HIGH POINT CHURCH

Fellowship, Singing and Music, Preaching, The Word of God, Prayer, Revival Meetings
Singing Schools, Vision, Inspiration, Truth, Integrity, Faith, Hope, Love

The Methodist were meeting in Midway School House when I first remember going to Church.  To begin the Service the pianist started playing and all who wanted to, would stand around the piano to sing.  Mother sat in a school desk with a baby or two on her lap.  I remember standing with Daddy one of the times.  Those services were held in the southeast class room.  I don't know how long services carried on in the school.  The last service I remember there was held in the High School Auditorium.  Brother Powers was the Pastor.  I sat in a seat of the front row next to Aunt Bonnie.

After that service all the family went to some one's house for lunch together.  I remember Aunt Bonnie telling Mother, "Brother Powers said, 'Carlton was the only person in the whole service who didn't stand up for the last hymn and prayer.'"

A mile north of Midway School and three-quarters of a mile east was a rather high hill with a country store and filling station on it.  The place was called High Point.  Our congregation was able to secure an unused Methodist Church Building from a few miles to the east.  The men hauled it to a few acres of land across from the store.  I think they made an arrangement with the farmer and if or when the Congregation needed the property no more, the land would revert to the farm.

The Midway School was established in 1919.  I don't know if the Methodist Church began meeting there from the very start.  Our parents with their families, were attending there as teenagers.  Granny's brother-in-law, Uncle Abe Tucker, an evangelist from Texas, preached a Revival Meeting there when Daddy was fifteen years old.  That would have been 1930.  Mother got saved in a Revival Meeting in the school when she was seventeen, which would have been 1934.

I remember the men restoring the building.  The window pains were in trouble.  They had to add new putty.  It was a rectangular building.  After it was set on the foundation, they built a large assembly room and two Sunday School rooms across the back.  I don't know if that happened immediately or a little later.  At the start, our children's class met in the back (north) west corner by the front door.  Irene Easley, Moss' wife, was the teacher.  We used American Sunday School Union literature.

The lessons were on 3 x 5 cards.  A story was on the back and a colored picture of the story was on the front.  Those were her teaching materials.  It seems that there was a new learning project about every quarter.  Once we learned the Ten Commandments.  Each Sunday we received one. It was a "D" shaped, light weight card stock which folded in half made the "D" shape.  The brief Commandment was printed on the front.  Next Sunday we received the second one.  We repeated the old ones and added the new one.  After a while we had the whole lot of them hanging together and could take them home.

In the Midway School, Papa had been the Children's Teacher for many years.  When he resigned, Uncle Everett Davis, Sunday School Superintendent, ask Mother to teach the class.  That was about the time or a bit before they were married.  Her only students were Myrl and Byrl, her little twin brothers.  She taught the class until about the time or just after I was born.  By that time there were 22 children attending the class.  And that all happened in Midway School.

Because of the controversy over slavery the Southern Contingent separated from the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844 to become the Methodist Episcopal Church South.  The Methodist Church meeting in Midway School was connected to that denomination.  Their Sunday School was a member of the American Sunday School Union, so their materials came from them.  In 1939 the two branches of Methodism reunited.  It was with them I got saved, was baptized and had my first license to preach.