The Growing Up Years Church

Church was a part of my life from my earliest memory. Some of the experiences were troublesome, remaining so to this day, but through it all I found a faith that has never failed. There have been times when I have wanted something very much, and even believed that it must be God’s will, only to have His will turn out to be different. But through these experiences I learned to recognize that His will was so superior to what I wanted that I had no trouble being content.

The earliest flickering memory of church that I have was not of a service, but of my mother getting dressed up to go to church. The only thing I remember was her Twenties style cloche hat. I was only three at the time. My father was dead and we had no car, so the four of us crowded into my Uncle Bert’s car to go the six miles to the Clarion Free Methodist Church. I think that there were five in his family at the time. It wasn’t unusual to pack in that many in those days. The distances driven were much shorter and the speeds were much slower.

At the beginning of my fourth year my mother remarried and we moved about forty miles away to my stepfather’s home. There we attended the Egypt Free Methodist Church. It, too was about 4 miles away from home and we still had no car, but my stepfather had a mare named Nellie and a buggy that was a little larger than the conventional size. Nellie was a draft horse, and preferred a steady walk to a trot of any kind. It took better than an hour to get to church that way. We would take Nellie out of the buggy shafts, put on a bitless halter, give her a bucket of oats, and go in to church.

When we got a little older the children- Le Roy, Lois, and I, would frequently walk to church. We had a shortcut through the woods that reduced the distance by more than a mile. Sometimes one of my step-cousins, Glen Mortimer, would let us ride home on the running board of his Model A Ford.

By the time I was ten or thereabouts, we got a 1926 Buick. It cost us $65.00. I think that the money came from a Veterans bonus earned by my father when he was in service in the latter part of World War I. Gasoline was 19 cents a gallon then, and one dollar would take the Buick about sixty miles, but dollars were very scarce then, so the only trips were to church and about once every two or three months into town. I recall one year when I got to town only once in the entire year.

When winter came antifreeze was an added expense. There were two kinds available then, a glycol base, which was very expensive, and an alcohol base. We could only afford the cheaper kind. It lost its antifreezing property through evaporation as the winter progressed. We would keep the car in the barn, frequently drained of antifreeze, and on Saturday afternoon we would warm the antifreeze, put it back in the car, and then work at starting it. We turned it over several times with the hand crank and then tried a combination of starter and hand crank. Frequently we worked a couple of hours to get the car to start. I’ve often wondered since how the battery held up as well as it did. We would let it run long enough to get thoroughly warmed up and then shut it off until morning. Usually it would start with several revolutions of the hand crank the next morning, and we had a ride to church.

The Free Methodist Church at that time was very conservative. Women were not permitted to cut their hair or wear wedding rings. No instrumental music was allowed in the church. Most of the men chose not to wear neckties, considering them to be ornaments.

Our church was on a circuit with two others. That meant that we had a preacher only every other Sunday. On the alternate Sunday we had a class meeting. Sunday School met every Sunday morning. We always used the International Quarterly for the lessons.

Class meeting was a time of individual testimonies and spontaneous singing. I learned a lot of old hymns that way. A person’s Spiritual state was judged by certain outward manifestations, emphasizing an ecstatic state of shouting, jumping, and praising God. Doctrinally, there were two states of grace, salvation and sanctification. In the latter state we were taught that we were sinless. Achieving that state was expected to be marked with an outpouring of blessing of the ecstatic kind. I think that a person’s testimony to sanctification could be accepted without the congregation necessarily observing the outpouring, but that was an exception. My stepfather, late in life, began to wonder if he had indeed achieved sanctification because his experience was different from the accepted pattern. He was a devout and dedicated Christian, and I have no question that he was right with God.

Revival meetings and Camp Meetings were a regular feature in our experience. The Camp Meeting was an annual affair held in the County Seat, Brookville. It lasted ten days. We did not get to attend the whole time many summers, although we were able to do so twice. We usually were able to attend on Sundays through the kindness of neighbors or if we had gas for the car. The services were evangelistic and emotional. Their success was judged by the number of seekers at the altar. I was a seeker many times but I can remember only one occasion when I felt the touch of the Holy Spirit in that setting.

The message that was a constant theme was that of damnation and Hell. I remember one occasion, when I was about seven or eight, attending an afternoon prayer meeting during which there was a vivid discussion of the Second Coming and the Judgement, with great emphasis on the fires of hell. Because I had never had an ecstatic emotional experience, I was afraid that I was not saved. When we left the service to go home, the afternoon sunlight seemed brassy and cruel. The beauty of the rolling rural hills seemed a mockery. I can still remember the fear I felt that afternoon.

There was frequently a revival meeting, held in a hall or a tent at some other time of the year. Except for the setting and the services being limited to the evening, they were very similar to the Camp Meeting. Also there were occasional revival meetings held in the central church in the circuit. I remember one of these distinctly. The preacher’s text was “Redeem the time, because the days are evil.” I can’t remember anything that he said other than the text, but I went forward at the altar call and felt cleansed.

Attendance at church was mandatory. There were also prayer meetings in the members’ homes, and frequently evening services. I remember fighting without success to stay awake during a long prayer, until someone out of pity had me lay down on the seat. A walk home by the light of a kerosene lantern usually served well to wake me up.

I can distinctly remember four severe lickings I got while growing up. One of them was a result of missing a church service. A lady attended our church from the central church by coming with the pastor on the Sundays he came. She usually brought one of her sons. One Sunday he and I stayed on the porch and listened casually to the service rather than going inside. When the service ended my mother came out and announced to all and sundry that I was going to get it for staying outside. That afternoon she cut a limber switch from the lilac bush and used it up on me.

Family worship was an integral part of my growing up. It was usually in the morning after chores but before the day’s work started. One of the parents would read a passage of scripture and then each one of us would pray in turn. We usually spent the better part of an hour at family worship. On Sunday there was a different pattern. Family worship was in the evening. Rather than reading the Scripture we usually recited the first Psalm. I learned it by heart very early.

I have put down both the negative and the positive of these experiences because there is a very important lesson to be learned from them. God was able and willing to use these experiences to instill in me a love and reverence for Him that I would have been less likely to acquire without them. The people were quite possibly “broken vessels” but God was able to use them in teaching me to accept His love and forgiveness. They kept in constant touch with His Word through their reverence for the Bible. They taught me that nothing was more important than my relationship with God. I have grown a long way since those early years when fear of damnation and Hell were strong motivators. I still have a long way to go. There is much that I do not understand. But that is where Faith and the Grace of God come into play. I love God because He is God and because He loves me. One of the most significant demonstrations of that love is the permission He gives for me to come to Him through Christ, in spite of my failings, my struggle with self, and my failure to be completely dedicated. Thank You, Lord!