What exactly is an "Old Fashioned" Church?

[Tarheel Baptist]

This week I received an invitation in the mail to attend an Old Fashioned Conference and saw a couple of posts on FB about a church being Old Fashioned. So the question comes, what does that mean?
Asked this question on FB and received no good answer.

What does the old fashioned label mean when attached to a church?

 

[BALAAM]

This week I received an invitation in the mail to attend an Old Fashioned Conference and saw a couple of posts on FB about a church being Old Fashioned. So the question comes, what does that mean?
Asked this question on FB and received no good answer.

What does the old fashioned label mean when attached to a church?

You won't receive an adequate answer from me either but it is a term that is overused in ifb'ism and drives me up the wall. I guess they mean that they don't have indoor plumbing because that would be like the southern batists.

 

[pastorryanhayden]

My sin was old fashioned, my guilt was old fashioned, God's love was old fashioned, I know.

JK.  It drives me up the wall.  Usually the point of reference for "Old Fashioned" is somewhere in the 1960's.

 

[bgwilkinson]

It makes IFBxxx types feel warm and fuzzy. It started in the 70s.

 

[Ransom]

This week I received an invitation in the mail to attend an Old Fashioned Conference and saw a couple of posts on FB about a church being Old Fashioned. So the question comes, what does that mean?

From what I've seen on the various incarnations of the FFF in the past, it's an excuse for the pastor to dress up like Col. Sanders or the Quaker Oats guy, and pretend that the Puritans would have approved of his theologically vapid, though shouted, sermons.

(Personally, I'd be tempted to invest in some medieval clerical vestments, including a mitre, and see how far their tolerance goes for "old-fashioned." Gimme that old-time religion!)

 

[longlivedunkin]

This week I received an invitation in the mail to attend an Old Fashioned Conference and saw a couple of posts on FB about a church being Old Fashioned. So the question comes, what does that mean?
Asked this question on FB and received no good answer.

What does the old fashioned label mean when attached to a church?

from my observations... what it means to be old fashioned...  the preacher is loud w/out necessarily being biblical, the music has no drums or guitars, God forbid, and it's definitely not "contemporary", and among many other things, it far too often leads to externalism and the leading of the Holy Spirit is placed on the back shelf. As long as the hair, attire, and music is not modern and/or hip, you're good. The label old-fashioned is basically a red flag for me.

 

[AmazedbyGrace]

I see "Old Fashioned" as a sign I should skip over a church/conference.

 

[Tarheel Baptist]

In all honesty, I believe those who use the label, intend it to reflect their 'values' at least that's a consistent answer I have received from them.
My point is that the typical man on the street has no idea what they mean and forms his own opinion or conclusion...and it isn't usually a positive for the church or ministry.

 

[BALAAM]

I see "Old Fashioned" as a sign I should skip over a church/conference.

I really agree with this. Whenever I hear of some conference or church and their first description is "old fashioned" I immediately dismiss it in my mind as something I would be interested in. Possibly because I have been around these "old-fashioned" types for a long time. It is sad because many of them are really good and Godly people. They just choose to run and be in accord with the "old-fashioned" crowd. And many of them would automatically dismiss you in their minds if you are associated with Southern Baptist or Evangelical without knowing anything about you. So I guess we are all pretty much the same as far as judging goes.

 

[Frag]

Technically, Old-Fashioned is the opposite of New-Fangled. 


We put Old-Fashioned on our stuff so you neos won't want to come. 

 

[BALAAM]

old fashioned church?...... how about this one?..... built in the 1800s, by missionaries, out of coral blocks cut from the reef....



and still in use today... every sunday.....  changed very little from when it was originally built.... 
it still has no air conditioning... (other than open windows)...



it does have ceiling fans and electric lights now though....  :-\ ....and recently a modest sound system was installed.....
so i guess it;s not that old fashioned.......  8)



but it;s not really needed coz the acoustics in the church are awesome......
a reigning monarch and former queen of the nation of hawaii were once members,
... the inside of the church looks exactly as it did when they attended in the 1800s..

and even the clock on the tower still works....

Yeah. But how about indoor plumbing??

 

[PappaBear]

[quote author=Scripture]Jer. 6:16  Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.[/quote]

I'm afraid you are wrong by a number of decades, admin.  "Old Fashion" has its roots in the Second Great Awakening and that emphasis on Holiness, the Scriptures, Revivalism, and objection to skepticism and modernism.  Though not limited to Campbellism & the Churches of Christ, the idea of returning to the "old paths" is what sparked what is known by them as "The Restoration Movement."  The use of "Old Fashion" came into wide use in early 20th Century Revivalism and harked back to the glory times of the great camp meetings.  Old signs for camp meetings and revival meetings seen in pictures of the era will many times include those terms for such as Bob Jones, Sr., Billy Sunday, B.R. Lakin, Vance Havner, Oliver B. Greene, and Sam Jones.  The Old Fashion(ed) desire for the Camp Meeting Revivals of Shubal Stearns and the Methodist Circuit Riders planted the seeds of Fundamentalism which was born out of resisting the "modernists" preaching evolution and skepticism in the early 20th century.

Biblically, God does not change.  So be it 1740, 1842, or the 1970's -- if it is wrong then, it is wrong now.  But throughout history, many have thought that God and His religion need to get current with progressive society and so have attempted updates.  So it was in Jeremiah's day (see above scripture), and so it was in American Fundamentalist History, and so it is today.  "Old Fashion" has been the call for a return to the "old paths" in contradistinction to The Modernists, Progressives, Aquarians, New Agers,  Contemporaries, Emergents, and such like. 

The 1960's and 1970's witnessed the birth of a fast moving culture that is "falling away" at a dizzying pace.  Prior to that, Christianity was not nearly as fractured and divided, and had a greater affect on society.  And change was more gradual.  But today's modern crowd demands new doctrines, new acceptance, new bibles, and a new look on an almost daily basis. We may be dinosaurs from another dispensation to the X generation today, but there still remains a few of us who yearn for the old paths when God saved souls and changed lives and we affected our neighbors, communities, family and friends and the real and living God would meet with you as you walked in holy ways with Him.

 

[pastorryanhayden]

Question Papabear,
Why is it that you can't look farther back than the 60s in fundamentalist history and find many of the "Ol' Fashion" emphases?  Why is it that Old Fashioned religion hasn't produced a Spurgeon? (who was castigated as "new fashioned). Or an Edwards (let's face it JE would be run out of most IfB churches today? Or a Leonard Ravenhill? (Who chose a different path than the Ol Fashion IFB?)

Too often, Ol Fashion means shallow, satisfied and resistant to change.  Even if that change may bring about revival.

 

[Just John]

"but there still remains a few of us who yearn for the old paths when God saved souls and changed lives and we affected our neighbors, communities, family and friends and the real and living God would meet with you as you walked in holy ways with Him."

I'm sorry if that is not happening in your church. It DOES happen in mine.

 

[abp]

I missed church last Sunday because my neighbor's tractor got stuck while baling hay & needed a tow. I guess that makes me a terrible church member but good neighbor? Do I get an Ole Fashion gold star? Tractor...hay bales...??

 

[PappaBear]

Question Papabear,
Why is it that you can't look farther back than the 60s in fundamentalist history and find many of the "Ol' Fashion" emphases?  Why is it that Old Fashioned religion hasn't produced a Spurgeon? (who was castigated as "new fashioned). Or an Edwards (let's face it JE would be run out of most IfB churches today? Or a Leonard Ravenhill? (Who chose a different path than the Ol Fashion IFB?)

Too often, Ol Fashion means shallow, satisfied and resistant to change.  Even if that change may bring about revival.

Well, Bro. Hayden, I think that if you will research a little, you will find that the majority of camp meeting revivalists were prior to the 1960's.  Or are you under the mistaken impression that Oliver B. Greene, B.R. Lakin, Sam Jones, and such are all just a product of the 60's?  That is why we want to go back to the "old paths," or the "Old Fashion" ways.

Or maybe it is what you are defining as the "Ol' Fashion" emphases?  I suggest that you should not be hasty to allow a man's enemies to define him or his emphases.  Be careful if you are forming opinions based on what you read on the internet from those against all things fundamentalist.  Now that the fundamentalist mega-churches have essentially castrated themselves, it is not so popular again to wear that badge.  Those whose only desire is acceptance and good PR in modern society have cast off the moorings and distanced themselves from the old time religion.

As for producing another Spurgeon, he was a man.  So was Elijah.  He was a man "of like passions" as we.  John the Baptist was not an exact copy of Elijah, but Christ would say about him that he came in the spirit and power of Elijah.  If by another Spurgeon, you are desiring to see another not-quite-so-hyper a Calvinist in the large city of London who started his ministry as a very young man -- an exact replica, I think you are bound to be disappointed.  If instead, you look at the spirit to see a man adopted by Baptists and non-Baptists alike, who believed in the power of the Holy Spirit and who brought change to his society, a man who could claim to be a 5-pointer, yet receive and approve the broken English and revival spirt of Moody and Sankey in the Metropolitan Tabernacle and who labored tirelessly as a winner of souls and a pastor to "John Ploughman," then I think you will be delighted to find many a kindred spirit among our brethren.

You seem to be looking at history backwards.  The shallow and satisfied you speak of are certainly those since the 1960's who emphasized Easy Prayerism, empty evangelism by rote fleshly methods, a meaningless social gospel, and whose arrogant grasp has always been for the spotlight and a place in history.  But after all, we are living in a Laodicean age of lukewarmness as the last Church Age prior to the rapture.  But I challenge you, read the men from before that time, the Old Fashion Preachers, if you can.  I know it is hard to find much, but it does take time to visit the widows and orphans, to start Rescue Missions and Orphanages, to build churches out of people instead of museums out of brick.  You will find a depth and spirit that will heat up the most tepid of our fatalistic brethren.  Our history is not absent of men of courage, or faith, or holiness, fire, or depth.  But it does frown on those who seek their own legacy and wallow in the limelight, unlike the modern generation who called themselves fundamentalists but have prostituted themselves to fame and fortunes.  Many of our genuine heroes are forgotten or ignored, because instead of building circuses or palaces, they were busy walking with God and building Local Churches.  And there are still some around in the little cities, hills, hollers and gulches -- forgotten men who nevertheless stick with the truths they have been taught and are busy about the Lord's work, quietly building Churches instead of worship centers or recreation halls.

You are right about one thing.  We are resistant to change.  Much like Isaiah was resistant to that new fangled image of jealously that Manasseh brought into the House of God.  Similar to the resistance put up by the Man of God from Judah who cried against Jeroboam's new "more convenient" altar in Bethel.  If you desire the new freeze-dried, miracle-free and Spirit-less thing that passes for modern day religion, then you are welcome to it.  However, we Old Fashion Baptists, descended from the men and martyrs of yesteryear's  Fundamentalists, do not plan to go so gently into that good night. 

There was a day, my friend, when Christians, even of different denominations, were more uniformly holy, happy with the Bible they had and which God blessed, and endued with power from on high.  Then we saw repentance with real tears.  Torn up families were mended, drunkards were sobered, our youth surrendered their lives to far off fields in need of the gospel, and scarlet women became godly wives and mothers.  Please forgive us who miss the old times when the sodomites were shamed into their closets, the drunkards were shipped off to jail, and Bible rejectors were shunned from our Churches. 

Today's generation can boast no great revival.  What have you to be proud of?  What great light has this new society shed?  Alcohol is defended so that it flows like a river, breaking apart more and more families.  Immodesty is emboldened so that places of nudity, cursing, and carnality are promoted on billboards, serving "customers" at many exits and on many corners, across most airwaves, and in your face at public magazine racks and news stands everywhere, when it was absent in "Old Fashion" times.  The after-60's generations are the ones who can proclaim their dismay at the old ways and the old Bible, but have presided over a society that no longer recognizes the stories of Adam and Eve, Abraham or Joseph, Elijah & Elisha and their miracles, the prophecies of Isaiah or Daniel, or has any idea of what the Babylonian Captivity or Roman destruction of Jerusalm was. Nor do they know if Jonah was swallowed by a whale or eaten by a cannibal named Queequeg after being french-fried on the deck of the Pequod.  Congratulations that the fight against the words of God has succeeded in removing it from what once was a common place in American households and turned us into a mostly godless society without moral guidance.  Finally, the contemporaries have drifted into a casual acceptance of fatalism, holding to a dry as dust repetition of cold, detached and empty catechisms in vain hope that those truths will somehow enflame this new generation by spontaneous combustion.  That lack of evangelistic spirit has sacrificed too many souls to a Christ-less eternity and turned our churches more into monasteries, shivering in fear and complacent about the future, looking inward while the world outside marches to hell.  Before today's freebird seeker-sensitive groupies bellow out into the streets of the city to read lifeless dogmas, I would counsel to tarry awhile in the Jerusalem of scripture until the promised fire of God comes to your own life.  This fire such as Spurgeon -- and Moody, Torrey, Finney, Stearns, Havner, Lakin, and others -- had.  Would to God that we had a host of like-minded Christians today who would offer up their bodies a living sacrifice and be consumed by God -- men of passion, men of fervor, men of zeal as well as knowledge. 

Be blessed on the LORD's Day tomorrow.  *Hat tip </) , my friend.

 

[Castor Muscular]

Get off my lawn, you crazy kids.

 

[Izdaari]

I think the most old fashioned church (as in having changed the least from 1st century Christianity) is the Orthodox Church. And it's not at all close to Baptist.

 

[pastorryanhayden]

Papabear,
I'm preaching on the Second Coming of Christ this Morning from Matthew 17 and the Limits to our Liberty from 1 Corinthians 9.  I've got to deal with an errant member of our church who is living in open sin.  I'm wearing a suit.  We sing hymns.  I preach from the KJV.  I'll have an invitation.  If that makes me old fashioned, I'll gladly own it.
I pastor a church that was pastored by Tom Pullen for 37 years.  He is an "old fashioned" preacher who stuck with the stuff, much in the spirit of Oliver B. Greene. He was a Bible preacher when it wasn't popular, and never dipped his toes in the "easy prayerism" of many of his contemporaries. I seek his council all the time and I do my very best to honor him.  I honor his friends and those who I have gotten to know I have really liked.
I have no problem with Oliver B. Greene or B. R. Lakin or most of the other people you listed. (You already know my opinion of Finney and Sunday)
In my experience, those today who most often talk about being Old Fashioned glory in bad suits, bad grammar, mediocre music and yelling - lots of yelling. 
The reason why I don't think Spurgeon or Edwards or Ravenhill or Torrey would be welcome in their midst is because those men weren't from the southern united states, weren't uneducated, and focused more on the content of their message than the number of "amen's" they received.
I thank God for Elijahs. God knows we need them.
But God also uses Isaiahs and Ezras. 
He uses Peters and Pauls.
My temperament and background makes me a lot more like a Paul, Ezra or Isaiah than an Elijah or a Peter.  Because of that, no matter how old fashioned my positions or my message, I've never felt at home in the Old Fashioned crowd.
Have a great Sunday.  I'm praying that soul's get saved.

 

[rsc2a]

Well, Bro. Hayden, I think that if you will research a little, you will find that the majority of camp meeting revivalists were prior to the 1960's.  Or are you under the mistaken impression that Oliver B. Greene, B.R. Lakin, Sam Jones, and such are all just a product of the 60's?  That is why we want to go back to the "old paths," or the "Old Fashion" ways.

Or maybe it is what you are defining as the "Ol' Fashion" emphases?  I suggest that you should not be hasty to allow a man's enemies to define him or his emphases.  Be careful if you are forming opinions based on what you read on the internet from those against all things fundamentalist.  Now that the fundamentalist mega-churches have essentially castrated themselves, it is not so popular again to wear that badge.  Those whose only desire is acceptance and good PR in modern society have cast off the moorings and distanced themselves from the old time religion.

Funny how you don't find those tent revivals all that much if you go much earlier than 1800. I guess Old Fashioned really isn't all that old after all....

[quote author=PappaBear]As for producing another Spurgeon, he was a man.  So was Elijah.  He was a man "of like passions" as we.  John the Baptist was not an exact copy of Elijah, but Christ would say about him that he came in the spirit and power of Elijah.  If by another Spurgeon, you are desiring to see another not-quite-so-hyper a Calvinist in the large city of London who started his ministry as a very young man -- an exact replica, I think you are bound to be disappointed.  If instead, you look at the spirit to see a man adopted by Baptists and non-Baptists alike, who believed in the power of the Holy Spirit and who brought change to his society, a man who could claim to be a 5-pointer, yet receive and approve the broken English and revival spirt of Moody and Sankey in the Metropolitan Tabernacle and who labored tirelessly as a winner of souls and a pastor to "John Ploughman," then I think you will be delighted to find many a kindred spirit among our brethren.[/quote]

I read this and thought immediately of Billy Graham. My assumption would be that you didn't have that name in mind.

[quote author=PappaBear]You seem to be looking at history backwards.  The shallow and satisfied you speak of are certainly those since the 1960's who emphasized Easy Prayerism, empty evangelism by rote fleshly methods, a meaningless social gospel...[/quote]

My guess the woman whose hungry children got the sack of groceries didn't find that "social" gospel "meaningless...

[quote author=PappaBear]...and whose arrogant grasp has always been for the spotlight and a place in history.  But after all, we are living in a Laodicean age of lukewarmness as the last Church Age prior to the rapture.[/quote]

You know what else isn't old fashioned? Rapture-ready dispensationalism. In fact, it was started about the same time as those tent meeting revivals. I'd prefer something a little older myself.

[quote author=PappaBear]But I challenge you, read the men from before that time, the Old Fashion Preachers, if you can.  I know it is hard to find much, but it does take time to visit the widows and orphans, to start Rescue Missions and Orphanages...[/quote]

Wait....I thought you were opposed to the "social" gospel.

[quote author=PappaBear]...There was a day, my friend, when Christians, even of different denominations, were more uniformly holy, happy with the Bible they had and which God blessed, and endued with power from on high.  Then we saw repentance with real tears.  Torn up families were mended, drunkards were sobered, our youth surrendered their lives to far off fields in need of the gospel, and scarlet women became godly wives and mothers.[/quote]

Actually I can show you plenty of churches where this happens every day, but I doubt you'd approve of them.

[quote author=PappaBear]Please forgive us who miss the old times when the sodomites were shamed into their closets, the drunkards were shipped off to jail, and Bible rejectors were shunned from our Churches.  [/quote]



[quote author=PappaBear]Today's generation can boast no great revival.  What have you to be proud of?  What great light has this new society shed?[/quote]

Do you not know how fast Christianity is growing in Asia and Africa?

[quote author=PappaBear]Alcohol is defended so that it flows like a river, breaking apart more and more families.  Immodesty is emboldened so that places of nudity, cursing, and carnality are promoted on billboards, serving "customers" at many exits and on many corners, across most airwaves, and in your face at public magazine racks and news stands everywhere, when it was absent in "Old Fashion" times...[/quote]

However, since that time, no one thinks they have a right to own another based on the color of their skin, marital rape is no longer tolerated, factories cannot work children for 60+ hours a week, and families don't have to worry about death by starvation...at least in this part of the world.

[quote author=PappaBear]Finally, the contemporaries have drifted into a casual acceptance of fatalism...Before today's freebird seeker-sensitive groupies bellow out into the streets of the city to read lifeless dogmas, I would counsel to tarry awhile in the Jerusalem of scripture until the promised fire of God comes to your own life.  This fire such as Spurgeon -- and Moody, Torrey, Finney, Stearns, Havner, Lakin, and others -- had.  Would to God that we had a host of like-minded Christians today who would offer up their bodies a living sacrifice and be consumed by God -- men of passion, men of fervor, men of zeal as well as knowledge. [/quote]

That's awfully fatalistic of you. Also, I can point to a bunch of individuals, often "freebird seeker-sensitive groupies", men (and women) of "passion...fervor...zeal..knowledge", who are offering their lives as sacrifices to the glory of God.