8 Things Georgia Churches Did on Sunday Mornings That Have All but Disappeared

Georgia’s gospel singing conventions once pulled crowds by the hundreds into a single country churchyard, starting with a county convention founded back in 1875.

Many of those local gatherings no longer exist.

These are the once-common Sunday morning traditions that are hard to come by nowadays at many churches in Georgia.

1. Dinner on the Grounds

Twiggs County’s Old Richland Baptist Church, founded in 1811, once sent its whole Georgia congregation straight from the closing hymn of Sunday morning service to boards laid across sawhorses under the shade trees.

The meal started the moment the preacher said amen, not sometime later in the day.

That kind of Sunday now happens only once a year, at homecoming.

The rest of the congregation’s Sunday mornings run through New Richland instead, the newer building down the road with air conditioning and running water.

Nobody wanted to give up the sawhorse tables completely.

Homecoming still brings out fried chicken and a dozen kinds of pie at many Georgia churches, but the everyday version, tables under a tree right after the service, has mostly become a fellowship hall with folding chairs.

2. All-Day Singings

In 1875, William Jackson Royal started a singing convention in Irwin County that Georgia churches turned into a tradition: A whole Sunday built around an all-day singing.

Word spread.

By 1927, Georgia held its first statewide singing convention, and the annual event still runs today.

The custom’s roots sat in the Sunday morning hymn-singing every congregation already did each week.

An all-day singing just let that morning keep going, with dinner at midday and more hymns after.

Georgia families spent more of the century behind the wheel or in front of a radio instead of in a churchyard on Sunday.

Local, county-level conventions have thinned out since, even though the statewide gathering still draws several hundred Georgians every year.

What survives today still opens with the same Sunday morning hymns and usually wraps up by noon.

3. Shape-Note Singing

Georgia churches once sang straight from a hymnal with four shaped notes instead of the round notes on a modern staff, a system called Sacred Harp.

B.F. White of Hamilton and E.J. King of Talbotton compiled the tune book in 1844, and for generations it was simply how ordinary Sunday worship sounded across Georgia.

No instruments played.

Every voice in the pews carried a part, fa, sol, la, or mi, and the whole room sang together at full volume.

Modern hymnals and worship bands replaced it in many Sunday services decades ago.

The four-shape system survives now mostly among small dedicated singing groups who still gather to keep it alive, not in the ordinary Sunday lineup.

4. A Full Hour of Sunday School

Georgia churches, many of them tied to the Southern Baptist Convention, once treated Sunday school as mandatory, a full hour of age-graded Bible classes before the main service even started.

Attendance was the whole point.

Teachers kept rolls, classes competed for perfect-attendance pins, and a child who missed too many Sundays heard about it.

Life magazine called Sunday school the most wasted hour of the week back in 1957, and attendance has been sliding ever since.

That’s a long slide.

Many Georgia churches still hold a Sunday school hour, but it draws a fraction of the crowd it once pulled in.

5. The Invitation Hymn

Georgia churches used to close nearly every Sunday sermon the same way, with an invitation hymn like “Just As I Am” sung verse after verse while the preacher waited at the front.

Anyone ready to join the church, ask for baptism, or rededicate their life walked the aisle right then, mid-song.

The custom grew into standard practice at Baptist and evangelical churches across the state, popularized nationally by the Billy Graham crusades of the mid-20th century, though its roots run back a century earlier to 1830s revivalism.

Nobody sat down until somebody walked forward, or the song ran out of verses.

Many churches have moved away from the weekly version, swapping it for a private conversation after the service or a response card in the bulletin.

Fewer Sunday mornings call for it now.

Not every Sunday.

6. Baptisms in the River

River baptisms at a Georgia church followed right on the heels of the Sunday morning service, the whole congregation walking from the pews straight to the water.

Georgia’s oldest Baptist churches, starting with Kiokee Baptist Church near Augusta in 1772, took root next to a creek or a spring on purpose, so that walk never had to go far.

That’s where the pastor baptized new believers, out in the current, in front of the whole congregation, the creek doing the job a baptistery would do at a newer church.

At Ohoopee Baptist Church in Washington County, the original spring-fed baptistry still does the job, and the building didn’t get indoor plumbing until the 1960s.

Many Georgia churches went a different direction.

Heated indoor baptisteries with a window and a robe closet replaced the walk down to the water as congregations grew more comfortable.

Congregations no longer had to work a baptism around a cold river in February.

7. Decoration Day

Decoration Day’s centerpiece at a Georgia church was the Sunday morning sermon, a memorial message the pastor built around the members buried in the church cemetery.

Georgia churches set that memorial sermon every spring, timed for after planting but before the summer’s hoeing started.

Families used that same Sunday to clean the cemetery, lay fresh flowers on family graves, and plant cedars or dogwoods near the headstones, work built around the morning service rather than the other way around.

Graves faced east on purpose, toward the resurrection the preacher had just finished preaching about.

The cemetery work followed the sermon; it never replaced it.

Many Georgia families now spend Memorial Day weekend on travel and cookouts instead of a spring Sunday at the church cemetery.

Outside pockets of the Appalachian foothills, a Georgia church setting a whole spring Sunday aside just for its cemetery is rare now.

8. Coats, Ties, Hats and Gloves

Georgia churchgoers in the 1950s dressed for Sunday morning the way they'd dress for a wedding.

Men wore a dark suit, a starched white shirt, a tie, and often a fedora.

Women added hats and gloves, with a handkerchief tucked into a clutch bag.

Kids got the miniature version, scratchy collars included.

No exceptions.

That level of formality has faded at many Georgia churches now.

Jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt draw no second look on a Sunday morning at many Georgia sanctuaries today.