Faith Works 10-20-18

Faith Works 10-20-18

Jeff Gill

 

A long obedience in the same direction

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Eugene Peterson is in hospice care; as "Christianity Today" aptly headlined, this beloved pastor and author is nearing the end of his "long obedience in the same direction."

 

His family shared this news on social media last Saturday; it has been quietly but well known in Christian circles that a combination of heart failure and dementia have led to his withdrawal from public speaking for the last few years.

 

Peterson was never a Billy Graham, had not filled arenas or spoken to mass meetings. His was a more pastoral ministry, rooted in spending the majority of his professional life at a single congregation in Maryland, all the while writing and sharing his insights in book after book. He began teaching and speaking at workshops in the last twenty years of his life, at a seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia following his retirement from the parish, but his preference was always to the personal interaction, the closeness of one on one, or at least author to reader.

 

"The Pastor" is his memoir that cemented his reputation as a minister's minister, but it was the 1980 "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction" based on the Songs of Ascents recorded in Psalms 120-134 where I first "met" Peterson. It was not, as were many of his later works, aimed directly at clergy, but it spoke to me in seminary, and after my ordination in 1989, it became a touchstone for my own teaching of the Bible to congregational groups.

 

You may know him best as the translator of "The Message," a contemporary language rendition of the entire Bible from the Hebrew and Greek. Here, too, Peterson was less concerned with academic respectability and acceptance as he was application and effectiveness in the congregational setting. In interviews, he was quick to point out that his translation was not a paraphrase, it was laboriously worked out from the original languages of scripture into everyday language, but that as such it was limited to our time. It was the sort of project he would argue is called for by the church in every era.

 

At 85, it was never realistic to hope we'd have Eugene Peterson with us for decades to come, but like any mentor in ministry, he is a hard example to let go of. I've grown accustomed, as have many of us in church leadership roles who never met him in person, to regularly being recharged, refilled, renewed by his latest writings.

 

Truly, I can commend to anyone seeking a sense of his work almost any book he's written: I looked around online, and it appears he's written over 30 books, but I couldn't find a hard number. Since finding that first copy of "A Long Obedience" in the seminary bookstore back in 1985 or so, I've always been able to count on a new Peterson work every year or so, to inspire me, motivate me, and open me up to how the Holy Spirit is at work in the everyday acts of pastoral ministry. Re-reading will be a blessing still in the future, but it won't quite be the same as re-reading in between the expectancy of new reflections and insight.

 

And the truth is, if you're just now discovering Eugene Peterson, the Christian author, as his earthly life is coming to an end, I would probably point anyone, lay or clergy, to "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." It speaks from early in his career to the path he was already on, and the calling to which he calls us all, of faithfulness, and persistence.

 

Godspeed, brother Eugene.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he hopes you'll read some Peterson as well as the Bible this week. Tell him what your favorite Peterson work is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-13-18

Faith Works 10-13-18

Jeff Gill

 

Spiritual disciplines online

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An oxymoron is a phrase, usually two words, which at least seem to contradict each other.

 

"Jumbo shrimp" is a common candidate for oxymoron status. Perhaps unfairly, so is "military intelligence." (Hey, some of my best friends have been G-2s…)

 

Online spiritual disciplines can be considered a modern oxymoron. Much of what I read about spirituality tends to start with telling people to put down the phone, shut down the computer, get away from screens of all sorts.

 

Ironically, I usually read that sort of stuff on a laptop.

 

Once upon a time I subscribed to a number of periodicals that included spiritual readings and reflections and prayers. "Weavings" was a publication from the "The Upper Room," which was discontinued in 2017. "The Upper Room" still puts out a monthly daily devotional booklet that's popular at the church I serve; "Our Daily Bread," "These Days," "Today in the Word," "Give Us This Day," "Our Sunday Visitor," and of course "Guideposts" all still exist in print form.

 

But like "Weavings," the print format is getting shakier and shakier in terms of financial viability. More websites and apps for smartphones are taking the place of the little booklet or magazine, and instead of debating when it's time to shift to the large print edition, you can just take your thumb and forefinger and make the typeface bigger right there on your tablet or device.

 

I certainly hope they don't all go away; there's something to be said for the tangible, the carried around, the object on whose pages you can scribble notes and inspirations. They are diminishing, though, and the move to virtual publications is well-nigh inexorable.

 

What I want to do here is not to endorse any particular format or website online for spiritual growth. There are too many of them, and more are going to a subscription format where, like this paper, you can look a bit, but beyond a few clicks you'll have to pay something. I have my preferences, but they may not be yours.

 

For anyone, I think the key to a spiritual discipline using social media or online tools is the same as an old breviary or prayer book, leather covered and cherished with bookmarks and funeral cards tucked into the pages. None of them work without some form of regularity, a pattern or practice of prayer.

 

If you have a schedule and a standard cycle of prayer, I doubt if it matters much whether you use a book, a magazine, or your phone. If you tend to give God and the cultivation of your soul what's left over, when you feel like you can get to it, what would it matter if you had the latest app with special ringtones to remind you? A prayer corner in the home, cherished and tended but never sat down in, gathering dust, isn't going to do the spiritual growth for you.

 

Mornings are common; in most Christian traditions and many other faiths, morning and noon and night, a three-fold pattern of intentional pausing for prayer, is a benchmark. As is now well-known, Muslims pray five times a day; Christian monastics have a "liturgy of the hours" that marks seven times in each twenty-four hour day.

 

For many of us, a good start is simply prayer at meal times. You can't evade that necessity, and a fast food burger is as worthy of your thankfulness as a Thanksgiving turkey. Prayer at each mealtime can be a framework on which to build.

 

Bedtime prayer depends on the person, and how tired you are when you head off to sleep. Some pray on their commute, a long twice daily time of reflection and intercession.

 

However you do it, find a pattern you can stick with. Starting with the liturgy of the hours and seven times a day is probably like telling a couch potato to start fitness by running a marathon. Mealtimes and on waking up? Find your benchmarks to nudge yourself into regular, patterned prayer, whatever they might be.

 

And then you can work into your prayer life that which feeds you. The last forty days I've been posting a different prayer each day from a variety of people, eras, and traditions, on behalf of my wider church body that needs a boost. Many have told me they look forward to reading those, and working some of each into their own prayers.

 

You know where I found forty good prayers worth sharing? Online.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he prays a great deal, and not enough. Tell him about your prayer practices at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-6-18

Faith Works 10-6-18

Jeff Gill

 

World Communion Sunday

___

 

Jesse Bader was, I'm proud to say, a minister of my particular Christian tradition, the Disciples of Christ.

 

He was born in Illinois, raised in Kansas, and got his higher education in Iowa, serving congregations in Kansas and Missouri, including a stint working for the YMCA serving the needs of troops overseas during World War I.

 

After 1920, Bader went on to serve in leadership for the general offices of our fellowship, and ultimately to the Federal Council of Churches (later the National Council of Churches of Christ). It was in his work with the wider church fellowship across the United States and Canada that he got a vision for a global fellowship meeting of our tradition, starting in 1930 the World Convention of Churches of Christ, which has met every few years ever since with representatives from 199 countries.

 

You can tell Bader had a passion for ecumenical work, and his move to the Federal Council of Churches only increased his interest in finding ways for Christians in general to express their unity in worship and service. But his move to national and global involvement took this Middle Western parson to places where he saw how the world was beginning to take a turn to conflict and crisis, and war was clearly on the horizon in 1939 . . . not unity.

 

Which led him to propose and work for a year to promote and launch World Communion Sunday, on October 6, 1940. The world was already descending into the World War that America was to enter later the next year, but Bader's vision and commitment told him that a regular occasion to remind Christians of the essentials that bind us together might be all the more important once the war, as all wars must, would end.

 

So it has been true that on the first Sunday of October ever since, for 78 years, many Christian traditions mark this particular Sunday as a time to include communion in their worship, and to remember that fellow Christians are doing so even as we are at our tables – all of us doing so in obedience to Jesus' call for us to do this "in remembrance of me."

 

Jesse Bader was actually noted more for his focus on evangelism than ecumenical work during his active career in the church. "Each one, win one" was his recurring phrase, and he continued in the wider denominational work, and as a national and global ecumenical officer to promote the priority of evangelism in Christian life. He pointed out at mass meetings and individual conversations again and again that the thing Jesus made primary could not reasonably be made by us a secondary matter. "Go, and make disciples" was the command of the Master that Jesse was faithful to, and his belief was that the service of communion was in essence an evangelistic more than a sacramental act.

 

To Bader, the heart of service at the Lord's Table was not so much the elements involved, but the invitation that was given. "Come and see," "taste and see," commands given again and again in scripture to invite others to this table, and in fellowship at the table of the Lord, by eating and drinking together, we see and taste and feel an invitation that goes even deeper, to become part of the family of God, to be sisters and brothers together in the fellowship of that holy meal.

 

So this great evangelist, who died in 1963, set up this minor festival of the churches in the hopes that we might use it to remember that ecumenism and evangelism are not in any way opposed to each other, but in fact should be understood as two sides of the same coin, inextricable one from the other.

 

The truth is we've found it hard to keep that in mind during the half-century and more since his death. The two fields and practices and denominational areas of interest have tended to grow apart, and branch into very different aspect of church life.

 

But the common celebration of the communion table quietly pushes those streams back towards each other, encouraging their outpouring to be rejoined and to pour out all the more strongly into a parched and cracked world. Evangelism and ecumenism can eat at the same table, just as tomorrow Christians around Licking County, and around the world will be mindfully doing as part of our worship. Not separately, but as one.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's looking forward to World Communion Sunday as he does every year. Tell him where you see unity growing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-11-18

Notes from my Knapsack 10-11-18

Jeff Gill

 

Tearing down the old school

___

 

When last we met, I was telling you about Granville's first school building, a log structure but with a lot of love and extra bonuses built into it, considering the era.

 

From the winter of 1805 into 1809, the first log school house was used for a variety of purposes, but Our Fayre Village loved education and valued its place in the community from literally its very foundation. We finished the school building before a church was completed, using the interior for worship until the sanctuary across the way was done. The original log school sat where Centenary United Methodist Church is today.

 

According to Bushnell's invaluable "History of Granville" of 1889, there came a night eighty years earlier when "the boys, in their evening pastimes on the common, bethought them that it would be a very jolly thing to take down the old log school house. As it would help their sires thus much, they thought it would be a meritorious frolic rather than otherwise. Though it was on the public square, and their noisy proceeding must have been observed by older people, no one interfered with them. They first took out the glass windows with great care, which had replaced the oiled paper; took the batten door from its wooden hinges, and carried them, with all that was of any value, across the street, and stored them away at Mr. Josiah Graves'. Then, beginning with the weight poles, they dismantled it down to the joists. Then, becoming weary, they went home and to bed, and slept with quiet consciences."

 

Aside from noting that you really had to be hard up for fun to enjoy taking a building apart for amusement, it actually makes sense to me. A bunch of young men, knowing the structure was coming down soon: how often do you get to tear down a building and not get in trouble? So they did . . . and got in trouble. Sort of.

 

The justice of the peace, Timothy Rose, and a few other leading citizens, decided to teach them about lawlessness, and convened a mock trial. Which is to say, the men knew it was mock, the boys did not. They were gathered a few nights later, one of them actually being gotten out of bed, and brought together where a hearing was held in high formal dudgeon. The young men were smart enough to know they needed to confess all, and did; the court then assessed them a fine for unauthorized demolition: of one quarter apiece.

 

Inflation has taken a toll, but in truth from 1809 to 2017 that's maybe four bucks in today's money. The problem was that "Twenty-five cent pieces were very scarce at that time, and it began to look pretty serious to them. It waked up their ideas about law and order. Then all the officers, as the boys looked unutterably penitent, consented to throw in their fees..." and let them in on the joke.

 

Bushnell says of the new frame school house built the next year: "It was 24 x 32 feet, and nine feet between joists. It stood with the side to the road. The pulpit was in the west end, a little raised, with a window at either side. In front of it was the deacons' seat, where, according to the custom of the times, two deacons sat, facing the audience, during each service. To the right and left, extending well down the sides, and occupying the school desks, the choir was seated. In the end of the house, opposite the pulpit, was a large open fireplace, on the north side of which was a closet for the wraps and dinner-baskets of the school children, and the front door opened right against the chimney, on the south side."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he promises there's a point to this quaint series of historical tales. Tell him where you think he's heading at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 9-29-18

Faith Works 9-29-18

Jeff Gill

 

Changing the angle of vision

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When you try to see things from God's point of view, it can be a bit of a stretch.

 

Honestly, we're just not cut out for that perspective. It takes abilities we just don't have, though we can catch glimpses and inklings of it.

 

What we can do is change our usual angle. In so many ways (seats in church for instance) we can get stuck on a single point of view.

 

As I mentioned last February, I've found that I have a mild neurological disorder which can become a major problem for someone who mostly talks in his work. It's called spasmodic dysphonia, and there's a treatment if not a cure which involves periodic injections . . . into my vocal cords. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds.

 

And I trade some improved function in the months to come, as I recently did for a goodly stretch, for a brief period of relative incapacity. In short, I can't talk above a whisper for a week or so.

 

What I did last Sunday I commend to any other preacher, lay speaker, or church leader in any form who gets used to one particular vantage point. I sat in the back. And it was a learning experience in many ways.

 

I learned that at our second, larger service, 20% of the worshiping congregation arrived after the stated time of service. I don't know what that means, or even if I should do anything about it, but it's interesting. I had vaguely noticed an increase in late arrivals, but from up on the platform from some time before the beginning, you don't really experience it. Sitting in the back, what we call the narthex or entry room before the worship space (or nave, but no one in our church calls it that), I got a very clear picture of the trend. Perhaps more to come on that subject!

 

And I heard the singing very differently. Congregational singing, whether in contemporary or traditional style worship services, is a much debated topic. How to encourage or enhance singing by the people in the seats. John Wesley complained in the 1700s that the parishioners tended to not sing out very well; Martin Luther included in his reforms reducing the focus on choirs and more popular hymnody. It's still a challenge, quite frankly. Do we just give in and let the choir or praise band or organ or whathaveyou take the lead, or are there ways we can promote more singing from the congregation?

 

I also got to sneak up and enjoy children's church. The younger ones leave after the children's message in our later service, and have a program in a chapel then an activity room all their own (and kudos to everyone in the church I serve who have improved and beautified that space). I had been told the outlines of how this has been going the last few months, but it was a joy to get to be in the room and join in a bit with their part of the service.

 

Honestly, I'd done this before under various opportunities, but in this last week to have the whole worship service from the opposite angle of the church experience was a great chance to know what our community looks like and feels like. I commend it to anyone, and don't wait until someone has stabbed you in the throat with needles for an excuse!

 

What sticks with me most, though, was to just hear the words spoken around me, and the songs sung, and share in the elements as they were passed, and to not have a part in the leadership of the day. I'm used to singing out to help boost the music, being a worship leader in speaking first, and having a voice in the whole affair. It is indeed a very different experience to simply participate, to be entirely receptive in the worship without any active role at all. It's not that it's better or worse to be one or the other, it's that this is the way an overwhelming majority of people experience worship, and I think I needed to be reminded what that aspect of being church is like.

 

Sometimes, we need to just be. To be in worship. And nothing more. May we all have that opportunity at some point soon!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's likely to be talking again all too soon. Tell him about your experiences of silence and listening at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.