Love Feast at Baugo

While some members of the church today would suggest that Love Feast has changed very little over the years in their congregation, the following excerpts from "Love Feast at Baugo" in Kermit Eby's 1958 book For Brethren Only might cause us to reflect on changes surrounding the Love Feast we have forgotten.

Baugo had its love feast the last week in May or the first week in June. Instead of using only the bread and wine in memory of the death and resurrection of our Lord, we members of the Church of the Brethren ate together a complete Lord's Supper of beef and bread and beef broth. In this farming community, we held our annual love feast when most of the planted corn was up but not big enough to plow. The clover was in bloom. The wheat was headed out but the haying and the harvesting were still two weeks away.

The love feast was the service which dramatized our religion and renewed our faith.

The "examination sermon" was the first in the series of event preceding the love feast. Sometimes Grandfather preached it, but usually a neighboring minister exchanged pulpits with him. The examination sermon was straight from the shoulder. If the barbs were too pointed or if the preacher's eye remained fixed too long on one person, tongues started wagging. We were told to look into our lives. If there were any family quarrels, they were to be settled. If anyone had cheated his neighbor by giving short measure, like Zacchaeus he was to restore it fourfold. If any husbands or wives had strayed (how I used to wonder what straying meant!) they were to confess their sins before God and the brethren. ...

The examination sermon was followed by a visit to each family by the deacons, of whom there were six in Baugo, who traveled in pairs like the disciples of old. Before beginning their visitation they met with Grandfather. Exactly what was said I never learned, but I can guess. Each Baugo member's record was examined and the deacons were encouraged not to shrink from their duty. ...

Thursday was love feast day. On Tuesday we went to Baugo to clean the church and arrange the tables. While the menfolks carried out the benches and washed them with water from the schoolhouse pump, the women scrubbed the floor, polished the windows, and secured the tin communion dishes and great kettles in the basement. ... Not all was work on cleaning day. Baugo Creek was warm enough for swimming, and while the old folks stood around and talked we youngsters kicked off our overalls and shirts and jumped in. ...

Wednesday forenoon the deacons' wives met at Grandmother's to bake the communion bread. Before beginning work, the sisters put on their prayer coverings and held a short worship service. The coverings were worn and not a word was spoken until the baking was finished. ...

On love feast morning we got up a little earlier than usual ... Just before noon, fires were built in the great ovens in the church basement. ... The afternoon at Baugo was a busy one ... the beef to be cooked, seasoned, and cut up;; the dishes, knives, forks, and spoons to be put in place for the supper; the tubs to be filled with water for the feet-washing and the great towels with drawstrings in one end placed beside the tubs; the basins and the hand towels distributed; the loaves of bread cut up and piled in big wicker baskets; a hymnbook laid between each two places.

...Before supper, the brethren began washing each other's feet. I hoped they would hurry. My stomach was empty and I was thirsty and getting sleepy. By the time the bread and wine were passed and the climax of the service reached, I was sound asleep. When the congregation stood to sing Blessed Be the Tie That Binds, Dad began shaking me to wake up. ... By 9:30 the love feast was over. The hired man drove us home. Dad stayed to help clear the tables and to see that everything was ready for breakfast in the morning.

And that's the way it was for love feast at Baugo in the early 1900s.