The Old Days

When I think back to early preaching days, I cannot help but remember three very rural North Carolina Churches to which a Young Harris College friend and I would go.  It was an eight point charge and Harold and I went to one of the three churches each Sunday.  He would preach one Sunday and I would do it the next.  While I cannot figure how one preacher could be assigned responsibility for eight different churches, it happened back in days that are long past.  My first appointment in South Georgia was a three point charge and though the churches were small, it kept me busy being pastor and preacher to all three.  

The multi church assignment was a carryover from the days when Methodist preachers were known as circuit riders.  In the early days of Methodism the circuits might cover large areas with the preacher riding up once every few months.  It was then baptisms and weddings would take place as well as gatherings for preaching.  A church like the circuit riding church was more influenced by the frontier rural environment than a liturgical calendar.  It is also one of the reasons Methodist churches used to have holy communion quarterly with most folks thinking that was more than enough.  A worship service with communion was often not regarded as a preaching Sunday and a lot of folks would stay home.    

Of course, the church has changed greatly just in the years of my ministry.  When I started preaching most churches left the doors unlocked during the week, communion was served monthly normally on first Sunday, and there was what is remembered as a strong evangelistic spirit which invited its young to accept Christ and become servants in the world.   My memories are not about church politics although there were some, but about worship, altar calls, spirited singing that went on and on, and people who tended to stick around forever after the preacher said the benediction at the Sunday evening service.  I sometimes wish I could turn the clock back to those days, or at least to my memories of them.