86 thoughts on “GOH: Old-Fashioned Meeting”

  2. Oh this boring tired song. I remember singing this in the choir, I remember having to interpret it for the deaf, and hearing it, and even having someone request it for special services. Every time it came up I’d do an inward groan! What a bore this song is!

  4. I remember this one from tent revivals. Seems I have it on an old-fashioned cassette tape as well.
    I wonder if what year the old Bible on the pulpit is? No way it’s a 1611, even a 1769 should be under glass, right?

    Whenever I hear these songs and sermons that reference other popular Baptist songs and sermons, it reminds me that this isn’t just a church, it truly is its own subculture. Somebody who really has a doctorate should study this phenomenon within the IFB at some point.

    1. Because it’s old-fashioned! The Bible says stick to the old paths, haymen?

  6. Pretty decent camera for what appears to be a small rural church.

    I don’t recall hearing the song in a long time. I can’t say I missed it.
    Even if I could sing, I couldn’t sing that song without lying. I realized my need for Christ as Savior at about 11 years old in a suburban, modern church building. It was as a result of teaching over time, and not an “old fashioned” hell-fire and brimstone sermon. And that was before a later pastor started us on the road to Fundy-dom. We weren’t even KJVO yet.

    1. Whoa… Well I hate to break it to you, but you didn’t get saved if it wasn’t from the KJV.. You need to repent and get saved… Like from the KJV.

  7. Old fashioned = 1st century? No
    Old fashioned = 1950’s
    Insipid

  8. You probably wouldn’t want to show any emotion while you sing or play- too worldly. The creative genius of the song lyric is astounding

  9. Repetition is one of the Old-fashioned songbook’s key strategies. I remember an old song called “Inside the Gate” that was about heaven. The chorus had the soprano line solo while the ATB parts repeated “just inside the gate” 15 times.

    Even as a 10 year old kid, I couldn’t resist a smirk when the choir sang it.

    1. Yes, in choir I used to wonder why the sopranos always got the main line of the song.

        2. Wow, that’s J.D. Sumner, the tall guy singing bass. In later years he sang with the Jordanaires who backed up Elvis. He was also listed in the Guiness Book of World Records holding the lowest note sung by a human, he held that distinction for 18 years. I knew everyone needed a little trivia, right?

        3. CML & nomorecoulettes, Correct! J.D. Sumner and the BBBs sang background for Elvis. The Love of my Life introduced me to gospel quartet music on our second date in….1962! He and my BIL sang “Inside the Gates,” so you know the repetition didn’t matter, esp when my Sweetie was singing the tenor and playing the guitar. Ahhh, the memories!

        5. OOPS! Correction to my post below. It was the Jordanaires and JD Sumner who backed Elvis.

    1. I remember the Marshall family! Unfortunately I remember that song, too. :/

      1. KJV has ass, bastard, pisseth to name a few. What does Good News for Modern Man have?

        2. The AV was not written for American fundies. Nothing wrong with ass, it is used properly. The cuss word is arse and it is not in there.

        5. Where Saul is berating Jonathan for sticking up for David, in the KJV, he says something like: “Thou son of a perverse, rebellious woman! …” in the Good News for Modern Man, it has Saul calling Jonathan an S.O.B.

    3. Another ignoramus who thinks the King James Version is the original Bible.

      Sigh.

      1. Another ‘Bible Agnostic’ who probably doesn’t believe any bible is the inspired words of God.

        sigh

  12. I can write songs like this one, too:

    Old-fashioned old-fashioned old-fashioned old fashioned.
    Old-fashioned old-fashioned old-fashioned old fashioned.
    Old-fashioned old-fashioned old-time religion!
    Old old old fashioned fashioned fashioned hey!

    How’s that?

  13. They attended the meetings in the Old-Fashioned Way!
    Horses, and buggies and in wagons with hay!
    And they listened with rapture and wondrous delight
    To the Old-Fashioned Nonsense from the pulpit that night!

  14. Ahhhh, hard seats, bad music, bad preaching talking about the sins of liberals and gay people and other scary things, and an inappropriate appeal to an almost entirely “saved” audience to “repent” and “come to the altar.”

    What more could one ask for in an IFB church service?

      1. That is so far from the culture I grew up in, but it seems like such a beautiful way to honor the deceased.

  16. Hmm, I can buy the cattle on a thousand hills for the low, low price of $134.51. So says Amazon.

  17. I’ve never heard this song. Good for me! Old-fashioned Grace? Really? What would they know of grace?

    1. I thought as such. Given the accent. For a moment I thought it was the rural South and the Irish lilt had persisted among the Scotch-Irish more than previously held.

  19. Oh, boy, I know this one — for decades, it was (and maybe still is) the theme song for the late Perry F. Rockwood’s “People’s Gospel Hour” out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Rockwood was an ex-Presbyterian who became a militant, KJVO, come-ye-out-from-them-and-be-separate fundy. He pastored a tiny church in Halifax, but his radio program could be heard literally worldwide via a sizeable network of Christian stations and shortwave. He came to become kind of a caricature of himself over the years, but I always found him enjoyable to listen to because hearing his program was like stepping back in time about six decades. It never, ever changed in style or format, and neither did his preaching (or his many and sundry dislikes of anything with which is disagreed).

    1. Weary Pilgrim, you hit the nail on the thumbthumb by stepping back in time by six decades. Fundystan in a nutshell.

      1. *Thumb, not thumbthumb. I stutter sometimes. Now I’m starting to do it through the keyboard….

    2. I love perry Rockwood! Good ole wdcx or of buffalo. He had the funniest voice. Reminded me of Lawrence Welk for Christians

    3. Perry F. Rockwood came on every Sunday afternoon, just about the time we were getting ready for Sunday night church. That song always reminds me of him.

  21. I liked this song, Old Fashioned Meeting, but this rendition is boring and awful. I did not hear it much over the years at meetings, but it seemed to show up in cassettes and CDs I bought. I prefer happy-sounding music, not the heavy and melodramatic types of music heard in even the most fundy of fundy churches.

    1. Awful is right. The guy has no sense of timing and needs some serious guitar lessons. There may be hope, or not. I always was attracted to the soulful rich R&B style Pentecostal music, which was considered an abomination by my childhood fundie church. The few folks who liked Southern Gospel groups were considered “too worldly”.

    2. I also like the song, but not this version. It almost seemed like he was embarrassed to have his voice heard.

      The tune that I know is slightly different.

  22. Since this is England wouldn’t a older meeting be at least the C of E, if not all the way back to the Roman Catholics? Now, that’s some old time grace.

      1. That is some clever lyric writing. Must not be a Baptist spiritual gift.

    2. The Church of England has many very beautiful churches. This seems to be a converted garage, with the wide front door filled in.

      My guess is that the congregation bought this building at a very low price and fixed it up as a church.

      I doubt it was ever a C of E church.

        2. Weary Pilgrim – thank you for pointing out Thomas Coats. I was baptised there! But only because my liberal Episcopalian church wouldn’t do it.

      2. The old gothic style stone churches would be cost prohibitive to build today, especially for a small congregation. Labor was cheap in times past before the rise of much needed labor unions. Our church was a large basement with a plain rectangular educational building built on later. Almost all of the labor was done by the pastor and other men in the church who were skilled in construction. Most of the congregation were working class or had small businesses. They were a different generation, had fought in WWII, strong work ethic. Just too strict for me in general. The weirder fundie ideology wormed its way in later about the time I left.

        1. When I was in London this year, I had to go to the Holy Land, i.e. Abbey Road Studios, to pay my respects. I discovered this across the street:

          http://www.abbeychurch.org/

          It’s really a beautiful building, probably ex C of E or possibly RC. A weird note: there was a Ferrari parked out front. Did that belong to the pastor?

  23. I attended an Episcopal Church last Sunday and they did a lot of “old-fashioned” things. Don’t think it would pass IFB muster though….

    1. Betcha those “old fashioned things” you experienced in an Episcopal church on May 24 included the congregation singing “Glory to God in the highest,” a reading from the second chapter of Acts, many folks wearing red, and all reciting the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

      All very old fashioned. Ancient, actually.

      1. I loved Pentecost Sunday! I’m still pretty new to the Episcopal Church, but one of the things I love most about it is the ancient rites. Easter and Pentecost were so precious to me this year, having spent the previous year in formation classes where I learned the history and significance of those rites and spent time unpacking what they mean to me personally as a person of the Way. Plus, we had a baptism on Pentecost Sunday, and those are so joyful in my church that coffee hour goes on for ages because no one wants to leave.

      2. You hit the nail on the head, but it was an absolutely beautiful service. Much more reverence and respect shown for Scripture than in any IFB meeting I’ve been to.

  24. His singing is one thing, but his playing bothered me more. And what’s up with the camera constantly zooming in and out? I don’t understand.

  26. If I had to listen to songs like that, or sit through sermons about sticking to Ye Older Pathes, I would start looking for an Old-Fashioned Door to close firmly behind me on the way Out.

  27. I am teaching myself to play guitar via the Gibson Learn and Master dvd lessons. I am only on lesson 6 of 30. I have already learned that if you only strum the strings on down strokes, it makes for very boring music.

  28. Last True Whig, a “liberal Episcopal church” would most probably baptize just about anyone who professed the Christian faith..

    Was this “liberal Episcopal church” in the USA?

    1. No, it was in Scotland.

      The Episcopalian church I was a member of wouldn’t baptise me because it was in the ‘Affirming Catholic’ tradition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_Catholicism

      This meant that although the church was liberal in lots of good ways (female priest, very inclusive and holistic theology, social justice etc), they were sticklers for the niceties of traditional canon law and the sacraments. That meant no re-baptising for people who had been sprinkled as a baby. They wouldn’t budge on this point.

      However, I was still convinced of believer’s baptism and I felt God calling me to get baptised as an adult believer. So I made arrangements with the baptists to get it done there. The good baptist folks were very friendly and open to the idea – although I made it clear to them that I was only there for the ordinance and did not intend to join their church.

      Interestingly, the church itself was more ‘fundy’ than any I had ever seen or visited before. People turned up in suits. That was a new experience for me.

      1. I mean, the baptists were in suits. Just wanted to clarify that. And they were independent – and they didn’t do modern worship music. (I’m not sure if they were actually full-on fundamentalists – I didn’t stick around long enough to find out – but they were certainly very old fashioned).

        Come to think of it, the only time I ever set foot in an independent, suit-wearing, old fashioned, possibly a bit fundy, baptist church, it was to get dunked!

        The pastor was great though. Nice guy. Very understanding and accommodating. I think it was the first baptism he’d had in a long time, and was just glad to put the pool to some good use.

        1. Yes, I believe “dunked” is the correct theological term… 🙂

  31. I can’t stand how fundies take a song that really was meant to just be a fun quartet number in the style of the old African American Spirituals and turn it into some theological rhetoric. Of course, I think the song is devoid of any meaning or merit, but when done correctly it can be at least enjoyable.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgS1Z5W8MGk

    1. They seem to be having fun singing, but that doesn’t make the song any better.

  33. This brings back lots of memories:

    1. This is probably the worst rendition I have ever heard (and I grew up in a very small church where 30 people was considered a packed house).
    2. How did a guy this young ever hear this song?
    3 I listened to about half of it.

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