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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Robert McFarland

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

 

 

 

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

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

 

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

No, not if his sermons were pure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

John Robert McFarland

“Art is triumph over chaos.” John Cheever

 

 

 

 

 

REASSEMBLY [M, 9-7-26]

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Robert McFarland

 

 

 

 

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