Faith Works 7-21

Faith Works 7-21-12

Jeff Gill

 

Get your kicks this summer

___

 

Have you ever driven Route 66?

 

I was born and raised near the eastern terminus of "the Mother Road," which in Licking County we know takes second place in chronology to The National Road, but it's the best known by far.

 

Maybe Doug Smith has written one by now, but no one did a Top 40 pop song about US 40. Bobby Troup strung some town names together, from "starts in Chicago" to ending in San Bernadino, and had himself a catchy hit which most of us can hum if not recall all the words to ("don't forget Winona!").

 

So from the steps between the lions at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the sign "Route 66 begins" faces the exiting crowds, down across the Land of Lincoln and launching out across the Great Plains, a journey could begin.

 

Actually, few people ever started out meaning to drive from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Pacific Coast. It was driven by Dust Bowl refugees to the Inland Empire of California looking for migrant work, or used by trucks to carry products from state to state.

 

In the 21^st century, it's been supplanted (mostly) by I-40, an interstate which plows through the landscape. There's a beautifully evocative scene in Pixar's "Cars" where a James Taylor song accompanies an explanation of how the development of the interstate and the growth of speed left small towns and simpler pleasures in the dust, such as the town of Radiator Springs.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I took my family in our rental car, as we hopped about from national park to national park, down some stretches of "original" Route 66. We drove through Flagstaff and waved at the Lowell Observatory, and after a stretch of I-40 towards Kingman we turned off to a long, winding stretch of Route 66 that was still concrete, the tires going thumpa-thumpa-thumpa over the joints in the road, ponderosa pines on either side. A few former "porch" style gas stations could be identified, even if the pumps were now planters and rockers sat in the one-time service bays.

 

In fact, this was a part of the second layer of Route 66, which (if you have time and temperament for it online) can be traced in sections as the original narrow lane in some places, a more developed built road of mostly concrete, and then occasionally abandoned pieces that are more farm or ranch lanes than county road, which in turn may run right into the towering berm of the modern obliterating interstate. It's not like US 40 vs. I-70 thru Licking County, but a puzzle of pieces and layers. You really, really have to slow down to find it. And you may never quite find it all.

 

Following the ghost of Martin Milner's Corvette, or picking up the hints in pop culture far afield from any path Route 66 once took, you can cover quite a bit of ground. Monument Valley is rooted in the imagination as part of the path, which in fact runs far to the south of that iconic landscape . . . but the gift shops in Monument Valley sell more Route 66 souvenirs than almost anywhere else, in acknowledgement of the fact that Route 66 is a state of mind.

 

All of which is part of an approach I've been taking with a group on Wednesday nights this summer towards the Bible. It's a sacred library of (in Protestant tradition, anyhow) 66 books, and we moderns tend to take the highway through it, hitting the high points and speeding on to predetermined destinations.

 

What I'm finding rewarding is the slower, more leisurely look at the landscape all around, and trying to find the thin red line that originally connected it all without just passing by. Sometimes the path is well marked, and occasionally you just have to stop the car, Corvette or Impala or VW minibus, and get out and look around.

 

And when you do that, you realize the road is not just the pavement, or the horizon, but the people who built it, and travel it, and whom you meet along the way.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor around central Ohio; tell him about meeting the Word along the Way at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 7-14

Faith Works 7-14-12

Jeff Gill

 

The Lad doesn't like hearing me say it, but this is the time of the summer when I say to him "there's not much vacation left: what do you want to do with it?"

 

The last few years we've tried to make a plan in May and have a special project or two from the start, but the recent years include summer reading required for the new school year, plus once you've helped with Cub Scout day camp, gone to Scout camp yourself, we've gotten in some family vacation or trips to various family households in Indiana, and the whole Fourth of July melee, the fact of the matter is that there's not much break left.

 

Add in that marching band actually starts the last day of July this year, and I can't blame him for feeling like his summer is over before it began.

 

Which to my way of thinking is an argument for a little planning, in order to make the most of it. You don't want to get too tied to your plan, and then be miserable when small details don't go as anticipated, but a plan taking into account the time you have to work with, and what you want to accomplish or even enjoy, can really make the time last longer.

 

Michael Hyatt, the author & former head of Thomas Nelson Publishing, is a big advocate of having a life plan. You can find his materials and suggestions very easily online, but he's passionate about saying, especially to Christians, that we really owe it to the One who gave us this life to stop and pray and consider and plan how we will use this gift. He points out, accurately I think, that sometimes we avoid doing a life plan because it implies from the outset that our life plan has an arc, and an unavoidable end, so it's easier to just "live for today."

 

Hyatt says that this sort of living is dangerously close to heretical (at least for Christians it would be!).

 

We have a certain amount of time on earth, just as summer vacation only lasts so long. We have the promise of eternity ahead, which gives us both hope and a new way to look at our mortal life, but that doesn't mean we should assume that our time here is just a prelude, or of lesser significance. How do we want to spend this gift? A plan can actually help us enjoy that, and not quietly dread the end of it. A life plan might just make the days stretch out enjoyably, even as we know that band camp is coming.

 

What's your life plan? This summer might be a good time to take a step back, prayerfully look at where you are and where you're going; to think about what God is inviting you to do with your life, and make a plan for following those leadings.

A vacation might be the perfect time and place to do that sort of worshipful work . . .

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor; tell him what stories you've heard this summer at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Knapsack 7-12

Notes From My Knapsack -- Granville Sentinel 7-12-12

Jeff Gill

 

The Lad doesn't like hearing me say it, but this is the time of the summer when I say to him "there's not much vacation left: what do you want to do with it?"

 

The last few years we've tried to make a plan in May and have a special project or two from the start, but the recent years include summer reading required for the new school year, plus once you've helped with Cub Scout day camp, gone to Scout camp yourself, we've gotten in some family vacation or trips to various family households in Indiana, and the whole Fourth of July melee, the fact of the matter is that there's not much break left.

 

Add in that marching band actually starts the last day of July this year, and I can't blame him for feeling like his summer is over before it began.

 

Which to my way of thinking is an argument for a little planning, in order to make the most of it. You don't want to get too tied to your plan, and then be miserable when small details don't go as anticipated, but a plan taking into account the time you have to work with, and what you want to accomplish or even enjoy, can really make the time last longer.

 

Michael Hyatt, the author & former head of Thomas Nelson Publishing, is a big advocate of having a life plan. You can find his materials and suggestions very easily online, but he's passionate about saying, especially to Christians, that we really owe it to the One who gave us this life to stop and pray and consider and plan how we will use this gift. He points out, accurately I think, that sometimes we avoid doing a life plan because it implies from the outset that our life plan has an arc, and an unavoidable end, so it's easier to just "live for today."

 

Hyatt says that this sort of living is dangerously close to heretical (at least for Christians it would be!).

 

We have a certain amount of time on earth, just as summer vacation only lasts so long. We have the promise of eternity ahead, which gives us both hope and a new way to look at our mortal life, but that doesn't mean we should assume that our time here is just a prelude, or of lesser significance. How do we want to spend this gift? A plan can actually help us enjoy that, and not quietly dread the end of it. A life plan might just make the days stretch out enjoyably, even as we know that band camp is coming.

 

What's your life plan?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and occasional end-of-parade scooper in Granville; tell him what you've had to shovel recently at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-7

Faith Works 7-7-12

Jeff Gill

 

Notes from the apocalpyse, junior version

___

 

One of the aspects of the pastoral role is that of "ritual specialist."

 

That's a kind of anthropological look at being in charge of ceremonial occasions, and in ecclesiastical terms it means you've had the training for and the theological background to know what service parts go where when, and how you are allowed to change and rearrange depending on various circumstances.

 

In some religious traditions, the acts and words around the observance of communion are set and inviolable, and in others you have a great deal of latitude, while some would prefer to avoid communion as a ceremonial event altogether, keeping it to certain occasions . . . and so on.

 

Weddings are one time where, whatever your own ordination or certification, you are called on to be a "ritual specialist" for sure, even if no one would ever throw that odd title around.

 

"Can we do this? Is this appropriate? Can we change this and add that?" The questions are myriad, and if I get specific I know there are lovely married couples in central Ohio who will think I'm talking about them, so I'll just let you use your imagination. But things happen at weddings that you just never used to have to consider, let alone have a plan for response to, and they sure didn't talk about this in seminary in the 80's.

 

So I understand clergy who retreat in a sort of formalism, and say "if I'm presiding at a wedding and signing the license, then the service takes place in a church, in my church, and the outline is *this* and no, I don't allow substitutions, this isn't a Chinese buffet." There's a certain calm and clarity to that approach.

 

If you say, as many do and I'm one of many, "Sure, happy to preside at an outdoor wedding," then you do, in fact, lose a certain amount of standing to object or require. You still can, but the negotiation is now no longer with you in the driver's seat.

 

And then there are wedding planners, who often are on a whole 'nother playbook.

 

What I say is "Do you have a Plan B?" Because if this is outdoor as in "I'm sure the weather will be fine in Ohio in [name month here]" and without a nearby option confirmed and reserved, I will say "No." Not often, but under those circumstances, I will and do.

 

Which is how I ended up driving on the bike path getting back to the Bryn Du Mansion just after the storm, where I just had been before it hit, looking at all the lovely decorations hanging around the plaza by the fieldhouse, which was both Plan B and the site for the reception dinner after.

 

Storm Night was the rehearsal (& rehearsal dinner) and the next Day of Chaos was the scheduled wedding day, and let this ritual specialist tell you: it was beautiful, and no doubt memorable, and an awesome example to a newly married couple of how a wedding, like a marriage, requires the co-operation and involvement of a whole bunch more than two people.

 

The respective families of the bride and groom jumped in with everything from generators and chain saws to hauling gear and toasting without notes by candlelight. The teams at Cherry Valley Lodge, where they let us run an ad hoc rehearsal in their lobby by lantern light, and fed everyone as if this happened most weekends; Bruce Cramer and the Bryn Du staff who steered and sorted and flexed to make this work out; Susan Kaiser at Faire-la-cuisine and her crew who somehow managed to feed 250 people in a pretty dark and rapidly heating room with food that I'm sure would have looked as good as it tasted if we could have seen it; and most of all the bride & groom, Natalie & Josh, who handled themselves with all the grace under pressure you could ask of a couple.

 

They did, however, immediately leave the scene of devastation for an area with more advanced technology and infrastructure: Mexico.

 

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a respite of air conditioning five days later, typing this courtesy of MickeyD's wifi, thinking how you simply can't, and probably shouldn't plan for something like *this*, but there's an element of flexibility and adaptability that you can practice, and that allows the Spirit of God to jump on board and be part of the plan.

 

We've all gotten some serious practice time in this week, I think!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him about your serendipity and Spirit-filled moments in the midst of the maelstrom last week at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-30

Faith Works 6-30-12

Jeff Gill

 

A motivation from within or without

___

 

Incentives are a funny thing. The Lad is in a summer reading program where reading items gets you tickets, and the tickets get you in a drawing for a Kindle Fire, so suddenly reading is a major theme.

 

Plus he's reading without being asked, told, or hinted at, entirely at his own initiative.

 

That, and the prospect of a Kindle Fire.

 

Mind you, he's grown up in a houseful of books, with a good education where reading is affirmed, and plenty of other "educational supports." But it's the hope of entering a drawing, one that he's very unlikely to win, which has spun his attitude on reading around.

 

This same approach has shown some interesting results with school attendance and graduation in various locations around the country, but also provokes no little controversy. Should a student be rewarded for doing what they're already supposed to do? Is it right to provide cash or goods in return for behavior that is already legally mandated?

 

Yet what you find is that the argument of future reward is remarkably unsuccessful in most circumstances, and not just for the young. Telling people that a new practice or behavior change now will result in good things much later, even very (very) good things, has a pretty poor success rate generally speaking.

 

But asking for a different personal choice in return for a relatively modest immediate reward – a gift card from a retailer, even a handful of small hard candies – garners a much higher rate of return. Even an intrinsically worthless paper ticket (albeit that in turn qualifies you for something more valuable) that is handed over in response has a leverage all out of proportion to a logical understanding of outcomes.

 

Traditional Christianity has an incentive program in place. One aspect of it is, we hope, far in the future, and that has to do with the end of the world. A little closer, but we also hope not so much, is the end of the world from our own subjective point of view. In either case, there's a reward offered for changed behavior.

 

Theologically, that's not how you're supposed to describe it (or look at it), but it gets talked about that way pretty often. Along with the DIS-incentive of punishment, lasting and significant, for continuing poor choices and bad behavior, there's a future reward in store for those who make right choices, or so it's said.

 

Not to make light of the objective or doctrinal status of heaven or hell, but the practical problem is that it's very hard to find anyone who says their decision to adopt a belief system stems from their desire to secure long-term future benefits. Don't write to tell me about someone who did, I'm saying that in general, that's not what gets people to worship services.

 

As you dig in to the actual substance of your faith community, I think it's likely that you'll find having a secure, calm sense of what eternity means for you actually does change you in the here and now, for the better. It's just that you probably didn't come through the door looking for that when you first came to church. In a similar way, my hope is that my son will come to a better understanding of why free-choice reading expands and illumines his world as he delves into it, but that's not why he dove in to start with.

 

So why did you start attending worship services? What got you in the door to start with, and what brought you back the second time? An open, honest conversation about this for church leaders can be very informative.

 

Should churches pay people to come to church? Well, no . . . but we do offer dinners and music and programs and potential friendship and fellowship. That's not the same, you might answer, which I wouldn't argue too much, except: they are incentives.

 

What incentives would help your church move to the next step in evangelism and mission? It can be a revelatory conversation.

 

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

 

Knapsack 6-28

Notes From My Knapsack 6-28-12

Jeff Gill

 

Not just a matter of opinion

___

 

Have you ever been yelled at?

 

Probably so; most people would say so. Less well known is that most of us, who think we've been yelled at, would find upon asking the yeller that they don't think they were yelling at the yellee.

 

Yelling is a matter of opinion, in most cases. There's no federal standard for decibels in committing the act of "yelling," nor is the tone or word choice well established.

 

In fact, for most of us, "getting yelled at" is a phrase we use for people we know, about when they amp up their usual volume and inflection to make a point.

 

And yelling is what we call it when someone's telling us something we don't want to hear.

 

I'm not saying there's no such thing as yelling as an objective reality: Mom on the back porch yells my name out across the neighborhood, a Scout troop on a hike overlooking a valley yells into it to hear an echo, and so on.

 

But the whole "so-and-so yelled at me" is a tricky concept. Truly, I've found that most people accused of yelling at someone else sincerely don't believe they raised their voice (much) or took on a tone (maybe a little). They know things got heated, but they'd probably pass a polygraph if the question was "did you yell at so-and-so?"

 

I've got a phrase I created more to remind myself than anything: Anger is fear in a poorly fitting costume. In my weekday work I talk to lots of angry people. They're angry because they're afraid they're going to be out money, or are going to lose financial security; they're angry because of a past they can't change and a future that they fear will be more of the same; they're angry because they fear no one cares about them, and deep down they fear that no one should, either.

 

For most angry people, if you can find out what they fear, and address it (not even necessarily solve it), then often the angry overtones will disappear as fast as a passing cloud. You'll see faces relax if not lighten up, and the slant of shoulders and volume control of the voice will all shift into a more placid register.

 

The dilemma is usually that folks who are stuck in anger have spackled a large pile of fury over the top of their fears, and even they don't always know, let alone are ready to talk about, what it is they fear. It's not so much about childhood trauma as it is the built-up certainty that their fears are unanswerable, unresolvable, and so must be covered with all the angry insulation you can pile up in a hurry.

 

Anger is fear in an ill-fitting costume. I'll stand by this phrase, knowing there must be exceptions out there, but I haven't run into them yet. Relieve the fear, and the anger melts away.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him your adventure in anger at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 6-23

Faith Works 6-23-12

Jeff Gill

 

Repetition, again and again

___

 

 

Last weekend I ended up, by an odd and delightful chain of coincidences, standing and talking for a while with Matt Romney.

 

He's got a father who's been in the news and in the Newark area recently, and is a father himself.

 

You might or might not be surprised to know he wasn't entirely thrilled about the idea of dad running for public office again, because at 39 he's been through this before, and knows the hard work that is a modern political campaign, air conditioned buses or not.

 

"So how do you end up enjoying this?" I asked, not telling him I wrote a weekly column on faith and life, but not really thinking about the column, truly.

 

His answer, which I can't quote precisely, so I won't pretend to put it in quotes, was that in each place, he looks around and tries to find what's unique, what's particularly characteristic, of the place and the people, and reflect on what that special quality has to teach him.

 

This may not sound like much, and it beats doing dishes or raking dross off a blast furnace ladle in the mill, but it's a skill, a practice (I would argue) that few have mastered. For most of us, riding a bus from stop to stop, scanning a script that doesn't change much, stepping out into a space between barricades lined with sunglassed dark suited men talking into their sleeves, and shaking a few hundred hands before getting on the bus and . . . yes, doing it again, and again, and again: it gets old. You get pro forma and ritual and mechanical, and your face starts to get stiff and the answers canned, tasting of tin when they come out.

 

To look out at a crowd, look around a courthouse square (which often looks remarkably similar from town to town, let's be honest), and scan the faces and the platform, and find what's new, what's worth absorbing and reflecting upon: it's an almost spiritual act. Matt said that the more he did this – looked for the particular and the special – the more he found it, and enjoyed it. And I think that enjoyment showed.

 

My own son, on that Father's Day, got up to do something he'd done many times before, leading a group in the Pledge of Allegiance. It's a familiar act, but one that can be dangerous in how familiar it is until something unusual happens, and then you suddenly can't even think of the words.

 

The Lad hit his cue and his mark, ready to speak clearly and directly into the microphone, an object which also holds no terrors for him, but there was a glitch. The plan was that the color guard would be to one side, and he was ready to turn as the crowd joined in, but due to a quirk of the staging, the flags ended up directly behind him.

 

He handled the awkward pivot like a pro, starting to the front, spinning right around as it went on, and at the close shook hands with the mayor like he'd been doing this all his life, and calmly strode off stage.

 

This is the same young man who, earlier in the week, had said to me with horror after the first day at Cub Scout Day Camp as part of the Scout staff: "I have to do the same thing every hour, exactly the same, over and over!"

 

"Yes, and . . .?" Dad responded unsympathetically. But we talked about this, and the fact that much of life is repetitive, and there's just not much you can do to change that. Doing dishes, taking out the trash, shopping at the grocery, folding the laundry, filing papers, clearing the supply shelves, sweeping the shop floor . . .

 

What you CAN change is . . . you. Your approach, your understanding, your awareness. Why are you reacting negatively to a new chance to do something worthwhile for or with a different group of people? "But it's the same thing!"

 

Actually, it isn't. And every courthouse square across America is uniquely itself, and even two identical buses apparently (so I'm told) have switches in different places, and when I really think about it, each time I pray the Lord's Prayer, it's different. A different day, different circumstances, changed inflections, new people standing nearby saying it with a slightly different emphasis.

 

Could repetition, as much as variety, be the spice of life? Do our beliefs about the world and what it means help us see value and specialness where the world-as-it-is sees sameness and monotony?

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him a story, even a twice-told tale, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

My note to FCC-Valpo for this weekend

First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) 175th Anniversary
Valparaiso, Indiana

"Good to be done more abundantly"

To look at our history as a congregation, I'd like to start somewhere about in the middle, just to keep us thinking about history as something more than just a series of dates and an orderly sequence of events. Life rarely feels like an orderly sequence of events when you live it, and it's the life of this congregation I'd like to help celebrate this summer more than our history. 

In "The Life of A.B. Maston," published just two years after his death at 54 in the year 1907, there is the following note about 1878:

"Valparaiso has, besides the City College, a flourishing Normal School, said to be the largest in the United States. Has about 1,200 pupils. The school is under the superintendence of Prof. H. B. Brown, a member of the Christian Church. While in Valparaiso, we visited the Normal School during chapel service, where we met over 600 pupils, who observed the most marked order during the services . . . We met Bro. A. B. Maston, a young man of fine natural abilities and good attainments, who will finish his course in the Normal School this year. Bro. Maston expects to enter upon the work of the ministry in full. A congregation wishing the services of a young man would do well to call him."

In fact, he ended up called not so much to a congregation as to a continent, and became one of Australia and New Zealand's foremost evangelists. You can read more about him at: http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/people/amaston.html

"People's minds in this county are taken up with the truth, and are searching the Scriptures to see if the things of which we speak are so." So said the article in Alexander Campbell's "Millenial Harbinger" about what was going on in Porter County, Indiana, at the county seat of Valparaiso, on June 22, 1837.

The August 1837 issue went on to state "there is great prospect for good to be done more abundantly."

Campbell himself never came to Valparaiso, but he did dedicate the Christian Church in Wooster, Ohio, from which came Elias & Phoebe Axe. The Axe family name is still remembered with honor at First Christian Church in Wooster, and Elias & Phoebe of that clan came to northern Indiana not long after, with "the principles of Restoration" still fresh in their hearts. Those were central to the establishment of this new congregation, and the Axes carried into this body of believers the outlines of what they had learned from Campbell and the early Disciples' preachers.

What they began shifted about in a variety of locations close to downtown Valparaiso, and most recently has found a home on Glendale Boulevard, but is centered now as then on the communion table. A table to which all are invited, but away from which some carry a calling, a commission to go out and tell others about this open banquet of God's grace. Or as Sri Lankan theologian D.T. Niles said, "Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread."

Bread has been found, and good has been done abundantly, at First Christian Valpo. My own memories of this congregation don't go back 175 years, they go two thousand, and more. When I think of First Christian, I think of home baked bread, bing cherry jello salad and deviled eggs on the long pitch-in tables just inside the kitchen doors off of Fellowship Hall, and we kids playing (during programs for adults) up in the coat room, where the brick foundations of the high tower above sloped inwards, brick by brick, like an Egyptian temple. It felt ancient and mysterious and downright Biblical.

We ran haunted houses through that mysterious room, hid from junior choir directors in there, tied knots during Troop 7 meetings around the heavy pipe racks, and even occasionally hung coats from hangers in there.

Our history, at least by way of the Bible, goes back at least to Exodus and watching "The Ten Commandments" in a Sunday school classroom, and as a small child I thought of Rev. Percy Thomas as a patriarch from the prophetic books; Rev. Tom Alston talked about working in the pickle factory when he was young like the Hebrews spoke of making bricks without straw. The historic and the contemporary were casually entwined for me in growing up as part of a church family.

I think of Christmas baskets delivered, with bread and more, to home bound members, and others whose names had come to the attention of the elders, and then a pageant in the sanctuary when the brightly colored windows were dark; it was the crowns of the wise men, looking *exactly* like those worn at the stable in Bethlehem, that cast flashes of light and hue across the polished wooden pews with the glitter of their marvelous fake jewels and carefully wrapped foil. Their brocaded robes and gently cradled gifts were messages directly to me from across the ages and the pages of the gospels, promises of God having even more to say when I learned how to hear.

Nowhere did God's voice seem clearer than at communion, if only with the words across the front of the table: "This Do In Remembrance of Me." There is a promise of bread in the grain framing the grapes in the Benham Room windows under the balcony at the back of the church, those elements of communion being the only actual images shown in the geometry of the stained glass, other than the Holy Bible perched atop the south wall. Communion was real, and nothing made it more real than the Sundays when you knew, looking at the nested tower of communion ware, that the elements were there because you and your family had put them there, either that morning or the evening before. Bread, in the form of small rectangles of inedible off-white something, was always carefully poured out into the smaller plates as we filled the larger cup holders with small glasses of grape juice right out to the edges.

Sharon Watkins, our current Disciples' General Minister and President, and former neighbor minister down the road at Boone Grove, likes to tell a story about something she learned from a neuroscientist. "Where is the edge of your brain?" she asks. It turns out that it isn't a horizon in your skull, but your brain extends through your nervous system, and in fact the edges of it extend to your outstretched fingertips.

"Where is the edge of the church?" Dr. Watkins continues. For First Christian Valpo, it turns out that our fingertips, our extensions of contact and touch and feeling reach as far as Australia & New Zealand; to Bethany, West Virginia by way of Wooster, Ohio; and an odd assortment of other places we've gotten our fingers into. Our Timothys and Eunices are in congregations around the United States, and our influence extends even into other denominations . . . but if you grew up at First Christian, you still look to the Table for your focus, for your center, for a place where you can count on being welcome.

And we carry forth our welcome, our invitation to God's table, into homeless shelters and jail ministries, through regional & general assemblies to our fellow Disciples, as part of food pantries and Mother's Days Out; at World Jamborees of the Scouting Movement, with retirees to the Rio Grande Valley and the Smoky Mountains, among Civil War re-enactors and pilots and police officers and nurses and college professors and steelworkers.

As one of First Christian's Timothys, I have an ordination certificate on my office wall with signatures on it like Irene Roeder, C.D. Clover, William Eckert, and Ronald Gill. My service of ordination was almost but not quite at 7 Chicago Street, since by August of 1989 the building had been condemned, but not yet brought down . . . so our worship was in a large tent in the west yard across the alley. We had more Scout uniforms than robes, and folding chairs instead of pews, and canvas in place of stained glass, but it was still First Christian Valpo in worship: because the Good News was proclaimed, and the Table was shared. Everyone was invited, and we ate and drank and gave thanks. Then, we left.

To share the bread, we have to break the loaf, and distribute the pieces. You can't have your cake and eat it, too; you also can't just set a lovely loaf up on a shelf and expect it to just sit there. It's meant to be broken, and eaten. And then it finds new life in we who partake. When we worship, it continues in a new way after the benediction, as the body that has been gathered, and formed, is dispersed. Are we still a church then? Yes. Just as a loaf of bread has meaning even after – maybe especially after – every scrap of it has been eagerly eaten by hungry people.

Then, that loaf of bread is at work in and through those who ate it, who are thereby empowered to go out and do what needs to be done. Maybe even doing some good more abundantly. That's what our history at First Christian Valpo is about: we know where bread, the Bread of Life, can be found, and we want to share it, and we want to make use of what that Bread does in us, "for good to be done more abundantly."

In grace and peace,
Rev. Jeff Gill
Granville, OH