MOTHER AND BOBBY KNIGHT [sun, 10-11-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscenes of A Very Old Man—MOTHER AND BOBBY KNIGHT [sun, 10-11-26]

 

The Indiana University basketball season starts today, sort of, so it is worth recalling that my mother once took a course in coaching basketball. At IU. From Bob Knight.

That probably sounds strange, to anyone who knew Mother or who knew Knight. Until you remember that they were both outliers.

Mother liked basketball. No sports for girls in her day, of course, so they had to play vicariously. For Mother, it was through her brothers, especially her oldest brother, Ted.

He was born in 1900 and played before the Francisco, IN school had a gym. Just having a school at all then was not to be taken for granted. When Mother graduated, her class actually dedicated their yearbook to the taxpayers of Center Township for providing a school for them. That was after Uncle Ted’s playing days.

 

Uncle Ted played basketball in a barn. That’s how we get the basketball term, “barn burner,” a game so exciting that the barn catches fire, at least emotional fire. Mother talked of Uncle Ted’s games like that.

When I started on the staff of “Oak Barks,” the Oakland City High School newspaper, as a lowly fourteen-year-old, editor Benny Albin gave me the job of doing the “years ago” column, as in Ten Years Ago, Fifty Years Ago, Etc. In our archives we had the school papers from all the Gibson County schools, including Francisco. Going through the archives, I discovered that Uncle Ted had indeed been a standout player. He had often been high point man. In games that ended in scores like 6 to 4!

Of course, the game was slower then. Whenever anyone scored a basket, someone had to climb up to the loft to get the ball, since the baskets were actual baskets, with the bottom still in.

Francisco was named for a Mexican who was helping to build the Eerie Canal. He lived in a hut there. As other people began to settle in the area, they referred to the place as Francisco’s. It is often called Frisco. There are several members of the Pond family, Mother’s family, who still live there.

When Mother was growing up in Francisco, it had about 600 residents, about the same as today, but in those days before automobiles it had two hotels--to serve the drummers, [1] two doctors, a bank, a barber, several restaurants, several grocery stores, several churches, a blacksmith, etc. And, of course, the infamous “company store” of the coal mine owners.

 

I think Uncle Ted started his general store to try to put the company store out of business, by giving miners, like his father, decent goods at a reasonable price.

Mother and Dad went to live in Frisco in their last years, because Mother’s 7 siblings gave her the family home when Grandma died, but Frisco, like all small towns, was rapidly declining. When the last grocery store closed, my brother moved Mother and Dad to a house he owned in Bloomington, IN, only a couple of blocks from the Indiana University campus.

That’s where Bob Knight “taught,” [2] so that’s where Mother bought a pink sweatshirt with Indiana University on the front, and walked over to campus to listen to Bobby explain the motion offense.

 

She finally got what she always wanted; she was a college girl.

John Robert McFarland

1] Called “drummers” because they traveled on the railroad, from town to town, “drumming up” business. The opening scene of Meredith Wilson’s great The Music Man pays tribute to them.

2] In his early days, before everyone knew who he was, when people asked Bob what he did, he replied simply, “I teach at IU.”

THE FEMINIZATION OF THE CHURCH [F, 10-9-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Observations of An Old Man—THE FEMINIZATION OF THE CHURCH [F, 10-9-26]

 

 

In my discussion group, at a national conference, a young woman pastor--I’ll call her Julie--was making the case for women in the ministry. “I know the names of all the children in my church,” she said. “That’s why we need women pastors.”

I was flummoxed. Julie was pastoring a church of a hundred members and knew all the children. Good. But I was pastoring a church of a thousand members and knew all the children. I knew a lot more kids than she did, and I was a lot more male than she was. I had always known the names of all the kids in my churches, from when I started preaching in 1956, which was also the year the Methodist Church decided it was okay for women to be preachers, whether they knew the names of children or not. [1]

I didn’t say that, though, about how this tall, deep-voiced, bearded man was just as concerned to minister to the children as Julie was. Because that wasn’t really what she was talking about.

It was the 1970s. Equality for women was the big and important issue. She was just trying to say that it was okay for women to be preachers. Unfortunately, Julie felt that she had to find something unique about women pastors to justify their existence. The only thing that matters in a preacher is competence, “gifts and graces.”

I kept my mouth closed in that discussion because I was on Julie’s side. I had been an advocate for women in the ministry from 1956 on, although I really had not had opportunity to do much about it until I became a campus minister in 1964 and began to encourage college girls to go to seminary. [2] [Yes, college students were boys and girls back then.]

The problem now is—and notice that I’ll quickly say it’s not really a problem—is that we’ve gone all the way from saying it’s okay for women to be preachers to having a feminized church. Men really don’t have a place in the church anymore. That’s probably a good thing.

[When I say the church has become feminized, a female institution, I am fully aware that the church has always been a feminized movement, unacknowledged as such, from the moment when women were the first ones at the tomb on Resurrection morning.]

In important ways, the church has always been a female institution. Not in its leadership structure, of course, but in its work structure. That’s always been almost entirely female. That’s why the church has been so successful. Let men think they are in charge while women actually do the stuff is a guaranteed recipe for success.

The Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist Churches are smart. They know if women get out of work positions and into leadership positions, the men will run like scared rabbits.

Here’s the stinger—a feminized church isn’t a bad thing. Men have been in charge for a long time. We’ve messed things up rather badly. No, I have no naive notions about women. They are full of original sin, too. They’ll mess things up just as badly now that they are in charge. Isn’t that what equality is all about, equal opportunity to steer the boat into the ice berg?

Maybe there is one problem. Women think church power is worth fighting for. Not anymore. The church used to be relevant in society but it is no longer. Churches are closing left and right. Being in charge of the church now is like being president of the buggy-makers association.

The church is not irrelevant because of its increasing feminization. The irrelevance and the feminization just happened to come along at the same time. But the women who now fight over church power don’t realize that’s it is like dogs fighting for the last chicken bone.

Men don’t have a place in the church anymore. That’s okay. They have football on Sundays. That’s a spiritual experience, especially after eight beers. [3]

John Robert McFarland

1] I am in a uniquely qualified position to understand this and comment on it since my 70 years as a preacher have coincided with the 70 years the Methodist church has ordained women. Also, I am tall, male, and straight, and comfortable with white privilege.

2] The first was Joan Tuttle Smoke, from Indiana State U. She became an Episcopal Priest, and I preached at her installation. Her email address is “holysmoke.”

3] This leads into my plan to have churches share buildings with taverns/bars. More on that in four days.

 

 

WHEN DO WE BECOME ADULTS? [W, 10-7-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHEN DO WE BECOME ADULTS? [W, 10-7-26]

 

Anna Quindlen, in her novel Every Last One, has her protagonist say, “So much of friendship is being in the right place at the right time.” So it was with Darrel and me.

I first met Darrel when we were both in fifth grade, although because of different birth dates, he was one semester ahead of me. [1] It was a pleasure to watch him grow up. I didn’t think about it at the time, of course, because I was so concerned about my own growing up, but looking back, yes, it was a pleasure to watch him grow up.

When is it that we move from childhood to adulthood? Puberty? In some ways, but not always. With a ritual, like bar mitzvah or confirmation? Or commencement, from junior high? Or senior high? Or college? Or when you get a girl pregnant? That did it for Darrel.

We had parted ways early in high school because of girls. He had a car and money. It wasn’t a great car, and he didn’t have scads of money, but it was more car and money than I had. Thus he always had a girlfriend, or several. I did not. Also, he was very good looking and a basketball star. Those attributes helped to attract girls.

We had not stopped being friends, but he and I were busy with different lives. Nonetheless, I watched him, and learned.

I appreciate more now than I did in high school that Darrel was always faithful to me as a friend. From age ten, he said I was his best friend. He never replaced me with a different best friend. He always saw me that way, even though he entered that handsome jock-clothes-cars category and I did not. But when it came to girls, I was always disposable. More than once I walked home from a school event, late at night, in the ditch beside the highway, and then on mud or gravel roads, 3 miles, because he had connected with some girl and totally forgot about me and went off to Lover’s Lane with her.

I knew that sometimes he used me, but I didn’t mind. I knew he was the alpha male and I was the wingman. This was especially true when he was a junior and wanted to date a cute 8^th grade girl. [Our high school started with 8^th grade.] Judy was an only child with protective parents. But I had a reputation as a nice boy. As long as Judy dated Darrel when I was along, either via double date or as a chaperone, Judy’s parents thought it was okay.

Darrel didn’t just put up with me because he got something out of it. He had accepted me as a friend clear back when we were ten years old, and he never wavered from that, even though our lives diverged in significant ways. I was his best man, for a wedding that started a fifty-year marriage.

He got a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue, and worked for as an engineer for 29 years. But his real passion was music, especially Dixieland. He played trumpet and tuba. Even in college, and during all those years as an engineer, he really thought of himself as a musician. He even directed a church choir.

He retired from engineering in his early fifties to play Dixieland music all over the world. It was coming back from a gig on a snowy night that the car slid off the road and a brain injury ended his life some weeks later. He died much too young, at 72.

Is this a column about Darrel? Not really. I’m trying to distinguish when and how we change from childhood to what we are as adults. Because Darrel held onto me as his friend, even in those moments when he abandoned me, I got to see him grow up. His ups and downs were greater than my own, and so I learned a lot about growing up from watching him. Friends do that for you.

Shortly before he died, in his brain-injured state he looked at his wife and said, “I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” When is that we become adults? Perhaps when we realize that our friends have grown up, and taken us along with them.

I have CD of Darrel playing Gospel Dixieland. It’s one of my most prized possessions.

John Robert McFarland

1] In those days, kids born in December through May started school in January, at the start of the second semester of the school year. Children born April through November started in September, after Labor Day.

 

 

ONE OF US HURTS [M. 10-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—ONE OF US HURTS [M. 10-5-26]

 

Helen had a dream recently in which I was in great pain. She awoke to learn that she was in great pain [tooth]. That’s what happens when you’ve been married 67 years. If one of you is in pain, you aren’t really sure which it is.

I was going to go to our dentist and say, “One of us hurts. Can you figure it out?” I was afraid, though, that he would say, “Sure. I’ll work on one of you and charge both of you.”

Immigrant Elon Musk says that what is wrong with America is that we are too empathetic. You don’t make any advances if you feel the pain of others, he says. You have to ignore the pain of others. He does a good job of living what he believes. Makes you wonder why he immigrated from South Africa, where they have a better history of ignoring the pain of others.

Humans have the capacity to be self-aware. Narcissists and sinners don’t. Sinning is mostly failure to recognize who we really are.

I recall a preacher story about a little boy who got mad because his mother did…whatever mothers do to try to control little boys. He went to the yard and kicked his little puppy and then sat down to pout. A moment later, he felt a tentative licking on his arm. The little puppy had come to comfort him, even though he had abused it. He ran into the house with the puppy in his arms and cried, “Mommy, I’m mean! I’m mean!”

Redemption is accepting who we really are. If we are not embarrassed by hypocrisy and lies, we cannot accept salvation.

Jesus said, “The well have no need of a physician.” If you don’t feel your own pain, you’ll die physically. If you don’t feel the pain of others, you’ll die spiritually.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT INCLUSION IN 70 YEARS AS A PREACHER [Sa. 10-3-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT INCLUSION IN 70 YEARS AS A PREACHER [Sa. 10-3-26]

 

My 70 years in the ministry were the same 70 years that the church and America became inclusive. My next 70 years will be dealing with the backlash against being inclusive—in church and nation and world.

I’m going to use American Methodism as representative for what happened in the whole nation. How the Methodists went from a church that kept women out of the pulpit by keeping them in the kitchen, how we kept black churches in the back pews of the organization, how we kept gay folks out of everything while claiming that they were “persons of sacred worth,” how we went from a church of exclusion to a church that actually practiced “Open Doors, Open Minds, Open Hearts.” And how we paid an institutional price for that.

I started preaching in 1956. That was the year the Methodist Church agreed that it would be okay for women to be preachers. This year, my Conference is presided over by a woman bishop, and my District Superintendent is a woman, and my congregation has a woman preacher. [It also has a man preacher.] Open Doors.  

When the Methodist Episcopal [ME] Church, and The ME Church South and the Meth Protestant Ch reunited in 1939, we agreed to let black congregations be part of the denomination, but not of the regional conferences. They were segregated organizationally into what was called The Central Jurisdiction [CJ]. White Methodists, from bishops on down, didn’t have to go to meetings with black Methodists. The CJ was a denomination within a denomination. When Brown v Board of Education was passed in 1954, some Methodists said it was time to abolish the CJ. In 1972, the CJ was finally abolished and black congregations became parts of regular annual conferences. Open Minds.

That same year, 1972, a couple of boys in my Wesley Foundation told me they were going to go to a gay bar to find out if they were gay. I advised against it, for a lot of good reasons [safety, including from police who liked to go there to beat up on gays], and for a bad reason. Like almost all the rest of society, I thought homosexuality was a choice. I told them they should not make up their minds too soon about whether they were gay.

Who was I to disagree with The American Medical Assn and the American Psychological Assn? They both claimed that being gay was some sort of mental illness.

A lot of research was done from 1972 to 2024, when we finally realized that being gay is not a choice but simply the way you are born, and there is no reason for gay folk to be kept out of any part of the church. Open Hearts.

A lot of good people are scared of things that are not easy to understand. Gender and race and sex are areas where our views are almost entirely emotional. Every time the Methodist Church became more inclusive, we lost folks who don’t feel comfortable with open doors and minds and hearts. That loss is important, not because the organized denomination is smaller and less powerful now, but because it is always a grief when the Body of Christ is broken for any reason other than sharing the body in communion.

The story of Jesus is a story of inclusion—women, Samaritans, prodigal sons, tax collectors, lepers, sinners… For 70 years, we’ve tried to be better followers of Jesus. We’re a smaller church, but we’re a better church.

John Robert McFarland

 

EVERY SINNER NEEDS A FRIEND [R, 10-1-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—EVERY SINNER NEEDS A FRIEND [R, 10-1-26]

 

Younger preachers, and some not so young, felt free to come to me with their problems because they knew--sooner and better than I did--that I would never be in a position to affect their job.

In Methodism, pastors are not “called” [hired] by a congregation. Each pastor is appointed to their place by a bishop, with a helping hand, sometimes a heavy hand, from a District Superintendent [DS], who is sort of an assistant bishop, able to be in closer relationship to pastors and churches because of presiding over a smaller geographical region.

Technically, the DS—and sometimes the bishop--is a pastor’s pastor.

It’s hard, though, for a pastor to go to the bishop or DS for help with problems, either personal or churchly, and confess how deficient professionally or sinful personally they are. When appointment time comes, you want the bishop and DS thinking only of the façade you’ve built that indicates you should have bigger and better appointments.

I had a reputation for understanding the ways of bishops and DSs even though I wasn’t one. [1] Folks knew that I could hear their problems, and perhaps give helpful advice, without ever being in a position to use what they told me against them.

I also had a reputation as a trouble-maker who hated meetings. The purpose of bishops and DSs is to avoid trouble and go to meetings. [2] No one would ever consider me as a bishop or DS. So, I was safe. I heard a lot of worries and confessions from colleagues.

Through the years, I became a sort of pastor to pastors without portfolio. I never had an official position or authority to pastor pastors, but often I would get a call--sometimes from a colleague I barely knew, because our conference was quite large—and the caller said, “I have a problem. I don’t know what to do. They told me I should see you.” Sometimes I knew who “they” were, and sometimes I didn’t. Regardless, I tried to be helpful. I tried to be a friend.

When I went back to congregation pastoring, after a decade in campus ministry, 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. Then I got married, and went to seminary. Helen was always my best friend, and the seminary was a natural fellowship. When I was in campus ministry, I wasn’t much older than my students, and we had a great friendship community that continues to this day.

Then, after all those years on campus, 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. So I looked for friends among the other preachers.

But it’s hard to be friends with pastors of other denominations, too. Preachers are wary of one another, afraid that a more attractive shepherd might steal their sheep. That wasn’t a problem for me. I didn’t worry about other pastors stealing my sheep. If one of my members found a better church home, that was a good thing. All the better for them. So I was able to befriend pastors of other denominations, too.

I took friendship for other pastors as one of my ministries. I got no “points” for doing so, either with my congregations or my denominational leaders, but I got a great deal of personal satisfaction from those friendships.

I’ve told before of how our bishop, Leroy Hodapp, told me he was going to appoint me to the Investigation Committee, kind of the equivalent of Internal Affairs in a police force, following up complaints of cop corruption. I said that wasn’t a good idea because I would be too sympathetic with folks who did wrong. “That’s why I want you on there,” he said. “Every sinner should have one friend.”

It’s lonely being a sinner as a preacher. Preachers are supposed to be above sin, and we aren’t. I was always glad if I could be a sinful colleague’s friend.

As Christians, we’re supposed to live like Jesus. Most of the time, I’m not very good at that, but at least I have gotten to be a friend to sinners. [3]

John Robert McFarland

1] Often, at meetings of the clergy women of our conference, I would be the only man present, by invitation, because they thought I knew stuff, since I hung around with the bishop and DSs socially. Actually, I never knew as much as either they or I thought I did.

2] There is a great difference between meetings and gatherings. It’s only meetings I hate. I love gatherings.

3] Mt 11:19, Lk 7:34.

 

THE IT FACTOR, PART II [T, 9-29-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Man—THE IT FACTOR, PART II [T, 9-29-26]

 

As you know from last column, old friend Quentin said that I have IT. He could not define IT, but he said I accomplished things in a town where I really did not fit because “…you have IT.” I was closing in on 90 when he said that. In all those years I had never considered that I have any IT. So, what could he mean?

First, most of who and what we are is not at conscious level. We get our personalities from nature and the early years of nurture, years we can’t remember. Many things happen then that we would take to the therapist if we could remember them. So, any IT I have is probably just an accident of those unremembered years.

Anyway, I have finally decided that by IT, Q meant that I was present.

Certain of my family members will get a huge laugh out of that, because at home I am often present only in my own mind. But, starting in fifth grade, I discovered that I could be a friend. It was then that I started being present. In the company of others, I paid attention. So much so that as years went by, sometimes people would accuse me of reading their minds. I wasn’t trying to. I just paid attention…and remembered everything they said and did. I thought that was what a friend should do. [1]

By “present,” I guess I mean depth. Since in the column before this one, I told you about two group situations where I did not show my IT, let me tell of a different one.

Gary Putnam was campus minister at Iowa State U when I had the same position at Illinois State U. We were in the same discussion group at a conference of campus ministers. After a day of working on some issues together, he said, “John, the thing with you… there are others who can see what’s behind a situation, but you see what’s behind what’s behind.”

It is dangerous to use a phrase that was used to describe the IT factor of Jesus to describe one’s self, but I need to use here that description of Jesus as “having authority within himself.” [Mark 1] I always assumed that everyone knew what was right and what was wrong, what was just and what was unjust. I acted on that assumption. I think that was my IT factor. It wasn’t arrogance—I alone am the one with the truth. No, I believed that we all have the truth, that we share in the same truth together. I was present for sharing that truth. [2]

As I have written before, I recently asked old friend Jim Kiefer about why anyone would think I have an IT quality. I’ve known Jim since he was an eighteen-year-old student in my campus ministry at IL State U. Later we were ministry colleagues for 20 years. Without hesitation, he said, “You have a deep voice, and you make people laugh.”

So much for having IT.

John Robert McFarland

1] My “presence” with others started with fifth grade school bus friends, not with pastoring, but it served me well as a preacher. People of all ages, even old people, accepted me as their pastor when I was just a teen, because I was present to them.

 

It was a dual-edge sword, though. Through the years, some people liked me because I really “got” them. Others disliked me for the same reason. They thought I could see through their mask and recognize the less pretty stuff underneath. I really couldn’t, but folks like that always reveal their real selves in one way or another without realizing it.

 

2] I have since learned that is so innocently ignorant, that we all share the same truth. I have not lived in the “all” at all. I lived in a very small niche of society, a very thin slice of humanity, called liberal Christianity. By liberal I simply mean open-minded. I thought the United Methodist slogan—Open Doors, Open Minds, Open Hearts—was perfect. Not many people want to live that way.

 

 

THE IT FACTOR [Su, 9-27-26]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—THE IT FACTOR [Su, 9-27-26]

 

[Remember that this column makes no claim to be anything but the personal reflections of an old man who is still trying to understand life.]

Q stopped by some while back, with his wife, Susan. We had not seen them for 15 years, and it was 45 years since we were both professionals in the same town. As they were leaving, he said something that has puzzled me greatly. I’m going to try to understand it by telling you…

Well, first, lest I seem too full of myself—which is undoubtedly true, anyway—I shall provide evidence to the contrary of what Q said.

When I was a seminary student, I was slightly older than most of the students, and a lot more experienced. Most of them had come to seminary right after graduating college. I’d had preaching appointments for five years. I had dropped out of high school to work in a factory. I’d been fired as director of a community center for letting black kids come in. I was married, with children. I was serving a full-time church while commuting four hours [round trip] to seminary each day.

Through all those experiences, I had learned that other people wanted to tell their stories, but they didn’t listen well to the stories of others. So I was used to letting everyone talk, while I kept silent, and then summarizing all the stories in an understandable form, so that we could move on. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.

I did that one day in a Christian Education class. Can’t remember what we were talking about, but I remember the reaction of one of my classmates: “You do that all the time. You act like you have some prerogative to wrap up everything the way you want it. You wait while the rest of us stumble around and then swoop in with your deep voice and act like you’re the last word. You think you’re smarter than everybody else. Others of us are smart enough to…”

He went on at some length, rather indignantly. I waited for one of the others in the class to come to my defense. I waited for the professor. No one said anything. I was mortified. Mostly because I realized he was right. I apologized to him, and to the class.

I overlearned my lesson from that class. It was like the Catholic girl who was dating a Jewish boy. Her parents said she could not marry him unless he converted. So one night, she decided she would have it out with him. She came home crying. “Are you crying because he wouldn’t convert?” “No, because I overdid it, and now he wants to be a priest.”

I stopped acting like I was smarter than everybody else. I became humble Casper Milquetoast.

Ten years later, I was in a graduate school discussion group. At break time, I hurried to the restroom and was ensconced in a stall when I heard the others in the class coming in. [Yes, it was an all-male class.] They were talking about someone. “Where does he get off with this poor country boy bull?” “Yeah, he’s smarter than the rest of us put together.” “Yeah, he…” Whoever it was sounded like a real jerk. Oops. Once again, great chagrin; I realized they were talking about me.

I had switched from being smarter than everybody else to being just a poor, dumb country boy. Same thing, actually.

So don’t take what Q said too seriously…

Q was not a member of my church, or any church, but we knew each other pretty well, and respected each other greatly. He’d taught and coached my daughters in high school. We’d been involved in some of the same issues. As he was leaving our house on that recent visit, he said to me: “You were so important in that town, because they were so conservative, and you stood for so many unpopular causes, but you got away with it, because you have IT. Not the kind of IT my daughter has, but you’ve got IT. I can’t describe it, but you’ve got IT.”

[I’ve known his daughter since she was born, about 45 years ago. She is a sparkling blond TV personality whose smile lights up the room. I definitely do not have her kind of IT!]

Well, heck, we’re out of time. I guess we’ll never know why Q thinks I had IT, unless I take this up again in the next column…

John Robert McFarland

ENDING UP WHERE I STARTED [9-25-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—ENDING UP WHERE I STARTED [9-25-26]

 

Financially, it had not been smart to spend the summer as a social worker in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Pastoral appointments were made in June. Somebody else would be appointed to the Solsberry Circuit. There would be no preaching appointment for me when I returned to IU that fall. That meant no money to go to school.

I hadn’t thought about money when I decided to go to Chicago. I just knew that I wanted to be an inner-city pastor. In the 1950s, that was where the action was, because of The East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York. Those young pastors and seminary students were self-sacrificing and ecumenical, the great idealistic buzz words of the time. They were the cutting edge. The cutting edge was where I wanted to be.

I had lived until age ten in the all-white, working poor, inner city of Indianapolis, but that wasn’t exciting. It was just where I lived. And from age ten on, I was a total farm boy. I needed to experience what the “slums” were like to see if I could pastor there effectively.

I assumed it would be no problem. After all, I had grown up just as poor as anyone in Pilsen. But rural poverty is very different from urban poverty. That summer taught me that I did not belong in the city. So it was a really important summer. Still, though, when I returned to IU, I had no job, and no money.

Except for F.T. Johnson, my District Superintendent, and Loyd Bates, Director of The Wesley Foundation, who did indeed find some money to pay me to be a campus ministry “intern” that year. I found out that there was where I really belonged. I ended up preaching where I had started preaching, in the university. Not in the mean and gritty streets of the inner city, but in the gentle groves of academe, the hallowed halls of ivy. Leather elbows on the sleeves of my Harris Tweed sport coat. Puffing Borkum Riff in a bent-stem pipe. Not as a professor, to be sure, but as a preacher, a pastor, one who loves God with the brain first and parses the Word to other brain-first seekers.

I’ve always felt a bit bad about that, a bit guilty. More than a bit. The inner city is so hard, and the needs there are so great. The campus is a cushy place. I couldn’t cut the hard place. I was just a semi-elitist feeble intellectual who went to graduate school and got a doctorate and spent his days with thinkers instead of doers.

If you don’t believe that “thinkers instead of doers” line is accurate, just attend a committee meeting with a bunch of PhDs. It will always end with “Let’s study this some more.”

So, despite my guilt at taking the easy road, I still remember fondly all the times I pushed those tweed jacket types out in front of a bus and yelled “You’d better make a decision now!”

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

AN INNER-CITY PREACHER [W, 9-23-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Man—AN INNER-CITY PREACHER [W, 9-23-26]

 

I have long looked online for photos of Wycliffe and Halstead Street Methodist Churches in the Pilsen Neighborhood of Chicago. I’m still looking for Wycliffe, but I found one of Halstead Street. The photo above is current. It is apartments now. But it looks just like it did in the summer of 1958, when I was its last preacher. Of all my churches, it had the most impressive building. On the outside, though, it didn’t resemble what I thought a church should look like. I was a country boy; I did not understand the space needs of the city, where you build up and instead of out.

I wanted to understand the city, though, because I thought I should be a preacher there. After all, I had grown up in poverty. Didn’t that mean I’d be a good preacher for others who lived in poverty?

That’s why I was in Pilsen that summer, a social worker at the Presbyterian Howell Neighborhood House. Settlement houses, like Jane Addams’ Hull House, had been around since 1889. But settlement house churches, called institutional churches, were newer. The model and standard was the East Harlem Protestant Parish, in NYC, started in 1942. Chicago Methodists had started a church like that, The Halstead Street Institutional Church. But despite a marvelous big building, complete with everything from a large Gothic sanctuary to a swimming pool, it was on its last legs.

The problem was Eisenhower. Meaning interstates. The average highway takes 24 acres per mile. Interstates require 40. That’s a lot of displaced people when you take 40 acres per mile to build an interstate through a city like Chicago. You’re not going to displace folks on The Gold Coast or tony neighborhoods, of course. No, you’re going to take the slums. By the summer of 1958, the neighborhood served by the Halstead St. Institutional Church had been replaced by interstate highways. There is no point to a church that has no neighborhood.

There were a few folks, though, for whom that church was home. Each Sunday they drove tortuous routes to get there to worship. They didn’t have a preacher, though. Not enough worshippers to justify the bishop appointing somebody. Somehow they heard about the kid at Howell House who was preaching a nine o’clock service at Wycliffe Methodist and figured I could add Halstead Street to my Sunday morning.

Wycliffe was situated in the heart of what was left of Pilsen’s Bohemian neighborhood. I was their first preacher who used English instead of the Bohemian language, now called Czech. [I’ve always felt it was appropriate that the first translation of my book, Now That I Have Cancer I Am Whole, was Czech.]

Each Sunday morning, I got up early to fix breakfast for the other college kid summer staff, who lived on the third floor of Howell House, hoping that bacon and eggs would be good evangelism, that somebody might get dressed after breakfast and go with me to church. That happened only once, and I think my roommate, Randy, regretted it. He hadn’t known that he would have to go to church twice.

That summer was, for me, one of those dead ends that turns out to be a blessing, because I was going down the wrong road. I needed to turn around and go back to start and take a different road. I didn’t belong in the inner city. Rural poverty is very different from urban poverty.

But I cherish the memory of the summer of ’58, that short time when I could say that I was an inner-city preacher.

 John Robert McFarland

 

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT FAITH IN 70 YEARS OF PREACHING [M, 9-21-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT FAITH IN 70 YEARS OF PREACHING [M, 9-21-26]

 

Our friend, Suzanne, told this story in a public setting with about a hundred people present, so I’m not revealing anything private. When she was a young woman, early twenties, she was raped. Suzanne is a small woman, maybe five-three, and the man who raped her was huge, 6 foot 7, 300 lbs. He raped her over and over, and he kept telling her that when he was done with her, he would kill her. She believed him. She knew he would kill her. And he surely would have, but someone intervened before he could do it. She said throughout the ordeal that she prayed, and she kept saying to God, “Just don’t leave me alone. I can take the pain. I can take the humiliation. I can take the aloneness, as long as you don’t leave me alone. I can take death, as long as you don’t leave me.”

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.

[Okay, I just realized I have already used this in the column a couple of days ago. Sometimes my cutting and pasting gets out of hand. Well, it’s too late for me to learn something else, so either you can read it again or just relax into the everlasting arms.]

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 theology of Christian belief. And I’m confused about Christianity 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. 

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

 

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