Reminiscing

From time to time my mind rolls back over the years. This time of the year I have a great memory from the month of January in the late 1950's to reminisce about. I grew up 12 miles northwest of the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. Every January the Nazarenes, Pilgrim Holiness, Wesleyan Methodist, Free Methodist, Missionary Band, Salvation Army and other like minded Wesleyan Armenian groups would put on a mid-winter indoor camp meeting at Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis. A few days ago a boyhood friend, James Scales, from Indy posted the pic of Cadle Tabernacle below on my face book.

The tabernacle was huge, I don't know the seating capacity but it was in the thousands. In that day the biggest Wesleyan Armenian church around that I knew of had an attendance of 300-400, walking into that huge tabernacle that would seat thousands got my attention as a young boy. Thousands would come for the ten day meeting.

The camp meeting was led by Dr. P.F. Elliot who at the time was President of Owosso Pilgrim College in Owosso, Michigian, his booming voice and ability to work a crowd made him an excellent leader for the services. The camp had the best Wesleyan-Armenian evangelists and singers of that day. Too this day, one Nazarene pastor who was a camp evangelist stands out in my mind, his name was Lawrence B. Hicks, he pastored First Church of The Nazarene in Ashland, KY. Too this day I remember a title of a sermon he preached at the camp meeting, it was titled "This is That", taken from the words of Peter in Acts 2:16. I remember Jim Bohi singing "Until the Storm Passes By" and Orval Butcher and his trombone. It was a mighty gathering, great fellowship, tremendous singing and powerful preaching. Eternity will show the results, but it sure made a impression on this young lad.

I mentioned the camp was in January, you guessed it, it always snowed. The snow did not cause the meetings to be cancelled and did not keep people away. Through the snow and ice the thousands would come service after service. We took the snow, ice, and cold in stride it was just part of January winter in Indiana.

Today the Tabernacle is gone, the camp meeting era is pretty well gone as well. The memories remain.