What the Church Has Taught Me: Foundations
What the Church Has Taught Me: Foundations by Rev. L. John Gable
June 18, 2023
Perhaps it comes as no surprise but I have found myself reflecting on my life and ministry recently and so would like to share with you during the next couple of weeks some of “what the Church has taught me” appropriately beginning today on this Father’s Day because my family had everything to do with my early faith formation.
I am a Timothy in the faith. By that I mean I am one who was born in to a family of faith, just as was Timothy in the Scriptures. We just read a passage from Paul’s second letter to him saying, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not know or know about Jesus. My parents and both sets of my grandparents were active church members. My parents met in their primary Sunday school class as children. My father and my grandfather both considered going in to the ministry before choosing other professions. Bedtime prayers. Grace over meals. Every Sunday at church. These were givens and non-negotiables in our family. Both of my parents served in numerous church offices. My dad taught Sunday School for nearly 5 decades. My mom directed a handbell choir for 30 years and sang in the choir her entire life, and still, at 99, has a beautiful alto voice.
The church of my childhood was faithful in mission and ministry, and it allowed me opportunities for study and service. I vividly remember having my teachers from school and local business leaders as my Sunday School teachers and seeing them sing in the choir. I was raised to believe that the Church was an important expression of the Body of Christ and had an important role to play for Christ in the community and the world as well as in individual lives. I saw ministers who were well-educated and respected and was raised to believe that ministry was an honorable profession.
I am a Timothy in the faith thanks to my family and my church family, and I commend our Tab families and the Tab Church family to be the same for all of our children and young people. This faith is better caught than taught and that begins in the home. Parents and grandparents are the first line evangelists to our children and grandchildren, the rest of us then come alongside as we fulfill the promises we make in baptism to help you raise your children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” May we be so committed.
I am a Timothy in the faith in that I didn’t have “a” conversion experience, rather I have had “many” conversion experiences in which Christ has become real and alive to me. The summer between my 7th and 8th grade years I was at a Lion’s Club carnival in my hometown when I was approached by what we then referred to as a “Jesus freak.” Long haired, tie-dyed t-shirt, torn jeans, he sat me down and started telling me about Jesus. I listened for a while and then suddenly thought to myself, “I know this Jesus, I’ve always known this Jesus, I’ve just never heard Him spoken about in the way he was talking about Him.” In that experience I knew in my heart that the faith of my family, my parents, my church, was my faith too, and not very long after that I felt a definite call to ministry. I’ve known that God has called me to be a pastor since middle school, so, I often think that ministry is not something that I do, as much as it is something that I am.
With that sense of call in my mind and heart, during high school I became even more involved in my church’s youth group and choir, and helped to organize a chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at our high school. Those became faith forming experiences for me. At one point I was given a little devotional piece titled “I’m Third” that recounted the story of a young man who lived by that motto. When asked by his friends what it meant he would always answer, “I’ll tell you some day.” The devotional piece told the story of how this young man grew to gain the respect of his elders and peers, how he served others and helped in times of need, how he was friend to everyone he met. After graduation, before heading off to college, he finally told his friends the meaning behind “I’m Third”, saying, “The Lord is first. Others are second. And I’m Third.” I was inspired by that story and decided to live my life by the same motto, and in many ways strive to do so still.
I am a Timothy in the faith, loved and supported by my family, encouraged and given experiences by my church family, and inspired by others who I admired and respected, just as Timothy did the Apostle Paul. I pray the same for the young people of Tab.
Having grown up in St. Louis, I attended Hanover College in southern Indiana, a decision for which I will always be grateful, primarily because it was there that I met Kristin. She was my first small group Bible study leader my freshman year, a story to be told another day.
Hanover allowed me the opportunity to expand my experiences in ministry. We had an active student-led, Christian fellowship on campus so there were upper classmen and women who I admired and could follow. Members of that fellowship quickly became my closest friends, including Kristin. All of the leaders of the fellowship graduated after my sophomore year, so that summer when I got home I sold my trumpet, bought a guitar and taught myself the 10 chords needed to lead our singing. I soon started leading the group, along with others, and got hands-on ministry experience.
Meanwhile I declared a double major in Theology and English, and quickly found myself at odds with much of what was being taught by the Theology professors. I remember thinking, God was trying to get me into the ministry and my professors were trying to keep me out, but that struggle was good for me. It helped me think honestly and critically about my faith, another avenue which allowed me to claim my faith as my own. During those years I also started attending the local Methodist Church and quickly became friends with the pastor who took me under his wing and encouraged me. I frequently served as the liturgist on Sunday morning, taught 2nd grade Sunday School, directed the choir for a very short time, and even had the opportunity to preach when the pastor was away. One such Sunday morning the phone rang as I was getting ready to leave home. It was the head usher asking me if I was coming. I said, “I’m on my way right now, why?” He said, “We changed the time for the morning service. The candles are lit and the prelude has been played…we’re just waiting for you!”
I loved my college experience and that church. Like my family and my home church and my childhood experiences, they too helped to shape my faith and ministry, for which I will always be grateful.
Having known I felt called to pastoral ministry since middle school and having considered other possible career options along the way, I took a year off after college to work for Hanover in the admissions department before applying for seminary.
A sidebar story here. As faithful a church member as my father was he challenged my call to ministry during those years, something which at first I did not understand. We would have long discussions about my sense of call and the demands of ministry. He would set me up with summer jobs in the factories of some of his business associates, one of which offered me a very lucrative opportunity to join his sales team after graduation. Difficult as those conversations and attractive as those offers were they each served only to convince me of my sense of call. My father, however, was not yet convinced until one day we had a heart to heart conversation in which I asked him, “Why don’t you want me to go into the ministry?” He answered, “I don’t care whether you enter the ministry or not, I just want to make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.” From that moment on he became my biggest cheerleader.
I’ll share one final story regarding the foundations and formation of my faith journey. When it came time to choose a seminary, I selected Gordon-Conwell in Boston, a well-established, well respected seminary in the conservative evangelical tradition. That seminary would have fit me perfectly, that is where I stood on the theological spectrum. I had “God in a box”, a box of my own making and was very comfortable there.
But when I announced my decision to the committee on preparation in my Presbytery they announced to me “That is fine, but we may not ordain you.” I won’t go in to the details, but that gave me pause, so I went back to talk with my home church pastor, who just happened to be on the board of trustees at Princeton Seminary, who encouraged me to consider Princeton. I did and was accepted, and am tremendously grateful for the experience I had there.
Having put God securely in to my little box, I soon met others, students and professors, who had different boxes for God. At first it was easy to reject their differences, but the more I got to know them, to listen to their faith experiences, to watch how they lived out their faith, while different than my own, I began to appreciate rather than reject the differences. I knew I loved Jesus and wanted to serve Him but they helped me to see that they loved Jesus and wanted to serve Him too, just in different ways…and the acceptance of those differences became critical in my faith formation.
If you were with us two Sundays ago, I spoke on the unity we find under the Lordship of Jesus Christ which sustains us together despite our differences. If you weren’t with us or haven’t yet listened to that message I encourage you to do so. That understanding and acceptance of the diverse expressions of our faith across the theological spectrum was shaped and nurtured by my time at Princeton Seminary, not to mention the opportunity to serve as a chaplain in a maximum security prison and a nursing home while I was a student there. All of which I believe has served me well in each of the four churches I have served over the past 41 years, including the past 15 at Tab. About those experiences of “what the Church has taught me” we will talk about further in the weeks to come.
I close with a quote by Albert Schweitzer. “One other thing stirs me when I look back at my youthful days; that is, the fact that so many people gave me something or were something to me without knowing it. Such people, with whom I never perhaps exchanged a word, yes, and others about whom I merely heard things by report, had decisive influence on me; they entered into my life and became powers within me. Much that I should otherwise not have felt so clearly or done so effectively was felt or done as it was, because I stand, as it were, under the sway of these people. Hence, I always think that we all live, spiritually, by what others have given us in the significant hours of our life. These significant hours do not announce themselves as coming, but arrive unexpected. Nor do they make a great show of themselves; they pass almost unperceived…Much that has become our own in gentleness, modesty, kindness, willingness to forgive, in veracity, loyalty, resignation under suffering, we owe to people in whom we have seen or experienced these virtues at work, sometimes in a great matter, sometimes in a small…If we had before us those who have thus been a blessing to us, and could tell them how it came about, they would be amazed to learn what passed over from their life into ours.” That is certainly true for me.
I trust you understand, my intention in sharing the story of my faith journey is not simply to tell you more about me, but to encourage and help you to understand how important family, church, friendships, experiences, good teaching, good modeling, opportunities to lead and serve, exposure to others who hold views different than our own, are all important ingredients to faith development in our children and grandchildren, in the children of this church and community, in our own faith development.
I am a Timothy in the faith and for that I am forever grateful. I pray that we will be a church that loves and nurtures and encourages all of the other Timothys and Teresas for generations still to come.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN