We didn’t acknowledge religious holidays in our family. There was no tree, no presents, no special church service or candles (although the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy made appearances). There were still the family dinners at appropriate times: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. I longed for sweet connection within my own family, but usually found underlying tension and visitors from church who didn’t have anywhere else to be. I often ended up alone in my room, overstimulated and confusingly depressed (read: introvert with a sugar hangover).
So when I think “recurring event or annual occasion”, there’s really only one option: Convention. This was my real life, anyway. My “meeting” life. This was my true structure, my true authority, my true identity, my true belonging. Meetings punctuated my week like breath. Inhale: Sunday Morning Fellowship Meeting. (exhale: big meal, sometimes with company, then retreat to my room for a few hours) Inhale: Sunday Afternoon Gospel Meeting. (exhale: go to school, practice violin, do homework) Inhale: Wednesday Night Bible Study. (exhale: go to school, practice violin, do homework). The meetings were the checkpoints, the reminder of my purpose. A time to repent, to stop, to pray and to set an intention for the future.
But once a year, it was different. I mean, it was the same really, just longer and much more exciting. First there were the trips to K-Mart for wintergreen lifesavers, Mentos, Necco wafers, lemon drops and a new journal. Then there was the new meeting outfit or two, just in time for the biggest event of the year. We joyfully packed our suitcases and garment bags full of treasures, loaded everything and everyone into the big red van (which, by the end, had doors falling off and mushrooms growing in the carpet), and set off. For two weeks in August, we were not “strangers in a strange land” of inner-city Seattle and public school; we were home.
I remember nothing of the drives there. Nothing of the hour (or three, in traffic) either north or south of us to the private farmlands. But the nerves would start once we hit the exit: Starbird Road in the north, Black Lake in the south. Who will I see this year? Will my old friends be there? Will there be someone new from another state? Will I meet a cute boy? What does God think of me? Am I doing okay? What will He say to me? I hope it’s not too hot. Who will wait tables with me? Who will sleep next to me? Who are the visiting workers?
I learned many years later that other churches do something similar, and it’s called a “retreat”. I guess you could use that word for convention, except I kept hearing from friends about volleyball games and ice breaking activities and separate sessions for children, women, men, marrieds and unmarrieds; there was none of that here. It was camping, really, but in fancy clothes. There were dormitories with bunk beds, private tents and campers. Some were fancy with their large motor homes hooked up to power and water; that was never us. We slept in the gender-specific dorms with a hundred or so others. And instead of activities like bonfires, hikes, or enjoying nature, there was cafeteria-style eating and sitting in gospel tent meetings five hours a day.
From the moment we drove onto the grounds, everything was familiar. Everything was exactly as it always had been. A large revival-style meeting tent, an equally large dining tent, wooden benches (and the excitement of saving your seats with a colorful quilt), dormitories with lumpy mattresses ready to receive your sleeping bag (or at least a handwritten sign on notepaper, taped on to claim your space), and people. All the familiar faces, the same buns in the same women’s hair, the workers (ministers) bustling around with final preparations to the grounds, the kitchen, the dorms. Everyone happy to be there, everyone ready to quiet down and hear from the Lord, the children ready to play, the teens ready to find boyfriends and girlfriends.
My first stop was through the pink satin curtains in the green-metal-sided dormitory, suitcase and sleeping bag in hand. When I was younger, I would sleep by my mom, but as I grew, I graduated to the upper bunks, where teenage girls would giggle and eat Cheez-its long past lights out, with frequent reprimands from a flashlight-wielding sister worker on nightwatch. Of course, that made it very hard to wake up in time to serve at my table; all young girls were expected to wait tables.
Some girls come of age with a quincieñera, a bat mitzvah, or a moon circle. I came of age by getting to pour coffee and tea for the workers’ table: a decided honor. The time would come when I was even requested to serve at the workers’ table, without having to ask. I’d arrived.
The fluorescent lights buzzed above our heads in the green canvas tent as we sang a table grace, and then began walking down the grass on each side of the long picnic tables, looking for bowls to refill, pouring drinks, and chatting with our co-servers. After a few rounds of offering coffee and tea, and seeing people begin to finish their own plates, we would hurry to find a spot with our friends. If there weren’t enough empty spots at existing tables for us to find leftover food, a worker would uncover a brand new line of picnic tables from its long roll of painter’s plastic, and bring steaming hot bowls of fresh food. This was the best; all the young people sitting together, serving ourselves a heaping helping of toast, scrambled eggs, and the ubiquitous favorite: convention hash.
There were regional differences of course; in Ecuador, there was more fresh fruit and no hash; in Jamaica, there were many more black faces and interesting hairdos; in Virginia, they served sweet tea with every meal; in Wyoming, there was a rack to hang cowboy hats just inside the meeting barn; in Alaska, they served salmon.
But everywhere, there were the benches, the cafeteria-style eating, the same hymns (in English or translated), many of the same workers, visiting or assigned overseas, and the same rhythm over the 2-4 days of meetings. We boarded together, we woke together, we ate together, we chatted, milled about, and worked together, we sat in a two-hour meeting together, we ate lunch and served and washed up together, we rested together, we sat in another two-hour meeting together, we ate dinner and served and washed up together, we sat in a one-hour meeting together, we milled about and chatted together, we drank tea or hot cocoa together, we returned to our quarters together, we washed our faces together, and we bunked together.
Of course, the main event was the meetings. This was really the point of the whole thing; to hear from God, through His servants. We came ready for introspection, for correction, for direction…and let’s be honest, as kids, with plenty of Fun Pads and Word Finds and Werther’s Originals to stave off boredom.
This was where people made their choice to serve God. Where we purposed again to pray and read our Bibles more often. Where some were baptized. Where a young person might offer their life to enter the ministry as a homeless, itinerant, celibate preacher forever. That’s not where I made that offer, but it was often done here.
As I write this, I smell the fresh-mown grass and the beef stew; I hear the crinkling plastic being spread out over freshly-set picnic tables and the whine of the parabolic mic turning to catch the last half of a prayer in the back corner; I feel the heat coming off the heavy fabric walking trail that led through the sweet-smelling blackberry shrubs; I feel my pounding heart before standing to deliver a public testimony; I am there, feeling the water running over my hands from the communal wash fountain, the kind with the foot-operated lever and built-in soap dispensers. I know this place better than I know my childhood bedroom, better than my neighborhood park, better than my school buildings, better than the room where I had years of violin lessons, better than my college dorm. This place remains so vivid, so alive in my memory.
And yet, I don’t miss it. It sort of stuns me to write this; I don’t miss it. Convention remains as much a part of me as my United States citizenship or my curly hair. It is my homeland, my native tongue, my own skin. It represents a structure and a worldview that entirely defined me for 34 years. And I don’t miss it.
We were there to hear from God. It turns out His voice is everywhere, but I had to leave to find my own.
By Heidi DenHerder
Jan 19, 2025
Source: https://iwonderasiwander.substack.com/p/day-6-convention