One of William Thornton’s posts prompted me to think about Southern Baptist practices of the past. I’m 69 years old, and I grew up in Southern Baptist churches. So, I remember lots of things that may seem quaint to our younger readers. Other old codgers (like William and Dave) may want to add to my list.
Hymns and hymnals. In the old days we did not have LCD projectors, and no one knew anything about PowerPoint, so we sang hymns from the hymnal. Typically, we sang three hymns on Sunday morning, not counting the invitation hymn. The only time we sang a chorus in worship was during a revival meeting. Often, we had a theme chorus that we’d sing at each revival service.
Doxology. Every Sunday morning we sang the doxology after the offering had been taken. I kind of miss doing that. It’s good to be reminded that all our blessings come from God.
Organs. No, not heart and lungs—a musical instrument that was played during worship services. Wealthy churches had pipe organs, and most other churches had an electric organ. Even small churches used a small Hammond organ. Not many churches use one now. I’ve heard it’s hard to find an organist.
Responsive Readings. In the back of the hymnal you could find many responsive readings. These were passages of Scripture, divided into verses read by the leader and verses read by the congregation. I miss these, too; responsive readings involved everyone in reading the Bible aloud. Surely, that is a good thing.
Revivals. When I was a boy, most Southern Baptist churches held a fall revival and a spring revival. At first these were two weeks long and later one week long. Now, they are usually a weekend meeting or even a one-day event. Many churches also sponsored a summer youth revival, and there were young evangelists who became famous for preaching in these youth revivals.
Training Union. On Sunday evening, before the Sunday night worship service, we attended Training Union, which was a church program intended to disciple new believers, train leaders, and teach Bible doctrine. Typically, each participant had “a part” to read to the group.
M-Night. M-Night was short for Mobilization Night. Baptist associations sponsored these rallies in in September, before the new church year began in October. These were like pep rallies and informational meetings to promote Training Union.
Women’s Missionary Union (WMU). The WMU was an organization for SBC women, and they promoted missions education, prayer for missions, and giving to missions. They sponsored the Week of Prayer for Foreign Missions every December and the week of prayer for Home Missions every Easter. Of course, they also encouraged the church members to give generously to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions and the Annie Armstrong Offering for Home Missions. They taught missions to little children in Sunbeams and to girls in the Girls Auxiliary (GAs). Every year our church would have a GA coronation service to honor the girls who had earned recognition. One year Mary Alice was crowned “Queen Regent with Scepter.” Of course the WMU still exists, but its numbers have steadily declined in recent years. Our SBC churches miss the missions emphasis provided by the WMU.
World Missions Conferences. When I was a young missionary, while on furlough I was required to speak in a certain number of World Missions Conferences. These were 8-day (Sunday through Sunday) conferences that were sponsored by local Baptist associations. Foreign missionaries, home missionaries, and state missionaries would go to the association, and we would speak in a different church each night and on two Sunday mornings. I would preach on missions on the two Sunday mornings. Every night I would lug my Kodak Ectographic slide projector to another church and show my 2 by 2 slides and tell the folks about our ministry in the Philippines. At one church a man came up to me after the meeting and said, “Usually, these missionary talks are really boring, but yours wasn’t half bad.” I believe that is called faint praise. Very few associations sponsor these events any more. I’ve been told that our folks will not attend them these days. That makes me sad.
Dressing Up. In by-gone days we wore our “Sunday best” to church. Men wore suits and ties, and women wore hats and gloves (when I was really young). Now, folks dress more casually, and that does not bother me, though it seems some people take it too far.
Well, what are your memories, precious and otherwise?
Thanks Brother Mark. Missed all those things that you’ve mentioned here because I was raised in the church that way in one of the many churches that you… our missionaries in the Philippines planted and helped raised young leaders who now become Pastors and missionaries like you. I thank God for your life and the lives of Rev. Sam Waldron, Rev. Gerald C. Davis, Rev Tony Latham,, Dr. Pau Johnson and many many more.
Thank you
My memories are from a little younger perspective.
1. Don’t forget as part of the transition from Hymnals to Projectors was the use of over head projectors. Just find a blank wall and someone that had reasonably good handwriting and viola! Corporate worship was transformed! This was especially true in youth groups, but I was in main services that utilized it too.
2. The Sunday turn around: After a long Sunday lunch, just when you got to playing good, it was time to come back in and get ready for evening services. When they went from a 6 o’clock start to 5, my parents loved it, but just saw my afternoons cut short!
3. I am a little jealous of those that get away with wearing shorts and t-shirts to church. Sorry, there’s always going to be that little boy in me that just doesn’t want to dress up.
4. Brass fixtures. Everywhere.
5. Knowing a church when I saw one. Is that an office complex or a commuter college behind those trees there? Our new pastor has run into people lately that seriously thought this about our church. Hilarious.
I joke that there is nothing as spiritual or comforting as the warm glow of an overhead projector in a dark room. Even the noise the fan made was soothing.
“Is that an office complex or a commuter college behind those trees there?”
How about the hip warehouse church? We have some of those in my area. If it weren’t for the signs, you might expect to see semis coming and going from there. And you go in and it has that style that has rusted metal panels, cement floors, stage decorated with old pallets, and exposed ductwork all over the place.
Nothing communicates the glory of the Lord God like…
I’m pretty young I think for this post, but my youth group growing up was still all about the overhead projector for worship songs. Mostly I think because the youth pastor (who was also the youth worship leader, isn’t that a job requirement?) did not want to throw out his giant binder of transparency pages. When the church added an extension with a new youth space, they had a screen and multimedia system installed, so that was it for the projector.
I miss all of the ways mentioned of church growing up. Wednesday night GAs, pews, steeples, and stain glass windows. Also looking for my grandparents to see where they were sitting and hearing my mother and daddy sing.
• Choir robes
* Sign in the sanctuary that displayed the previous week’s attendance, offering, etc.
• Worship took place in the “sanctuary.”
• Keeping up with attendance with the “eight point record system”—or was it six? Included tracking if you were there, on time, studied your SS lesson, brought an offering, staying for worship after SS, etc. what did they do with all those statistics. It encouraged lying—particularly the “on time” part.
.• Memory verses
• Memorizing long passages of Scripture in GAs
• Memorizing and reciting all the countries where SBs had missionaries in GAs
• Knowing that “Just As I Am” was page 240 in the 1956 Baptist Hymnal. “Holy, Holy, Holy” was page 1.
• Knowing all (or most) of the verses to many hymns. I’m 68 and even recently walked through the grocery store mentally singing all the verses to “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”
• Track racks
We still have choir robes at my church. Also, my adult Sunday School class still memorizes Bible verses.
Something I DO NOT miss at all: outhouses.
Something I do miss: week long vacation Bible school, with cookies and koolaid laid out on flatbed wagons!
I haven’t thought about most of these things for years. We had everything you mentioned in the churches I grew up in. I also remember that the pastor always stood at the exit and shook everyone’s hand on their way out the door. I haven’t seen that in a while.
The things we still have from your list there is we still have an organ, a digital pipe organ, that plays along with our piano, small orchestra, and rhythm section.
We occasionally do responsive reading. Since we don’t have hymnals in the “pews” the readings are displayed on the screens.
We also sometimes sing the doxology, but it’s an updated version.
I don’t know about Training Union, but we have fairly attended Wednesday evening classes that we call by the more modern “Equipping University.” Pastors and members alike teach classes on a quarterly schedule. Some are more like small-group Bible studies, some are more practical groups like Grief Share or Reboot (a PTSD group for vets), others are theological classes from high-school to seminary-level difficulties. We have a wealth of people with seminary degrees and consequently some have even been qualified for continuing ed for teachers and others who could use those credits.
Our WMU groups are still strong. They really do contribute tremendously with our missions efforts. My church does missions conferences, but I can’t say that the local association has done one in a while.
Some knowledge lost with the wearing of hats by women:
At a youth meeting I attended a few years ago, the youth were directed to remove their baseball caps for prayer—even the girls. Having grown up in a church where “Easter bonnets” were the rage once a year, I remembered that not only is it proper for a female to keep their hat on, it was improper to take it off as if she was a man. But this knowledge has been lost to a pervasive egalitarianism. I shared this with them but they found it hard to believe.
Jerome,
Paul trumps Emily Post: see 1 Cor. 11:4-16. That is where the custom originated, as eroded as it might have been by the time ball caps were worn. Fashion or lack thereof is irrelevant.
Also:
• Sword drills
• Prayer meeting on Wednesday nights
• Thursday night visitation
• “Minister of music” or “music director”—terminology
Things I DO NOT miss…
Visitors wearing guest badges.
The trend of asking everyone to stand, then all members to sit leaving guests standing so the members could welcome us in unison with some silly diddy.
The youth all sitting front and center…with misbehavers sometimes called down from the pulpit.
Things I DO miss:
Special music, even when it was not all that special
Potluck dinners without ANY store bought items
I’m overseas now a predominantly Muslim country and attend a small church. From time to time, a certain gentleman who leads worship is moved to sing a special.
His voice is not that great, but you can see his love for Christ written on his face. Last time he sang, I leaned over to my teenage daughter and said, “I love to hear his lousey singing that is the most beautiful song. Just look at him.”
She gets it too.
We still have the old church steeple and preacher shaking hands at one of the exits most weeks. We sing a newer song with a younger worship leader and then we sing a song from the hymnal (also projected on screen) by the older gentleman who had directed music for a long time. We used to sing the doxology until this past year, but I still sing it around my house quite frequently. Our congregation is split between those who dress up and those who don’t. No one seems not notice or mind. A few times a year we will do a responsive reading (led by the guy who does the hymn song). I think maybe once I’ve heard the organ.
We have great musicians in my church so one thing I don’t miss are those little accompaniment music cassettes.
We still have the older gentleman who will sneak you a Werthers when you shake his hand, praise God.
I miss Acteens. I think our girls would love it. What we do on Wednesday nights is more like what my church growing up did on Sunday nights.
Our women’s group is very similar to and based off WMU and all the things you described.
I’ve never been to a revival or seen an evangelist but I sure would like to sometime.
Oh I almost forgot! I love to watch the guy who pulls the rope to ring the bell and signal worship starting.
My wife and I were married in a Southern Baptist Church 53 years ago. We had all the stuff you mention in that church. Our music leader was transferred to a job in a different state so yours truly lead the singing, at the age of 19, for about six months until a “real” music guy came in to do it. The new music guy was a music major with upper division standing getting credit from California Baptist College for work in a church setting. He came to our church each Sunday and led music for us on a pro-bono basis.
The GAs and RAs jointly put on a skit featuring the life of Lottie Moon. My best friend played the part of the “ship captain”. The captain talked to Lottie Moon while she was literally on her death bed just before she died. Looking back, I guess that the “ship captain” was a device to allow for the story line of Lottie’s last days to be depicted in the play.
Our pastor was a graduate of Talbot Theological seminary. He lined up a job for me to work at radio station KBBI which was a FM station in Los Angeles owned by Biola. I had a First Class Commercial Radiotelephone license and was qualified to operate a commercial AM or FM broadcast station. Are you ready for this: the mixer console at the station only had 16 channels and it used vacuum tubes.
The organ at our church was a Conn Minuet which had scads of 12AU7 tubes. I used to work on it.
Yep. Two revivals a year — whether we need them or not.
Felix, thanks for your kind words. In the Philippines I served with some great missionaries and many wonderful Filipino pastors. We planted lots of churches and held lots of evangelistic meetings.I remember those years very fondly.
Yes! I remember the Sunday school attendance board. Some small churches still have those. Our pastor did stand at the door and shake everyone’s hand, at least those who left by that door. When I was a pastor, I did that, too. Our church had “visitation” on Tuesday nights.
I forgot to mention Youth Week. During youth week the youth filled every job in the church–leading the singing, preaching, ushering, etc. I preached my first sermon during youth week. It was terrible–those poor people. Still, they were very encouraging, and I got to go to seminary, where I learned to preach properly.
I also should have mentioned youth choir tours. Our youth choir traveled all over the South, singing in churches. We rode our ancient church bus. We called it “The White Tornado,” because it was painted white.
I still have a 1940’s edition of the Broadman Hymnal, and at least one copy of each Baptist Hymnal published since 1957.
I started missions education in Sunbeams. Then it was RA’s and on to Pioneers. Sunday school classes were called Beginners, Primary, Intermediates, Young People and Adults.
I remember our church had an “organ fund” which seemed to be in ongoing existence for years before we finally had enough money to buy a Gallanti organ, which was electronic but sounded like a pipe organ. It sat at the front of the church for three years until someone joined the church who could play it.