Jerry Rushford, John Mark Hicks and Mac Ice present Memories: Photographs and Stories from the Restoration Movement. Here is the slide presentation and here is the audio recording.
Lord's Supper
“Severely simple”: the Lord’s Day exercises at the Somerset, Pa., Christian Church, ca. 1887
Few congregations among the Stone-Campbell Movement can claim book-length descriptions of their history, activities, membership, and import. But the Christian Church of Somerset, Pennsylvania can, and on top of that Peter Vogel published his book in 1887. I can think of no other comparable congregational history from the 19th century.
It is at points hagiographical by modern standards, but considering the sheer quantity of information it preserves, and much of that from primary written sources and oral history and tradition, I can scarcely fault Vogel for feeling proud of this congregation. It is certainly a storied history which intersects with many of the people who made the Campbell movement such as it was in its strength in the 1830s-1870s.
What catches my eye is Vogel’s description of the various weekly services and meetings, the full details are in ch. 25, pages 297ff. Here is his description of the “Lord’s Day Exercises”:
The Lord’s Day Exercises are severely simple. In a church that really numbers over three hundred members, though only two hundred and seventy-five are reckoned as tolerably faithful, the attendance might be better. It is, however, above the usual average of like- sized churches elsewhere. Some of the older members attend only in the forenoon, and the spiritually deficient only at night. Country residents, as a rule, attend but one service, while in many other instances husband and wife, or parents and older children, divide the services between themselves on account of the smaller children. The hot chase during the week after Mammon so tires out some that the Lord must excuse them from attention to Him on His day. Besides, Sunday head-aches, and such like, invade even this home of health. Surely the Lord will be merciful to such, for He was never known to endure weariness or pain!
The first thing in the morning service is either a resurrection or fellowship hymn; then a resurrection chapter is read by one of the elders, taking the four gospels in regular turn, and on a fifth Lord’s day in the month the eleventh chapter of I. Corinthians. Occasionally a crucifixion chapter is taken instead. After [p. 309] this the minister ascends the pulpit, announces and reads either a resurrection or other Lord’s day hymn in praise of Christ. After this is sung by the congregation without organ, a devotional lesson, usually from the Psalms, is read, and the audience stands in prayer which bears in mind the toils and conflicts of the past week, the purpose of the hour, the needs and relations of the church, the absent membership, and the coming week. This is followed by another hymn of either a devotional, penitential, consecrational, or invocatory character. The sermon which follows is addressed to the membership, and ranges somewhere in the broad field of Christian life or duty, or draws inspiration from God’s providence or promises. Sometimes it is so far doctrinal or expository as pressing duty may require. In all cases it has a definite aim suggested by the known needs of the membership, and varies in length from thirty-five to forty-five minutes. The hymn which immediately follows is sung standing, and, if not always suggested by the theme of the sermon, is at least not alien to it; and both sermon and hymn give the key-note to the succeeding prayer. Then the minister and one of the elders attend to the breaking of the loaf and the distribution of the cup. Next the collection is taken up. For this the membership come with prepared envelopes, having name, date and enclosed amount written on them, and containing the proportionate amount of their yearly subscription. A good sister who died five years ago is still regularly remembered by a dollar bill fresh from the press. The loose change in the basket goes into the poor fund. After the collection come the announcements; among these, on the first Lord’s day in each month, the particular books of the [p. 310] Bible which are to be read by those who will, are announced in such order and number as will finish the Bible in the year. A doxology and benediction conclude the services, after which friendly and fraternal greetings are freely exchanged.
Some remain to spend the hour which intervenes between that and the Sunday-school session in friendly conversation, in consultation over the coming lesson, or in the rehearsal of Sunday-school songs. Others return home to relieve those older children or servants who care for the smaller ones during parental absence, that they may go to Sunday-school.
The evening service may or may not have a preliminary song. The pulpit work is, however, always introduced by singing, reading a portion of Scripture, prayer and singing again. These songs are usually of the chorus kind or some other light and popular air, and of varied theme. The Scripture lesson is related to or preparatory for the address or lecture which is to follow. Evening announcements come immediately before the reading of the text. The evening discourse is of varied character, and may be for the instruction of the younger members of the church, for the information or conversion of the world, or the treatment of some popular question. This, too, is immediately followed by a song; and, if the theme of the evening has led to it, an invitation to come to Christ is extended. A short dismissal prayer concludes this service. If, however, an evening collection for missions or other purposes has been announced in the morning, it is taken up immediately before this prayer.
–Peter Vogel, Tale of a Pioneer Church (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1887) 308-310.
In my teaching I use this excerpt (among others) to illustrate what congregational worship was like among 19th century Disciples. Though it is one data point, what I find useful, as a historian, are Vogel’s explanatory comments about the items of worship. He should know since he served the congregation as minister, twice. So, not only do we have a recitation of the elements and order of worship from the middle 1880s, we have a participant’s commentary on it. I thought of this in light of my recent foray into the literature of minister’s manuals concerning the items and order of worship.
Orders of worship, a final word, for now
The orders of worship I posted from a few minister’s manuals stemmed from a happenstance find in Christian Hymnary. I was not prepared to see the absence of the Lord’s Supper among proposed orders of Sunday worship in a major book used among the Christian Church (former ‘Christian Connexion’). Actually that itself was a diversion. I went looking for an old Philip Doddridge paraphrase. And before I knew it I was chasing leads.
The bigger point is that I am writing again, and not just here. But the writing here is a way to keep the pump primed.
That’s the point.
The Doddridge errand, and the order of worship diversion, are just icing on the cake. Neither, by itself, is the point. Close to the point, but neither is the point. The point is writing again. The memory of blogging about this kind of thing is slowly emerging again and I am warming to it.
To put a bow on the order-of-worship errand, what I see from these sources is that there is no agreed-upon or standard order of worship among the Christian Churches or Churches of Christ in the latter half of the nineteenth century, nor in the first half of the twentieth. The placement of the Lord’s Supper varies, the accompaniment of the offering alongside or apart from the Lord’s Supper also varies. The flow of worship, if these proposals are any indication, varies as much from place to place as it does from generation to generation. From what little I have seen, I cannot discern a trajectory.
One could begin much earlier, go much farther, and cast a wider net. Probably the place I would begin is with the Scottish Presbyterian and Congregational orders of worship from the late eighteenth century. Those are the immediate backgrounds for the Campbells and Walter Scott. I can see much value in spending time with Baptist worship as it was practiced in the East, then applied in the trans-appalachian frontier. Much of the Campbell movement derived its membership from former Baptists. So as much as the European orders of worship will be useful, I cannot see how neglecting Baptist worship can be of any benefit. The O’Kelly Republican Methodist movement emerged from Carolina and Virginia Methodism (which itself came out of Episcopal practice). All of those leads are worth chasing, in my mind at least.
The Presbyterians and Scotch Independents might shed some light on the proposed model worship service Alexander Campbell proposed in Christian System. That model probably is as close as we might get to uniformity, but I know first hand that source materials which will prove it are scarce to non-existent. Congregations simply did not print orders of worship or bulletins much before the 1890s, and even there they tend to survive from the largest city churches (Disciples), which betray a sensitivity to high churchliness that the country congregations simply did not share. Bulletins and orders of worship which might tease out a hypothesis will survive here and there for Christian Churches, but much less so for Churches of Christ. And if they do, they will be representative only for that congregation at that time in its life. My hunch is as soon as a new minister arrived, the game could change.
But enough about upstream influence. There are other avenues to explore, such as Standard Publishing Company’s volume On the Lord’s Day designed to provide congregations with just sort of these resources. So there was a perceived need (or market) for this and that book will be useful. There also is F. W. Emmons views on the order of worship, and that raises the angle of looking at Biblical texts, specifically Acts 2:42. There is a strand of interpretation that has not been mined, in print, that I am aware of. There are tracts here and there (and I resist every urge to go look for them). Then there is periodical literature searches on a variety of keywords and topics which might yield some articles. And more minister’s manuals (such as George DeHoff’s), and hymnals such as Gloria in Excelsis. Maybe they have more to say? After all, those hymnals are in the pew racks and certainly available for congregational leaders to use for ideas and guidance.
This could easily be a thesis. A thesis which I do not intend to write here a post at a time.
Maybe someone will take this up.
Schedule of services for the Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, Florida in March 1926
Every now and then someone asks about the origin of church services on Sunday nights or mid-week services (usually on Wednesday nights).
Perhaps at some point I will write up the few things I have found, but I do not have time to devote to that just now. It is enough for now to note this ad from Christian Leader, 16 March 1926, at page 13, below which I offer two observations:
Advertisement, Christian Leader, March 16, 1926, p. 13
1. Old church papers such as Christian Leader are rich in advertisements such as this, and as I hope this post demonstrates, they can be a helpful source of information. For anyone doing local history they supply chronological markers and physical locations, as this one does, for ministers and the congregation. Thanks to Google Maps we can virtually visit the neighborhood to get a sense of the lay of the land. It took me about 30 seconds to learn the address for W. A. Cameron on 10th was within earshot of the meeting house location on 9th. Point being, Cameron lived and ministered in this neighborhood. From the looks of the front of the nice building (now vacant) on 10th a block away, it appears his work may have had lasting effects. Anyone interested in local history or anyone interested in gaining a textured view of congregational practice can benefit from this ad. And that brings me to the second point:
2. This congregation meets twice on Sunday and once mid-week, in this case Wednesday evening. The Sunday evening worship evidently has additional time devoted to singing, otherwise it appears that the two Sunday worship services are just about identical. Both services feature preaching and communion, suggesting that a second offering of the Supper for all in attendance might have been the normal practice there, then.
I am also sometimes asked about various practices of the second serving of the Lord’s Supper at evening services. I do not have the time now to get into that, either. The short answer is that absent a massive amount of research, I cannot say there is a standard practice among Churches of Christ that held sway across time or geography. Bottom line is the test of this hypothesis is in ads like this, in addition to articles, anecdotes, descriptions, memories, oral history, and the like. I offer this ad as one tiny data point that gives texture to our understanding of past practices.
James DeForest Murch suggests two model church services, 1937
Well, why not continue a bit more now that I’ve gone this far?
A generation after R. C. Cave’s 1918 book comes James DeForest Murch, Christian Minister’s Manual (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1937). The copy I have bears a distribution stamp of the Christian Leader Company, Dresden, Ohio. Uncle Rhod acquired it while he was living in Shawnee, Ohio, early 1960s. It was advertised in Gospel Advocate Company catalogs of that era and served a generation or more.
He says
“Ministers should avoid elaborate worship programs. Christ taught His disciples to pray ‘without vain repetitions.’ The early church employed hymns, Scripture readings, prayers, as simple methods of worship. Emphasis should always be placed on simplicity. The participants in worship should be enjoined to do all ‘in decency and in order,’ ‘according to God’s will’ and with ‘the spirit and the understanding.’
He then says
“The general guiding principles of worship are reverence, dignity, order, simplicity, adjustment to the needs of the people, honoring Christ, His Word and His church, and variety and freedom of expression.”
And with that he gives two orders for morning worship, pages 47-49. I omitted some minor notes and instructions:
—–
The Organ
Processional Hymn*
The Call to Worship
Hymn
Responsive Scripture
The Gloria Patri
Chorus
The Prayer
Choral Response
The Communion (hymn, words of commemoration, thanksgiving for the loaf and cup)
Offertory
Anthem
Sermon
Hymn of Invitation
The Benediction
Choral Response
Organ Chimes
—–
[after the closing song of the church school, presumably which meets in the sanctuary?]
Doxology*
Invocation
Hymn
Scripture Reading
Prayer
Communion Hymn
Communion Service
Offering
Special Music or Hymn
Sermon
Invitation Hymn
Benediction
—–
*congregation standing
Benjamin L. Smith proposes orders of worship, 1919
A year after Cave published his manual for ministers, Benjamin Lyon Smith published A Manual of Forms for Ministers for Special Occasions and for the Work and Worship of the Church (St. Louis: Christian Board of Publication, 1919). At 225 pages of text, it was the largest manual among Disciples to date. Cave’s had 116 pages of text, about the size of Green’s 124 pages. Cave and Smith both have a few blank pages at the end into which a minister could record wedding, funerals, baptisms, and other special occasions. Both are bound in limp black leather, much like a New Testament, and are the size of a testament.
Smith is far more expansive, with sample services for just about any occasion a congregation could face. I will concentrate here on the orders of service for regular Sunday worship. “There is no place where one can show good taste more than in conducting the public worship of the church,” he says as a preface to all of the orders of service. “From the Gloria in Excelsis,” he states, “we select some orders of service that are admirable. They are capable of many different modifications and combinations.” He refers to W. E. M. Hackleman, ed. Gloria in Excelsis, A Collection of Responsive Scripture Readings, Standard Hymns & Tunes, and Spiritual Songs for Worship in the Church and Home. (Indianapolis: Hackleman Music Company and St. Louis: Christian Publishing Company, 1905 with later printings). The congregations which would have found Gloria in Excelsis attractive, a book which Hackleman considered his best work by the way, strike me as a far cry from the many churches R. C. Cave envisioned “that can not have a minister of the gospel with them oftener than once or twice a month, and are usually limited to a simple service led by an elder, or some member of the congregation” (Cave, p. 41).
Hackleman offers a suite of options for each element in five kinds of services: three variations of morning services (which Smith uses; see below), two variations of the evening service, an evangelistic service and a vesper service.
Here are Smith’s three models of the Sunday morning worship, pages 127-129:
—–
Organ prelude
Doxology
Invocation and Lord’s Prayer
Responsive Reading
Hymn
Lesson and Prayer
Offering and Announcements
Special Music
Sermon
Invitation Hymn
Lord’s Supper
Closing Hymn
Benediction
—–
Organ Prelude
Opening Sentence – Responsive Sentence by Choir
Invocation and Lord’s Prayer
Hymn
Responsive Reading
General Prayer
Anthem
Sermon
Hymn of Invitation
Communion Hymn
Lord’s Supper
Offering and Announcements
Doxology
Benediction
—–
Organ Prelude
Opening Sentence, with Response by Choir, sining the first stanza of Hymn
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning, our songs shall rise to Thee
The Twenty-third Psalm (in concert)
Invocation and Lord’s Prayer
Hymn
Lesson and Prayer
Communion Hymn
Lord’s Supper
Offering and Announcements
Special Music. Solo or Anthem
Sermon
Invitation Hymn
Reception of New Members
Closing Hymn or Closing Chant or Doxology
Benediction
Postlude
—–
R. C. Cave proposes an order of worship, 1918
This follows two posts with proposed orders of worship, one from Christian Hymnary (1909) and another from F. M. Green’s Christian Minister’s Manual (1883).
In 1918 R. C. Cave wants to help “in the way of giving suggestion, to the many churches that cannot have a minister of the gospel with them oftener than once or twice a month, and are usually limited to a simple service led by an elder, or some member of the congregation.” Cave devotes a chapter to this service, and another to the Communion Service. He elaborates on the elements in this worship service by providing text for the prayers, responsive readings, and other similar helps. I will condense his chapter to a simple list to facilitate comparing the structure of his proposed service to the earlier posts in this series. (I did not intend to create a series, but here we are.)
From R. C. Cave, A Manual for Ministers. Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1918, pp. 41-47:
—–
1. Hymn of praise and thanksgiving*
2. Responsive reading*
3. Invocation*
4. Hymn “expressing ‘huger and thirst after righteousness'”
5. Scripture reading and prayer
6. Offering (during which the choir may sing, or a leader may read a scripture text or hymn)
7. Devotional hymn*
8. Sermon
9. Invitation hymn
10. Taking confessions and welcoming new members
11. Lord’s Supper (to which Cave devotes the next chapter)
* congregation standing
—–
F. M. Green proposes “a good order for the public services of the Lord’s Day”, 1883
The orders of service from Christian Hymnary I posted a few days ago got me thinking, and since Green’s book was close at hand, I thought I would see what he says. Since it is online I see no need to rehearse how he sets up his proposed model. The book is a fine window into the practice of ‘church’ among the Christian Churches from 1880s into the 1900s. It was first published in St. Louis by John Burns in 1883. I have a copy bearing the imprint of Christian Publishing Company, successor to John Burns, also undated but with the ‘1883’ removed from Green’s preface. It appears to date from the 1900s. In 1904 it was still available from that outfit.
It was not an ‘official’ production, but to the extent it was an unofficially-official go-to manual, it appears that two books succeeded it. One came from Standard Publishing Company in Cincinnati, the other from Christian Board of Publication in St. Louis, successor of Christian Publishing Company. That itself reflects, to me, the growing divide among Christian Churches. By the second decade of the 20th century Standard is well into its own as a large publishing outfit, and Christian Board is a ‘brotherhood publishing house’ bought and paid for by R. A. Long as such, for such purposes. They are competitors, each with a range of periodicals, full scale book publishing of all kinds, and suppliers for all your churchly needs, from Sunday School award pins to baptismal pants. It makes sense, then, that each would issue new manuals for ministers. And each did.
I digress. Even so, now that I have both of those books also at hand, I will draft posts for them, too.
For now, here is the proposed order of service from F. M. Green, The Christian Minister’s Manual. For the Use of Church Officers in the Various Relations of Evangelists, Pastors, Bishops and Deacons. St. Louis; John Burns, 1883, p. 28:
—–
A good order for the public services of the Lord’s Day is desirable. The following, which is subject to amendment, as circumstances may demand, is given:
1. An opening hymn of praise, or thanksgiving.
2. The reading of a Scripture lesson either by the preacher or as a responsive service.
3. Prayer.
4. Public collection and announcements of meetings, etc., etc.
5. Singing.
6. Sermon.
7. Invitation hymn.
8. The Lord’s Supper.
9. Closing song and benediction.
Sometimes the general congregation may be dismissed before the ” breaking of bread.” This is usually done in the cities, and where the congregations are made up mostly of non-members of the church.
—–
Two orders of service from the Christian Hymnary, 1909
Two orders of worship from The Christian Hymnary, A Selection of Hymns and Tunes for Christian Worship. Revised and improved ed. 11th thousand. Dayton: Christian Publishing Association, 1909, p. 441:
—–
- Organ Prelude
- Doxology
- Invocation
- Responsive Reading
- Gloria Patri
- Hymn or Anthem
- Scripture Lesson
- Prayer
- Vocal or Organ Response
- Notices and Offering
- Hymn
- Sermon
- Brief Prayer
- Hymn or Anthem
- Benediction
- Organ Postlude
—
- Organ prelude
- Coronation (one stanza)
- Invocation
- Hymn or Anthem
- Responsive Reading
- Scripture Lesson
- Hymn
- Prayer
- Vocal or Organ Response
- Notices and Offering
- Sermon
- Hymn
- Prayer and Benediction
- Organ Postlude
—–
Congregations of the former ‘Christian Connexion’ by 1909 do not observe the Lord’s Supper weekly? I am surprised to learn this.
Flyaway: Rendel Harris on the Last Supper Cup, 1926
From an unknown newspaper 17 December 1926.
eScriptorium 