Faith Works 5-29-21

Faith Works 5-29-21

Jeff Gill

Summer in church

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When I think of worship services in the summer time, I think back into childhood and the kind of church buildings we had then.

The cornerstones all had dates in the 1800s, and the stained glass windows opened on the bottom, often pivoting when unlatched, yet another difference from the everyday and at home.

Fans were deployed into the pew racks around Memorial Day weekend, with Jesus or the Last Supper on one side, and the name of a local funeral home on the other, and a wooden paint stirrer type handle. Some women brought their own hand fans; my grandmother had some Oriental painted designs with a black lacquer metal frame which she opened with a practiced flick of her wrist.

Outside, with the windows all open such as there were, you heard dogs bark and motorcycles mutter past. At my mother's childhood church, which we were at quite frequently when I was younger, when the train went through two blocks away the preacher would steadily increase his volume from the pulpit until the first crossing evoked the engineer's horn, at which point the minister would look down at his notes grimly and bow his head in a form of ambiguous prayer until the train crossed the next three intersections, and the clacking of the caboose over the points meant he could safely continue.

Was it hot? I suppose it was; it was just summer was all, and you put up with it, hoping no fly would end up circling your pew. It was a definitely forbidden breach of church decorum to swat at flies. There weren't many, but I do not recall screens in most church windows (remember, they swung open around a horizontal pivot in the lower panels), so there were always a few. The temptation to take a bash at a fly in front of you was strong, but either our reverence for all life created by God, or the behavior expected in divine services, meant it was a fatal temptation to succumb to.

Both hats and gloves were fading through the 1960s in churches I was part of, but grandmothers tended to hold on to tradition as grandmothers do. Gloves did depart at least for a few months after Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as my maternal grandmother liked to say; hats got smaller to the point of superfluity, but they were still perched there (and the flies did often perch atop them). Ties on the menfolk would be loosened, discreetly; the rakish would unbutton the top button underneath the knot, at least for the duration of the service.

Preaching was more dependent on volume, such as when trains or other distractions passed by, because in the rural Midwest I don't recall many churches having electronic amplification until the 1970s, and in some quarters that was as controversial as drums or a guitar on the platform. I suspect a PA system was seen by some as the gateway drug to rock music. In general, to be a preacher meant having a preacher's pipes, and that had as much to do with volume as it did musicality. 

And I'll confess that I spent most of my high school years helping in the nursery, where the now wired church's set-up meant that one microphone, anchored to the pulpit, with a speaker in our ceiling, gave us an unintentional solo performance by the preacher on the hymns each week. We usually turned it down to zero until we heard down the hall that the sermon was starting, since you couldn't even hear the choir very well through the one mic.

Now we're working out how to integrate multiple camera angles and sound inputs into our streaming video broadcast, and prudent pastors turn off their wireless lapel mic as the praise team begins the musical offerings. Air conditioning is just about mandatory (I've seen where some places have had to call off services for a Sunday when their cooling system shut down and couldn't be repaired fast enough), and I haven't heard a dog bark during a sermon for a very long time.

But I hear a sermon of sorts every time I'm out on the porch and hear a train blow at a crossing, off in the distance. Remembrances, and memorials. May your Decoration Day give you pause for honoring all who have sacrificed to bring us to where we are, and for Memorial Day, in honoring those who gave their all. It's a good weekend to remember, and be thankful.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's in favor of sound systems and air conditioning, up to a point. Tell him where you think that point is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.