WHAT CAN I PREACH? [Sa, 9-5-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—WHAT CAN I PREACH? [Sa, 9-5-26]

 

[70 years ago this month, I started a career as a preacher, pretty much by accident. Now I need to make sense of it. Thank you for indulging me as I try. But if you’re not interested in preaching and preachers, come back in October. Surely by then I’ll have exhausted this subject.]

My only theological education when I started preaching was from Sunday School and Sunday morning worship services. I had never even been to Vacation Bible School or church camp or youth fellowship, because my church did not have those activities. That ignorance was an advantage.

If I’d had any theological knowledge, I would have tried to use it. Instead, as I faced those early Sunday mornings on the three-church Chrisney, Indiana circuit, when I was 19 years old, all I could do was try to remember what I had heard in Sunday School and Sunday worship, which wasn’t much. What I did remember were the stories—the Bible stories from Sunday School, and the funny stories that preachers sometimes told.

So, as I preached, I told stories. Quite haphazardly. Any story that seemed like it might fit in church, I threw it in. For instance…

A little boy got a stomach ache at school. The teacher sent him to the principal. He came back walking funny, with his back arched and his stomach way out in front. The kid reported, “The principal said if I could stick it out ‘til recess, he’d take me home.”

It’s not hard to get a “life lesson” out of that, but a sermon?

I was saved from total chaos by the Bible. I knew there was supposed to be a Bible reading in worship. I didn’t know that there was a lectionary, so I just picked a passage that I liked, or that seemed to fit the time of year, or that I had heard that week, and I used it as a jumping off point. So each sermon had a theme, sort of. I began to try to make the stories work with the biblical theme.

And my themes were saved by Jesus. There were so many good stories about Jesus, and he told so many good stories. From going from thinking I had nothing to preach in those first weeks, I went to having so many Jesus/bible stories that it was difficult to choose.

Rachel Remen tells about a Native American woman who was given a New Testament. After she read it, she said, “That man Jesus is good medicine.”

Sunday by Sunday, I found that there are certain categories that include everyone:

We are all sinners, who need repentance and forgiveness.

A teen boy disobeyed his parents and took the car without their permission. He was in an accident and the doctors had to do an emergency surgery to remove both his legs. When his parents got to the hospital, he said, “Please forgive me. I can live without my legs if I’m forgiven.”

We are all children of God, who are loved by God.

When our granddaughter was four, she told her mother, “Santa and Grandpa are a lot alike. Santa has a beard and Grandpa has a beard. Santa brings toys, and Grandpa brings toys. But Grandpa is better, because he stays and plays.

We all need community.

A lot of activity in the church is like a hen trying to lay an egg on an escalator: a lot of moving around but not much getting down to business.

And I concluded that, in addition to those categories that include us all, there are a couple of methods that include everyone:

We all like stories.

We all like to laugh.

Former student and sometime clergy colleague, Jim Kiefer, recently summarized my career by saying: “You have a deep voice, and you make people laugh.”

Apparently, preaching wasn’t as complicated as I thought it was.

John Robert McFarland

The sketch above is of the Chrisney and Newtonville church buildings when they united a few years ago. The Chrisney church is just as I remember it. It was yellow brick.

WHERE STORIES COME FROM [R, 9-3-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Old Preacher—WHERE STORIES COME FROM [R, 9-3-26]

 

Herb Beouy’s grade-school daughter once said to him, “Daddy, sometimes you preach, and sometimes you tell stories. When you tell stories, I listen. When you preach, I read my Sunday School paper.”

Even when I was a brand-new preacher, I understood the importance of stories. I knew in listening to sermons that the stories were what caught my attention, and drew me in, and made me think. But I was only nineteen. I had only a few stories of my own, and they were quickly used up. Sermons are voracious eaters of stories. I was always desperate to find more stories.

So, I combed newspapers and books. I listened to radio shows. I perked up when I overheard someone telling a joke, or saying something stupid.

As time went by, though, I learned that there was an even more important source of stories. It is called “people.”

I still read newspapers and books, but I began to read people, too. I still listened to stories on the radio, but I began to listen to the news broadcasts of people. I heard people tell jokes when they didn’t realize they were being funny.

Every once in a while, someone says to me, “You’ve lived such an interesting life.” Yes, but no more so than most other lives. If my life seems interesting, it’s just because I see every happening, every experience, every relationship, as a story. I see the story in every person.

And, yes, I tell those stories too often. I’m an old man; what do you expect? But sometimes I’m in a gathering when the conversation is just so banal and boring. I feel that I must tell a story just to restore sanity and equilibrium to the universe. It’s like the dog who came into Annual Conference and ran up front and bit the bishop. On the way out, he bit three lay folks. As he exited, an usher said, “I can understand you biting the bishop, but why the three laity?” “I just had to get the taste out of my mouth,” said the dog.

I also began to learn that people often try to tell a story that is different from the one they are actually living. If someone starts a sentence with, “I’m the kind of person who…” they almost invariably describe a person they are not. They are usually the exact opposite of what they claim to be.

I’ve often had church members who proclaimed, “I’m the kind of person who tells it like it is.” That almost always meant they were going to tell it like it wasn’t.

I used to attend writers’ conferences fairly regularly. In the Q&A sessions, someone would always ask, “How do you get ideas for stories?” It seemed to me to be such a strange question. “Just look at anyone in this room,” I would say.

Which explains why these columns are so bland now. I always try to start a column with a little story of some kind. But people are the source of stories, and I never go anyplace where I see people. Except doctors, and the last time I went to see her, she told me I had only 3 months to live. I said, “Doc, I can’t even pay your bill in 3 months.” She said, “In that case, you have 6 months to live.”

Okay, it’s old, but what do you expect from a storyteller who never sees any new people?

John Robert McFarland

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for most people.” Thomas Mann

 

 

 

 

 

F.T. JOHNSON [9-1-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Preacher—F.T. JOHNSON [9-1-26]

 

Going through old files… A letter from Loyd Bates, Methodist campus minister at Indiana University during my undergrad years, sent to me in the summer of 1958, before my senior year, at Howell Neighborhood House in Chicago, where I was a social worker for the summer: Loyd writes, “At 8:45 this morning, I was eating a donut at the ministerial meeting when FT Johnson sat down beside me. “You think John McFarland could work for you this next year?” he said. “That’s a good idea,” I said. Then F.T. said, “Think you could pay him something?” “Well, I could work on that,” I said. “Good,” FT said. “He needs money.”

Obviously, I have seen that letter before, but I had totally forgotten it. I have not forgotten FT, though, nor his constant kindness to this raw recruit to the ministry.

He was the Superintendent of The Bloomington District during my college years. According to Dallas Browning, the Superintendent of The Evansville District, FT “stole” me from him in December of my sophomore year, to appoint me to the Solsberry-Koleen-Mineral circuit, after Dr. Browning had appointed me to the Chrisney-Crossroads-Bloomfeld circuit in September, before I was at all sure that I ever wanted to be a preacher, especially right then. It was a good deal for me. Chrisney was 100 miles from Bloomington, but Solsberry only 15. I think the pay was a little better, too.

In those days, a District Superintendent [DS] was the ruler of a church fiefdom. A geographical area, designated by the city where the DS lived, as in “The Bloomington District.” About 70 churches, with a similar number of preachers. Technically, it was the bishop who appointed each of us to our churches, but at the young-preacher, small-church level, the bishop just rubber stamped what the DS did. So DSs were feared. If you got on the wrong side of yours, he might appoint you to the dreaded Raccoon Circuit.

Whenever we were together, young preachers would tell DS jokes, and talk about how to keep the DS from finding out about our mistakes. We made up song and poem parodies, even, like I went through life with easy grace ‘til I met my DS face to face.

That was particularly true of FT Johnson and his wife, Marie. In general, the preachers of our District, and the whole Conference, felt that FT was not up to the job, a bit of a muddled buffoon, that he should still be out in the hinterlands, worrying about his own appointment, instead of being in charge of the appointments of others.

Marie was secretly ridiculed as a social climber. I think she was just innocent. She did not know how to dissemble. Or even realized that she was supposed to. I am still embarrassed when I recall something she said at a District meeting of the preachers and wives. “You young people just need to work hard. People used to make fun of us. Said FT wasn’t going to amount to anything. But we just kept working, and look at us now. We’ve made it.” I put my head down so I could not see the smirks and eye rolls.

Other folks didn’t understand why Bishop Raines appointed FT to be a DS. I did. FT and Marie were exactly as Marie said, folks who worked hard and wanted to do their job well. I did not fear that FT might appoint me to Raccoon as a punishment for my sins. I knew they would take care of me, even when I messed up. They referred to me as “Our son, John.”

Maybe they saw me as an obvious extension of themselves, a boy who didn’t amount to much but was willing to work hard. Whatever was the reason he was so good to me, I am eternally grateful to FT Johnson, who was looking out for me before I even knew I needed the help.

Through the years, I’ve had several highly competent and widely respected DSs. I appreciated them. Whenever I thought about being a DS myself, though, it was always FT Johnson I wanted to emulate.

John Robert McFarland

The photo is of the Mineral church. 

 

THE OLD MAN ON THE CURB [Sun, 8-30-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminesences of An Accidental Preacher--THE OLD MAN ON THE CURB [Sun, 8-30-26]

[September marks the 70-year anniversary of when I started preaching. Throughout that month, these columns will reflect on those 70 years, trying to make sense of why I kept on preaching when I wasn’t sure that I was called to do so. This column starts at the end, so you won’t even have to read any of the September columns!]

 

When I was twenty, I went to my first clergy continuing education conference. It was called the School of the Prophets, for all the Methodist ministers in Indiana, at Depauw University. I had been preaching at Solsberry and Koleen and Mineral for a year already, with no education for the job except Speech 101.

This was my first opportunity for education as a minister. I was enthralled. There was a Cokesbury display, with all the books and Jesus junk any preacher could ever possibly use, or misuse. I heard sermons by Bishop Richard Raines and Ralph Sockman of Christ Church in NYC. I got enough sermon illustrations to last a month, the only reason preachers go to these things anyway.

 

Most importantly, I was in a preaching workshop led by Webb Garrison. His teaching was practical. We were to put sermon “illustrations” on 4x6 cards, because they fit into a shoe box. We were to use rubber cement to affix clippings to the cards because it did not dry out the way Scotch Tape did.

At lunch I went downtown. To buy 4x6 cards and rubber cement. I also bought a pair of shoes I could not afford, but I really wanted the box. By the time I got done, I was running late for the afternoon session. I was in a hurry. I didn’t want to miss a single minute of that conference. In the distance, from the auditorium in Old Main, I heard the after-lunch singing start. What a sound. 100 tenors. 100 baritones. 100 basses. One soprano, Clara Mae Ripple, the only woman clergy in Indiana Methodism.

As I rushed along, ahead of me I saw an old man, bald and with a white beard, standing on the curb. He was wearing a black suit, shiny at the knees and elbows, with a yellowed white shirt buttoned up at the collar, but no tie. I was dressed like the cool university student I was, Kingston Trio style vertical stripe shirt, Ivy League chinos, argyle sox, tan buck shoes. The old man looked at me, hurrying toward the sound of the prophets, my shoe box under my arm, and as I got to him he said, “Are you a preacher?”

That was the question, for sure. Was I really called to be a preacher, or was I acting like one because I didn’t know how to say “No,” when the District Superintendent said, “You can start next Sunday.” That was the question then, and it was the question for 70 years.

But it was too complicated to explain, so I just said yes.

“I used to be a preacher.” He looked toward Old Main. “Is that the preachers singing?” he asked. I assured him it was.

I thought he would come with me, to the School of the Prophets, but he didn’t. He only stood there, gazing toward Old Main, his ear cocked toward the singing. He seemed content just to be close to “the goodly fellowship of the prophets.”

Now I am the old man standing on the curb. In the distance, I hear the voices raised in song, such much richer harmony now, with all those sopranos and altos.

 

In that harmony I hear the voices of Richard Raines, F.T. Johnson, Raydean Davis, Jack Newsome, Barbara Zwetz, Dick Hamilton, Joe Emerson, Merrill McFall, Jean Cramer-Heuerman, Tony Shipley, James Cone, Marcus Borg, John Wilkey, Joan Mau, Leroy Hodapp, Walt Wagener, Gary Bass, Joe Frazier, Webb Garrison…

I hear the singing of the prophets, and I know where I belong.

John Robert McFarland

 

 

MOMENTS OF COMMUNION [F, 8-28-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--MOMENTS OF COMMUNION [F, 8-28-26]

 

I’ve been going through old correspondence. I have a lot of letters from when people wrote long-hand and sent messages via the post office. It’s interesting to re-read them now, to see what our lives were like then.

One letter is from a theology professor. In it, he thanks me for being a friend to him when he taught a summer course, as a visiting professor, where I was a seminary student. When I received the letter, I probably thought that was nice, and then dumped it in the box with all the other letters I thought I should keep for some reason. Now I realize how lonely he must have been, to take the trouble to thank a mere student just for being nice to him that summer.

I think David felt inferior to other theology profs. He did not write books. He was not invited to give lectureships. He taught at a basic B.D. seminary rather than a PhD theological school. He was just training preachers instead of educating scholars.

B.D was the basic professional degree for ministers then. Three years of graduate work, after four of undergraduate, and we had earned another bachelor’s degree, Bachelor of Divinity. That started when other professional degrees were also bachelors. My college roommate, Tom Cone, had earned an LLB, Bachelor of Laws, in law school.

But by the time I was in seminary, every other professional—lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, dentist, janitor—received a doctorate for three years of graduate work. Tom’s diploma had even upgraded to JD, Juris Doctor. Not preachers. We are much too humble to be considered “doctors” just because we have as much education as the other professions. [1]

Many theological schools are part of a university. SMU, Duke, Boston, etc. They are PhD schools, teaching scholars for research and teaching. Those are the important seminaries, for they aren’t just training preachers to serve congregations. Their professors teach important stuff, like you how to parse the filioque controversy, not something easy, like how to comfort a grieving widow.

Other seminaries are free-standing, not part of a university. They are just training schools for preachers. The theology profs there might try to teach the students about Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard, epistemology and soteriology, but those students just want sermon illustrations.

David taught at that kind of preacher training school. Except for that one summer, when he taught a six-week course at Garrett, which served as the religion PhD faculty for Northwestern U. It was an advanced course. I liked it a lot. But mostly I liked having lunch with David. I always found him eating alone. He seemed glad to have my company. I was beginning to piece together my own narrative theology in those days, and he listened carefully as I made my fledgling attempts at it.

When he learned that I knew another theology prof from a different school, he said, “He and I were PhD students together at Yale. He was so smart, he never understood those of us who were average. Once we were studying together. He was reading St. Charles Borromeo, in Latin. He read a page, closed the book, and recited it word for word off the backs of his eyeballs.”

David had accomplished what he set out to do. He was a theology prof. But he knew he was just average. And he was lonely. As a lowly BD student, I looked up to him. I was flattered that he was willing to listen to my stories and share with me his own.

I have often offered to share a meal with someone who was eating alone. Sometimes that was a mistake. Most of the time, though, those were some of my best moments, and from them came some of my best friendships. I think that was part of what Jesus had in mind with what we call “communion.”

This is an add-on to the way I originally wrote this column, but I would be sadly remiss in a piece about community if I did not say something about the life of Dolly Parton. She was a gentle Christian, and in a world of cynicism and division and greed, she modeled and witnessed to hope and inclusion and generosity. Everything she did built community, because she found something in anyone and everyone, starting with herself, that was worthy of respect. That, too, is what Jesus had in mind with what we call “communion.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Some years after I graduated with my humble B.D. my seminary told me that if I would give them another $25, they’d send me a sticker to put on my diploma that said it was really a Master’s instead of a bachelor’s degree. I declined.

SMELLING THE SKUNK TOGETHER [W, 8-26-16]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Reminiscences of An Old Man—SMELLING THE SKUNK TOGETHER [W, 8-26-16]

 

We opened the bed room window last night. A rare treat, since the summer has been so hot and humid. That is, it was a treat until I woke up in the middle of the night and got a whiff of that unmistakable odor. It brought to mind an oft-told family story, of when Aunt Helen, my father’s only sister, shook Uncle Harvey out of a deep sleep and said, “Harvey, there’s a skunk. Wake up and smell the skunk.”

It’s important to have someone to smell the skunk with you, and

Harvey Bell was the kind of guy everyone counted on whenever something unpleasant was going down.

I don’t know if my father and Harvey were friends first, and that’s how Harvey and Helen met, or if they were already dating and that’s how Harvey and my father became friends. One of the problems of being the almost-over-the-cliff generation in a family, there is no one left that I can ask.

John Francis and Helen Beatrice were not only siblings, they were friends. They even joined the Ku Klux Klan together. [1]

Helen was the second of seven children [2] and John was the third. Their mother gave them lots of opportunities to care for younger siblings. They bonded over that.

When my parents decided to get married, they had to do it secretly, because Mother was in her last semester of high school. In 1928, a married girl was automatically banished from school, for fear she might tell the virgins about sex. [3] So they went to Boonville and got married by the Methodist preacher in his parsonage. [4] The two couples had often double-dated, so Harvey and Helen went with them as witnesses.

Harvey and Helen had only one child, Elizabeth Ann, whom I called Zibby Ahn when I was little. Maybe because they had grown up with lots of siblings, they felt that Liz’s cousins should be sort of included in their family, to give her the feeling of brothers and sisters. For whatever reason, they were always exceptionally nice to me and my sisters and brother, affirming and supportive in every way.

I had so many wonderful uncles and aunts. One of the blessings of my life was that large extended family. Harvey and Helen were a big part of that.

But I’ve known lots of people who had no one who stood by them the way my larger family members did. But they got through difficult childhoods because they had one adult who served as a model for them.

That’s what the psychologists say is necessary—just one adult you can count on. One high-achieving man told me that his childhood was made bearable by a scout master, the only person who believed in him.  

So, whether you have many or only one, give thanks for those folks who gave your life meaning when you were young. Give thanks for those who were willing to smell a skunk with you.

John Robert McFarland

1] They were around junior high age and went to the county fair together. The KKK had a tent there, and kids could join for only a penny. Indiana in the 1920s was a total Klan state, with even the governor marching in “white pride” parades.

2] Grandma had seven children, but raised eight. Genevieve was four when her step-mother, new wife of Grandma’s brother, threw her out, and Grandma took her in.

3] I’ve told many times of how Mother was the first woman in the state of Indiana to graduate high school with her married name because the school superintendent in the tiny town of Francisco, Indiana was unusually enlightened for the time, and said it was stupid to throw a good student out of school just because she got married.

4] They got married in Boonville because it was in Warrick County. They lived in Gibson County, and figured no one would find out. But someone saw the notice in the Boonville newspaper…

 

 

OLD AGE IS ALWAYS RELEVANT [M, 8-24-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—OLD AGE IS ALWAYS RELEVANT [M, 8-24-26]

 

Tommy John, Phyllis Graham, and Frank Jobe… what do they have in common? No, not Terre Haute, Indiana. That’s only 2 of them. Surgery? No, 2 again. Mathematics? Only 2 again. Professional athletics? No, that’s only 1.

Tommy John died last week. 83 years old.  He won 288 games as a pitcher in the major leagues. Despite that, he is not in The Hall of Fame, even though plenty of pitchers with fewer wins are. Maybe it’s because his pitching career was overshadowed by a surgery he once had on the elbow of his pitching arm, way back on September 25, 1974.

It’s forever been known as the Tommy John surgery. Lots of pitchers have it every year. Some more than once, like T.J. Antone, who has written a book about his three TJ surgeries. But should it not be known as the Frank Jobe surgery? He was the surgeon who performed and perfected it, and thus allowed Tommy to win 166 of those 288 victories on the pitching mound.

Phyllis Graham was Tommy’s professor at Indiana State University, in Terre Haute, where he was a math major, while already pursuing a professional baseball career.

Phyllis was one of my best friends. We had gone to high school together, until her sophomore year, when her family moved away. We were delighted to find each other again in Terre Haute, when she was a new math professor and I was a new campus minister. I officiated at her wedding, and I preached at her funeral.

So, when I was chatting with Tommy John, we talked about Phyllis, and how much he appreciated her as a teacher.

Strangely, the only time I talked with Tommy was not in Terre Haute, even though we both lived there at the time. I was in Sarasota, FL for the funeral of my uncle Glen, my father’s oldest brother, and Tommy was at spring training in Tampa with the White Sox. Being a baseball junkie, I couldn’t resist going over to spring training. [No, I went to Uncle Glen’s funeral first.] Tommy and I had a nice conversation at the outfield fence, where he was glad to have a reason to quit running wind sprints. We compared notes on baseball and Terre Haute and Phyllis and math.

So, have you figured out what they have in common? They are all irrelevant! Tommy John is irrelevant to The Hall of Fame. Frank Jobe is irrelevant to his own famous surgery. Phyllis Graham is irrelevant to education, because mathematicians are no longer needed.

Yes, I read this week that the first profession that will be replaced by AI is mathematicians. Why get a person to solve a math problem for you when AI can do it faster and cheaper?

The great thing about old age is that it will never be irrelevant. Yes, old people are irrelevant, and we will all die. But we will be replaced. Old people, as individuals, are and always will be irrelevant. But old age? No way. Old age, like the poor, is with us always.

John Robert McFarland