Growing up in a small church

John Acuf recently posted some thoughts as to why he thought it better to grow up in a small church. That got me to thinking about my own experiences and the little congregation I attended during my youth. Here's my take on the subject:


1.  Your Sunday School teacher was a lock.
There was only one teacher and one class for each age group you were in: my mother, Margie Woods, Dorothy Brannon, Johnny Brannon, and Atkins Wright. 1st grade through high school. Even the rooms remained the same. You started near the back door in the basement and worked your way up the hall and finally finished in the closed-in balcony upstairs.

2. So was your dating potential.
In a small church the available girls to date was a fixed number. A small, fixed number. Sure, there were non-church girls one could date, but if your intent was to stay with the sanctified (and there was a lot  of pressure to do so), the pickings were slim. There were the Brannon girls, one older and one younger than me; Judy Wright, all-too soon claimed by Jerry Gibson, Helen Davis, two years older than me,  a couple of friends of friends that couldn't be counted on as regular attenders, and a couple of girls whose names I confess I can't remember. New girls moving to town were really, really big news. Some came for the summer, some actually moved to Breckenridge, and one visited her aunt occasionally. I'll tell that story sometime. Maybe.

3. You learned to sing four-part harmony.
Our little congregation sang old-time songs in four-part harmony. More or less. We used a shaped note songbook, as did many conservative fellowships in the South, and every Wednesday night all the junior and senior high students gathered for singing tutelage led by Ross Greenlee, barber, deacon and song-leader. The boys took turns leading, the girls looked on admiringly and added harmony.

And we did learn to sing, and read music, as long as it was in the shaped note notation. Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So L, Ti, Do. And there was never a problem for a guest song leader picking songs. When Ross Greenlee lead singing, which was almost every Sunday, he wrote the numbers of his song picks on the flyleaf of the song book. Eventually, every book in the house had one or more selection sets; just pick up a book, check the fly leaf and you were all set. Not possible to lead a song the congregation didn't know. Of, course, that was moot - we knew every song in the book.

4. Every adult could discipline you.
And often did. There was an unspoken agreement that any adult who went to your church had the right to set your feet back on the straight and narrow, if needed. On baby dedication day at our present church, we stand and say we will be the community that nourishes, guides and chastens those children as they grow. At a small church they really do that.  Especially the chasten part.

5. Potluck dinners were something to behold.
We attend a large congregation these days, and there simply is no way to have an all-church potluck dinner with 1,400 people spread between two worship services. There will be groups or sub-sections of the congregation that will have a potluck from time-to-time, but the day of the all-church meal together is over for our congregation. Instead, “fellowship” time looks more like Starbucks as we gather around the coffee urns between services. I have blogged before about the culinary delights that come from church pot-luck dishes. Especially those dishes that were prepared in the era of my upbringing. Shame on the first person who brought KFC to the church dinner!

How about you? Do you have any small church memories to share?