WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT PREACHING IN 70 YEARS [Sa, 9-19-26, which is Talk Like a Pirate Day, Matey.]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The 70-Year Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT PREACHING IN 70 YEARS [Sa, 9-19-26, which is Talk Like a Pirate Day, Matey.]

 

PEOPLE LIKE STORIES.

It’s not just that we like them, we live in them.

“Any sorrow can be borne if a story can be told about it.” Izak Denisen

“There is no story that is not true.” Chinua Achebe

PEOPLE WANT TO LAUGH.

Even in hard times. Perhaps especially then. I was helpful and appreciated at funerals because I wasn’t afraid to make people laugh, because I knew they wanted to and needed to.

Please understand, I did the laughter thing only in funerals, not in private pastoral moments with grieving people. Well, sometimes even then, if I could tell it was acceptable and helpful.

“You have a deep voice and you make people laugh.” That’s what former student and 60-year friend, and sometime ministry colleague, Jim Kiefer said, when saying why folks thought I was a good preacher.

CHURCH PEOPLE DON’T ALWAYS ACT LIKE CHRISTIANS, EVEN TO ONE ANOTHER.

Remember, I was only 19 when I started preaching at Chrisney. I had experienced only two churches until then. I assumed that Christians were interchangeable parts of The Body of Christ. {Yes, I had not read I Corinthians 12.}

I attended East Park in Indianapolis, from ages 4 to 10. But I went only to Sunday School. The only folks you encounter in Sunday School are people who like children.

Then Forsythe, the little country church in our country neighborhood, after we moved to the farm near Oakland City. Another place that prized children.

In neither of those churches was I involved in decisions about church life, and I never heard adults talk about how stupid other adults in church were, because my parents didn’t go to church. [Well, my father thought anybody who went to church was stupid, but that’s different.]

As a preacher, I was involved in the decisions of the church, and I learned that otherwise good Christians can clash quite ferociously over the color of a carpet.

“We never let those two women work together.” Catherine Adams of the Chrisney Church told me.

A PREACHER’S MAIN WORK IS EVANGELISM

Evangelism is not haranguing, but inviting, inviting someone to be part of the community of faith.

“Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.” D.T. Niles

WE GET BY ON FAITH, NOT KNOWLEDGE

As another former student and 60-year friend, Dennis Heller, says: “I have no choice but to believe in free will.” That sums up theology, all of it, rather nicely.

I wasn’t sure I was called, but I did have the necessary “gifts and graces” to be a preacher, so I got by.

YOU GO WHERE YOU HAVE TO GO, DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

If you have accepted the job, even if you are not sure of the call, when the bell rings, you have to answer. I learned that in my second month of preaching, when I was 19, when Bob Adams said I had to go comfort the family of Billy Quick.

That sums up 70 years of preaching.

John Robert McFarland

SAYING YES [R, 9-17-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—SAYING YES [R, 9-17-26]

 

[This is the third part of a single story. I’m trying to understand my career in the ministry, which started 70 years ago this month. It’s probably best to read the parts in order, but they are about twice as long as usual, so if you have anything better to do…]

Why did I say yes when the District Superintendent [DS] said, “You can start preaching next Sunday?” I had not gone to him to start a ministry career. I was just trying to figure out the difference between a deal with God and a call by God.

I said yes because I always said yes. In improv theater, you never say no to your improv partners. You always say yes. My life was an improvisation. Still is.

I always said yes because I was afraid of being left out. I said yes to anything that would get me a place inside the circle, inside the circle of fellowship, of community. I wanted to belong. I wanted a seat at the table.

 As time went by, I came to understand that I had always belonged, within the everlasting arms, within the circle of God, at the communion table.

It is the Presence of God that makes life real. We don’t need to “feel” the Presence, or even be aware of it. The Presence is just there.

I’ve been a Christian for almost 90 years. By Christian theology, I became a Christian when I was baptized right at 90 years ago. I have a cradle roll certificate to prove it. And I have been thinking about God for almost all those 90 years. I have a doctorate in the theology of Christian belief. And I’m confused about Christian faith most of the time.

I mean, Jesus died for my sins. Or was that Christ? Anyway, if I’m saved from my sins, how come I keep sinning? Why do I pray every week for forgiveness? How does the death of one peasant two thousand years ago make things different for me now? And resurrection? Heaven hereafter? Hell? And where does the Holy Spirit come in? And if the Bible is the Word of God, how comes it says so many contradictory things? There is no end to the doubts about faith.

When I get overwhelmed by too much theology, I just turn it over to God. I remember that phrase from Deuteronomy: Underneath are the everlasting arms. I stop trying to understand, and I relax into those everlasting arms of God.

Here’s the bottom line: the one necessary thing for life is God’s presence. Crucifixion, resurrection, salvation, eternal life… those are all fine. But without the everlasting arms, without the Presence of God as the foundation, they are nothing.

In these 70 years since I started preaching, four of my members were murdered. Over a dozen committed suicide. Two dozen died in tragic accidents. Many died much too young, some still children.

In all these events, many people, including me, prayed for God to intervene, for God to act. In the process of pleading with God to act, I learned that God’s action was not nearly as important as God’s presence.

Also, though, in those 70 years, 23 young people from my churches went into the ministry. I like to think it is because they learned from me that the best thing you can do for anyone, in the midst of tragedy or joy, is to remind them that they are in the Presence, that God loves them.

About forty years after that dreadful night when I “comforted” the family of sixteen-year-old Billy Quick, by telling them that God wanted the best roses for “His” own garden, for the first and only time ever, I was back in Chrisney. I looked up Bob and Catherine Adams. I wanted to tell them about all my degrees and awards, to show that I had really been called to be a preacher. After all, it’s hard to justify a 70-year career in the ministry if you really just did it for the money.

I wanted to show them I had a call, despite that humiliating night at Billy’s house, but they seemed to take it for granted. They also took it for granted that I had married well. “You don’t need to show us her picture,” Catherine said. “We know she’s pretty.”

Finally, I said, “Do you remember when Billy Quick was killed?” Suddenly, they brightened. “Oh, yes, his father was a good friend of ours. Up to the day he died, he always talked about how you came to their house to comfort them... about how you knew just the right thing to say… something about a rose…”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BILLY QUICK [T, 9-15-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Reminiscences of an Old Preacher—CHRIST IN WINTER: The Reminiscences of an Old Preacher—BILLY QUICK [T, 9-15-26]

 

[This is not a series. It is one story, in 3 parts. This is the 2^nd part. The first I posted on Sept. 13. Old people need to think through the pivotal moments of their lives, to see what life was all about, to make peace with it. Thank you for indulging me, as I think through 70 years as a preacher, but be aware that this column is 1000 words instead of the usual 500.]

The doorbell rang. It was after dark. I had to feel my way through the rooms of the empty parsonage, to get to the front door, because I lived only in the back bedroom. It had the only overhead light in the house.

It was a Saturday night, Oct 21, 1956, five weeks after I was appointed to be the preacher at the three-church Methodist circuit at Chrisney, Indiana.

I lived in the parsonage only on Friday and Saturday nights, because I was just starting my sophomore year at IU. During the week I in lived in Linden Hall, in the old Trees Center residence center, where the Education Building is now. During the week I took a lot of courses with numbers like 101.

On the weekends, though, I was the fair-haired boy, the skinny nineteen-year-old who was way too stupid to know he was in way over his head. I had been appointed preacher at Chrisney because the District Superintendent was desperate. He didn’t know me. We had just met. But I said I was thinking about being a preacher. He said, “Good, you can start next Sunday, at Chrisney. See Bob Adams when you get there.”

So, my first Friday, I had seen Bob Adams. He told me the times of the worship services at Crossroads and Chrisney and Bloomfeld, and gave me a key to the parsonage.

That Saturday night, a month later, I felt my way to the front door and switched on the porch light. There stood Bob Adams. I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me what I would preach about twelve hours later, because I didn’t know.

But Bob didn’t ask about my sermon.

“You don’t know the Quick family,” he said. “They haven’t been to church since you’ve been our preacher. But they’re part of us. Their 16-year-old son, Billy, was going down to Tell City to the movie with a couple of friends. They hit a bridge abutment. The odometer was stuck at 120 miles per hour. They were all killed.”

My first thought was, “Okay, no jokes tomorrow. Boys just 2 or 3 years younger than I am, throwing their lives away for a momentary thrill.” I had something to start filling out those empty lines in my sermon outline.

But Bob Adams kept talking. He said, “Billy’s family is waiting down at their house for you to come comfort them.”

I felt so much like Peter O’Toole’s actor character in the movie, “My Favorite Year.” When he learned he had to go on stage live, he cried out, “But I’m not an actor. I’m a movie star.” 

I wanted to yell, “I’m not a pastor. I’m a preacher. I tell jokes. Old people think I’m a nice boy and give me cookies. What do I know about comforting the grieving? I’m 19 years old. The biggest tragedy of my life was when my high-school girlfriend dumped me for a better-looking guy.  I’ve never even been to a funeral.”

As I thought about this sermon for today, I said to Helen, “Why in the world did I agree to go preach at Chrisney?” She replied, “You did it for the money.”

In 70 years, that had never occurred to me. I was making fifty cents an hour as a bus boy in the Rogers Center dining room. I worked 10 hours a week to get $5. The churches on the Chrisney circuit paid me $20, just for preaching the same sermon three times on Sunday morning. Apparently, I am the only preacher in the history of the church who went into the ministry for the big bucks.

I did not think that any amount of money could get me to go to Billy Quick’s house to comfort his family, though. What did I know about comforting the grieving? I was 19 years old. I had suffered no tragedies. I was not “…a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” [Isaiah 53:3]

But Bob Adams was still standing there, waiting to show me where the Quick family lived. So, I went. Because Bob Adams expected me to. Because I had to. After all, I was the one person among the people called Methodist in Chrisney, Indiana who officially represented the presence of God. I was the person, the person, the parson. I was the one who took God’s Presence with me, because the DS had been desperate to get some warm body into the pulpit in Chrisney.

There were about a dozen people in the Quick’s front room, gathered around a coal stove that had gone cold. The women wore feed sack dresses and lace-up Oxfords. The men wore overalls and high-top work shoes. They gave me a kitchen chair to perch on and then sat there looking at me.

So I said everything I could think of, about God and Jesus and the Bible and heaven and hell and resurrection and God and Jesus and…. It took about a minute and a half.

Then I remembered something I had read in one of Grandma Pond’s old Readers Digests. So I told it to Billy Quick’s family, parents and grandparents who had just lost their only boy.

“God chooses the best roses for his own garden,” I said.

I blamed the sudden and tragic death of an only son on the horticultural arrogance of God. “God wants the best roses for himself.”

I didn’t have to do Billy’s funeral. It was during the class week, when I was back at IU, taking courses with numbers like 101. The other boys were members of The E&R church, so that pastor did a funeral for the three boys together.

I didn’t preach very well after that. The jokes weren’t very funny. The quotes weren’t very deep. The people didn’t smile as much. I carried a very heavy load of rose petals on my back.

It was such a great relief when, a month later, F.T. Johnson, the Bloomington District DS, “stole” me from the Evansville District--according to Dallas Browning, the Evansville DS--to appoint me to the three-church Solsberry Circuit. I no longer had to face the people of Chrisney, who had heard me blame the tragic death of a boy on the selfishness of God. I no longer had to preach to people who knew that I was not called to preach.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

ACCIDENTAL PREACHER [9-13-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Man—ACCIDENTAL PREACHER [9-13-26]

 

[The vast majority of people alive today were not even born whenI started preaching, 70 years ago today, as a 19-year-old sophomore at Indiana University [IU]. Please indulge me as I reflect on those 70 years—how I got started, what I did in those 70 years, and what I think I learned. That is too much for one column, so today is the first of three—how it started…]

76 years ago, I made a deal with God, to save my sister’s life. If you save Mary V, I’ll be a preacher. It was all I could think of. I was a thirteen-year-old welfare farm boy. What did I know about what God might want? But God came through. Mary V lived.

But as I listened closely to preachers tell their stories, I realized that you had to be called, by God, to be a preacher. A deal wasn’t actually a call, was it?

I struggled with that alone for six years. Aunt Nora was a church organist, so I figured she would understand all about God. She told me I should talk with the District Superintendent [DS].

So, I went to Evansville to see Dallas Browning. In Methodism, congregations don’t hire pastors. Pastors are appointed to a church, by the bishop, through a DS. The DS is responsible for all the churches in their District, making sure each church has a preacher, every Sunday.

I didn’t tell Dallas Browning about my deal with God. I just said that I was thinking about being a preacher some day. I didn’t know how desperate he was. He said, “Good. You can start next Sunday.”

So, the next Sunday, I started preaching on the 3 church Chrisney Circuit, 100 miles south of IU.

Each Friday, after my last class, I went to the IGA and bought a loaf of Wonder bread and a jar of peanut butter and drove down to Chrisney, where I spent the weekend in the empty parsonage. Well, it wasn’t totally empty. In the back bedroom, there was a narrow metal frame camp bed with a two-inch mattress, and a metal folding chair. I stood at the kitchen counter and ate my meals of white bread and peanut butter sandwiches. For a desk, I turned my big hard-sided Samsonite suitcase on end, and set my portable Smith-Corona typewriter on top of it.

On Saturdays, I visited the shut-ins and widows. I liked that. They gave me cookies, which supplemented my sandwiches nicely. The rest of the day, I worked on my sermon, which meant that I sat at my Samsonite desk and outlined my sermon on my Smith-Corona portable typewriter.

I.

  A.

     1.

        a.

II…     

Perfect outline. The problem was that I didn’t have anything to write out beside all those letters and numbers.         

As it turned out, I didn’t really need an outline. I already had everything necessary to be a great preacher. I was tall and had a deep voice. I told all the good jokes I had heard that week. People laughed, so I told all the bad jokes I’d heard too. They laughed some more. I quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson and anybody else who had shown up in one of my classes that week. The people smiled and nodded. They were pleased that their preacher was so smart. I figured I’d be a bishop by the end of the month.

There were three churches on the Chrisney circuit. That first Sunday, 70 years ago today, I preached the same sermon at all 3, only to learn that it was not the same sermon at all. Each congregation responded differently, and that made it a different sermon each time.

I was on my way. I was no longer worried about whether a deal with God was the same as a call from God. Sunday mornings were easy. Then I found out that being a preacher took in Saturday nights, too… More on that next column.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

I WANTED TO BE A GOOD PREACHER [F, 9-11-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—I WANTED TO BE A GOOD PREACHER [F, 9-11-26]

 

[Continuing my reflections on being a preacher, since this is the month of my 70-year preaching anniversary…]

I really wanted to be a good preacher. I don’t mean a good pastor or minister or clergy person. I wanted to be a good preacher, good at speaking the Word through words. In part, I suppose, because it was all I had ever seen a minister do in church, besides eat a lot at church potlucks and referee church softball games.

It was also part of the Methodist culture at the time. All of us, when meeting with the Board of Ordained Ministry, were asked, “Are you convinced that you are called…by God…to preach.” Same emphasis on each of those words.

When I was 13 years old and traded my life for my sister’s--by telling God I would become a preacher if “He” would save Mary V’s life—I had not seen preachers do much besides preach.

I went to East Park Methodist in Indianapolis from age 4 to 10. East Park had a fulltime preacher. My only memory of him, though, [I greatly regret that I don’t know his name] was being in a confirmation class, with my sister, when I was 9 and she was 14. All I remember him doing was telling us to memorize some stuff, like The Apostles Creed and Psalm 23, and then telling us to recite together on confirmation Sunday. Mary V and I are blessed with good memory genes, and together we pretty well carried the other confirmands to the Amens.

Then, at age 10, came the little open-country Forsythe Methodist Church, outside Oakland City, IN. It was far too small ever to have a fulltime preacher, even to be on a circuit with a fulltime preacher. We had a succession of Sunday morning lay preachers—school teachers and post masters and factory workers. None of them had any theological or ministerial or homiletical education. None of them lived in “the Forsythe community.” The real leaders of that congregation, from whom we kids got our religious education, were the Sunday School Superintendent, who presided over “Opening exercises,” usually Carson Blair or Homer Heathman, and our SS teachers, especially Mary Louise Hopkins.

So when I began to preach at age 19, as an IN U soph, I thought being a preacher meant you preached. On Sunday morning. That’s all I had seen. I didn’t know about weddings and funerals and programming and evangelism and Bible study and committees and social action and counseling and administration and church kitchen conflict resolution. I barely knew that they existed.

To me, being a preacher was summed up in the title of a book by John Killinger, The Centrality of Preaching in the Total Task of the Ministry.

Please don’t think I neglected pastoral care or evangelism or education. I was faithful at hospital calling and shut-in calling and new member calling. I never turned anyone away when they called or showed up and asked to talk to me. I taught confirmation and VBS.

Preaching, though, was all those things—counseling and inviting and teaching. So, preaching well was what I set my sights on.

I was surprised that preaching came rather naturally. I had very little experience with public speaking. In high school I had been required to give one two-minute speech. I think it was in biology class. [We had that kind of school.] I chose the history of basketball for my topic. In an Indiana school, that would surely get me a sympathetic grade.

But I had been president of The Lucky 13 4-H club, and president of my high school class, so I was used to being up in front and talking. Not exactly speeching, certainly not preaching, but enough to make me comfortable in front of people.

Folks were surprised that one so young and callow was able simply to stand in the pulpit and talk. [Also, I had a deep and pleasant voice; that makes folks think you’re more mature than you are.] Because I appeared mature compared to other boys my age [only males preached in those days], and because my early churches knew they wouldn’t have to put up with me for long, and because they were just nice people, they told me I was a good preacher.

There were others along the way who told me otherwise, but because of those nice people at Chrisney and Crossroads and Bloomfeld, and Koleen and Mineral and Solsberry, and Greene County Chapel and Walkers Chapel, I always thought I was a better preacher than I really was.

But that’s okay. Anybody who did not think that I was a good preacher back then is dead. So, I am even better back then now than I was back then then.

John Robert McFarland

“Life is lived in the first 20 years, and the remainder is just reflection.” Graham Greene

 

 

 

PURITY OF PREACHING IS TO SAY ONE THING [W, 9-9-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Reminiscences of An Old Preacher on 70 Years in the Pulpit--PURITY OF PREACHING IS TO SAY ONE THING [W, 9-9-26]

 

In his retirement speech at Annual Conference, a preacher said, “Those of you who know me know that I really had only two sermons.” One of his colleagues in the congregation turned to his neighbor and said, “There was a second?"

No, not if his sermons were pure.

Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “purity of heart is to will one thing.” Purity of pulpit is to preach one thing. I first learned about that on Saturday night.

Saturday night—what a disappointment. I never liked Saturday nights much, even as a teen.

Saturday nights were for fun, supposedly. When I was growing up, on Saturday nights, teens got in their cars and cruised the square and went to the root beer stand, or went to parties or the movies. Not if you lived in the country, and didn’t have a car, or enough money for root beer or movies.

I was still in my teens when I became a preacher. I was a college student through the week. Monday through Friday was for learning facts and passing tests. It wasn’t until Saturday that I could spend time on preaching. Saturday nights were for thinking through the next morning’s sermon, and desperately trying to find something to add, some interesting story that would make it actually worth listening to. That wasn’t much fun, either, because I had not lived long enough to have many stories.

I wrote in my journal: “Preaching is mostly sitting up sweating on Saturday night.”

Things got better as I became a story farmer. Maybe hunter-gatherer would be a more accurate description. Yes, I wrote stories, but mostly I collected them. Eventually I had two thousand 4x6 story cards. Saturday nights were more fun, going through those cards, looking for just the right ones for the sermon.

I told many stories in a sermon, but the goal was to make every story I told in a sermon tell the same story, the Christ story, the story about how God loves us.

I didn’t come to understand that by myself, though. I was so used to that Saturday night sweating that it seemed normal. One such night, many years later, Helen asked what why I was fretting. I replied that the Gospel lesson for the next morning was such a familiar story that people thought they already knew all about it. I had to find some new and different way to tell it.

She said, “You worry too much about finding new and interesting ways to preach. You have only one thing to do when you preach, and that is to remind us that God loves us.”

I have several degrees in Theology. Helen has several degrees in Home Economics. She’s always been the best theologian in the family.

 

John Robert McFarland

“Art is triumph over chaos.” John Cheever

 

 

 

 

 

REASSEMBLY [M, 9-7-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—REASSEMBLY [M, 9-7-26]

 

I loved to hear Max White give the pastoral prayer in Sunday morning worship. He always started with, “O God, bless those of us assembled here…” 

I knew that he was asking a blessing upon the congregation as a whole, we disparate individuals who had come together for this special time together. I rejoiced in that.

I heard his prayer also as a request for reassembly for those individuals whose parts had been scattered all over by the forces of the world. We come to church to be put together again, to have our brokenness made whole. “Bless those of us being reassembled here…”

Max White was a blessing to me. In his retirement, he was the minister of visitation at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL for twenty years.

He and Ruth moved to our town when he retired after 40 years as a preacher. Ruth came to see me shortly thereafter. “Four hundred people come to church here on Sunday morning. That’s too much for you to handle by yourself,” she said. “You should hire Max to be a pastor to call on folks. He’s great with old people.”

“I’d love to hire Max,” I told her, “but we don’t have enough money.”

“How much to you need?” she asked, in a rather desperate voice. Apparently, she had, as the old saying goes, married Max for love but not for lunch.

So, I talked to some folks and found enough money to hire Max. I figured it was easier than doing marriage counseling with Ruth. And it was one of the best things I did for that church.

So, every few weeks, when our associate minister or campus minister wasn’t helping to lead the Sunday morning worship, I’d include Max as the pastoral liturgist for the day, complementing the lay liturgist. The lay liturgist’s primary duty was scripture reading, and the pastoral liturgist’s primary duty was the pastoral prayer.

When Max prayed, “Bless those of us assembled here…” he was asking God to bless the congregation. But he was also asking for help for each of us individually in being put back together. At least, that’s how I always heard it, because I always needed help being put back together. That’s why we go to church, to get reassembled.

As we age, we become disassembled. It’s called senescence. It’s not the number of years that causes old-age problems. It’s the disassembly that happens in our cells over the years. And the disassembly that happens in our souls over the years.

When we met our late, great friend and church member, Jo Petry, she told us of how she had not left her house for 13 years when her husband was dying. That sounds crazy now, but it was in the 1940s and 50s. The services most of us have access to now did not exist then, especially in a small town. I was amazed. Jo had a right to be depressed forever, but she was probably the most upbeat person we had ever known. I asked her, “How could you do that? How did you remain sane?”

She said, “Each day, I found something to laugh at, and something beautiful to look at.”

Each day, I hear Jo’s voice telling me to find something to laugh at, and something beautiful to look at. And then I hear Max’s voice telling me that the Lord is reassembling me.

People seem to think it shows we’re crazy if we hear voices. Sometimes, it shows we’re being reassembled…

John Robert McFarland