Gospel Meetings
I grew up in the world of “Gospel Meetings.” The denominations had revivals; we had gospel meetings.
Twice a year, we had preachers come in and speak every night for a week. The two who came most often to our church were Guy N. Woods, our unofficial pope, and Hugo McCord. I also remember Bobby Key, Bobby Dockery, and Walter Buchanan, three men whom I always liked to hear.
But we were hardcore. It wasn’t just our gospel meetings in Neosho; it was all the area congregations having their fall and spring meetings. We were always encouraged to “support XYZ church” in their gospel meeting. So we were known to travel to Hottel Springs, Seneca, or Joplin to support their revivals. I mean gospel meetings.
Here’s the funny thing: while I think there’s a part of that culture that is funny (not as in IDIOTIC funny but as in THAT’S MY FAMILY funny), those aren’t bad memories. While I probably wouldn’t have volunteered to go to worship every night for a week, there was a certain excitement about it. The Bible would be preached. Some wandering sinner might be saved. The song leaders were usually hyper-caffeinated. Afterward the middle-aged men I liked so much would gather outside for a smoke to talk about sports.
Now I’m wondering: what is it we’re doing now that one day will seem sort of funny to my kids, but that will be a fond memory as part of their faith formation?
30 years from now we will look back and laugh at things like Powerpoint, praise teams and drama skits because we will be doing things so differently. Don’t know what it is yet but think about 30 years ago…they were on the cusp of technology with overheads and slide projectors and could not think of the things we do today.
“30 years from now we will look back and laugh at things like Powerpoint, praise teams and drama skits because we will be doing things so differently.”
Even so, I’m thankful for today– a far cry from the Jules Miller film strips–if I even remember the correct spelling! :-}
My prayer is that we’ll soon be such radical witnesses of Jesus to every nation that Powerpoint and praise teams will be irrelevant–we’ll be serving the Lord with the power of the Spirit and every one of us will be part of a praise team!
Aaahhhhhhhh, I know some churches who haven’t accepted powerpoint yet, or praise teams. When I visit them and they think those things on on the cusp of being evil, I realize any changes that would be benefical and uplifting are going to be shunned in some of our churches.
Do you remember questions and answers with Guy? I use to love it when he gave book, chapter and verse and his personal thoughts and it went against the heirarchy of our church. But soon things would change in Guy’s favor, as we loved and trusted him to be right. He was the only one who could get it done anything close to quickly.
Carolyn – Well said, my dear friend. Your prayers (and those of all in the ministry team you’ve helped form) have been a source a great encouragement and strength for me and many others.
I remember when I was little, L.O. Sanderson came to our church to hold a “singing class.” Being in the presence of the man who wrote “Be With Me, Lord” was almost too much to handle! I remember my parents acting so excited, like the Stones were in town or something.
I hope that in 30 years, we are so caught up in the mission of God in every crack and crevice of this world that we look back on former days and say, “We were so attached to our buildings, money, and programs. What were we thinking?”
Growing up in South Africa, we were still having Gospel Meetings while some of you were getting powerpoint! But all that aside, I resonate with the “excitement” feeling. As a teenager it was awesome to be going to hang out with the teenagers from XYZ congregation – we were such a small little minority in the stream of Christianity that just being with someone else of the same stripe was cool.
I think in 30 years some young believers are going to unearth a DVD called “Mike sings the Classics” and be wholly confused but completely amused. It will testify to living between the times, “the already but not yet.”
Very well said Carolyn! I was just wondering what we are doing to get our kids excited about anything spiritual and you came along with the answer – the Power of the Spirit. Once they get a taste of how exciting God really is there will be no stopping them. Now if only we could become examples of that in our own lives. That is my prayer.
Growing up black in a predominantly white environment, my father used to make us listen to gospel music every single Sunday on the radio, blasting it from the moment we woke to the ride back from church. My sister and I used to COMPLAIN, complain, but it was important to my dad that we not completely lose out on our cultural heritage. We’d even try to use the anti-instrumental music argument, unconvincingly, as a reason why we shouldn’t listen to it.
Now of course, we are thrilled to have had that as part of our rearing.
Great question Mike!
I think 30 years down the road we’ll remember back when our church used to send out missionaries to the far ends of the earth. In 30 years however, we’ll be the missionaries, being sent to our neighbors and friends, and WE’LL have missionaries coming TO US from Africa, China and Brazil.
We’ll probably look at the 30+ year old mega-church buildings that are now being used as mission-training centers for the new, radical harvests workers who are spreading God’s Kingdom in the pubs, parks, and corporate offices of our brave new world.
That’s my dream anyway.
Growing up white, in a predominantly white environment, it was neat for my family to get to host Marshall Keeble on a trip through our town for a gospel meeting he held there. I was young enough that I don’t remember what he said, but I love hearing him say it. Good memories, indeed.
When I was a boy, I remember tent meetings as being especially cool (although that word hadn’t been invented yet), mostly because of the sawdust “floors” under the tent. That was a great occupier of the kids.
When I was a teenager, our preacher thought that if 2 gospel meetings a year were good, just imagine how great 12 would be! So he started the “Meeting a Month” campaign. As I recall, people became so sick of meetings that they cancelled the ones scheduled for the second half of the year.
I think gospel meetings, revivals, and even lectureships had there time and place. Things are changing. People are busy. People don’t have time to go and do the things they did 30, 40, 50 years ago. Just think how much has changed in the world and in the lives of Christians over the last 30, 40, 50 years. I don’t know if they are effective anymore but something we remember that was a part of our past.
Growing up I hope I instill in my kids and that they will remember that the church was a family of God. A place to find love, forgivness, acceptance. A place where God is the center and focus of worship.
I also hope that when they get older they say, “Remember when we met in the buildings instead of houses, had praise teams instead of spontanious group singing, remember when we it seemed so formal, institutional and showy. Remember when church was something you did for an hour or two on Sunday or Wednesday. I sure do love that we aren’t pressed for time and don’t put restrictions on the length of our worship. I sure do love the community and informal settings we have today. Remember when we were concerned about what we wore to chuch. The church is growing because we aren’t distracted by the things the church was distracted by back then. We aren’t focused on the petty stuff. We aren’t focused on style of worship, womens role, etc. The church has grown so much because of our missional mindset. Isn’t wonderful that our elders and leaders are pastorial in nature and watch over the churches in our town and region. I love the closeness, family that His church is to a world that needs belonging.”
Thirty years from now some may wonder why they felt justified in using a tiny instrument (say, oh I don’t know, a pitch pipe) to obtain the pitch but felt constrained to oppose the use of a larger instrument (say, oh I don’t know, maybe a piano) to maintain the pitch. Or why it was all right for women to pass the communion trays east to west sitting down but not all right to pass them north to south standing up.
My vote is to bring back gospel meetings, or revivals, or whatever we want to call them. I’m one of those who would say life has gotten way too busy, but I’m all for slowing it down again. We need a revival, because we get bent out of shape when we have a meeting on a night other than Sunday or Wednesday. We think we’re too busy to add “another night at church”, but I would gladly give up a week, or two or three, of nights filled with prime-time TV. I think kingdom work sometimes gets put on the back burner and we spend all of our time stirring a pot of conflict or discussing how much our lives are going to change not seeing the Yankees in the world series or that T.O. isn’t doing anything for my fantasy football team.
Now I’ll hop off my soap-box and say it again; I think we need to bring back revivals. Make them a place where Christ is the small talk discussion and where God is winning souls for Him. I’m not too busy for something like that…
Wow! I remember those tent meetings. Our tents had yellow light bulbs. I don’t know if that was to help keep the insects away or what. Potlucks will probably be the thing we remember. Since we rarely cook anymore, we just go out and eat.
Logan – I’m with you 100% that Christians have gotten too busy and need to slow down. I do not agree, however, that returning to gospel meetings are the solution to this problem. Fundamentally, gospel meetings/revivals are influenced more by frontier/post-Revolutionary War America than the Scripture or ancient history. They worked for a time, but our culture has changed so much. We’re not a rural society anymore.
So, let’s definitely slow down and practice more authentic koinonia with each other, live out lives of simple mission where we are, and reminisc on gospel meetings with great fondness (but move on to more culturally relevant missional practices).
Obviously some of the time spent preaching about the bible should have been devoted to preaching about the evil that is smoking.
I truly beleive we need much more fellowship than preaching. With more fellowship you can really get to know people and minister to them. The best revival in the world still may not get to know that your friend is struggling in his marriage as simple fellowshipping can.
I also think that 30 years from now we will wonder why we used to have bible classes such as “How to be a Christian in the work place” or “How to be ‘wild at heart’” instead of a comprehensive study of the book or Romans or the gospel of John.
Heck, I hope that is next year!
I have always been a proponent of Starbucks church of Christ.
What if, one sunday a month, churches didn’t meet in the buildings, but went to starbucks and coffee shops all over town and had fellowship and discussions and talked to people who were sitting alone doing the NYT crossword.
Or what if we did that every Sunday?
Hey, you mentioned my uncle! I agree, Bobby is a good and thoughtful, if rather conservative, speaker. I also remember hearing the other two speak. In NW Arkansas, our pool of “meeting preachers” was pretty close to the same as yours in SW Missouri.
I think that, if we had been honest, we would have called the meetings revivals, as they were primarily about stirring up the members, not about reaching out to the “unchurched.”
I just think a person named “Guy N. Woods” is worth listening to.
Such a humble, low-key name.
Being a minister’s kid, I loved revivals/gospel meetings (we were part of the Independant christian churches). The music was amped up, and even us kids knew that things were “happening.” Perhaps it was further testimony to the Spirit moving among us, I don’t know. I loved having pot luck afterward and getting to know the speaker. The one I recall most quickly was Ben Alexander from a group called “Exposing Satan’s Power”–he used to be a practicing occultist medium, and told great stories (although now, as an adult, I don’t know much about him or that ministry. Their website poo-poohs Harry Potter, which I happen to enjoy).
Mike,
Growing up, Gospel Meetings were a big part of my life, because Bobby Dockery is my dad. I can remember spending hours and hours riding in the car to places in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma and eating in the homes of people I didn’t know. It was always neat when people from our home congregation or friends of my dad would come to “support the meeting.”
When I think of Gospel Meetings/Revivals, it seems like a quaint, old-fashioned idea, and I would agree that their time is passing: church-goers are so busy that it’s hard for them to make time to attend night after night and speakers are so busy that it’s often hard to schedule them for more than a couple days at a time.
But then again, I can remember a meeting I went to just a few years ago that was poorly attended and not all that exciting…where my best friend was baptized. Maybe they can still be meaningful?
TWD,
Hey Tommy.
Personally, I think we need to bring back the age of the initials.
That’s right. You can’t just have a name like Mike Cope. It sounds like a kid youth minister (no offense Mike). You need to throw in an initial or two in there to make it sound official. Like Michael N. Cope. And I’d even throw in a few extra syllables in the last name, like Copeland or something like that. Where are the names like we had in the past like T.B Larimore, N.B.Hardeman, B.C. Goodpasture? I say we need to resurrect the initials again!
Did my first gospel meeting in the spring of 2001 at the age of 20. Had no clue what I was doing. 5 sermons in 4 days. Went with 2 1/2 sermons. I remember talking with you/Mike and Randy Harris before I went to the meeting. You told me how you had often prepared Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s sermons the day of. Randy asked, “Have you had a preaching course yet?” I said, “No.” He said, “You’re screwed. But good luck.”
I made a promise to myself that I didn’t want to neglect smaller, rural churches. Therefore, I am doing another gospel meeting in February for a church in East Texas. I hope to give them Jesus.
Ditto Lisa,
L.O. Sanderson used to come to our congregation once a year and lead us in songs he had written, while telling the stories behind the songs. Without a doubt, it was the highlight of the year for a lot of people.
Does anyone foresee a day when younger generations might approach the older church leaders, proposing the revive some of the beautiful old 19th-century hymns sung from hymnals, only to be met with the stern response, “There’s nothing wrong with the way we’re doing things. Just sing the devo songs from PowerPoint like we’ve always done it.” ???
I hope we look back and say, “Remember when we used to sit in pews instead of around tables?” And, “Remember when we used to ‘take’ the Lord’s Supper instead of eating it? And no one could say anything during it?”
And I hope we don’t have to wait thirty years to remember those things.
Michael
I agree Michael.
“Remember when we used to break off a crumb of a Saltine and drink a thimble of juice, then sit silently and call that ‘communion’? What were we thinking?”
Agent B: I don’t know about humble, low-key. When I hear “guy in woods” I also think of “woman in mall.”
“Remember ‘blogging?’”
“Oh, yeah! My parents were the worst. They’d talk about stuff on Mike Cope’s blog as if the kingdom of God was hanging in the balance. My favorite was when they’d talk about how closed-minded their parents’ generation was and then turn around and try to codify all of their idiosyncracies.
“Is that the same Mike Cope of Tio Miguel’s Fair Trade Guacamole?”
“Yeah. He was preaching at Highland back then. I didn’t care much for his sermons, but every now and then he’d show a cool video or play something from The Byrds. That was also back when Leland thought he’d lost his faith…”
“Leland the Evangelist?!?”
I also hope and pray for a day when our main identifying marks are not what we do during an hour block of time on Sunday morning, but the freshness of our aroma in the world the remaining 167 hours of the week. Whether or not we take care of each other. Whether or not we take care of widows and orphans. How we conduct ourselves in our places of work. Whether or not we welcome the stranger, love the unloveable, and live simply.
Judging by the predictions/hopes/wishes given so far (the majority of which concern things we “do” in an assembly, such as PowerPoint, song selection, even roles of women), we have a long way to go!
“Remember when we used to have a final AMEN so we could dismiss God from our worship service…….that way we could bring in a singing group”?
“Remember when we used to think God was pleased with us listening to music by ATHEIST, but that He would somehow damn us to eternal HELL if we listened to music that was dedicated to praising Him, but had instruments”?
“Remember when we loved our doctrine more than we did other believers……..or our neighbors”?
DU
“Remember when we had to actually meet together to be in a small group?”
“Yeah, That was before these mental telepathy internet cell phone implants came along.”
“I hear that at some of those older churches, they still insist that you meet in a home for small group!”
“Ha ha ha ha…”
Maybe….
50 year old people blogging about their sex life…
Happy Clappy songs…
Youth Rallys (i hate the name)…
Cheesy PowerPoint presentations… (Come on it’s 2006! Not 1998!)
People still having gospel meetings…
Mike Cope Sings the Classic Videos, which were never released =(
Jeff Walling- there’s a Jeff Walling Fan Club on facebook.com (email me to join)
When art was finally let back into church by the Jesus Painter…
What I already laugh about and I’m only 21! HAHA!
Dinner on the Grounds…I loved Dinner on the Grounds.
Big Potluck under the trees on the lawn in front of the building… feeding four or five hundred people in 30 mins… three rows of tables, six lines, no waiting… casseroles, fried chicken, and Ambrosia!
Does anyone have a good ambrosia recipe? That would really take me back…
Using my initials…
David U
I’ve a quote posted near my computer that reads:
“When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.”
I have warm memories of Camp Meetings that dotted to South in the summer. I usually attended every night of ones that were in easy driving distance and a night or two at others over an hour or two away.
Real saw dust on the floor, Bible messages, spirited singing, and lots of good, Chirst loving, devil hating people.
I miss them.
30 years? I will be 90 or in the presence of Jesus. Either way, I will not likely care what happened 30 years ago then.
Grace and Peace,
Royce Ogle
Remember when there were different denominations and we lived on earth.
Not only do I remember “gospel meeting”, I held many of them in many different states around the country. What I remember about them was that they had little, if anything to do with the gospel. They were about Church of Christ dogma and why we were different from the denominational world. Even though there has been much change in some Churches of Christ, I still worry that much of what we do in church is still about us. Not so much us as a church but us as a culture. I think Jesus would have been uncomfortable at one of our gospel meetings and I’m afraid he might be uncomfortable at one of our more modern services. He wasn’t much of a church goer.
We were hard core too. OK my parents still are. As a matter of fact I got a call this morning from my mother meant to invoke guilt because I was not coming to support their MEETING!!! Yes folks in rural Alabama they are still happening, but they can’t figure out why no one comes.
But like Mike, I did enjoy it growing up….I went to a lot of different churches and heard a lot of the same speakers. But mostly I went to check out the boys.(and because they MADE me)
Remember when the only things women could do “in church” were sing during worship service or teach the kids under 6th grade?(a grown woman teaching a baptized male 6th grader would be a grave sin) Isn’t it great now that women are FREE IN CHRIST?
Remember when “church was just a building with an auditorium where we sat in rows, sang while we sat, prayed while we sat, “partook” of communion while we sat, listened to preaching while we sat, listened to scripture being read while we sat, & all of the above was called “going to church”? Isn’t it great now that we realize WE ARE CHURCH & we can GO anywhere & BE CHURCH to a dying world!
Grant – I so desperately needed your touch of humor today. Seriously.
And Leland, did you get that? God has a funny way of using people who’ve been honest about struggles and doubts. Someday I may be making guacamole for a living and you may be preaching for some church in Portland.
Hey Donna,
I live and preach in Rural Alabama and our church just had a great Gospel Meeting with Jerrie Barber. We even had un-churched (not members of non-church of Christ’s but people who don’t go to church anywhere but Smith Lake) show up. It was cool!
Like anything else, if done with a purpose God will provide the increase. But if it is done for tradition sake then even the ZOE conference or Pepperdine Lectureship would be mind numbing.
As for a great memory from almost 30 years ago, Jack Exum did his 3 unusual days at the DeGualle Drive Congregation when we lived in New Orleans. It was pretty cool, but for a 8 year old the baby in the bottle really got my attention.
My main concern with “gospel meetings” over the years hasn’t been only the dogma preached. Even when great salvation messages were presented, I’ve wondered why we did not tried harder to bring the lost to hear these messages. It seems that we limited our promotions to church bulletins and cheap, grainy, Xeroxed flyers. When dealing with the message of the blood of Christ, why weren’t we getting the word out in impressive, compelling ways that would really bring people in?
“Remember those Sunday nights when we used to stand at the end of the `service’ and sing a spare verse of some random hymn to give those Sunday-morning slackers a chance to get back to that secret room and `partake’ of that little shard of pie crust and a quarter-shot of Welch’s, just to make sure they had their chance to punch their ticket for the week?” What was it…`For those who have not had the opportunity to partake of the Lord’s Supper, it has been left prepared in Room 104, if you’ll excuse yourselves during the singing of our closing hymn…’”
Never mind that Alice was broken-hearted over her sin that week and had stepped forward to the front row during the invitation to be prayed for…but since she missed this morning, she’s gotta wipe those tears off, buck up and head back to the back with the rest of the sad-faced conformists…
Cynically but cheerfully,
qb
Josh…
Christendom says to the “unchurched” (ugh), “Come and join us.”
Exiles say, “Can we come in and join you? What are we drinking?”
(Paraphrased by qb from Michael Frost’s _Exiles_)
Speaking of gospel meetings and hyper-caffenated song leaders, have you seen song leader revolution?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9qzrkUnjtRU
Funny to the max.
Peace.
Will they say, “Remember when women thought they had to be up front doing things in order to be an important member of the body of Christ. Remember how confused they were about their role in the church. Remember how the men when asked to serve refused and gave excuses. The women now are the mother to the church. Giving comfort, showing compassion to the poor, needy and entire body of Christ; giving advice; wisdom; guidance; serving now in ways they didn’t even think about back then, bringing others to Jesus by their godly lives and testimonies of what God has done and can do in their lives. How the church has grown by their influence, ministeries and service.”