Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

Gospel meeting season! Everyone's least favorite week of the year (though they would never actually admit it). That week where your whole life outside of church gets put on hold and you get to experience the stress of Wednesday night every night! Rush home from work, hurry and get the kids' homework done, hurry up and get dinner eaten, rush to wash up and change to look presentable for the guest preacher who you'll likely never see again, but still feel the need to impress anyway. The only visitors you'll see, despite hours of walking around neighborhoods handing out fliers and inviting all you friends and co-workers, are the super devout members from area congregations who always drive a 1-2 hour round trip during the week to support their local congregation. They'll probably get called on to lead a prayer and feel the need to lead a ten minute prayer (I swear this happened almost every time...who are they trying to impress?) Your whole week is shot singing the same old, tired hymns and listening to the same old sermons likely letting you know that you are luckily in the one true church and are among the only real Christians in the world, since obviously every denomination is full of fake Christians who know they're wrong and want to drag you down with them!

Your gospel meeting week is over already? Don't think you've got your normal routine back too quick, kids! All the congregations in the area, even those an hour away made sure to schedule their meetings all on different weeks. Your parents will still probably drag you to some of those, turning your non-church night into yet another unnecessary and miserable church night, only this time you have to travel four times as long to get there and back...gotta support the local congregations you know, and never forsake the assembly!

Gospel meetings. Every time we had one at my congregation someone would remember a time waaaay back in the day where they had a ton of baptisms at gospel meetings. Now they don't have any! One I attended a few years ago a preacher badgered a woman in the audience because she was not a member of "the church", trying to convert her directly through his sermon. He threw his assigned sermon topic out the window, and went on to make a jackass out of himself. As far as 10 minute prayers/sermon prayers, I'm ok with that as long as they pray for the preacher to have a "ready recollection"

.

I guess I was lucky to be in the NICOC. There were fewer congregations nearby, so fewer gospel meetings to visit!

I'm not going!

Unless we were going to someone's house for dinner, I did not enjoy Gospel Meeting weeks. It usually meant getting home from school at 3, eating dinner by 3:30 or 4 pm, getting cleaned up and to the church early, sitting through the service and then having to hang around afterward so we could present a good image for th' church. Hungry again by bedtime, but tough. Homework and rest weren't priorities during those weeks. And yes, we'd get dragged to meetings at other churches, especially those with people who came to ours.

I also heard the older crowd talk about how meetings would last for two or three weeks. Of course, they had no lives outside work and church.

The last meeting I attended was one at which I was paid to lead the singing, more than 12 years ago. Haven't gone to one since. Don't miss 'em.

One year our congregation decided to hold an Old Fashioned Tent Meeting. They rented a huge tent, put it up in the local park, and invited several different ministers to speak. It was to last a week and they wanted someone different every night. We canvassed the town, knocked doors and spread flyers. The elders even went so far as to place a large ad in the newspaper announcing the meeting. It was the middle of August, hotter than the sidewalk in downtown Dallas, and more bugs than you could care to count. It was terrible. And the only people in attendance were the die hard members.

My apologies to Neil Diamond:

Hot August night and the leaves hanging down
and the grass on the ground feeling itchy and wrong
Move up the road to the city's park
and the sound of that plain gospel song
Sits a ragged tent where there ain't no trees
And that Church of Christ tellin' you and me


Church,It's the Church of Christ traveling salvation show
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes
'Cause everyone knows Church of Christ show


Room gets suddenly still and when you'd almost bet
You could hear yourself sweat he walks in
Eyes black as coal and when he lifts his face
Every ear in the place is on him
Startin' soft and slow like a small earthquake
And when he lets go half the valley shakes


It's the Church of Christ traveling salvation show
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes
'Cause everyone knows Church of Christ show


I say brothers
Now you got yourself two good hands
And when your brother is troubled you've gotta
reach out your hand and slap him 'cause that's what it's there for
And when your heart is troubled you've gotta reach out
your other hand, reach it out to the Man up there
'Cause that's what He's there for


Take my hand in yours
Walk with me this day
In my heart I know
I will never stray
Halle, halle, halle, halle, halle, halle, halle, halle


It's the Church of Christ traveling salvation show
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes
'Cause everyone knows Church of Christ show

I love that song, for some reason. Those old biddies are right: the best lack all conviction, everything falls apart.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming.

Very good, Agri.

One year, my mom pasted the flyer to our meeting in the window of our family sedan and then of course picked me up at school, drove around town, etc.

I guess I should have been "dying" to invite people, but as a kid, I was just embarrassed we had a sign plastered to our car window.