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.
S. H. Hall
Nashville, The City of David (Lipscomb): Three issues of Gospel Advocate remember Lipscomb and his legacy
The December 6, 1917 issue of Gospel Advocate was devoted to the memory of the recently-deceased David Lipscomb. It is a rich treasure of memories and tributes. To my knowledge this issue was the first to carry Lipscomb’s photograph on the cover. Similar covers followed in 1931 (the July 11 Davidson County Special Number) and 1939 (the December 7 special issue about the history of the Nashville congregations).
These three issues are of significant historical value. As primary sources they provide information unavailable elsewhere. As interpretive reflections they are a beginning point for how Lipscomb was remembered and how congregational history was recorded and carried forward. The 1917 issue, other than newspaper obituaries and Price Billingsley’s diary, is the first secondary source about the life and impact of David Lipscomb. The Billingsley diary (housed at Center for Restoration Studies, Abilene Christian University) contains a description of the funeral along with its author’s candid thoughts and impressions. It was not intended, at the time, for public reading.
The issue of the Advocate, however, is a product of the McQuiddy Printing Company and is most certainly intended to capture the mood and ethos in the air just after Lipscomb’s death and by way of the mails deliver it to subscribers wherever they may be. In point of time, it is the first published sustained historical reflection on Lipscomb’s life and ministry. The 1931 and 1939 special issues focus on Lipscomb’s activity on the ground among the citizens of Nashville’s neighborhoods. Here his legacy is as a church planter: an indefatigable, patient, faithful steward. He plants, he teaches, he preaches, he organizes. He observes shifting residential patterns and responds with congregational leadership development. To meet the needs of the emerging streetcar suburbs, he urges elders to take charge of teaching responsibilities, engage evangelists and establish congregations through peaceful migrations and church plants. The 1931 and 1939 issues are testimonies to the effects of this approach. Along the way they preserve details and photographic evidence that is simply unavailable elsewhere.
All three are available for download below.
Click here to download the December 6, 1917 David Lipscomb Memorial Number.
A strategy for congregational research
My Nashville research across the last ten years has evolved from an interest in Central Church (where I was then Associate Minister) to a much, much larger scope including each congregation in the county, every para-church ministry based in Nashville, and how the larger issues within Stone-Campbell history interact with local history in one city resulting in the ministry conducted on ground, in the trenches, in the congregations. With that comes the innumerable evangelists, ministers and pastors who held forth weekly from pulpits across the city. Ambitious? Yes. Perhaps too ambitious. That may be a fair criticism, but the field is fertile and the more I survey the landscape and read the sources and uncover additional data, the more I’m convinced to stay the course.
In the last four years especially I have focused my efforts to obtain information about the smaller congregations, closed congregations, particularly congrgations which have closed in the last 40 to 50 years. My rationale for this focus is that some history here is in some cases, potentially recoverable. There are larger affluent congregations which have appearances of vitality…they are going nowhere soon. I can only hope some one among them is heads-up enough to chronicle their ongoing history and preserve the materials they produced. On the other hand are congregations which have long-ago closed and chances are good we might not ever know anything of them except a name and possibly a location (for example, Carroll Street Christian Church is absorbed into South College Street in 1920 forming Lindsley Avenue Church of Christ…no paper is known to exist from this church, and I can’t even find one photo of the old building, and there is no one remaining who has living memory of this congregation). For all practical purposes Carroll Street Church of Christ may remain as mysterious in twenty years as it does now. I’d be surprised to learn of 3 people now living in the city of Nashville who have even heard of it.
But the several congregations that closed in the 50’s-80’s (and some even in the last five years) remain accessible if only through documents and interviews. Theoretically the paper (the bulletins, meeting minutes, directories, photographs, even potentially sermon tapes) has a good chance of survival in a basement or attic or closet. Chances are still good that former members still live, or folks might be around–in Nashville or elsewhere–who grew up at these congregations. Theoretically. Potentially. Hopefully.
Yet as time marches on there are more funerals…for example in the last year I missed opportunities to speak with three elderly folks about their memories at these now-closed churches…they were too ill to speak with me and now they are gone! I did, however, speak at length with one woman in ther 90’s who I thought died long ago! She is quite alive and lucid!
So from time to time I will highlight on this blog these closed congregations…closed in the recent past…with hopes that someone somewhere might look for them (I get hits on this blog by folks looking for all sorts of things, among them are several Nashville Churches of Christ). Maybe we can stir up some interest and surface additional information.
A few days ago I posted about one such congregation, the Twelfth Avenue, North Church of Christ. I have in the queue a post about New Shops Church of Christ in West Nashville. There are more, several more.
Stay tuned, and remember, save the paper!
Nashville Churches of Christ History Facebook group
Nashville Churches of Christ History group is open to anyone interested in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. When I began the group about three years ago I said this:
I envision this community as a place to share common interest in the rich story of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Nashville. I am conducting research for a book which will highlight each congregation of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches from the 1810’s to the present…basically the entire movement from its beginning in our city until now. I envision this group as a place to share memories, photos, news and generate discussion and interest. Please join and contribute. Please feel free to contact me directly at icekm (at) aol (dot) com.
Since readership for this blog is significantly higher now than it was in 2010, let me offer another invitation. The group is open to all. Help spread the word and generate interest. (astogetherwestandandsing…)
Name Authority for Nashville, Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations
Name Authority for Nashville Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations, September 2012
Click above to download a document listing 319 variants of time-, place- and character-names for the 227 known congregations of the Stone-Campbell movement in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee from 1812 to September 2012.
To my knowledge my work in this area is the only such compilation, and therefore, the most complete. The initial publication of the list to this blog was in May 2010 as a first step in my research toward a book on the Restoration Movement in Nashville. I blogged then:
With over 200 congregations in this county, the congregational research alone will take years, perhaps the remainder of my life. If I live to be 100 I may not finish even a rudimentary survey. It may be too much: too many congregations, too many preachers, too much ‘story’ to tell.
But this is where I am at the present. I publish the list here to generate interest, additions, subtractions, corrections and clarifications. Look it over and if I need to make changes, please let me know.
While congregational history is only one aspect of this project, this is where it all played out…on the ground in the congregations on a weekly basis. Few congregations have attempted more than a list of preachers or a narrative of the expansion of the church building. What I propose, as I wrote above, may be too much…too far to the other extreme. But that fact changes not one whit the necessity of it being done.
The story of these churches in Nashville needs to be told. I ask for your help in telling it. look over my list; I solicit your critique. Contact me at icekm [at] aol [dot] com.
(The first version of the name authority, from May 2010, can be found here.)
S. H. Hall remembers James A. Harding
S. H. Hall remembers James A. Harding
Part 3 (of 3) of Samuel Henry Hall’s reminiscences of three men who significantly influenced his life and ministry: David Lipscomb, T. B. Larimore and James A. Harding. I prefaced the first installment, on David Lipscomb, with a brief biographical sketch on Hall. By way of footnotes I again insert a few clarifying details. Additional information about Hall is available at here.
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Excerpted from chapter 3 of S. H. Hall, Sixty-Five Years in the Pulpit, Or, Compound Interest in Religion. Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1959. Pages 15-16.
JAMES A. HARDING – So different was he to either Lipscomb or Larimore. Lipscomb was always deeply serious and grave; Larimore quiet, gentle, and exceedingly kind in looks and manners; but Harding was exuberant, abounding in faith and his face aglow with joy. When I got into James A. Harding’s life I got into the field of faith and undoubting confidence in God’s love and care for his children here on earth. Special providence was his hobby, if it be right to call it a hobby, and I came to go along with him all the way in his faith and trust in the Father’s taking care of his children here on earth. He was often criticized by some as going too far in such faith, but when you listened to him talk about his Father in heaven and describe the beauties of the heavenly home, as a rule, you were made a believer. How often have I been lifted almost out of myself as I listened to him talk about his Father’s love and special interest in his people! Yes, I listened when he quoted Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” He would then hurry to Psalm 84:11, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” How he could emphasize, “NO GOOD THING WILL HE WITHHOLD FROM THEM THAT WALK UPRIGHTLY!” Then to Ephesians 3:20, looking up with tears coming down on his cheeks, he would exclaim, “He does for us exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think.” Well, Harding made a full convert out of me, and made me wish that every child of God on earth has the faith and confidence in God’s love and care for his people that James A. Harding had. Yes, he was criticized by some for his special /16/ providence “hobby,” as some called it, and even Brother Lipscomb who loved him dearly felt that he sometimes went too far with it. But let me have his faith – it enabled me see as I had never seen before, and to rejoice as I had never rejoiced before in the consciousness that God is near, that his angels surround us, and that they are sent out as ministering spirits to God’s own here on earth. Brother Harding saw good in all of his experiences.
One other thing about him, and I close, but could write all day about him. Due to the condition of his mind he did not seem to remember from one Lord’s day to the next what he had preached on the previous Lord’s day, but was continually discussing special providence or talking about heaven. Therefore, we had to persuade him to give up pulpit work, a service which he had rendered for about a year after moving to Atlanta with what was then called the South Pryor Street Congregation. After being out of the pulpit for quite awhile, one Lord’s Day morning he said to his wife, “Let’s go over and hear Brother Hall at West End Avenue today.”[1] So here they came. I knew how his heart yearned to get back in the pulpit, so asked my elders to let me use him that day because many people were there who had never heard him preach and, if he talked about heaven or special providence, it would be new to them and we who had heard him on these subjects would enjoy it. I could never tire of hearing him speak. I had promised to speak on the “Home” that morning, so to help him take that subject for study and stay with it I had informed him that this was the subject for study and he had expressed his delight to discuss it. To make it easier for him to stay with the subject I made some preliminary remarks to get him to think along that line, and then turned the subject over to him. A more coherent, logical line of thinking I had never heard that when he spoke of the different members of the home – father, mother, sons and daughters, and their respective duties to each other. Then he said, “If we live as God tells us, some of these days” – now raising his hand and pointing toward heaven – “we will all be – Home, Home, that is Home!” He never got out of heaven and not a dry eye was seen in that audience.
Well, we have to stop here, but if I were to talk and write from now until then end of life comes, I could not tell all that these great men have meant to me. I thank God that he, in his providence, brought them into my life.
[1] Hall began preaching in Atlanta the first of January 1907, p. 17, until he moved to Los Angeles to preach for the Sichel Street Church of Christ in September 1920, p. 85. For a photograph of the West End building, see p. 18. South Pryor Street Church was an outgrowth from West End, p. 20, and by the end of Hall’s first four years there was a second ‘swarm’ from West End, p. 23. For additional instances of how Hall saw special providence at work, Harding style, see Ch. X, pp. 56 ff.
S. H. Hall remembers T. B. Larimore
S. H. Hall remembers T. B. Larimore
Part 2 of Samuel Henry Hall’s reminiscences of three men who significantly influenced his life and ministry: David Lipscomb, T. B. Larimore and James A. Harding. I prefaced the first installment, on David Lipscomb, with a brief biographical sketch on Hall. By way of footnotes I again insert a few clarifying details. Additional information about Hall is available at here.
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Excerpted from chapter 3 of S. H. Hall, Sixty-Five Years in the Pulpit, Or, Compound Interest in Religion. Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1959. Pages 14-15.
T. B. LARIMORE – He was at his best when I began to preach. I heard so much about him and it was so favorable that I wondered if T. B. Larimore would leave this old world as did Enoch and Elijah and be relieved to what is known as death’s transition. I have not the words to express the powerful influence he had on me. We were blessed in our Atlanta work – I believe it was the third year – by having him there for a revival.[1] He had his peculiarities, which never did any harm to a human soul, but sometimes embarrassed his friends.
Brother O. B. Curtis, who perhaps knew Larimore as but few knew him, having been with him and led the singing the whole time he lived in Washington, D.C.[2], and who is now out very efficient song leader at Arcadia, California, made the statement a few days ago that he never heard Larimore say one harmful thing about anyone. This made me think of a little of my experience with him. I was preaching regularly once a month and doing all the mission work in the summer for a congregation[3] that once had on its board of elders a very shrewd lawyer, who took a position as legal adviser to the leader of a very strong religious cult that believed in Triune Immersion. He was immersed in this way, doubtless, to please the one who was paying him a big salary. But his services ended and he returned to his home town and, it seemed, expected to be received in full fellowship and to be recognized as an elder as he was before he left; however, he was not recognized. He came to my room almost every day complaining about the treatment he was receiving, and spoke of what E. A. Elam, T. B. Larimore and others thought of him. Some of our best were they, and I was just a very young preacher. This was just before our move to Atlanta, Georgia. He had a great deal to say about prophecy and gave me one position which he stated he also gave to Larimore, for which, Larimore said he never thought of before and thanked him most graciously for the thought. While Larimore was in a revival in Nashville the lawyer chanced to be in Nashville also, and learning of Larimore’s being there and where he was preaching, decided to go and hear him.[4] He got there a little late, and as he entered the building he was pleased to hear Larimore discussing the very point in prophecy that he has pointed out to him. So, Larimore, seeing this great lawyer coming down the aisle, at once stopped his sermon and stated: “Friends, since beginning this sermon, I see a friend of mine is here and he knows more about this subject than I do, and I am inviting him to the stand to discuss it in my stead.” This lawyer had related this a number of times to show what great men such as Larimore had thought of him, and as a rebuke to his elders at home for repudiating him as an elder. He related this to me a number of times, and deep down in my heart I /15/ did not believe it and made up my mind if I ever met Larimore, I would ask him about it. So one Christmas, as I was changing trains in Nashville, I met Brother Larimore in the waiting room. After a little conversation about where I had been and where I was going, I stated, “Brother Larimore, I have a question that I want to ask you, and I hope you will not think it out of place for me to ask it.” I related the whole story, then stated, “I have wondered, Brother Larimore, if you did do this.” Get this – he raised those long arms and gently placed his hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye – his eyes were so gentle and beamed with kindness, and said, “Brother Hall, you will never be any worse off if you never know. Miss Emma Page is in the women’s waiting room, would you not like to speak to her?” Into that room we went and I visited awhile and then took my train for home wondering what did he mean by saying, “Brother Hall, you will never be any worse off if you never know.” My only conclusion was he feared that if he stated the whole story was false, I would abuse the information and say too much about it. But that’s that.
What did Larimore mean to me? Well, I got this great lesson – you need absolutely nothing to be a good preacher of the gospel except to know the Book, the exact sayings of our Lord, and tell it to the people. If ever a man spoke where the Bible speaks and stayed silent where it is silent, Larimore did just that.
[1] Hall began his work in Atlanta the first of January 1907, see p. 17; Larimore’s meeting there would have been in about 1910.
[2] 1922-1925, see Doug Foster on Larimore in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 453.
[3] Smithville, Tennessee, from 1904-1906, see p. 9. Hall helped establish three congregations in and around Smithville during this time.
[4] Larimore’s first revival in Nashville was in 1885; he preached often for Christian Churches in Nashville from 1885-1906 including a long meeting in 1887 when the South College Street Christian Church was set in order. David Lipscomb was one of the elders at South College Street from 1887 until his death in 1917. Larimore and Emma Page were married 1 January 1911; see Terry J. Gardner on Emma Page Larimore in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 452.
S. H. Hall remembers David Lipscomb
S. H. Hall remembers David Lipscomb
Samuel Henry Hall was born in Smyrna, TN 23 December 1877. Baptized by F. W. Smith in a meeting at Rock Spring Church of Christ in 1892, he began preaching a few years later in 1896. By the time he entered Nashville Bible School in 1902 he had been preaching about six years, had taught school, was married and had a young son. While a student at NBS he roomed with H. Leo Boles. When these memoirs were published, first in 1955 under the title Sixty Years in the Pulpit (privately printed by John Allen Hudson of Old Paths Book Club), Hall had lived in Los Angeles for five years. Hall preached often in revivals and gospel meetings throughout his career, and earlier at Sichel Street Church of Christ, Los Angeles, from 1920-1922. His brief stay in California came between two long ministries, first at West End Church of Christ in Atlanta from 1906-1920 and at Russell Street Church of Christ in Nashville from 1922-1950. During his ministries in Atlanta and Nashville, both churches grew to considerable size. West End Church in Atlanta grew to about 350 members (large for a Church of Christ in Georgia at that time) and Russell Street in Nashville, with over 1000 members, was among the largest congregations of any group in Nashville. He served on the Board of Directors at David Lipscomb College prior to his move west in 1950. Additional information is available at here.
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Excerpted from chapter 3 of S. H. Hall, Sixty-Five Years in the Pulpit, Or, Compound Interest in Religion. Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1959. Pages 13-14.
DAVID LIPSCOMB, whom I first came really to know after entering the Nashville Bible School. When I entered that school[1] I had deep-seated prejudice against him because of the influence of the “A. McGary and Lipscomb controversy” over what was called “rebaptism” and “shaking them in,” the latter being the expression used by McGary against Lipscomb and the former the word used in speaking of those who stood with McGary. My father was a regular reader of the Firm Foundation and took a radical stand for McGary’s side of the question, and it was through his influence that prejudice against Lipscomb found a strong place in my heart. I took a class under Brother Lipscomb, primarily to give him all the trouble I could when such questions came up.
But, let me state that this is where I got what I sometimes call “my second conversion.” I found Lipscomb so everlastingly fair in all that he said about other religious bodies and those of our brethren who differed with him that it revealed something within me that was all wrong and led me to see how utterly wrong I was in taking a position and holding to it with bull-dog tenacity instead of studying the question with the sole desire to get the truth, even when it condemned me. It was the influence of Lipscomb that planted, never to be rooted up, the following scriptures – Micah 6:8, “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to lover mercy (kindness), and to walk humbly with thy God?” Jeremiah 5:1, “Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.” To be absolutely just in representing others, never falsely accusing them, and to be as fair in stating their positions as you are in stating your own, was the lesson I got from Lipscomb—and it saved me. For had I continued with the unfair and prejudiced way I had been handling questions with those whom I differed, I would have been lost—no doubt about this. The awful danger of our “receiving not the love of the truth, that we might be saved” about which we are warned in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 had never dawned upon my heart. Lipscomb planted that warning, and he lived what he tried to get over to his students. He is the only editor—there may be one or two exceptions—who, occasionally, in his writing would take up some statement that he had formerly made and state, “I am sure I was mistaken in the position I took on this scripture and want to now correct it.” He looked for his own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others. Hw often did I hear him in the class, when some young preacher would start off on a tirade /14/ against the Baptist or Methodist on some position, gently say, “You are mistaken there—here is their position,[2] and he would give it exactly as their best scholars taught it. All liars shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone, so the Book declares. So far as I know, it is just as bad to lie about others by accusing them of believing something they do not believe as it is to lie in a horse swap. If not, why not?
Name Authority for Nashville, Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations
Name Authority for Nashville Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations
Click above to download a document listing 286 variants of time-, place- and character-names for the 228 known congregations of the Stone-Campbell movement in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee from 1820 to May 2010.
To my knowledge this is the first such compilation, and therefore, the most complete. The publication of the list to this blog is a first step in my research toward a book on the Restoration Movement in Nashville. With over 200 congregations in this county, the congregational research alone will take years, perhaps the remainder of my life. If I live to be 100 I may not finish even a rudimentary survey. It may be too much: too many congregations, too many preachers, too much ‘story’ to tell.
But this is where I am at the present. I publish the list here to generate interest, additions, subtractions, corrections and clarifications. Look it over and if I need to make changes, please let me know.
The story of these churches in Nashville needs to be told. I ask for your help in telling it.
Nashville Churches of Christ History Group on Facebook
Nashville Churches of Christ History group is open to anyone interested in the Stone-Campbell movement in Nashville and Davidson County. Here is the first post I made a few days ago:
I envision this community as a place to share common interest in the rich story of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Nashville. I am conducting research for a book which will highlight each congregation of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches from the 1820’s to the present…basically the entire movement from its beginning in our city until now. I envision this group as a place to share memories, photos, news and generate discussion and interest. Please join and contribute. Please feel free to contact me directly at icekm (at) aol (dot) com.
The group is open to all. Help spread the word and generate interest.
eScriptorium 