SURVIVAL IN A HANDBASKET [M, 10-14-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man--SURVIVAL IN A HANDBASKET [M, 10-14-24]

 

Alan Walker [1911-2003] was a well-known evangelist when I was a young preacher, even though he was from Australia. In pre-internet days, that was almost like a different world. At a conference, I heard him tell this story…

He was asked to be the preacher at a big downtown church. Fifty years before, maybe even twenty, it would have been a plum appointment, but the neighborhood had changed, and the church had declined. There was a huge building, but only a handful of people. [1]

He said that he would take the appointment only on one condition: the first month, everything that came into the church through the offering plates—the only way donations were collected then—had to be given to missions. The church could spend nothing on itself.

Years later, as he spoke to us, the church was full and vibrant again. He had reminded them of why they were a church. Survival wasn’t an adequate reason.

If you’re working only to survive, you’re going to fail. Even if you survive.

Right now, we are focused on survival, because the environment, democracy, the church…maybe human existence, all are faced with extinction.

There is a caveat embedded in Alan Walker’s story. It is tempting to think that his experiment worked because it worked. Not so, in Christian terms. It would have worked even if it hadn’t worked. The proof was not in the church being full again, but because they had done the Jesus thing. That’s always the only reason for the existence of the church—to do the Jesus thing.

In the wing of the church called “progressive,” we are so focused on service that we forget about God, who is the reason we serve the world. If we don’t serve God, we can’t serve the world. In the midst of the Reformation, Martin Luther wrote, “I am so busy right now that if I did not spend four hours each day in prayer, I would not survive.” I would say, “No, you’ve got to use those hours in work.” Don’t listen to me; Luther had it right.

Neither survival nor service is the right reason to survive. The right reason is to love. God is love. The Jesus thing is love.

We shall survive only if we do the right things for the right reasons, not if we do them so that we can survive. The right reasons are the God reasons. God did not create us for survival, but for love.

John Robert McFarland

1] I was fascinated, for it sounded just like the Halsted Street Institutional Methodist Church in Chicago, where I preached when I was a summer social worker at Howell Neighborhood House, in the Pilsen neighborhood. Its neighborhood had been eliminated in favor of a new interstate highway. Only a handful of people were left.

The Poplar neighborhood of London on the Call the Midwife TV show on PBS reminds me greatly of Pilsen. 

I assume that you are old enough to know the phrase “going to hell in a handbasket.”

REPLACING THE 1950S CHURCH [Sa, 10-22-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man— REPLACING THE 1950S CHURCH [Sa, 10-22-24]

 

When I was in seminary, our homiletics professor, Merrill Abbey, had us listen to a sermon by J. Wallace Hamilton, the preacher at Pasadena Community Methodist Church [PCMC] in St. Petersburg, FL. The sermon was on a long-play vinyl record, the best available technology at that time. I was so impressed with Hamilton’s sermon that I bought a copy of that record for myself. I wanted to be a good preacher, and I wondered, “How did he get to be so good at this?”

Well, his was the quintessential story of the 1950s church, the church of suburban growth and denominational loyalty and pulpit centrality.

Hamilton’s church was a new, struggling start in 1929, and only four years old when Hamilton was appointed there. He had just been ordained as a probationer. He wasn’t fully ordained until two years later.

Some of the lay people recognized that he had a special gift for preaching. “We’re small now, but we have a chance to grow here,” they told him. “You concentrate on preaching. We’ll do the rest of the work the preacher usually does so that you’ll have time for it. You preach, and we’ll bring the people in to hear you. And we’ll grow.”

By the time I was in seminary in the 1960s, PCMC had become one of the first megachurches, over seven thousand people on some Sundays, even though the sanctuary, built during Hamilton’s tenure, seated “only” two thousand. Others listened to speakers in their cars in the parking lot, drive-in movie style.

In its first four years, before Hamilton, PCMC had three preachers. That was fairly standard for Methodist churches in those days. Many appointments were for only one year, especially for a small church like PCMC. Preachers were eager to “move up the ladder” to bigger churches with bigger salaries. What was definitely not standard was for a Methodist preacher to stay in his first appointment for his entire lifetime, for 39 years, from the time when he wasn’t even fully ordained yet, until his death. J. Wallace Hamilton did that.

He could do that because he was a preacher in the 1950s church.

That’s what sociologists call it, The 1950s Church, because it hit its zenith in that decade. It spanned most of the 20^th century. It was pulpit centered and denominationally identified and growth oriented. It was perfect for J. Wallace Hamilton.

It was perfect for me, too, since I thought the main job of a minister was preaching. Nobody knew it then, but the 1950s church was already starting its decline in the decade for which it is now named. [That’s how we name things, according to my sociology professor friend, the great Paul J. Baker. “If you cut down all the shady oaks in building a sub-division, you name it Shady Oaks. Places and eras get named for what was destroyed in creating them.”]

The times, they were a changin’, even before Boy Dylan began to sing about it. The 1950s values of personal relationships, community, extended family, print communication, denominational identity, women in the home, respect for the Abe Lincoln sort of honesty… all those were being replaced by television, electronics, celebrity worship, social movement from rural to urban, adulation of the wealthy, entrepreneurial preachers, women in the work place… Each change helped make the others possible.

I’m glad I’m not a preacher now. In fact, every person in the whole country is glad not to be a preacher now. Most denominations retire eight to ten preachers each year for every one who is ordained. The 1950s church can’t survive that way. Well, it’s already dead, anyway.

That’s okay. The purpose of the 1950s church was growth. The flourishing post-war culture that made the 1950s church possible is also dead. A new church is borning, but we don’t yet know what it will look like, but we know it’s purpose. As the late, inciteful Kris Kristofferson sang, “Yesterday is dead and gone, and tomorrow’s out of sight…” The purpose of the church now is just to help the world “…make it through the night.” All the world is asking is our time.

John Robert McFarland

The song is Kristofferson’s, but the idea that the world is singing it to the church comes from sociological theologian Tex Sample.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHANGING UNTIL WE GET TO WHERE WE STARTED [W, 10-10-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories and Musings of An Old Man—CHANGING UNTIL WE GET TO WHERE WE STARTED [W, 10-10-24]

 

I think molasses dropped out of kitchen staples about the time Helen and I got married. When we married, everything was as it had always been. There was men’s work and women’s work. There were pencils and paper, augmented by fountain pens and typewriters. But… ah, there’s the point… sort of.

Vera Largent became the registrar at Garrett Theological Seminary the year that I started there. All her records were on cards, in pencil. Then they started using ink. Then they started using manual typewriters. Then electric typewriters. Then computers. That’s when she decided to retire. In the length of one career, she went from chipping letters into stone all the way to computers.

BUT…it was all the same thing. Just different methods. All for the same church. Guys [and a few gals by then] went to seminary in the electric typewriter era for the same reason they went in the pencil era--to get their names onto those registration cards so that they could pastor the same churches in the same towns in the same way as all the names that had been on those cards before. The same hymns and prayers and sermons as always, just new preachers.

Some of us radicals, though, claimed that sameness wouldn’t do. We wanted to change things, “keep up with the times.” The changes we wanted weren’t radical, though. We just wanted to tweak things a bit, put our mark on them.

As I mentioned in the column of 9-30, when I started, preachers were still praying by using these and thous. I was one of the first in Indiana Methodism to refer to God as a “You.” I figured it was time to pray and liturgize in modern English. It caused a bit of a stir.

I wasn’t really trying to cause a stir, but that became a part of my reputation. Once a reputation is started when we are young, we think we have to live up to it. So I began to push the limits almost as a habit, even after I had transferred from IN to IL. Either my rep followed me from state to state, or I kept it going.

I once asked the senior minister at the largest church in all midwestern Methodism why I wasn’t getting any positive response to some initiative I was pushing. “Why, the administrators are scared to death of you!” he replied. “They exist to keep things calm. You stir stuff up.”

I was sort of proud of that, and sort of chagrined by it. It was nice to be noticed, but I wanted people to like me, not fear me. I wanted bishops and district superintendents and other administrators to send me to “bigger and better” [and higher-paying] jobs.

Yes, I was a change agent. I knew change had to happen. But I really did not anticipate that things would change so much that the 1950s church would no longer exist. I knew things would change, but I had no special foresight. I thought that denominational identity and pulpit preaching would carry the church forward as it always had. I did not understand how totally television, and then the internet, and now AI, would change so completely the ways we relate to one another.

I was always the idea man, the one who tried to think up better ways of doing the same old things. Now there are no same-olds. I’m out of ideas.

For someone my age, that’s a good thing. It was too easy to rely on my new ideas and new ways to make me feel worthwhile. Now, I have to trust in God for that. That’s the way it’s always been.

John Robert McFarland

 

THIS DAY [T, 10-8-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THIS DAY [T, 10-8-24]

 

 

As a child, my mother taught me to pray each night as I fell asleep: Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep/if I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I’ve heard some folks say they were traumatized by that prayer as children, afraid to go to sleep for fear they’d die in their sleep and their souls would be taken, whatever that meant. Well, yes, I understand that. But I wasn’t that much concerned about the Lord’s activities. It was the devil that got my attention.

I was so worried that the devil might get me that I had dreams about him, red tail and pitchfork and all. He would be chasing me down the upstairs hallway of our house. In desperation, I would take off my red and blue felt house slippers and throw them at him. Having the Lord get my soul instead of the devil sounded like a good deal.

Also, I liked little poems that rhymed. Sleep/keep. Wake/take. They were easy to remember.

When I was a young preacher, I began to hear other preachers do a rather consistent sermon about night-time soul taking. They knew someone or had heard of someone who had gone to a revival meeting and refused to respond to the altar call to be saved. Sometimes the preacher had made a personal plea/invitation to that sinner, but it was usually at a revival service, although when I started preaching, many of my churches expected me to give an altar call at the end of every worship service, not just at revivals.

Anyway, after refusing the call to salvation, that night the recalcitrant died, usually in a spectacular and violent way, in a car crash or house fire. Then the dramatic question: If that happens to you tonight, where will you spend eternity?

I was much impressed by those sermons. They were dramatic. I thought it would be great to use those stories in my own preaching. Really get people’s attention.

There was a problem, though. I didn’t believe that God would damn a person to hell just because they didn’t have some emotional experience where they proclaimed Jesus as savior.

That wasn’t just because I was trying to avoid the devil. I wasn’t a very experienced Bible scholar then, but the God of the Bible didn’t include sending people to hell forever. Old Testament writers didn’t even believe in hell. They talked about Sheol, but that wasn’t the hell of modern theology, the hell of eternal punishment. It was just where the dead went, whether they’d been good or bad.

More importantly, Jesus didn’t seem to be overly concerned about where people would spend eternity. He was interested in the present. People needed to be saved from the sins of greed and lust and revenge…and all the others, now…thy kingdom come, on earth… “Come, follow me…”

So I preached a different kind of sermon, with the same kind of story, but with a different question at the end. This kind, like this one I heard from a fellow preacher.

His teen son wanted to use the car while his parents were out one night. His father said no, that he could not take the car. He did not think he was a good enough driver yet. The boy took the car anyway, and got into a terrible wreck. By the time his parents got to the hospital, both his legs were already amputated. The boy said, “Can you forgive me? I can live without my legs if I’m forgiven…”

Those old preachers were right. The decision is now. But it is not a decision about eternity. That’s not why we follow Jesus, why we worship God, why we yearn for salvation. The decision is not about everlasting life. It’s about life right now.

This day…God’s kingdom… This day…bread for this earthly body… This day…forgiveness as we forgive… This day…safety from temptation…This day…God’s power and glory…This day…now and forever…

This day… if I should die before I wake…

John Robert McFarland

WHAT DO YOU BRING IN YOUR HAND? [Su, 10-6-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of an Old Man—WHAT DO YOU BRING IN YOUR HAND? [Su, 10-6-24]

 

We have a commandment at our house: don’t go empty-handed. It’s mostly a commandment to self. We are old and don’t walk well, so don’t want to make unnecessary trips. We are also absent-minded and leave stuff where it should not be. So, if we are going from one room to another, and have an empty hand, or two, we look around, and if we see something that belongs in our destination room, we take it. “Don’t go empty-handed!”

The first thing I remember from a sermon is the question, “What do you bring in your hand?” Oh, I had heard sermons before, but nothing that I remembered. But when Paul Burns was preaching at Forsythe that day, he made me remember that question. And think about it.

I was a teen-ager, probably a freshman or sophomore. Paul was not our regular preacher. He was the postmaster in Oakland City. He was also a lay preacher. Not real high on the rung of lay preachers. In those days, there were about three levels. Each a different kind of “license” to preach. The lowest levels had the least amount of education specific to preaching and were basically qualified only to fill in on Sunday mornings. The highest levels could be appointed to a church full-time, serves as the regular pastor. Paul was at the low, fill-in level.

The District Superintendent tried hard to find someone to appoint at Forsythe who could be more than just a Sunday preacher. Sometimes it was Gene Matthews, a factory worker in Evansville, thirty miles away, or Kenwood Bryant, an Evansville school teacher. They had mid-level licenses. Still part-time, but ordained enough to serve communion, and do funerals and weddings. When they were not available, though, Paul would be called into service.

That Sunday, that was his repeat phrase. [1] “What do you bring in your hand?” It was a speaking technique I had never heard before, or at least not noticed. Maybe I noticed it because he asked the question several times. That’s why speakers repeat phrases, after all, to get us to notice and remember.

But there was something about the image of a full hand vs an empty hand. I don’t remember what scripture text he used, although I can make a good guess. I knew that my hand was empty. But because it was empty, something significant might be put into it. Then I could answer the question: What do you bring in your hand?

Several years into my ministry career, I had occasion to need some help in my church. I knew that Paul was retired and had suffered a late-life divorce. I thought he might like to come work with me, to have something to do, to feel needed. I wrote and asked him. I told him what his preaching had meant to me when I was young.

He declined. “I’m too old,” he wrote. [I understand that well now.] “But to know that you thought of me, after all these years… and that you got something from my preaching back then… that means the world to me.”

I’m sorry we didn’t get to work together. I knew he would bring something useful in his hand.

John Robert McFarland

1] Sometimes called an anaphora.

 

 

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE PASTOR [10-4-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE PASTOR [10-4-24]

 

[Yes, it’s still Pastor Appreciation Month…]

When I went back to congregation pastoring, after graduate work, I was surprised how lonely most of my fellow pastors were.

I had never been lonely. The first 3 years I was preaching, I lived in a college dorm. Lots of good friends. Then I got married, and went to seminary. Helen was always my best friend, and seminary students were a close fellowship. Following seminary, I was in campus ministry. I wasn’t much older than my students, and we had a great friendship community.

After grad work, I became the only pastor of my denomination in a small town. It’s hard to be friends with people in a congregation, people who decide how little your salary should be. No friends there.  

So, I did what became a pattern: I formed a group. It always seemed to me that when there was a need, and no one else was doing anything about it, why not me? I created friendship groups for clergy, formal and informal, throughout my career.

That first group took in more than my little town. We were not far from a large metropolitan area. I invited any clergy person I could find. Meetings on a Monday because that is usually the day when preachers are free of other commitments. They came. Protestants of all ages and denominations. Catholic priests. We did case studies and shared ideas. They didn’t feel so lonely then.

One Monday, Bob dragged in, looking like “death warmed over, on a cracker,” [as folk singer Bryan Bowers once said, referring to himself at the time.] Bob was the preacher at a large Baptist church in the cities. He asked to be the first to share.

“We had our regular monthly congregational meeting after worship yesterday,” he said. “Somebody made a motion to fire me. It failed by one vote. I haven’t slept for 24 hours. I had no idea anything was wrong.”

Being in a denomination in which I was appointed by the bishop rather than hired by the congregation, this was new territory for me, but I certainly understood Bob’s distress. So did everybody else in that group. They all expressed their concern and support for Bob, and then they began to strategize. They came up with the idea that I should talk to Bob’s congregation, and figure out what was wrong, and fix it.

It wasn’t hard. Congregation members all agreed that Bob was a good pastor. His perceived shortcomings were minor. But they had no way to communicate about it. Yes, people could talk to him directly, but most church folks just don’t like personal confrontation, even if minor. So discontents built up. I helped them create a pastor-parish relations committee, meeting regularly with Bob. He was able to sleep again.

Wherever I went, I became the pastor to pastors, without portfolio, because I formed groups. It’s easier for lonely folks to start in a group--especially those who are supposed to help other lonely people rather than being lonely themselves. Group friendships lead to personal sharing about loneliness and problems. Because I created the groups, many pastors saw me as their pastor.

I think that I was able to be a pastor to pastors precisely because I did not have any authority for doing it. No mandates from denominations or public position and acclaim. I was just a guy who liked the fellowship of his colleagues.

One of the reasons the young pastors—and some not so young—came to me with their problems was because my colleagues knew sooner and better than I did that I would never be part of the appointive system. It’s hard to go to the bishop or your District Superintendent and tell how deficient or sinful you are. When appointment time comes, you want them thinking only of the façade you’ve built that indicates how competent you are.

I had a reputation for understanding the appointive system [not wholly deserved], and colleagues knew I would never be in a position to use against them what they had told me.

Now that so many of my friends “…have gone on to their reward,” I cherish the memories of our sharing in “the goodly fellowship of the prophets.”

I trust that now they are not lonely.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

PASTOR APPRECIATION [W, 10-2-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Song Writing of An Old Man—PASTOR APPRECIATION [W, 10-2-24]

 

October was established as Pastor Appreciation Month in 1992, by Hallmark Cards. That was only a few years before I retired, and news like that traveled slowly in the places where I preached, so I never got appreciated.

Every October, though, various electronic messages suggest that I should show appreciation to my pastors. By sending them a Hallmark card, of course. [They’d probably appreciate the $7.99 more.]

That’s backward. I think preachers should be the ones showing appreciation to the folks we have the privilege of pastoring.

So, I wrote a hymn, not for others to sing in praise of us, but clergy to sing together, wherever we may be. After all, we are the ones who should do the appreciating, thankful that we have gotten to spend our lives in “the goodly fellowship of the prophets,” even for those of us whose useful years are almost up. If you’re clergy, let’s sing it. If you’re not, well… appreciate. So, all together now, any tune you know… [1]

IN THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP

Come now, sisters, come now, brothers

We who wear the clergy stole

Let us preach the good news message

Help to make the wounded whole

 

We who heard the Spirit calling

We who answered in the night

We who walked in faith and doubting

We who journeyed toward the light

 

Let us join our hearts in prayer

Let us join our voice in song

Let us march for peace and justice

Do our best to right each wrong

 

Ours is not a lonely posting

E’en though scattered far and wide

In goodly fellowship of prophets

We are marching side by side

 

Come now, brothers, come now, sisters

Sacrament and Word to share

For the healing of the nations

Joy for people everywhere

 

John Robert McFarland

You can sing it to Emily Wilson’s tune for When We All Get to Heaven, without the refrain.