I know I have a few hundred subscribers who are loosely separated into two buckets, one of archaeological & historical interest, and the other more into the church history & polity material. There’s some overlap, but also a fair amount of readers who are here for only one or the other.
The last dozen entries have been a sort of series: “Who made the Newark Holy Stones?” This entry is the close of the first section of this draft attempt at putting some of the voluminous research Brad Lepper & I have done into prose form, starting with the Keystone, which was uncovered by David Wyrick on June 29, 1860. On the 165th anniversary of the event, I went around that Sunday and took pictures of the find site as it exists today in an alley on Newark’s west side, and some downtown buildings still extant from when Wyrick & his son came to display what he had found. Below will be those pictures and brief captions.
The next few entries will be back on the church history & polity side, as I prepare to attend the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) General Assembly in Memphis, which was to be followed in the summer of 2028 by the next in-person GA, with the two intervening years having a virtual, online meeting. The decision to do this came at the last in-person GA in Louisville in 2023, which I couldn’t attend.
Word is that we will be informed that plans for a 2028 in-person meeting need to be put on ice, given the economic uncertainties of how many might come, and what these events are costing nowadays in guaranteed minimum hotel nights, banquet costs, and the general logistics of even having 2,500 attend. Louisville had around 3,000 registered, and next week is looking to be somewhere between 2,500 & 3,000. So I understand the decision to not commit resources to a 2028 GA — we could end up with a six figure bill for NOT holding one if we start signing contracts in 2025.
Will this be “the last” General Assembly? I’m not quite that pessimistic, but it will certainly be the last of this sort, as we’ve held them since 1968:
…with continuity to 1917:
…and of a sort all the way back to 1849:
If you trace those national & general gatherings back, you’ll see gaps due to wartime rationing & economic instability. This isn’t the first time we’ve been here. And you can see the numbers rise & fall, as much due to cultural expectations around church life & representation as an immediate index of the health of the communion as defined in each era.
There’s definitely some decline involved here, though. And I’m not sure what’s next, other than the opportunity to see what kind of continuity we can develop with a virtual assembly with congregational representatives. All of this has me wanting to attend in Memphis this month; my last GA was Des Moines in 2019, and I’ve attended more than I’ve missed since they were previously in Des Moines in 1985. They’ve been a big part of my life — I’ve served on three Local Arrangements Committees, which is a unique experience — and I will miss them if they stop altogether.
So, that’s the kind of talk you’ll see in my Knapsack Substack posts for a while. After I share below my images from the 165th anniversary of the Keystone’s appearance in Newark, which I’ll show you first (in two parts since Substack doesn’t like too many pictures in any one missive):
[captions to come later when I also finish loading in the second half of the pictures]
