preaching

Wilhite Meetings, Washington, Indiana, May 1910

/ mac / Leave a comment

As I read in the old church papers, I try to remember that in 1910 the photograph was still ascending as an innovation in printing and publishing and therefore it was still emerging as a staple of social and cultural life.  Standard Publishing appears to have taken full advantage as every issue of Christian Standard from the period carries several nice photographs.  Church architecture is a passing interest, especially the interior spaces designed and built for worship.  So photographs of church interiors, and congregations at worship never fail to catch my eye.  This one shows a full house at the Christian Church in Washington, Indiana, probably at the climax of H. E. Wilhite’s series of gospel meetings.  I have seen plenty of meeting reports that indicate few if any responses and little interest.  A few are as glowing as this one. Most are somewhere in the middle.

This item opens a window: we hear what the evangelist thought about the meeting, alongside a note from the regular minister.  Together they help us understand the social dynamic of the gospel meeting and the formative power of preaching events such as this.  We learn something about how music functioned to complement the preaching, and we learn about the energy poured into the effort by the whole congregation.  The photograph of the large congregation filling all available seats is compelling in its own way.  This is from “Wilhite Meetings at Christian Church, Washington Ind.,” Christian Standard August 20, 1910, page 1470.

“Wilhite Meetings at Christian Church, Washington Ind.,” Christian Standard August 20, 1910, page 1470.

“Wilhite Meetings at Christian Church, Washington Ind.,” Christian Standard August 20, 1910, page 1470.

“The New Make Christ King” Hymn Book advertisement, 1915

/ mac / Leave a comment

Quite some time ago I realized that advertisements contain a certain kind of information that is underutilized in Restoration Movement research.  I cannot recall ever seeing one footnoted.   But I have paid close attention in my casual reading and have gleaned several tidbits I intend to utilize in future projects.  I relied on ads for critical information included my exhibit about E. L. Jorgenson’s Great Songs of the Church. A heads-up marketing student could have years worth of projects.

Because they have been unearthed as a consequence of a recent move, and as a diversion from thesis research and writing, I browsed some old issues of Christian Standard from the Reynoldsburg genizah.  I will share three, one per week.

—

This one announces the publication of what it claims is “the most popular hymn book | the best selling hymn book | the hymn book used by most evangelists”: Excell, Biederwolf, Stough, and Lyon’s The New Make Christ King from Glad Tidings Publishing Company, Chicago.

The OCLC record for the edition linked to above lists Pearl Howard Welshimer as an author.  His portrait, though, is not included here, nor is he mentioned in the ad.  Such would have commended it to Christian Standard readers.

I find the portraits of value because when I teach about these things, and utilize projection, I like to show faces that go with the names under discussion.  Ads with pictures seem to connect in a way that text alone does not do.  The rhetoric of advertisement and promotion is rich in this example…’most popular’, ‘best selling’, ‘greatest’ and the like.  The rhetoric of merchandising evangelism is also well-represented (read closely to discover the details).  So, here it is, the full back-page ad from Christian Standard, vol. 50, no. 22 (February 27, 1915):

Christian Standard, vol. 50, no. 22 (February 27, 1915)

Christian Standard, vol. 50, no. 22 (February 27, 1915)

David Lipscomb compares Jesse Sewell against Alexander Campbell, Tolbert Fanning, Moses Lard and T. W. Brents

/ mac / Leave a comment

Some time ago I posted Benjamin Franklin’s impression of meeting and hearing Alexander Campbell in person for the first time.

In a similar vein comes David Lipscomb’s estimation of Jesse Londerman Sewell’s preaching.   This from Life and Sermons of Jesse L. Sewell (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Publishing Company, 1891), pp. 118-119:

—–

As a preacher he was a man of one book, he preached the word of God in a meek, earnest, faithful manner and kind spirit. He spoke with ease to himself, and his style was pleasant to his hearers. His power was in an earnest and sincere presentation of the truth, remarkable for its simplicity, conciseness and clearness. He was familiar with the Bible as but few men are. His discourses did not cover a wide range of thought, but were finished and complete, eminently pointed and instructive. They showed he had viewed his subject from every standpoint and that the bearing of every passage of scripture on a position, taken, had been carefully considered. I have heard Alexander Campbell, with his clear thoughts, reverential manner, noble bearing, and profuseness of imagery, Tolbert Fanning with his Websterian clearness and force of statement, and majestic mien, and forceful manner, Moses E. Lard with his close and clear analysis and elucidation of his subject and his power to touch the sympathy and to stir the feelings with his tender pathos, I have heard Dr. [p. 119] Brents with his well laid premises and strong and convincing logic, but for a well-rounded, finished, completed sermon, stating the full truth on his subject in manner so simple that the humblest could understand it, and guarding at every point, against possible misconception or objection, my conviction has been for years, that Jesse Sewell in his prime, was the superior of any man I ever heard. He lacked the aggressive force and self-asserting power that belonged to these other men. He was lacking in both the mental and physical activity and vigor that make a great leader, but for clearness of perception, the ability to look on all sides of a question, and to view it in all its lights and to form just and sound conclusions, then to state them with clearness and critical precision, he had few superiors. He was one of the safest and soundest scripture teachers to be found.

My conviction is, the hold the Christian religion has upon the people of Middle Tennessee, is due under God to Jesse Sewell, more than any other one man. His singleness of purpose and devotion to the work explains the reason. Brother Sewell’s whole life was one of quiet, earnest simplicity, industry and genuine honesty. He had no taste for show or display of any kind. …

David Lipscomb, Life and Sermons of Jesse L. Sewell (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Publishing Company, 1891), pp. 118-119.

 

It is a revealing analysis for in it we see:

–Lipscomb’s description Campbell, Fanning, Lard and Brents are from first-hand direct experience.  Lipscomb heard Campbell in Nashville in the midst of the Ferguson fiasco; he was formed by Fanning’s teaching at Franklin College and in the Nashville congregations; he could have heard Lard at several places but Nashville seems the likeliest (although I do not have a date at hand, but rely on memory); and what is true of Fanning is nearly true of Brents, who preached in many places.

–Lipscomb’s evaluation which reveals what impressed him about each man’s preaching, and from it we could triangulate those qualities of homiletic purpose, style, function, and content that most commended themselves to David Lipscomb.

–Lipscomb’s knowledge of the churches of Christ in Middle Tennessee and of Sewell’s work among them over a period of time.  That final analysis is striking for I would assumed Fanning’s activity (directly through his papers and through the influence of his school and students) would have been uppermost in Lipscomb’s mind.  Lipscomb may have assessed Fanning’s formative role in similar or approaching terms (I cannot recall off-hand).  In light of this from Lipscomb about Sewell, we should hold loosely to any assumption that Fanning was the dominant actor among these congregations.  At least we should in the absence of other evidence.  I am happy to learn more.

–Lipscomb also was known for his simplicity of lifestyle, although through Margaret’s innovative spirit they eventually lived at a standard quite above the Sewell’s two-rooms-and-a-lean-to (see p. 120 against Hooper’s biography).  E. G. Sewell certainly lived above this standard in his neat brick home in East Nashville.  But the point is that Lipscomb highly esteems simplicity, plainness, forthrightness, industry, devotion, and the like.  We see this from Lipscomb’s taste for personal attire to his preferred manner of ministry and mission work to his comments about church architecture.

–In these paragraphs we see something about Jesse Sewell, also Campbell, Fanning, Lard, and Brents.  And we something about D. Lipscomb, too.

 

Orders of worship, a final word, for now

/ mac / 1 Comment

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

/ mac / Leave a comment

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

/ mac / 2 Comments

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

/ mac / Leave a comment

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

—–