Missing The Old Black Church!

Many of you who visit this blog know that I am straight from the woods of Alabama...Were I cut my teeth in the Baptist and Pentecostal Church...This week I was thinking about some of the things I miss about my "Old Black Pentecostal Church" experience ...Church in my youth was a place where everyone was given dignity, anyone could participate, all were welcome to contribute.... It didn't mattered if you could sing well – you could still sing in the choir.... Even if you were one of the saints who struggled to live right, you could share during the testimony service.... You didn’t have to be a musician to pick up the tambourine and play... You didn’t have to be on the dance team or go to practice in order to “shout.” The success of a sermon was not just in the preachers hands, but he could (and did) “wish somebody would help me preach this.”Any way these are some of the things I miss:

1. Sister & Brother: Growing up, any adult person in the congregation was always referred to by their last name.
   
2. Testimony Service: It doesn’t happen much anymore, but in years past, almost every Sunday service (or Sunday evening service) saw testimony service, which was the congregants chance to sing their own song or tell about some particular thing God had done for them that week, or even ask a prayer request.
3. Shouting: And by shouting I mean running down the aisles, dancing with abandon, jumping up and down, and of course actually shouting. It is a spontaneous joyful response to God in worship; and expression of being touched by the Spirit. You could run, jump, yell, fall out on the floor and it was contagious. If one rejoiced, others would join in – jumping feet first into the flow of the Spirit and allow themselves to be carried away. Everyone who shouted had their own preferred style
4. Let the church say amen: I miss the “Amens” and “Say that” and “You preaching now, doc,” that accompany almost every good sermon... The single hand lifted by a church mother signifying her agreement with the sermon, the brother standing up in the middle of the sermon pointing at the preacher, the loud cries of “yeah!” echoing through the sanctuary make the sermon so much more than just …
5. Preaching: Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my pastor’s sermons. They are thoughtful, articulate, theologically sound and generally edifying. BUT… there is just nothing quite like good old school Black Pentecostal preaching.( E Dewey Smith )
6. Music: I didn’t want to say this one, because people always say this about the Black church, and it gets a little annoying. But I do miss the music.