Notes from my Knapsack 11-21-13

Notes from my Knapsack 11-21-13

Jeff Gill

 

A story on the way home – pt. 8

___

 

Heading down the hill of S. Main St. after turning left off Broadway, Nelson was watching on his right after passing the Denison power plant.

 

Orville at the Buxton had told him that he'd be turning "on your right, past the bridge over the creek, right before the Sunoco station." It looked like he was about to go back onto the highway, but the directions were good and there at the gas station was a sign for Weaver Drive.

 

1200, 1300, 1400 addresses on the left then the right; the 1500 address on the utility bill in the folder he'd gotten at the inn, left there by his late sister, was an odd number, so it should be on the left.

 

Weaver Drive was running out when Nelson saw a board holding a line of mailboxes on the left side of the road. Risking a small traffic violation, he steered his rental car across the oncoming lane, and slowed down to pause at the perched postal addresses.

 

It was good that the car was stopped or he might have swerved right off the road. There was the address he was looking for, and under it, in neatly painted if faded letters, his own name.

 

Turning down the gravel drive, feeling just a bit disoriented, he realized there was a cluster of trailers, or modular homes, or whatever the proper term was. All looked older, not really neglected so much as weary. Some children's toys were scattered about, and a couple of the trailers appeared vacant.

 

Rapping at what seemed the right unit, a high thin voice from inside called out "Come in," and Nelson walked inside.

 

Across from the door, an elderly man sat in a recliner, a clear plastic tube running beneath his nose and running over to a device sitting on the floor and plugged into the wall. In a slightly deeper voice, the seated man said "Pardon me for not getting up," then began to cough, softly.

 

"You must be my grandfather."

 

"Quick one, like your sister."

 

"Did you know . . . she died?"

 

"I had assumed something of the sort. Since she'd found me here last year, she called every Sunday, and came out for a couple of days every month. After two Sundays and no call, I assumed the worst. That's usually the right call."

 

Nelson stood there, after closing the door behind him, looking at his newly discovered grandfather. After a wave of the elderly man's arm, he sat down in the chair opposite, realizing his sister had probably sat right here on her visits.

 

"Your father moved me here when he taught up at the college; I had an apartment in the village. When he moved on, I decided I'd be fine staying here; I'd made some friends, and it felt like home. Then he got himself in some jams, stopped calling me, and I knew he had burned his bridges with your mother. I stayed out of all that."

 

"But my sister? How did she find you, and why didn't she tell me?" Pausing, still processing all of the last few hours on some level of his thoughts, he added "If that's alright for me to ask."

 

"Oh, I'd be surprised if you didn't ask. But that's a story itself."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-30-13

Faith Works 11-30-13

Jeff Gill

 

The limits of establishment

___

 

Over in Muskingum County, John Glenn High School and their school board made a hard but necessary decision. They took down a picture of Jesus hanging in the building.

 

They had looked at their options, and been given the legal advice that to keep the picture up would involve court battles which would cost the district something between $250,000 and $1,000,000 . . . and they would still have to take the picture down. Recent cases such as down in Jackson, Ohio showed how this would play out, and with that weight of fiscal responsibility hanging over them, the board did what they had to do. School districts can't risk that kind of money these days on much, let alone a guaranteed losing battle.

 

Why is this a losing battle? The Constitution does say, in the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." If you're reading that, and thinking I've forgotten the part about "a wall of separation between church and state," that's because it isn't there. Not in the Constitution, not in the Bill of Rights, not in the US Code. It's in Jefferson's letters, a comment he made to some Baptists in 1802.

 

But let's just say that the intent of the Founders was to include in the national charter, as a binding advisory compendium, the collected correspondence of the Sage of Monticello. Maybe they did, and just forgot to add it as a footnote ("for details on the amendments, please consult T. Jefferson's letters he may write in the future").

 

This offending picture was purchased as a memorial to a long-serving teacher who died after 55 years of teaching, at her desk. Yes, at her desk. So given her manner of passing, it makes sense that to honor her service, friends gathered up an offering and purchased a painting that showed a person she respected deeply, and whose own life and death echoed the selfless sacrifice of Margaret Barnett.

 

Yet it was a picture of a religious figure, and so must be removed from school property (it will go to a local congregation Mrs. Barnett attended). "Wall of separation," you know. And having done so, I have to ask: where exactly does this stop, if the intention is to honor the legal force of Jefferson's epistles?

 

You don't have to make much of a reach, logically speaking, to wonder if the end point is a school curriculum made up entirely of mathematics and physical education. Yeah, the kids are gonna love that.

 

Plus, I'm reliably informed that as long as math tests continue, you will never be able to keep prayer entirely out of schools.

 

I do understand that the origin of the legal stream that brings us to the "Lemon test" (irony alert: that's really what it's called, and you can look it up on your own) is the fact that sectarian prayers, even and especially from the overwhelming majority religion in an area, can be divisive and hurtful and even oppressive for those students and their families who don't share those beliefs.

 

Or to put it even more plainly: I don't want teachers leading prayers. I love teachers, I'm the son and grandson and grandnephew of teachers and principals and superintendents, and I even married one, and I don't want teachers AS teachers leading prayer during the school day. And I want even less for teachers to lead a rote prayer written for them by a state legislature or even the local school board. It's the school districts job to provide math tests, and then the student and their family can learn together how best to pray and prepare for such trials.

 

Having said that, I don't get the angst over Mrs. Bennett's memorial, nor do I understand why it is legally impossible to tell the difference between an oppressive imposition of official religious establishment, or a particular expression of local values and personal memorials.

 

The law does pause to consider, on occasion, someone once known as "a reasonable person." How would a reasonable person respond to this, or that, as opposed to someone with an axe to grind or an interest to pursue. The "reasonable person" is a basis for judges to rule and for juries to deliberate.

 

Let's make sure we leave room in schools for students to learn how to become reasonable persons, regarding religion and art and pretty much anything else.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he likes to think of himself as a reasonable person. Tell him what you think is reasonable (or not) at knapsack77@gmail.com or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-23-13

Faith Works 11-23-13

Jeff Gill

 

Fifty years of reassessment

___

 

Fifty years ago yesterday, a president, a professor, and a provocateur died. They each left this life in different locations, for entirely unrelated reasons, but their careers are still being debated and their respective influences considered to the present day.

 

President John F. Kennedy died, and live TV coverage was born. His life and service had implications well beyond his death, but it's his assassination that colors so much of how we think about him. He took office having used TV in his debate with Nixon to great effect, and the power of televised media would have grown in any case, but Kennedy's skill in live press conferences, then the national role network coverage had in bringing a shocked country together in the next few days, culminated in the state funeral so many of us remember.

 

I was two years old when Kennedy was shot. It seems to me that I remember my mother crying, and I believe I recall the procession with the riderless horse and the reversed boots, and John-John saluting . . . but it could be the tricks that repeated video clips can play with memory. That, too, is what we learned from the aftermath of Kennedy's death: even with film, there is still uncertainty. The handsome images and gripping pictures still do not tell the entire story.

 

Clive Staples Lewis was a scholar of languages and philosophy who taught and wrote on how words can conceal and reveal; he was distinguished in his academic fields as only makes sense for someone who was a professor at both Oxford & Cambridge in his career, but that's not what he's best known for today.

 

When he became, relatively late in life, a "reluctant convert" to Christianity, it was bare years later that he found himself in front of a BBC microphone during World War II, trying to explain the basis of faith and build up the foundations of hope to a listening population battered by Luftwaffe bombings. The popular response to those radio talks became books, which gave rise to more books, which became a calling as perhaps the English speaking world's best known and most read theologian of Christian orthodoxy. His death was quiet and private, but it also released under his name to the public his previously anonymous "A Grief Observed." It was his attempt as a Christian to come to terms with the loss of his wife, Joy, and some suggest it may be gratefully read for generations to come, with an enduring appeal beyond even that of his popular "Narnia" series.

 

Kennedy died in Dallas, Lewis in Oxford, and Aldous Huxley succumbed to cancer in California. Both Lewis and Huxley were overshadowed in their passing by the drama of a US President cut down in Dealey Plaza, even though they were public figures in their own right. Lewis is probably better known today than he was at his death, but Huxley has not fared so well. A late in life infatuation with psychedelics gave him a brief posthumous notoriety in the Sixties, but what has kept his reputation alive if not his name is the book "Brave New World."

 

The title comes from Shakespeare's "The Tempest," but the text is a tract for modernism and its discontents. Cynics have asked in recent years if, aside from governmentally mandated universal in vitro fertilization as proposed in this dystopian classic, it might be that Huxley was right. Was he a prophet? Is the world he warned against one we are largely living in today? That debate has just enough credibility to the proposition for it to continue, and it will, for some time to come.

 

Huxley asked if we were quietly letting drugs adjust us into a sort of stuporific happiness, and allowing the pursuit of personal pleasure to transform us into selfish shadows of the creative people and communities we could be. He was not big on answers, but his questions have a way of sticking with a reader.

 

Nov. 22, 1963 was a significant day for those three people, and for their world. It marked an ending and, cliché or not, a very real beginning. Their deaths began our search for the role each are playing still. Political celebrity, popular theology, and the pathology of self-improvement: these questions have not died.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him how you've been influenced by Kennedy, Lewis, & Huxley at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-16-13

Faith Works 11-16-13

Jeff Gill

 

A vision to be thankful for

___

 

 

It's a peculiar thing to recall, but some years ago, I was helping get ready for a community Thanksgiving service, and though I entered St. Edward's in early evening, it was already dark.

 

Some of us were arriving well before the stated time for the program, in order to sing in the scratch choir put together for the evening. We all had some choral experience, but we needed to learn the sound of our voices together, get used to a new director's style, that sort of thing.

 

In Granville's St. Ed's, you come in across a well-lit compact plaza off the parking lot, pass through a beautiful narthex into the sanctuary, and then turn right to go up a flight of stairs to the choir loft.

 

It seemed as if we arrived with a bit of light still in the western sky, but once we'd gone up and started singing, the world got dark fast.

 

What has stuck with me was, at first, a feeling like an "island in the sky" with a pool of light around the organ console, the director before us, and everything else in the surrounding nave was dark. Even the large clear windows shone little light within.

 

While our group rehearsed the Thanksgiving numbers that we were there to sing, you could see flickers of candlelight on ahead, into what I knew was the chancel. There were lights, there was a presence down there, but it was quite a ways away, and the few shadowy movements on the church floor below were scattered and hard to read.

 

As we practiced the pieces appointed for this day, some late-comers came through the door and made their way up. Our numbers grew, but over time, others had to leave to tend to other tasks, so the gathered group subtly changed over time, new faces coming, familiar faces leaving. A tread on the stairs and an expectant glance to see who would be joining us; quiet apologies shared with section mates as some left to make their exit.

 

In my mind, I had a pretty good picture of what the view ahead, on down the nave looked like, but in that hour, I had a few diagonal shafts of exterior light to confuse the view, and a handful of reddish yellow flickering points off in the distance. Otherwise, darkness. It was a darkness I could imagine, and soon I'd be walking down to find my place, but for now, it was quite comfortable to sit in this pool of light and to sing what we shortly would for worship.

 

Then suddenly someone, somewhere, flipped a switch. We were still illuminated in our choir loft, but the entire space within the church building was, if anything, brighter, and now the prospect of going down the staircase and heading up the aisle was entirely something to look forward to.

 

And those dancing points of light in the distance resolved into a candle-rack for private devotions, set in part of the church where the reserve communion waited in the tabernacle. A part of the worship space that moments ago had seemed so distant as to be an alien land was now, even from the choir loft, a connected part of the whole.

 

Is this life in the world like a seat in the choir loft, new singers joining and some leaving in due time? Is God's future like the apse beyond the chancel in a dimly lit church, where the outlines are known but the details await a brighter moment? And is the last trump, the final apocalypse or "unveiling" as you'd translate that word from Greek, similar to an unseen hand turning on all the lights?

 

The metaphor may hold for you, or leave you cold. But I am truly thankful for every experience of the familiar in the midst of the unfamiliar, where I catch glimpses of what it means to understand our place in creation and our role in redemption, just from realizing that there is always something strange around every corner – and just as often, something familiar built into the fabric of the new.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you catch your glimpses of the Kingdom of God at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-9-13

Faith Works 11-9-13

Jeff Gill

 

A promise to keep

___

 

"So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever."  (Joshua 4:7, ESV)

 

Most people who are familiar with the concept of a "tontine" know it from a M*A*S*H re-run, when Col. Potter gets a package that contains a bottle of cognac which turns him into a foul humor. Over the course of the episode, it comes out that of a group of World War I veterans, who had purchased this bottle while on a final leave together, Potter was the last survivor, and the deal, the idea of a tontine is that everyone pitches in, and the last one gets the now well-aged result, with the promise to drink a toast to those who have gone before.

 

There is a very special tontine being closed out today in Dayton, Ohio. The last surviving members of the Doolittle Raiders, are gathering there. Of those who flew out of the darkest early days after Pearl Harbor to bomb Tokyo, eighty in number off the flight deck , seven died in the aftermath of the mission, thirteen more during the remainder of World War II. The now sixty Raiders began after the war regular reunions, and in 1959 the city of Tucson, Arizona presented them with a unique gift and honor.

 

It was a set of eighty silver goblets, each with a name, on one side right-side up, on the other side upside-down, and a case to hold them. Each year since, there has been a ceremony to turn over the goblets of the men who died since the last gathering, joining the twenty that were already overturned.

 

At the center of the case is a bottle of fine brandy, bottled in 1896, the year of Col. Doolittle's birth. The idea was originally that at the last reunion, the last two survivors would open the bottle, and drink to the memory of their fellow airmen.

 

For many years, the Doolittle Raiders' tontine case was held at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs; not long ago, it was moved to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base here in Ohio. Nestled under the wing of a B-25, like the sixteen they flew from the deck of the USS Hornet to Tokyo and on to China, some visitors pause briefly and move on puzzled at this wide arrangement of silver cups oddly arranged, and others stand there, head bowed, for quite some time.

 

Over the years, in regular visits to this museum, I had watched the number of upright goblets dwindle. The last time I was there, it was five of the 80, today it is four.

 

The annual tradition had become more occasional, and the decision was made by the three of the remaining four who could travel to have a formal "Last Reunion" at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, where they had trained in 1942 for their mission. Those three also decided to set a date, which is now here, to go to Dayton, and open the bottle, and close out the tontine together, honoring all their fellows.

 

Dick Cole, Robert Hite, Edward Saylor, and David Thatcher. They are the last, all in their nineties, and Lt. Col. Hite probably will not be present. Lt. Col. Cole was co-pilot with Doolittle, and is a native of Dayton, closing a circle in another way as well.

 

A toast, a prayer, a memorial stone, a memory. They are each enduring acts in their own right, and all are vulnerable in human terms. The bottle will empty, the prayers are spoken and drift away in the breeze; stones can erode and memories always do. We treasure our own ways to honor and remember, with roadside shrines and car window stickers, let alone granite in cemeteries or on the National Mall in Washington, even as we understand they have a lifespan of their own.

 

Lincoln spoke in his First Inaugural of "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave" anchoring them to hearts & hearthstones. But he closed by reminding his hearers of "the better angels of our nature," knowing that a purely earthly sense of remembrance is frail as fog, needing a more solid connection to hold them in place.

 

May God's presence enfold and anchor and bless all the memories and hopes and thankfulness lifted up with those last three goblets, today in Dayton.

 

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

Faith Works 11-2-13

Faith Works 11-2-13

Jeff Gill

 

Saints, salvation, and some speculations

___

 

If you come from a more mainline and progressive tradition, there are words and concepts you don't hear about so often.

 

My denomination has many evangelical and conservative members, and in most settings I'm counted as one of them, but any church that practices open communion and open membership is going to be called progressive and even liberal sometimes, and those aren't cuss words.

 

While affirming that aspect of our history, I have to also admit that we've spent a generation or two avoiding certain words in the wider Christian understanding which we really ought to re-explore, and reclaim.

 

Evangelism is one, and you've heard me talk in this space about that subject, especially thanks to my friend and colleague Martha Grace Reese, whose best-selling "Unbinding the Gospel" has helped un-oxymoron the phrase "mainline evangelism." At least a bit!

 

Repentance is another good solid word which has some narrow assumptions attached to it that don't really fit the scriptural and spiritual heft "metanoia" should carry for us. And the whole image of blood, and washing . . . well, I've preached that sermon, and it's another column.

 

What I want to address today is: salvation. Salvation, "saving souls," and "being saved" are concepts that make folks anxious sometimes because they've become associated with a particular way of experiencing . . . well, experiencing what? That lack of grounding is a big part of what has made many faithful and spiritual people back away from salvation language.

 

Saved . . . from what? Fair question, and a good place to start. Because I believe that conservative or liberal, spiritual or religious, believer or skeptic, we all need salvation. Yep, I just went and said it. So let me try and explain it.

 

We need to be saved from: ourselves. Yes, "be your own best friend" and "learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all," but seriously, how did that work out for Whitney? Yes, I am being serious. Maybe your mileage varied, but I have not found that I am my own best friend. I may be my own best tempter, by own best goad and gadfly, but more often than not, I need to be saved from myself, and I don't think that's a "me" thing.

 

We need to be saved from: others. The pack, the herd, the mob; we hear these calls to be thinner, sharper, sexier, cooler, and we're constantly picking up on the message on the general wavelength – we're off course. Get with the program, hang with the cool kids, don't rock the boat. In mass, at the very least, we need to be saved from the voracious appetites of "others."

 

We need to be saved from: hopelessness. There's no better way to be lost than to believe you cannot be found. When we abandon hope, all we who enter into that dark wood Dante spoke of at the outset of "The Divine Comedy," we enter into a vast and trackless landscape which we cannot escape on our own.

 

We need to be saved from: meaninglessness. If life has no intrinsic, intended meaning that goes beyond our momentary hungers and passing fancies, then it is the pursuit of pleasure and precious little else. We starve, in this life, for meaning, and to find it is to be fed.

 

And of course we need to be saved from: death. Not dying, for which we have palliative care and all the comfort and solace medical science can bring, but death, something we experience most directly when it happens to someone else. As Donne said, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." How shall we be saved from that inexorable tolling?

 

To which I would heartily reply: the problem with salvation and being saved is that we tend to go at it the wrong way 'round. We don't need to be saved FROM as much as we need to see what we are saved FOR. The theological concept of salvation is the gospel proclamation of grace, of God's gift of wanting us, of loving us, of reaching out to us even when we turn away, and taking ahold of us to rescue and preserve and sustain and SAVE us for an eternal weight of glory, not made with hands (2 Cor. 4:17, 5:1). The glory already experienced by those we call this weekend by name of "saints," a company to which we might aspire to belong. I want to be in that number.

 

God wants to save us FOR something, so we can be in that number. What that number, that parade, that company of saints is, is beyond our imaginings, but it can be glorious to try.

 

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

 

So, you want to know about the history of the Disciples of Christ?

Here's my internet-centric (as opposed to a traditional "reading list" of books) attempt to create a do-able but fairly in-depth read/view list of links. Tell me what you think: if you were coming into the Disciples whether as a member, commissioned minister, or clergy coming in from another denomination, would this help you get oriented? It feels like the sort of thing folks are looking for.

Start with: http://www.disciples.org/Video/tabid/422/Default.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Ridge_Revival

https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/revival-at-cane-ridge/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Presbytery

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Last_Will_and_Testament_of_The_Springfield_Presbytery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Campbell_(clergyman)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_and_address

http://www.therestorationmovement.com/cmbla.htm -- see links at bottom, particularly:

http://www.therestorationmovement.com/walker.htm or for Campbell's fame from debates more broadly, see:

http://www.christianchronicler.com/History2/campbell_debates.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott_(clergyman) and make sure especially to look at the section "Five Finger Exercise"

For the general development of the diverging branches of the Restoration Movement, this is a very good overview (as of 10-22-13):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_Movement

To look at a specifically Disciples' overview, read:

http://www.disciples.org/Home/WhoWeAre/HistoryoftheDisciples/tabid/1116/Default.aspx and then view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG_GiGEu7Jk

Faith Works 10-26-13

Faith Works 10-26-13

Jeff Gill

 

Sustainability and size

___

 

First, a couple of personal notes; next weekend, I get to do some pastoral leadership in non-congregational settings.

 

On Saturday, Nov. 2, I'm meeting with anyone interested in a three and a half mile hike around some Newark streets at 9:30 am, starting (and finishing) at the Great Circle Museum, off of Rt. 79 where Newark and Heath meet at the Newark Earthworks State Memorial.

 

We will explore some elements of the Newark Earthworks that are outside of the Great Circle, and the Octagon (where we had a lovely open house day a couple of weeks ago). The original four and a half square mile complex is preserved in part through some Ohio Historical Society sites, but there are hints and traces left around the modern cityscape. The hike will take about two to two and a half hours, and is on uneven but mostly level ground.

 

Then on Sunday, Nov. 3, I get the privilege of again serving as MC for the "Gospel Celebration" at the Midland Theatre for the Licking County Coalition of Care. Tickets are $25 and the concert begins at 4:00 pm, with five rousing acts performing, including headliners and country music star Bryan Lewis. You can learn more about what this fundraising concert helps support at www.coalitionofcare.com.

 

If you attend the Gospel Celebration, you'll find yourself among members of many different congregations from around Licking County, and beyond. It's the kind of effort and outreach that is always effective in our area, where church co-operation is the rule, not the exception.

 

You might meet someone sitting near you who is from a congregation very different from your own; being a semi-urban, rural county seat of government kind of small city, we cover the gamut from large to small.

 

During the summer, we talked in this space about how some denominational leaders are inviting a conversation about sustainability and size. If you are worshiping on an average Sunday less than 100 or so, and your total church budget is below something like $150,000, then there's a case being made that those circumstances are not sustainable, or are only so because those churches have "cannibalized" their missions giving.

 

There's no doubt that some of that is true, and already happening within some mainline congregations, with personnel costs shooting above 85% and past 90%, which is where you start seeing a sort of "law of diminishing returns" catch up with you.

 

And there's a real problem across the country where a worshiping attendance of a few dozen (or one) sit in a sanctuary that seats a thousand built over a century ago. Congregations like that have a Damocles' sword hanging over them each Sunday, one major roof truss failure or code violation away from draining the coffers and then closing the doors.

 

The counterpart of the concern, to me, is that you start to develop a mind set that if you aren't over 75 a Sunday and don't maintain a budget of $100K or more above and beyond endowment income, then you really have an obligation to close your doors and hand over your assets to the wider church (and where to have your members go is not always even addressed, given geography and local patterns of travel).

 

When I read and hear of these "viability" issues framed as if an iron law, I think of congregations like Zion Reformed Church (United Church of Christ) down in Perry County, just past Thornville before you get to Somerset.

 

Perched on High Point Road, they are one of our region's oldest continuing congregations, founded in 1806 but with roots to 1803 and Rev. John King, or Johannes Koenig as he was on the boat coming over from the Old Country. 210 years old, this congregation has never really been over 100 in average attendance, but has pretty consistently worshiped from thirty to sixty in first a log then a frame structure on the south side of the road where their historic cemetery sits, and for over a hundred years in the brick church building across the road, standing high above where Rt. 13 curves below.

 

They love and value their pastor, Dr. Herb Hicks, and have a strong tradition of good preaching and "the sacraments rightly observed" in the Mercersburg tradition of the old E & R Church that is now part of the UCC, but they are fundamentally a congregation rooted in their neighborhood, with a healthy sense of continuity but a capacity of adaptation that is natural to farm communities.

 

If that's not a viable congregation, or a sustainable faith community, I'll eat my statistical yearbook. They'll never be a mega-anything, but they're likely to outlast most mega-somethings in a century yet to come.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him about how your congregation is preparing for growth at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Knapsack 10-24-13

Notes from my Knapsack -- Granville Sentinel 10-24-13
Jeff Gill

A story on the way home (pt. 7)
___

(the seventh installment of an ongoing story)

Coming down the stairway from the ancient inn's upper level, Nelson heard the proprietor before he saw him.

"Did you sleep well?"

A few steps further down revealed a tall, smiling older man with a halo of wavy white hair and a mischievous smile. "You had Room 9, I see."

Shifting his bag from his right to his left and setting it down, Nelson reached out across the counter. "You must be the proprietor."

"Quite correct. I'm covering the front for a moment."

"You probably have to cover a little of everything most days."

"Absolutely true, it's just the nature of being an innkeeper."

Bending over to pull a slip from the old-fashioned rack, the eyebrows went up well into his high forehead as the innkeeper read Nelson's name in full, with an emphasis on his last name. And then he said "Would you like what your sister left here?"

For just a moment, the room wobbled, dimmed, then returned to the morning brightness it began with, but now including a slightly worried frown on the proprietor's face. "Are you alright?"

"My sister died last week," Nelson said softly. "And I came to Granville because something had brought her here, and I wanted to know what; was it this inn?"

"I am so terribly sorry about your sister, she was a lovely guest, and I didn't mean to startle you with that question. So, with that last name, Sheryl was your sister, wasn't she? The resemblance is quite striking."

Nelson merely nodded.

Reaching up into a higher cubbyhole, the man pulled down a clear pocket folder, the sort people keep their bills or correspondence in on a shelf. It wasn't bulging, but had a number of papers in it, some photocopies, letters, and a few invoices of various sorts. "She usually came in the middle of the week, when we don't have that many guests, and she loved to stay in Room 9 unless it was already taken. She never made reservations, just showed up, and we always found a room for her, usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday it was Bonnie's room, the haunted one, you know."

Nelson hesitated a moment, then asked "Do you know what she came to this village to do, why she kept visiting here?" The innkeeper shook his head. "We like to be friendly with our guests, and I'm always willing to talk, but she didn't say much about that: my impression was that she knew someone here. But this folder full of papers is something she left in her room last time; we called her in Las Vegas and she laughed and said she'd just get it the . . . next time she came."

"So the answer," Nelson said slowly, "might just be in this file."

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-19-13

Faith Works 10-19-13

Jeff Gill

 

The issue isn't leadership, it's discipleship

___

 

Having spent three weeks talking about ministerial formation, in terms of seminary education and ordination processes in various Christian traditions, I would be remiss if I didn't talk a bit about a much more important subject.

 

Leadership.

 

For some folks reading this, they'll think "Dude, that's what you've been talking about for weeks!" But ministerial leadership is, in my opinion, just one part, maybe even a small part, of what it means to have leadership in a faith community.

 

Not all Christian traditions have clergy, but there are still leaders. Some have very hierarchical systems with the pastor holding remarkable authority over finances & property let alone planning & program, but those places still have – and need – other leaders.

 

In a Christian sense, servant leadership is the model given us by Jesus, so some would even challenge the centrality of the idea of formal leadership in the life of the gathered community.

 

If the leader of all should be servant of all, and "the last shall be first and the first, last," then positions and status don't really fit well into such a mold.

 

On the other hand, you see the early Christian movement quickly regularize the apostles by selecting a replacement for Judas to "The Twelve," and then after seeing the leadership load on the elders of the community, a group of deacons were called forth to do practical leadership in a hands-on, git 'r done sort of manner. As Stephen's example showed, this didn't mean they didn't teach or preach, but they had a particular calling of service to the gathered followers of "The Way."

 

There have been attempts through the ages to organize gatherings of believers in a purely consensus based model, with no individual leaders named or functioning as specific "in charge" roles. My impression is that they just don't last that way; sooner or later, they end up with leaders named as such. You can call that sinfulness, or you can just shrug and say "that's how we're made," but every regularly gathering group of like-minded people will end up with a few particular folks taking responsibility to "lead."

 

Leading is setting the pace, clarifying the vision, following up on general intentions with specific action. And I would argue that for most Christian congregations (the faith communities I know best), the weak point is a tendency to leave leading to the preacher. Even when there are names and faces in offices that carry similar or even equal authority to that of the clergy in the life of that church, there is very often little getting out front by them, no vision to speak of (they aren't speaking of it, anyhow), and they don't get to specific action on paper, let alone in person.

 

There are books aplenty out there on church leadership, and most of them strongly commend to the pastor some sort of role, but they all start with an assumption that the parson already is in a leadership role, and talk to the preacher as if she or he just needs to organize the troops differently.

 

A different approach is suggested by Bill Kinnon, a Canadian pastor, worship leader, and communications expert. Bill says "the issue isn't leadership, it's discipleship." Bill has long been concerned about the almost obsessive focus many clergy and church consultants and church growth books put on developing leaders, doing leadership development, and restructuring churches to more efficiently lead in practical terms.

 

To my reading of much of his online output over the last decade, Brother Kinnon would affirm that there is probably something worth praising in almost any leadership model or training plan, but NONE of it matters a whit if there is not healthy, growing commitment to discipleship among the members. If the members of a faith community are continuing to see themselves as consumers of a religious product, you could lead brilliantly but take the congregation nowhere.

 

Contrariwise, if you are teaching and preaching and modeling Christ-like ways of living, reflecting, and worshiping so that you are nurturing a community of Christ-followers, you probably won't ask at year's end "why won't anyone take on a leadership role in [insert ministry program name *here*]?"

 

Leaders will always be with us. We need accountability structures to ensure leadership cannot become abusive and controlling of the community and its members, but beyond that, there's all sorts of amazing ministry that can happen without formal, named leaders.

 

But if you don't have many disciples around, it doesn't matter how hard you work to develop a plan for a project as a leader. Your plan may just have to slow down or even stop a bit, to help reach out to those newly walking "The Way" of Jesus Christ.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him about how you lead, or how you help teach discipleship, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Faith Works 10-12-13

Faith Works 10-12-13

Jeff Gill

Bricks and Mortar and Hearts
___

 

First, before I close my reflections on ministerial education, let me encourage any of you reading this early on Saturday morning to make your breakfast or early lunch choice be a "Vancake Breakfast" organized by Wheels for Washka, a group working to help get an accessible van for a fellow over in Granville who has been inspiring to many of us as he has dealt so well with to increase of a debilitating illness that keeps him limited now to a wheelchair.

 

He's better known, though, for how he's keeping up his health and strength in the face of increasing disability by riding a recumbent bike all over Licking County, pedaling with his hands as he's paced by his faithful companion Scout.

 

So if you'd like to help Craig and his family get him around when a bike won't do, a few pancakes, or "vancakes" might be just the ticket over at St. Edward's Catholic Church on Newark-Granville Road.

 

Oh, and if you'd like to join me for a walking tour tomorrow afternoon of the Octagon Earthworks off of 33^rd St. in Newark, Sunday is the last Octagon Open House of 2013; we'll be out roaming the grounds from Noon to dusk. Happy to meet some of you!

 

My conclusion of these last few columns about the growth of virtual learning and online experiences for ministerial training has evoked some strong responses by e-mail and on Facebook. I appreciate all the shared consideration of the subject: it's not simple.

 

In fact, I'd not planned a third column on this originally, but the feedback to the first, let alone the second, showed me I needed to say a bit more.

 

Something I've said before in passing deserves saying quite clearly in this context: I don't think residential, accredited, theological seminary with a standard masters (like the M.Div.) is going to disappear, and I do not want it to. It is already becoming less common, less normative, and an expectation that even in mainline/oldline Protestant denominations is lessening.

 

This is not, for a variety of reasons, an ideal analogy, but I can't come up with one that "works" any better: I think the standard residential seminary degree is going to become like the service academies in the military. Once, if you were going to be an officer in the armed forces, you had to have gone to West Point or Annapolis. Period. Then there were a few "battlefield" promotions, "mustangs" who earned their way from enlisted ranks up to officer without going to the academy.

 

Today, it's still the general sense that if you want to make a career of the military, if you want to work on the highest levels ultimately, you should go to West Point or Annapolis or Colorado Springs. Yet some who graduate from the academies do their basic obligation and then return to the civilian world, and some who only have ROTC at a state school – like Colin Powell – rise to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So there are exceptions, yet no one says the service academies have no place, or that they'll close, just because some reach senior officer status without that experience and credential.

 

Likewise, there will be the choice of churches to want to hire seminary graduates, but some surprising places may choose not to limit themselves to that. Seminary will have the advantages it has, and if graduates and churches don't see those as absolutely necessary, that will prove itself out over the next generation.

 

Meanwhile, I certainly do think we have too many seminaries. That's not an opinion of mine, that's a statement of fact. They are closing every year, and have been for a while; others are actively pursuing mergers. The supply and demand of their graduates, and the ability of the church as a whole and seminary students individually to pay the bills is proving out that we can probably do with many fewer of them: but they are not, as a species of religious education, going to disappear.

 

And on the other hand, just as I was writing this, I got a message about a group of Episcopal dioceses in Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska that were working together to establish a "School of Ministry" for their candidates for ministry that would not require travel and residency at a traditional (and costly) seminary experience, allowing them to serve in place, and learn while serving. You can read more about it at www.bishopkemperschool.org .

 

The only thing I'm certain of about seminary education, other than the fact that seminaries will persist, is that the wider nature of it will continue to change in the face of our changing technology and culture.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he graduated from seminary in 1989 and is glad he got to do that. Tell him what you think about ministerial education at knapsack77@gmail.com or @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-10-13

Notes from my Knapsack – Granville Sentinel 10-10-13

Jeff Gill

 

A story on the way home (pt. 6)

 

(The sixth installment of an ongoing story)

 

"Ghosts? You must want Room 9."

 

That's what the cheery night clerk in the Buxton Inn had told him when he came in with his meticulous if hand drawn map he'd gotten over dinner at the other end of the downtown.

 

The cryptic label "ghosts" on a square with an "x" inside, on the southeast corner of Pearl and Broadway, had led him with his overnight bag to this remarkable structure.

 

It looked and felt, as he climbed the stairs, like a building that had been here 200 years, with a certain creaky solidity that you didn't feel in those identical hotels near innumerable airports with the same textured wallpaper over the same wallboard in the hallways with the same cheap table under a mirror next to a vending machine with the same slightly stale snacks.

 

This was . . . different. He followed the directions he'd gotten at the old fashioned front desk (a computer terminal the only barrier to imagining himself in any one of a number of eras past), to the head of the stairs and out onto an enclosed porch, through a door onto an open balcony around a courtyard whispering in the autumn wind.

 

Just a few steps along, and a room with a green door and a metal "9" on the frame; Nelson turned the key and stepped into the room.

 

Other than a faint hint of gardenias he could take or leave, it was a pleasant room if you were ready to see beds and restroom not arranged according to the implacable laws of modern hotel layout.

 

What had this room been in the past, he wondered? A common space for half a dozen men to sleep a fitful night until the stage left at dawn? A pair of rooms for a proprietor past? Or were the walls even arranged this way until this century?

 

He walked through the first room, a bed sized somewhere between standard and queen but more than a bit higher, into the second, where another bed different but much the same looked towards the two windows facing the street. This was where he'd sleep, and open up the bag on the bed in the first room next to the door to the small but serviceable bathroom.

 

Once the lights were out and before drifting off, he watched the occasional passing car's lights sketch the edges of blind where he'd nudged it aside, hoping for the glint of dawn to wake him. If this room was supposed to have particular creaks or groans from the two century old timbers, or if the light should have picked out a pool of shadow in one corner, it wasn't happening for him.

 

He fell asleep quickly, something that hadn't been true for weeks, and dreamed not of his recently deceased sister, but of their long departed father. It was neither sad nor angry, just a vision of his unfamiliar presence and well-remembered smile, walking out into the desert, pointing back over his shoulder.

 

Morning found him refreshed, and expectant, but he didn't know for what. Showering, he was glad the soap wasn't that gardenia scent they used in the room, but he was getting used to it.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

 

Faith Works 10-05-13

Faith Works 10-05-13

Jeff Gill

 

Seminary is changing into… something

___

 

Do ministers of congregations need to go to seminary?

 

Not that long ago, historically speaking, this was a perfectly fair question. Today, it's becoming a point of debate again.

 

For most organized Christian bodies, and in many other religious traditions under different terminology but with the same general structure and commitment, it is assumed nowadays that the teaching and preaching leader of the community has a college degree, and another educational experience beyond that.

 

It might be called a master of divinity; in some Catholic contexts a bachelor of sacred theology is actually a post-graduate degree, and there are other nuances of nomenclature, but in general, most of the Christian bodies with a national presence and a name you'd recognize call for a post-graduate degree before completing the ordination process (which we talked about last week).

 

What's changing is a movement in two directions with a single, general impact. On the one hand, nondenominational churches are springing up, with many of the larger or "megachurch" institutions having no affiliation with a denominational certification body, hence no specific requirement for even a bachelor degree or Bible college certificate of one sort or another. Each non- or undenominational congregation can hire whom they choose, and even ordain or not ordain as seems right and proper for their history and sense of tradition.

 

On the other hand, even mainline/oldline Protestant bodies are looking for ways to acknowledge life experience for older entrants into ministry, along with making use of more bivocational and part-time clergy, which is often a better fit with licensed or commissioned ministers rather than ordained pastoral leadership.

 

Add in the fact that for the once typical college graduate who goes straight into seminary and then into a small church or an associate pastor position (and they're not that typical any more, and haven't been for decades), the student loan debt from seminary, let alone remaining college debt plus seminary obligations, adds up to expenses that ironically can preclude the new graduate from working in any placement they can reasonably hope to be offered.

 

Which magnifies the impact and need for bivocational and part-time clergy . . .

 

So seminaries as academic institutions have seen a contraction in both support from denominational bodies which have financial troubles of their own, and a dramatically reduced applicant pool. Some theological schools had endowments enough going into the late 1990s to make it through this challenging passage, and a number have closed.

 

The financial crisis of the last five years or so has put a huge new pressure on what are often already beleaguered institutions. A few more have closed, many have sold off prime assets, and most are looking at options to relocate or merge or go "virtual", shedding physical plant along with faculty positions.

 

For those of us who "went" to seminary, and value the unique Christian community we became a part of for those three or four years, the idea of doing your M.Div. largely online, with face-to-face meetings among both teachers and fellow students only happening once or twice a semester, feels . . . well, wrong.

 

Students going through these new model seminary experiences report that, using online tools like instant messaging, video conferencing, and e-mail, they are growing closer to their fellow classmates in ways that I would have to admit are rich in their own way and deeper in some content than I had living on campus, but serving a church where my attention often was focused. When class was over, I usually headed on out, and only talked to my fellow seminarians just before the next class session; with online tools, they talk to each other, post to each other's papers, and communicate about both class content and personal response to a remarkable amount in between "sessions," in ways we couldn't imagine in the 1980's.

 

And as much as I have to work to imagine my way into the actual experience of seminary today with those sorts of distance learning tools, I have to admit it's more seminary, and better theological training than just getting a pile of recommended readings and no schooling at all, especially for a bivocational minister who has their hands full with a job that covers benefits, pays bills, and has to come before running to a church meeting let alone reading Augustine's "Confessions" (which you should do, by the way).

 

What will seminary & theological education look like in another ten years? You'd have to be a prophet to even guess.

 

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

 

Notes from my Knapsack 9-26-13

Notes from my Knapsack – Granville Sentinel 9-26-13

Jeff Gill

 

A story on the way home (pt. 5)

 

(The fifth installment of an ongoing story)

It was beyond frustrating, this long day in Granville.

 

Nelson knew his sister had been here, repeatedly, over the last few years. As next-of-kin, he was trying to determine what Sheryl's wishes would have been, given that her unexpected, accidental death had left a sum of money that, as her brother, he wanted to use in her memory.

 

Somehow, he was convinced that if he could find out what this town meant to her, he could make sense of what she would like done. Their uprooted and disjointed childhood had left them moving away from each other, without rancor, from early on, and the last few decades had given them a few phone calls, the last few years some e-mails, but little else to go by as a relationship.

 

He didn't know her, he said to himself for the umpteenth time, but she knew this place. How?

 

The one clue that tied into the village was up the hill, the college as everyone here inexplicably called Denison University. Nelson knew their father, the largely absent figure of their youth and long deceased himself, had briefly taught here in the 1980's. That was after they'd gone on to college themselves, he and Sheryl, and before she had tried to make contact with him, something that happened just before his death and a reconciliation Nelson had wanted nothing to do with.

 

That farewell took place in Dallas, though. And dear old Dad had been there a while, or so he thought, but Nelson had fended off all Sheryl's attempts to talk to him about what was discussed between them in that Texas hospital room.

 

At any rate, the campus records such as he could access told him little, and the editor he'd pursued across Broadway after dinner had said he'd have to check on his sister's name in their records, but not until after he'd done a dozen things none of which could wait: deadlines, you know.

 

Even with the press of deadlines, he'd been given a quick hand-drawn map of some historic buildings along the south side of Broadway to look at, with notes indicating age, or history, or some other point of interest.

 

Working back past the bank, Nelson looked appreciatively at the Granville Historical Society Museum, an aged sandstone structure that doubtless had layers of history woven around it. Strolling east, he ducked into the Post Office to check out the WPA mural, a primitive rendering of a pioneer scene complete with fresh cut tree stump and buckskin clothing, and silent mouths singing out what was obviously a hymn.

 

The library, which had to be his first stop tomorrow morning, adjoining a slate grey Greek Revival building with a charming clock tower on the side facing the library main door; heading further east, a Federal style home probably older than the other buildings he'd passed, a "mere" hundred year old house on the corner, and then he saw a salmon-pink wood frame building on ahead.

 

His penciled map showed on the other side of Pearl St. what had to be that building, and the cryptic note above it: "Ghosts." Nelson thought to himself "Now I know where I'm getting a room tonight," and crossed the street as the light changed.

 

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think happens next at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack on Twitter.