58 thoughts on “GOH: I’ll Take The Old Highway”

  4. I cannot make out anything they are saying and I am even wearing headphones. Wait, I think I heard the word “Calvary” and “Highway.” I don’t think their recording equipment was made for such a large group of singers.

  5. I found the lyrics!!

    There are many new roads we see each day
    Each one claims they are the way
    To a life of satisfaction more than we’ve dreamed
    They are lined with things that please the eye
    But they cannot satisfy
    So I decided to walk the highway with the redeemed

    I’ll take the old higway
    The one that’s called straight
    It’s so very narrow All the way to the gate
    It started at Calvary that’s where I got on
    It’s the old old highway paved with grace all the way home

    Our highway may look to worldly men
    Like it’s a road to a bitter end
    For we are promised tribulations all along
    The difference is easy to explain for we have everything to gain
    So just count me in the number going home

    4. I haven’t heard the music, but those lines are really rough metrically!

    5. Thanks for the words — like many others, I could only make out a word here and there.

  6. Thanks for the Acapella link, Darrell. I skipped the featured video and went straight to the good stuff! Nice way to head off for work. :mrgreen:

  7. Church choirs really need to learn to enunciate! I sang in the choir in our old church in Michigan and I knew we sounded a lot like this choir. A nice sound but what’s the use of it if the people listening can’t understand the words? 🙁

      2. This is what happens when you tell a choir to really sing out, but say nothing about blending or tone or dynamics.

      1. Nay… TWO white pianos!! I hear the “Hallelujah” chorus! *rapture* *glee* 😀

        1. Nay, I don’t think this comes within a hundred light years of Glee! 😯 😉

    3. At about :37 it’s like some woman woke up and thought, “Oh, crap! I’m supposed to be singing!” and then went back to sleep again 5 seconds later. Weird.

    5. Is this song written only for ALTO? Or is alto the only part that people who can’t sing actually end up singing?

      1. Alto has the main melody on a lot of choir arrangements. So yeah, if you aren’t singing parts, you more or less sing the alto line.

  9. btw, this is a church that is vying for IFB supremacy here in the Piedmont Triad area. The contenders are:
    1. Gospel Light Baptist Church, Walkertown, NC The reigning flagship of IFBdome in the area. School, bus route ministry, SOTL conference

    2. Woodland Baptist Church, Rural Hall, NC Recently relocated to Rural Hall but they have a School, buss route ministry and a college.

    3. Calvary Baptist Church, King, NC The rural Mothership. School, bus route ministry, a college and are the champions of the Christian Flag, “the people say fight” controversy.

    4. Freedom Baptist Church, Rural Hall, NC
    They only have a bus route ministry at this time. (Freedom and Woodland are on the same Road less than 5 miles apart)

    There are a few others in the area but this should suffice to illustrate the strain on the local culture. Oh, lest I forget this area also can claim “Piedmont International Bible College,” located in Downtown Winston-Salem, NC.

      1. Well, we also have have four major universities in the ACC: UNC, Wake Forest, NC State and Duke. They act as a counter agent to the fundie koolaid crowd. 😉

    3. Don – what I want to know is do any of those churches claim to be “the only Bible-believing church for miles”?

        1. There is also the “college” of Ron Comfort, Ambassador Baptist located in Lattimore NC. I was really impressed by him 35 years ago, but after dropping out of IFBdom in the late 80s I haven’t kept up with his activities. I recently read one of his “messages” on the Ambassador website, and was thinking “Is this guy supposed to be the president of a college, and doesn’t know the difference between a tenant and a tenet??”

        2. It’s a basic tenet of real estate law that tenants should pay their rent.

  10. Are there any good church choirs? Either they can’t carry a tune, can’t enunciate or they sing dirges. And what’s with all the crappy fake plants?

  11. Two things:

    1. @ 1:58 is the lady voting or waving?

    2. Love the ratio of women to men. Never understood why women always out number the men???

    1. She’s waving but why right then? Maybe she saw someone come in who she knows, but that’s not professional. She then whispered something to the person next to her right in the middle of a song. That’s not done! We heard often enough about how we should stand and hold our books etc.

      As for why there are more women than men in church choirs, I guess it’s something about men thinking singing is wimpy or sissified or something dumb like that. I have always preferred to hear men sing than women because a lot of women who sing soprano have this tendency to screetch. Not all of them, some do very well but others make you want to run screaming out of the room with your ears plugged.

      But in spite of the fact that the choir is mostly women singing soprano and alto, they took a dim view at my singing tenor because that’s traditionally a “man’s” part. I don’t agree with that at all. There are times when the choir sings in unison and unison is written for sopranos and tenors, forcing an alto to sing in falsetto. Why should one be forced to sing in a false voice just because they are female? I sang in my natural voice so tenor was more comfortable and I do NOT have a very deep speaking voice. I know a lot of women with a lovely deep voice who think the only way to sing is falsetto. That’s just plain dumb. The best women singers I’ve heard had a deep voice. 🙂

    2. I’m just wildly speculating here, but if you grow up as a fundy woman, there’s only a very limited number of things you’re allowed to do in church. Singing is one of them.

      If you’re a fundy man, you get to feel immensely important to the cause of Christ by virtue of your contribution of being a genetic male. But if you’re female, you kind of have to apologize for lacking in anything much you can Give to God by doing what little you can do.

      1. I just met a United Methodist Minister, a WOMAN. She pastors a church. I so look forward to hearing what that is like from a woman’s perspective! :mrgreen:

    3. Church things are usually a women’s club kind of thing. Now in my explanation, I understand that I’m generalizing and both genders like different things, but I think the overall stats back me up.

      Think of the things churches do; bake sales, pot lucks, choir, picnics, etc. The reason there is more women in the choir than men is that most men don’t enjoy doing choir. Some men enjoy it, and that’s fine. However, the numbers speak for themselves. Even if your church is non-fundy and shows a movie, it will probably be some weep fest.

      I could go on, but I’d end up writing a book.

      1. I’ve heard this often recently: that the church is too feminine and needs to become more appealing to men. I’m not sure if I agree or not, especially coming from the IFB world.

        Among the things churches do that you mentioned, our church never did a bake sale and actually preached against them as being worldly: “God’s church is supported by the generous tithing of its members, amen?”

        I also wouldn’t say that potlucks are something most women like more than men (maybe older women like my mom who does seem to genuinely enjoy cooking meals for people while I’d rather just go to a restaurant). Potlucks to me just seem like a lot of extra work for the women who usually cook, serve, and clean up, while the men get to enjoy endless trips back through the buffet line.

        As for picnics, we only had one once a year, and the activities again seemed often focused on the men – softball games, horseshoe, etc. – while the women served, cleaned, and watched the kids. (There were some women who played, but most didn’t.)

        Fundy church services are focused on the preaching which women can’t do. Public prayer, song leading, giving announcements, and ushering were all left to the men as of course any decision-making position like the deacon board. Some churches didn’t even like a woman to give a public testimony in the morning service.

        Women could teach children or other women, play piano, sing in the choir, work in the kitchen, watch nursery, lead VBS, write to missionaries, and plan the decorations. We could be very busy, but rarely in anything “official”. We were the support, behind -the-scenes while the men were on the front lines.

        And as you said, I could go on, but I’d have to write a book, which it looks like I already have!

        1. You’re so right PW. Fundies love to think of women only in the capacity of child care, cooking and cleaning, the things men don’t want to do. The Bible only says we can’t preach to men, period. Nothing else. But they save all the important and out front jobs for themselves and stick the women with the behind the scenes stuff like nursery duty.

          I like a potluck as well as anyone else because I like to eat. But whenever they’re having one as a woman I’m the one who has to plan what we’re taking, not my husband. I’m usually not helping with the serving. I have done so in the past but all that means is being the last to go through the line so all you get is what’s left over.

          Most everything else you mention that women are allowed and encouraged to do is always under the male leadership, in a small church the pastor, and in big churches some deacon or male who has been assigned that as a responsibility. Usually women don’t head up anything, and if they do it’s always under the pastor’s leadership so she’s never really in charge… 😡

  12. Does the Old Highway take you down the Old Paths to the Old Gospel Church, or to the Little Brown Church in the Vale? Or maybe when I’m On the Gospel Highway, that’s when I get to the The Church in the Wildwood. Anyway, my vehicle is powered by that Old Time Religion, so I’m sure to get somewhere.

  13. “Our highway may look to worldly men
    Like it’s a road to a bitter end”

    …pretty much describes how most IFB churches appear to outsiders. I’m glad I took the exit ramp.

    1. (channeling Pastor Bill O Edacity):

      Of course you bitter folks take the exit ramp. Down, away from the HIGHway. DOWN into bitterness. DOWN into sin. Only an utter apostate would be glad he is no longer part of the King’s HIGHway, Amen?

      ))@”(#@#$ – channeling over… back to GR

  14. my old church knew no limits to what women got to do as long as they were working. We started out with Reformers, me being the Assistant Director. The only thing that sticks out to me any more about that title are the first 3 letters.
    As for the music, if they have a deaf ministry, those dear people have reason for praise. Geesus, pleasus.

  15. Is it just me, or does that church look like a platform replica of the old First Baptist, Hammond? Colors, chairs, pool-pit, little tables, etc… And what’s with all the flowers? Was it a funeral or something?

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