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