Tag Archives: A License to Preach

The Play Preacher

28 Friday Apr 2017

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Scott and Tammy were a couple of twenty-year-olds living together in a small apartment near Lincoln United Methodist Church when I came there to serve as their first Intern Pastor in 1970. They were a local version of the “flower children” of the Sixties, smoking weed, sitting on pillows on the floor since they had no chairs, and working for just enough to get by. They were also expecting their first child, so their lives were about to change, and they were giving some thought to getting married when I knocked on their door and introduced myself as a neighbor, working at the church.

“Strange you should come,” they said, “We were just thinking we might go knock on your door, and see if someone at your church could help us get married.”

“I’m your guy,” I said, explaining that I was there for a year to serve as an intern. To their follow-up questions I answered that, as an intern, I would be visiting people, helping with the church school and adult study groups, filling in for the regular pastor from time to time, working with students at the community college, and helping a church in Tilton get reorganized. (I didn’t say that I would also be writing verbatims of many counseling sessions and visits, providing copies and recordings of sermons and worship services, meeting agendas and notes, evaluations of projects, and meeting with my seminary supervisor.) “And I can marry and bury or get you in touch with the regular pastor to do it.”

“So there’s a regular preacher and you’re the play preacher,” Scott said.

I admitted that I hadn’t heard that job title yet, but it fit. So began my first wedding counseling session on my own, since the regular pastor, my on-site supervisor, didn’t like to spend much time doing jobs that wouldn’t “build the church.” He was on a fast track to becoming one of the youngest bishops in the history of the church, or so it seemed in his own mind. In reality, he was on track to burn out before he made it to forty-five.

Scott and Tammy offered me a cup of some odd tasting herbal concoction, and we proceeded to talk about their thoughts on getting married and having a baby and life in general. As the plans progressed in the next few weeks, they were simple and easy, but they also wanted to talk about faith and God and finding meaning in life, so our get-togethers continued through the year past the date of their simple wedding ceremony by the lake with a few friends and family attending.

At the end of the year they both thanked me for coming to see them regularly, and told me they would miss our get-togethers. I told them I enjoyed our talks, too, and wished them well for a long life together with their beautiful baby and each other. I don’t know what became of them later, but I am confident that they had as many or more chances for that wish being fulfilled as any of the over five hundred couples that I have counseled since.

“You’re not just a play preacher,” Scott said. “You’re the first real preacher that I’ve ever known.”

“Thanks, but don’t rush me,” I said. “I’ve got a lot more to learn and I’m beginning to feel like ‘play preacher’ will suit me just fine.”

Seeing Jesus

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Church, Death, Faith, People, Prayer, Suffering

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Lillian lived a rough life. She had been married a short time, but she got out of it because she saw quickly that it had been a mistake. She made a living as a secretary, in an assembly line, and finally as a clerk in a package liquor store. She was a chain smoker for many years, so it was not a surprise when Chronic Pulmonary Disease took over her final years.

Her older sister, Margaret, on the other hand, lived a comfortable life, married to Bob for over fifty years, mother of two daughters, who were also married and raising families. With her husband, Margaret was active in her church and as a volunteer in the community, but she never had to earn a living outside of the home. Margaret always worried about her little sister, and when Lillian became sick and lived by herself, she made sure that her sister had a comfortable home near her own, had help when she needed it, and that her pastor would visit Lillian and, with the Elders, offer her communion as they did for other shut-ins in the community.

That is how I met Lillian. She didn’t resemble her sister, until she shared a picture of them together as young women. When I met her, Lillian was extremely thin, wrinkled, and leathery, while Margaret was plump, relatively youthful-looking, and often smiling. They were a study in contrasts in appearance, temperament, and life histories.

Underneath the obvious differences, they did share not only their childhood history, but other characteristics as well. They both had worked hard in their own ways and neither took an easy route when the harder route appeared better. Both were questioners and somewhat skeptical, not accepting a superficial answer, but digging deeper. In spite of the different paths their lives had taken, they shared many values underneath the surface.

Lillian did not respond immediately when I first visited her. She seemed a little irked that her sister had asked me to come. She was distant and unresponsive, but I persisted, saying that I liked to keep in touch with the people of our village, whether they were church members or not, just to see if there were needs that we could fill, which was part of our purpose as a church, and Margaret was one of those who made sure that we served that purpose. It was my usual spiel when talking to our non-member and indifferent neighbors. She allowed me to come and eventually to bring the communion elements that she had not received since she was a young woman.

Eventually her health deteriorated to the point that she no longer could stay at home and use oxygen there. She made several trips back and forth to the hospital and spent her final year in a nursing home, where I continued to see her about once a month. It was likely in her last trip to the hospital that she would not be discharged back to the nursing home. She seemed to be slipping deeper into unresponsiveness every day.

Then one day it was different, and she seemed to be unusually bright and alert. After a few light comments, she announced that she had a wonderful experience the night before. Jesus had come to visit her. She saw that I was taken aback, for she continued, “No, really. I know that you were here earlier, even though I didn’t feel like talking. And I know what you’re thinking—that I mistook you with your beard for him, but it really was him. I know the difference between you and Jesus! Don’t think I don’t!”

By this time we both were smiling, for this was the old plain-spoken Lillian that I hadn’t seen for a while. “Well, then, what did Jesus say to you, that made such a difference in you?”

 “He said, not to worry, that I would be coming home with him tomorrow night, and I would be able to breathe again. We had a wonderful talk, and then I relaxed and fell asleep. When I awoke he was gone.”

I don’t know what else we said about that visit with Jesus, but soon I was praying a thank you prayer with Lillian, and telling her that, one way or another, I expected to see her again. That night she fell asleep for the last time.

Part 2: “I sought the Lord, and afterward…”

16 Thursday Mar 2017

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Pentecostal bannerThere was a retreat for campus leaders just before the beginning of my sophomore year, which resulted in the development of a goal—a campus coffeehouse. As the newly elected president of the Methodist Student Movement, I took part, and I was excited about the idea of a place where people could come to talk informally and explore serious issues of the day—religious, social and political issues. Other campus venues seemed to be purely social or academic, not existentially grounded, and not open to student leadership. When leaders in the Student Senate developed the idea, however, it leaned more toward an intimate center for student performance as actors and musicians, than an organizing center for serious conversation. I publicly criticized the development as a betrayal of the original purpose.

There was a lot of support for the developing performance center coffeehouse idea, and I failed to provide a coherent and attractive vision of a place where we dealt with heady issues. It was embarrassing. Clearly the different visions for using the coffeehouse were not mutually exclusive, and I apologized for my critique. We would get to use the coffeehouse for many different issue conversations and presentations, but my criticism had proven counter-productive for the “Student Movement.” I had alienated some of the people I wanted as allies and dialogue partners.

Other matters added to my emotional turmoil. A trip to Chicago to take part in the SCLC-sponsored open housing marches had opened my eyes to the violence of the opposition to racial integration on Chicago’s southwestern suburbs. The war was expanding in Southeast Asia where the “Ugly American” had colored the conflict. My health was deteriorating. A friend whom I had joined for morning prayer frequently in my freshman year had become obsessed with Hindu yoga meditation, and I was not willing to pursue that for more than the satisfaction of curiosity. I was not finding a way through the spiritual solipsism that had confounded me.

In the middle of the fall semester a new hymnal was published for the Methodist Church, and Choir Professor David Nott invited everyone to the Presser Auditorium one evening to explore the hymnal. I was not involved in the choirs, but music was always helpful when I was distressed, and the prospect of hearing familiar and new hymns attracted me. Dr. Nott led enthusiastically. Then he introduced a hymn and arrangement that was new to him, though an anonymous person had written the words a century before: “I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew, God moved my soul to seek ‘him,’ seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior true; no, I was found by You.”

I was singing the song and praying the words, and suddenly I realized that the experience was real, and I was filled with a joy that had no measure. “You did reach forth Your hand and mine enfold; I walked and sank not on the stormy sea; not so much that I on You took hold, as You, dear Lord, on me.” Every word added to my joy through the last verse. “I find, I walk, I love, but oh, the whole of love is but my answer, Lord, to You! For You were long beforehand with my soul, Always You loved me.”

I had not yet read C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy, although John Wesley’s sense of “having his heart warmed” was always entertained in my thoughts. This experience went far beyond either, as I felt so light that I nearly floated out into the night when the program ended. This was the experience of God’s Real Presence.

Real challenges would bring me back down to earth, and the awareness that my ideas of God would always fall far short of the reality of God’s Spirit would keep me from lifting my thoughts too high. There would be more to come than insight, more than comfort, more than strength, more than an answer to my feeble prayers.

Part 1: “I sought the Lord, and afterward…”?

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

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In the first semester of my freshman year at Illinois Wesleyan University I wrote an essay and titled it “Is God a Teddy Bear?” I was exploring the psychological roles of anchoring for personal security in a god and the projection of good and bad attributes onto one’s idea of god. This was based naturally in the different characterizations of gods as judgmental, oppressive, vindictive at one end of the spectrum to loving, generous, and forgiving at the other end. These seem to be tied to personal experiences with parents, leaders, and others, to degrees of stress in environment, and the coping mechanisms we adopt for dealing with them and for understanding ourselves. The result for me was not only an “A” on the paper, but also a crisis in my own faith that lasted throughout the year.

If I was only praying to and worshipping an aspect of myself projected onto an idea of a personal being, there was not much power in my activity. If I was refusing or delaying the mature behavior of taking responsibility for myself and for my own potential, even when connected to other people, then such worship provided no service that could be characterized as healthy, “saving,” or mature. Worshipping oneself, even as a projected self, is a dead end. I began to think of the practices of devotion that I had exercised increasingly during my adolescence as an echo chamber that simply revealed to myself what I was thinking. Obviously I was on the wrong track in planning to be a minister, and I began to think of a career in psychology instead, or perhaps I should return to my earlier interest in anthropology.  The immediate dilemma was practical—my scholarship was tied to my status as a pre-theological student, and IWU had a psychology department which was devoted to behavioral psychology only, with its theoretical foundations in B. F. Skinner, whose work did not inspire me in the least.

I wanted to believe. The means to that end seemed to be retreating, and the awareness of my practical and psychological needs only accelerated the retreat. Even the fact that my own projections were positive, based in loving parents and family, and helpful, intelligent advisors and mentors, did not provide the answer if they were only projections. Relying on the faith of others does not provide a substitute for one’s own faith. My advisor for my work with the Illinois Conference Methodist Youth Fellowship noted that sometimes we “act our way” into belief. We continue to do as much as we know how to do until the ultimate goal becomes real for us. I knew “how to act” but the advice did not deliver me from the circle of my own subjectivity. The college chaplain suggested that the analogy of projection relied not only on a projector but also on a screen; something had to be there to receive the projected image, or something had to be “behind the screen” that was true. While I agreed with the analogical point, it did not construct anything more than an idea of god, not God-as-personally-known-in-the-universe.

I had no idea about what could deliver me from this conundrum, but I continued seeking an answer.

Threatened with Expulsion

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Appointed by the Illinois Wesleyan Student Senate in my senior year to chair the Religious Activities Commission, I presided over the committee that organized the weekly chapel series, two annual lectureships by theologians or religious leaders, two symposia on current events related to the world of religion, and coordinated several volunteer groups, including the Student Christian Movement and the Community Tutoring Program. It was my third year serving on the commission in those latter capacities, and it was turning out to be a challenging year.

 

We determined that the Fall 1967 symposium would address the issues raised by the Vietnam War, and it was customary when dealing with controversial issues to have different sides well-represented. An expert in the history of Indochina agreed to come to provide background. Several of the IWU faculty agreed to serve on discussion panels. To present the case for the continuing conduct of the war we found a U.S. Defense Department analyst, Craig Spence. The cost of bringing these experts to campus had eaten most of our available budget. I asked for more funds.

 

I began to promote the plans for the symposium, using an art student volunteer for poster design, and, among other efforts, publishing the key documents that represented the sides of the conflict, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, various statements by North and South Vietnamese leaders and assemblies, and considerations of Just War theory and applications by ethicists. These documents were left in several areas of the campus for students who were interested.

 

Four weeks until the symposium, when we still had not secured a bona fide critic of the war, the Dean of Students summoned me to her office. She informed me that I should not secure someone to present a criticism of the war, I should stop distributing propaganda representing our enemy’s viewpoints, and, if I continued to undermine the reputation of the university that she had worked so hard to maintain, I would be expelled. Anything else that she said during the minutes that followed fell on deaf ears as I prepared my case. I was not alone in planning this program; other students and faculty were just as committed to it as I was. If the university was doing its job, it would consider different positions as objectively as possible. If she thought she could threaten me into submission on this, she was mistaken.

 

The next day I learned that no additional funds would be available. I called Staughton Lynd, a well-known academic and activist, who had written and spoken extensively about the war, and explained the situation to him. We could provide a modest honorarium, and I would drive to Chicago to bring him to campus and return him to his home after the presentations and discussions. He agreed to come.

 

I confided in the college chaplain and two other faculty members about the threats from the Dean of Students, and received reassurances from them, but I didn’t see any value in alarming the other students who were involved in planning the conference until and unless they experienced the same threats.

 

The symposium occurred with high participation, full reporting by the Bloomington Pantagraph as well as the Wesleyan Argus, and Staughton Lynd made a thorough presentation to a packed ballroom at the Memorial Student Center. Craig Spence said that the war would probably last another thirty years, if we intended to win it, and an important benefit could be the destruction of China’s nuclear arsenal. If it was evaluated as a debate no one won the symposium, but as a fair representation of views it accomplished its purpose. I mostly remember the extraordinary five hours on the road between Chicago and Bloomington, learning from Staughton Lynd, who shared his experiences with the human rights crisis in the United States as well as opposition to the war in Vietnam.

 

I didn’t hear any more from the Dean of Students, but a few weeks after the symposium, the Dean of Men called me into his office, and he warned me about the dangers of the passive aggressive anger that I had displayed in the fall. He didn’t know that I had that in me.

 

Responding to the Kerner Commission Report

27 Friday Jan 2017

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hot-owl-southern-white-faced-owl-in-botswana-trying-to-keep-coolAgain in the last semester of my senior year, the Illinois Wesleyan Political Science Department gave two other students and me another opportunity to represent the school at a special gathering, the annual Public Affairs Conference at Principia College. (By that time I was also taking the first political science course of my college career.) The conference theme was “Combatting Racism.”

 

The agenda of the conference included a variety of experts. The immediate background of the theme was the February 29,1968, release of the Kerner Commission Report, formally called the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which branded racism as the primary cause of the surge of riots that had recently swept several major American cities. It was the conference objective to consider and design programs and laws that would reverse the separation of America into two racial cultures that were separate and unequal. It was an ambitious undertaking, especially considering that minority groups were barely represented among the participants.

 

With the division into working groups, I found that my group had one young eloquent black man. He dispensed with the group assignment with the observation that we could imagine many fine ideas for state and federal action that would go nowhere. Instead, we could design goals for ourselves working in the families and communities in which we lived, and these might have some chance of accomplishing something if we were courageous enough to follow through. I was hooked, and so were the other members of the group. Around the circle we considered the actions and processes that would disturb the racism that prevailed where we lived. It was not comfortable, but it was real.

 

I had grown up in a northern community that was thoroughly segregated, even though it was only a few miles from Chanute Air Force Base. Air Force families of many racial backgrounds lived off-base, but only white families lived in Paxton, where people still boasted a “sunset law” that threatened any darker-skinned person who might be caught there after sunset. I had spoken about racial justice in the few sermons I was invited to preach in my home church, but I had not approached the members of the Paxton City Council that I knew, who had it in their power to renounce the “sunset” idea and prepare the town to be open to all.

 

Black friends lived in neighboring towns, but they would not risk coming to Paxton, even to take part in such common activities as bowling, seeing a movie, swimming, or roller-skating. I was welcome in their homes to eat meals and enjoy their company, and they were welcome in my home, which was miles from town in the countryside. The town’s segregating attitude had to change. That would change, I was confident, as the months went by.

 

We resolved to implement the plans we made.  The other groups reported ambitious government programs that would take large scale political action. Our group’s report seemed pale and meager in comparison. In hindsight, few of the ambitious goals that were formulated there, or in the Kerner Report, came to be embodied in actions in the decades that followed.

 

I returned to my home town and approached the public officials that I knew. To a one, they thought it was “too soon” or “too radical” to do what I was suggesting. Furthermore, the time for me to do the organizing that was needed even to accomplish such a modest goal was short, as I was preparing to marry and begin my graduate education in Chicago. There, in Chicago, I would learn what life in an integrated community was like, and how deprived my own background had been.

 

Fifty years later, returning to Paxton, finding a mix of people in the school system, working in the businesses, and living in the town, I wonder why it took us so long, and why we still have so far to go. There is still a lot of room for both large-scale and meager goals and the courage to embody them.

 

Farm Worker Ministry

05 Thursday Jan 2017

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I was elected to represent the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC) at the Illinois Conference of Churches (ICOC) in 1976. I considered it an honor and an opportunity to work on the ecumenical relationships that I hoped would deepen as the years progressed. As it turned out, the ICOC Forum where we served was mostly an opportunity to be informed about what the leaders of the denominations in Illinois were doing, not to exercise any influence or activity ourselves. I stayed on, learning what I could. At the end of my four-year term, I had decided that the place of real ministry, where I might contribute, was an arm of the ICOC, called the Illinois Farm Worker Ministry (IFWM). There the denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, were cooperating in providing a ministry to people who needed and deserved it—the mostly seasonal farm workers in Illinois, although many who formerly followed seasonal crop needs had “settled out” and adapted to work opportunities in various locales in the state. I asked for a place on the Illinois Farm Worker board and received it for the next two terms until 1988.

The Farm Worker Ministry gave support to organizing efforts of farm workers on the national level and in the state, provided resource people for several locations where workers had found more or less permanent work and homes, served both spiritual and material needs as we discovered them, and, after the Immigration Reform and Control Act was finally signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, supported the educational and citizenship qualification efforts of thousands of Illinois residents. The capable leader of IFWM was Olgha Sandman, the wife of my mentor in the UCC, Robert Sandman, and soon an equally important mentor to me as well. We worked alongside farm workers to improve conditions in their work and for their families. That included such matters as documenting the use and abuse of pesticides and the exposure of people to chemicals that would harm them.

Olgha made every possible effort to bring her board members into close contact with farm worker leaders and people. We visited sites in Onarga, Princeton, and elsewhere, where farm workers were gathering, organizing, and needing services. We met and worked with scores of wonderful, hard-working, non-citizens and new and would-be citizens. The dedication of so many people who had come to work, make a living, and settle down, was evident as those who had come or been brought into the country without papers or permanent papers before 1982, and had stayed here for at least five years without any legal problems, took advantage of the classes to learn English and familiarity with US history and government. There were many who could not provide the necessary proof of their work history or long-term residency who were just as qualified by character as those who succeeded at that time, but those were the limits of the 1986 legislation, and no efforts since then have made such an opportunity possible again.

As communities of farm workers have continued to mature, most of their leadership has emerged from among their own ranks, and many of the various regional groups that used to provide a ministry have declined, including the IFWM after Olgha’s retirement. The need for people to advocate with them and on their behalf has not declined. Various industries and employers have continued to bring people into the country without papers and to employ those who are here, without the legal support or rights of citizenship, therefore taking advantage of their status to provide low wages, no benefits, and poor working conditions. In the end that has not been an advantage to either the immigrants who have come for a better life or to the rest of the workers in the country already, whether they were recent immigrants or not.

We could do much better and much more for hard-working people who come for a better life. The willingness to welcome such people has been a tradition of this country for centuries, before and after “legal papers” became an issue, receiving the vast majority of our ancestors. We have also seen the persistent practice of getting other people “to do our work for us,” and “to do what we are not willing to do,” and “to do what we have not enough skilled and knowledgeable people to do.”  

The fraction of people who have come in recent decades is much smaller than most of our history, and the people who come have proven to be less dangerous than those who already live here. A variety of paths to new citizenship are appropriate, and the church always has a duty to provide hospitality to the stranger and sojourner. Having an opportunity to know and work with farm workers leads most of us to the same conclusions.

Starting Out and Starting Over

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

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Through ten years, between 1964 and 1973, scholarships, fellowships, and grants got me through college and seminary. I worked and studied mostly through the benevolence of others. The savings from my work before college disappeared in costs for the first year. What I earned during the summers or working during the school years disappeared almost immediately. I felt fortunate to leave the years of private institutional education with no debts and no bank account, a talented wife and two small children. I needed a job.

For months I interviewed with churches and church-related institutions. I felt qualified to be a pastor, or a college or hospital chaplain, or a librarian based on years of working in and for libraries.  My academic record no longer impressed anyone. My denominational connections were tenuous. Clearly wealthy suburban congregations did not see anything in my resume or presentations that convinced them. I was going to start small or as an assistant to someone. Who and where?

In the interviews I was my own worst enemy. I asked questions that no one wanted to hear. How often do you examine social issues, such as race and war and poverty and hunger, in preaching and study groups? How many bible study or issue study groups do you have? (Study groups? What are they?) Is the church involved in serving its community? Providing food, housing, help in finding jobs? (I couldn’t find my own job, let alone help someone else find employment.) One church was offended when they bragged about the success of their dartball teams, and I asked them what dartball was. The discussion went downhill after that. Clearly I was on a different wavelength than my interviewers.

Along the way, the United Church of Tilton, where I had served part-time for a year as a pastoral intern, asked me to come for an interview. Tilton was an industrial village at the edge of the much larger community of Danville, Illinois. The General Motors Foundry was the largest employer, but there were several other factories and a railroad yard in the town. This congregation had blended a few Methodists with a few Congregational-Christians and started over. They built a new building, in large part with volunteer labor, and they had started building a new parsonage. They only had thirty members, but they obviously had courage and faith. Would I take the chance to be their first full-time pastor in decades?

I had grown up on a farm fifty miles away, but this mostly union-member, blue collar community, with decidedly southern accents, was like foreign territory. Racial prejudice lay barely under the surface of a lot of comments, and a college education was suspect among some of them. Biblical literalism was the standard, and the church songbook came right out of old-time Gospel radio. Could I serve them?

The commitment and devotion of this small group won me over. They took a chance on me, and Jan and I took a chance on them and accepted their invitation. A year later they gathered around me in an ordination. Within a few years the membership had doubled and then doubled again and again. Their per capita stewardship led the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ, although the composition of the congregation looked decidedly different than most of the rural and urban congregations of the UCC.

We had our challenges there. School desegregation, poor economy and loss of jobs, religious fundamentalism and the critical judgment of other Christians, problem pregnancy counseling, competition among congregations for members and support, physical and emotional abuse in families, drugs and alcohol—these all brought plenty of tearful times. We also had successes—reorganizing the abandoned town cemetery, senior adult meals, youth programs and work trips, men’s and women’s and couple’s fellowship experiences, and, yes, study groups. After seven more years I thought that it was time to move on and seek new ministries, and let them show that their faith could keep growing with new leadership, which of course they did.

A Church Finds Ways to Reach Out to Others

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

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St. Paul’s Church in Minonk supposedly had six hundred members when they called me to be their pastor. About fifty of that number turned out to have no names, but they were still a substantial congregation. Many were related to each other after four generations of German family intermarriage. The town of Minonk was 2400 in population and rapidly shrinking, due both to the elderly imbalance of its citizens and to the loss of industrial jobs in its area. Clearly St. Paul’s dominated the five congregations in the town in size, but that had not resulted in taking more responsibility for community life.

They did take part in the one social service project of the town, sponsored by the Ministerial Association (the four ministers—the fifth coming a distance only on Sunday), and that was home-delivered meals prepared by the nursing home and delivered by church volunteers. That was a beginning, anyway. Otherwise the town had only the local community services that were provided by town government, namely the police, fire and rescue services. Lions Club, Scouts, and 4-H did occasional helpful projects. As poor people moved into Minonk to take advantage of low-cost housing, there was not much more to serve their needs.

St. Paul’s had mostly looked after its own needs, caring for one another in family duty. When a 4-H club, led by congregation members, asked to use the church facilities for regular meetings, it was the first such request that any of the current leaders could remember. They hesitated, but the argument that they should serve more people in the community won the vote. There was not much sacrifice in providing a free location for a 4-H club.

The next steps were harder. It was clear that more people were having a difficult time making ends meet. Food banks were beginning to make an appearance in the larger communities in the region, and access to surplus and donated food was simple, given pick-up vehicles, a few volunteers, and a place to distribute. A few church members saw the need, provided some volunteers, two of whom loaned the use of their trucks. The city provided space in an  old city hall, if another organization took responsibility for staffing and liability insurance, which St. Paul’s insurance provider was willing to do. The Ministerial Association recruited a few more volunteers. With St. Paul’s members in the lead, the church gave its approval of the project. Food and money donations came in and the pantry was underway. (Several years later, outgrowing the old city hall, the church provided space in underused accessible rooms.)

After a few months, a local restauranteur volunteered to provide a Christmas party to needy children of the area, and she asked the food pantry to gather a list of children to be invited, along with gift requests. The food pantry clients happily cooperated. St. Paul’s and another congregation sought volunteer sponsors, and there were enough to cover the fifty children who were the anonymous recipients. St. Paul’s Youth agreed to wrap and identify the gifts with the number tags that maintained the anonymity. So, Santa’s Helpers was born, and continued year after year.

The people who had for several years gathered clothing to take to Goodwill and other groups in larger communities found that they could distribute coats and shoes and other items in town at the food pantry before they took the surplus to other places.

Requests for counseling increased as the newer residents found that they had a home in Minonk and people who cared about them. The four ministers reported that their counseling loads were increasing with people outside their congregations. We investigated the resources available in the area and places to refer people in need for those situations that exceeded our abilities.

Eventually St. Paul’s would hire an associate pastor who provided a children and family program for several years, although the funding for that effort became too great a burden to bear.

St. Paul’s Church always had plenty to do to take care of their own members, but a shrinking town population and the diminishing power of extended family ties did not keep them from growing in their care for others.

A Panegyric Upon Plymouth

24 Thursday Nov 2016

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cornfields

The only time I have been invited to preach at a college chapel service was for Illinois Wesleyan University just before Thanksgiving in 1969. I chose the presumptuous title of “A Panegyric Upon Plymouth” as my sermon title, drawing from Soren Kierkegaard’s “A Panegyric Upon Abraham” and the historical fictions surrounding the founding of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

A panegyric is supposed to be an oration or public address in praise of something or someone. By using the scripture of the Pharisee and the publican as the scripture text for the sermon, my praise was reserved for the publican who approached God humbly and with repentance, in contrast with the Pharisee who proudly thanked God that he was not like other people because he was so much better. With no small amount of sarcasm, I compared the Pharisee to the usual message of thanksgiving in America and expressed the hope that we would learn to use the publican as a model instead.

My delivery was not so good that evening. I recall that my wife compared it to a dirge, since it was slow and halting. I was nervous and had never preached to a college audience in such a formal setting. My mentor, Chaplain Bill White, gave me the benefit of the doubt and said that sometimes it takes a while for a message to sink in and later people come it understand it better. Probably they would understand it from someone else who spoke it more effectively.

Maybe no one else understands that message better, but I do. If the legend of Thanksgiving bears any truth, it is in the generosity and good will of the Wampanoag people in helping the pilgrims to survive, even though the Wampanoag themselves had suffered the worst decade of their own existence as a people. As a result of the pilgrims and the actions of later puritans, we can attest that “no good deed goes unpunished.”

When President Barack Obama addressed the Arab nations in Egypt early in his presidency, expressing regret for some of the actions and attitudes represented in United States’ interventions in the Middle East (never using the word ‘apology’ although that was later used by Obama’s critics), my thoughts returned to my earlier diagnosis of American pride. We have not learned to be humble supplicants to a gracious and merciful God. Our ideas of American greatness are distorted and deadly to the future of the earth. We need to appreciate the humanity that we share with people everywhere, and realize the failures that also come with that humanity. We need to learn humbly from each other. We can only be grateful that God has given much more, much more than we deserve, and perhaps we will have more chances to do some good with what we have received.