“They Are Making Change from the…”
As kids, my siblings and I went to lots and lots of Baptist churches/meetings for all kinds of events. We went to cottage prayer meetings, potluck meals (dinner on the grounds), singing services, river baptisms, homecomings, protracted revival meetings (The kind that has a date to start, but no date to end. The meetings occurred every night. After a while the preachers would decide that the “spirit of the Lord” had moved on and the revival would be over.), ordinations, communions, holiday special programs, funerals, and whatever else someone would decide to have. We visited lots and lots of homes, eating all kinds of home-cooked meals. My father retired a few years ago after 55 years of being a bi-vocational pastor, mainly of small Baptist congregations.
Occasionally, we would go to a church located near the end of the blacktop road, up the hollow, near a creek. It was a little white plank building that would seat around 80 or so when full. The pews were hand-made, warped because the wood was not dry when they were fitted together, terribly uncomfortable. And really hard to sit on. The women and children sat together; mostly on the right side of the divided worship center. Many of the men sat on the left side. The only place where males and females sat together was in the back pews. I figured out that those in the back were the “real sinners” and the ones that just came to sit near the opposite sex in order to do some handholding and courting. Of course, in the very front there was the “Amen Corner” located off to the side of the elevated pulpit area. The Deacons were the only ones that sat in the “Amen Corner”. There was an old, upright, out-of- tune piano that was played by the wife of one of the deacons. As I remember it, she mostly played every song in the same rhythm, hitting mainly the cords and not worrying too much about the individual notes. The songbooks were published by the Stamps-Baxter Publishing Company from Cleveland, Tennessee and were “shaped notes”, of course. On most Sundays there would be around 40 or so in attendance. Just in front of the pulpit there was a short pew that faced back at the congregation. It was called the “mourner’s bench” and was set aside as the place where sinners would go to mourn for their sinners and seek forgiveness. The altar area around the pulpit was where folks went to kneel during the “altar prayer”. (I always figured that area should have been called the “alter” since that is where folks went to get altered because of their sins.). And, of course, there was no air-conditioning; thus, in warm weather, they raised the windows and most folks used handheld fans provided by the local mortuary to stir the air around.
One of the things that I remember from the many times we went to that church was the time when they would take up the offering. At some point in the worship service a couple of the deacons would come up front and get the wooden plates that were used to gather up the offering from the congregation. They would then go to the back of the church and start passing the plate, row by row. Eventually they would work their way to the front, and, after a prayer, set the plates on the altar and return to their seats. It was a solemn part of the service.
There was a beautiful, white-haired lady that was faithful to attend the church. She wore “pill-box hats” atop her 80+ year old head. Almost every time the offering plate came near her, the deacon would stop. She would dig in her snap-purse, pull out her paper money, and whisper in the deacon’s ear; he would reach in the offering plate, count out some bills, take her money, and give her the bills he had taken from the offering plate as she had requested. I remember thinking that was a strange thing to do. Later, when I asked my father about what that was all about he said, “They are making change from the offering plate”.
It is funny some of things we hold on to in our memory. Whenever I think of her I remember the offering plate ritual.
I wonder what would happen if someone asked for the “dragger of the plate” some Sunday morning, right in the middle of the service, in front of God and everybody, to make change for a twenty dollar bill. Who knows? I might just give it a try.