is an endpoint, until we get to that eternal conclusion before the Throne of Grace.

 

To lose a person you can still visit, that you still can talk to, in a way – that is different. I won't say harder, but it is simply different, and for someone who has dealt with a severe grieving process, this can indeed feel impossible in comparison.

 

Dementia is the overarching category, Alzheimer's disease being one of a number of forms dementia can take. The words are used interchangeably, and I'm sure health care providers feel like most ministers do, that it's not worth correcting. It is worth noting, though, that many forms of dementia are not Alzheimer's and can even be temporary, or at least will follow a very different path.

 

We're all seeing more dementia, and in that tragedy is some good news: we're living longer. Plenty of people in years past would have ended up with some measure of dementia, but cancer or heart attack or some other ailment killed them before it became apparent.

 

Still, there's much concern and confusion over what it is, and how to handle it. I still use the old doctor's warning: aging is when you forget where you put your car keys. Dementia is when you forget what car keys are for. Memory loss alone is not necessarily dementia, though it can be a warning sign.

 

Dr. Oz on television has recently spoken out about his own mother's memory loss and apparent Alzheimer's disease. He has helpfully noted that even a trained medical professional can mistake early symptoms, and be vulnerable to that great enemy, denial. He just couldn't believe it was happening until it was so deeply rooted there was little they could do for her.

 

I've known the pain of sitting in an assisted living facility and looking into the eyes of a much beloved family member, and realizing "she doesn't know who I am." It hurts, there's no better word for it. And the pain makes some people run away; our local nursing care facilities are evidence of that in the visitor logs.

 

And even to go through that with a more recently made friend can be hard, and at the very least disconcerting. I still remember when my dad took me to visit an old family friend, whose problem they learned was a stroke and the brain damage done by that physical affront; she not only didn't know us when we visited her room, when we ducked back into the room not a minute later, she didn't recall the visit we just had. I was 21 and beginning a journey into understanding and trying to deal with dementia then, and all the years since has not lessened how much it hurts to realize how little we can do.

 

But there is something. Medications are being tried with some effect in slowing neurological problems; other medical interventions help when small strokes, chemical imbalances, and other more subtle attacks on memory are the underlying situation. We need in churches and our community to let love cast out fear, and to lovingly talk to each other about memory loss, dementia, and end of life decisions while we still have the wit to make them for ourselves.

 

And to visit even those who do not know us. The person in that chair may not know who we are, or why we're there. It can be hard, even painful. But if you honor a God who knows, whose knowledge is intended for love and forgiveness and grace, then that Divine One knows you are there, that you went, and it was worth doing.

 

Even when the world doesn't remember why. God knows.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's been in most of the nursing homes in this county and the adjoining ones, and he'd love to see more of you visiting there, too. Tell him where you've been visiting at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 9-12-19

Notes from my Knapsack 9-12-19

Jeff Gill

 

Hi, I'm a failure!

___

 

Recently an event was held in our area, aimed at reaching out to students and families on the subject of achievement and stress.

 

Which is why I'd like to talk about failure.

 

I am honored to know John Ball, the convener, and some of his cohorts; those Granville High School grads who are now seniors in college this year are of particular interest to me. Those young adults have grown up and achieved for years in my sphere of observation, and when proud Blue Aces and some friends from up on Denison's hill get together to say "high school and college have been really, really stressful," I know exactly what they're talking about.

 

Pressures to succeed and excel and not just aspire but to attain – oh, they're real. Not just an internal sense of drive, but many external reminders that this is what's expected of them. Which is hard, especially when there's something else out there that can happen. Like failure.

 

But we don't talk about failure. "Failure is not an option" isn't just a mantra for the space program. Failure is for the memory hole, it's not spoken of, either as a possibility in the future, or as an actual occurrence in the past. Except, stuff happens.

 

So here goes: I have failed. Oh, no, not small stuff, either. Some big ones. I know, yet I get to write a column for the Granville Sentinel? All the better that I share some of them with you.

 

I was thinking law school was where I should go, and I got it into my head that pursing that path by way of the United States Marine Corps made sense for me, and so I enlisted, and began a journey towards that goal. In candidate school (officer basic), I slipped on the obstacle course, turned my knee around backwards, and was given a lovely cot in a grim silent building for a few weeks to think about my future plans.

 

When a jovial sergeant (they do exist!) said to me as I was ready to be "separated" that maybe my destiny was elsewhere, I agreed, and we signed the papers. I got an honorable discharge from the USMC, and I was and am proud that I volunteered to serve, but I've never felt comfortable being called a veteran, because I really wasn't. I served, and I failed, and home I went. It was a learning experience in many useful ways.

 

Years later I was talking to a friend about his time in the Navy, much more substantive than my own service, and on hearing my story, he smiled sheepishly and told me he went up for SEAL training not once, but twice, and washed out both times. "I don't think I've ever told anyone about this." We agreed, however, that given the failure rate, if you know one SEAL, odds are you know three or four people who tried, and failed to make it into the program. But you don't know, because we don't talk about it.

 

I went into a technical field, and my first truly grown-up job I was poorly trained for a week, and the first night on my own, I erased an entire county's voting records (this is forty years ago elsewhere, relax). I was fired the next day, fairly or not. I did learn, however, never to settle for less than the training I know I'll need, even if I'm assured "it doesn't matter."

 

I've learned much from failure. You almost certainly know people who didn't get into the programs they hoped for, got jilted by suitors or dumped by friends, or just plain couldn't do what they wanted to be able to do, whether a backflip on a balance beam or a chord change on the guitar. We ALL have failed, some more spectacularly than others.

 

Maybe what would help the pressure felt by our youth around trying to succeed is hearing more from us older adults about our failures. Some of them are actually pretty funny stories, too.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's got failures he hasn't even gotten around to remembering yet. Tell him one of yours at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 9-7-19

Faith Works 9-7-19

Jeff Gill

 

Ways to worship, not worshiping ways

___

 

If you follow a liturgical calendar in the Christian church, we have Holy Cross Day and Ember Days ahead; if you are part of a more informal tradition, it's the time even contemporary worship leaders start thinking about Christmas season ahead.

 

I grew up in a middle-of-the-road congregation where the preaching minister and the choir robed, but the word liturgy was mostly unknown. The bulletin may not have come down from heaven, but it was prepared by the pastor and the church secretary and the organist, and that was close enough.

 

Like many Protestants, I assumed the order and music of our worship service was pretty much what everyone did. As I got older and visited Catholic and Orthodox churches, I realized how differently some worshiped, but I would notice those points of contact, if not exact parallels – the Lord's Prayer with its minor variations, the Gloria sung to different tunes, but those words echoing out of scripture, the place of an altar or table at the center of the area where people moved around during the service.

 

We sang at camp songs that were different from what we had in church, and some parsons would let the kids sing them, once, gently, before returning the service to hymnbooks and four part harmonies out of the choir loft. In youth group we might think out loud about how much fun it would be, why it might even be good to sing more of those camp songs in Sunday services someday . . . but how would you get a guitar into church without people freaking out?

 

During college, my now-wife and I plus some friends from our campus ministry went out to an outdoor music venue and heard Randy Stonehill play Christian rock music, which seemed so, well, rebellious. Others there had heard Larry Norman and Keith Green perform, and we listened to albums by Amy Grant and Michael Card, but for personal enjoyment, maybe even spiritual growth, but in church?

 

We offered up a service called the "Saturday Something" which was a chance to have communion, at 10:47 pm (so we'd be done by the time Saturday Night Live started), and those of us from a tradition that allowed non-clergy to preside at communion came together to not just lead at the table, but to experiment with different tables, in different parts of the church building, in the basement, up in the balcony, once up in the bell tower (that was crowded, but fascinating). It was a college Christian service, but for formal worship on Sunday we put on ties and dresses, a few bold souls wearing t-shirts or slacks.

 

Jump forward nearly four decades, and there may be more in worship on any given weekend with contemporary music than are singing from hymnals. Informal spaces, or at least what my grandmother (or mother!) would call an informal space, are where many services are held. Screens are common, four-part harmony in the pews uncommon, and pews themselves less so.

 

The idea of a set, formal, pre-planned liturgy laid out to order our shared worship experience is still a big part of what it means to be a church in many quarters. For some, the central experience of communion can't happen without that protective embrace; others highlight the sermon more than communion, but also circumscribe tightly who can preach that word on a Sunday.

 

But for more and more, these artificial constraints (as they can get called here and there) are strange and unfamiliar and even off-putting. Songs from the last few years are played, the words on overhead screens drawing in more singers whether they know the music or not; standing or sitting, dressed down or casualed up, worshipers gain a personal sense of excitement and involvement through the singing around them, the prayers offered between and after the songs, and then the quick transition into preaching that can last thirty minutes or longer. This is, to many, familiar, and what's new and different is having a prayer book or printed missal for worship.

 

This minister doesn't think it's at all useful to call one mode or the other right, or even better. There's plenty of evidence that contemporary worship is more effective for inviting, reaching, and changing hearts among the unchurched; lots of practitioners of traditional worship with a liturgical bent would present their case for how their model is more effective in building up discipleship.

 

One model for worship is more popular today; the other has centuries of experience behind it. I think neither will completely displace the other, but it will be interesting to watch how these trends play out over the next few decades.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's led worship in both styles. Tell him (nicely) what you value about your experience of worship at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 8-31-19

Faith Works 8-31-19

Jeff Gill

 

Labor and the life of faith

___

 

Labor Day weekend is upon us, the end of summer and the start, in many ways, of the fall.

 

It's a time to take a day off, even though many of us don't, and is meant to honor the role of workers in our economy, and has been used to celebrate the work of labor unions in our national history.

 

Grover Cleveland started it in 1894, but the observance has roots back in American Federation of Labor celebrations years earlier; today's AFL-CIO is a labor federation, a group of unions still working together today.

 

There was an even earlier push to honor workers on May Day, May 1, but that was associated with anarchists and communism, and some argue the development of Labor Day at the start of September was to avoid that connection.

 

This is where churches and faith communities and unions have their own awkward history. It would make sense that a cause intended to bring people together for their common good and mutual support would resonate with Christian congregations, but the concern that socialism and unionism were two sides of the same coin made many churches avoid open support of unions and union causes.

 

Washington Gladden, a Congregational minister in Columbus in the 1880s through the 1900s, may be better known to you as the author of the hymn "O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee" but he was also an early advocate of the labor movement. As a member of Columbus city council, he advocated for public ownership of utilities such as water and sewer services.

 

Doesn't sound that radical, does it? But it did then. The early Labor Day parades and marches in Gladden's day called for wild and crazy stuff like the eight hour work day, paid vacation (usually asking for two whole weeks), and stopping child labor in factories.

 

And they were denounced as anarchists and socialists and communists for calling on the public to support such things. Churches found themselves split in some cases over whether to support or affirm union organizing, and agendas like the eight hour day, paid vacation, no child labor program of the early 1900s.

 

The Catholic Church has historically been more sympathetic and openly supportive of labor unions, perhaps because of their association with immigrant groups and struggling workers more generally. Because of this, during the period of Ku Klux Klan control of Newark city government in the early 1920s, their leadership called for barring Catholics from serving in public works, police, and fire as supporting "radical socialist organization," which was mostly unsuccessful and partly led to their dissolution and loss of power by 1925, but the echoes continued for generations.

 

The congregation I serve has a long history of being very much a church of union workers, with active members and leaders over the years who have been union local officials and leaders in that sphere as well. I grew up in northwest Indiana, where the USW and UAW and Teamsters were just part of the landscape along with the steel mills and factories curving along the lakeshore up into Chicago.

 

But the decline of union membership nationally has certainly been reflected locally. We still have a few open and active union halls in town, but many fewer than just a couple of decades ago. The loss of major manufacturing means the decrease in numbers of members, and that loss of dues means a lessening of influence, both civically and politically in Licking County.

 

There's still a Labor Day parade in Newark, on Monday at noon from the high school down Granville Street to Fifth St. to Main. As with many parades, it's not as big or long as it used to be, but the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are still out waving their banners for organized labor.

 

For religious communities, the challenge in how to support labor is complicated today by politics, and that's a whole series of columns. But whatever your party affiliation, and whether you've ever paid union dues or not in your working life, people of faith can agree that workers should have a safe and healthy working environment, and receive a fair day's wages for a full day's work.

 

Like any human institution (including the church!) labor unions have their flaws. I still think we need them, even those of us not in their membership.  My dad always said "unions are only needed when there's bad management . . . " and then he'd say there's always going to be bad management, sooner or later.  So I think in the Beloved Community, we're always going to want to have labor unions around.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think about labor and grace and the Gospel at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.