MONMOUTH’S TEMPORARY TABERNACLE SEATED 2,500
Older listeners may remember Billy Graham’s massive television revivals, but it’s difficult for anyone living today to imagine the scope of revivals held a century ago in small towns such as Monmouth.
One of the earliest and most successful revivals in Monmouth occurred in April 1898, when famed evangelist Milan Bertrand Williams of Atlanta, Georgia, conducted a month-long campaign in a temporary wooden tabernacle at the southeast corner of East Second Avenue and South Second Street.
Williams, who in his early days used the more traditional canvas tent for his services, pioneered the tabernacle concept, which was later copied by such famous evangelists as Billy Sunday. The long, low structures had an elevated speaker’s platform at one end and were designed to allow an audience of thousands to hear in the days before microphones. Twelve inches of sawdust on the floor helped deaden ambient noise from the audience.
Acoustic considerations aside, the genius of the tabernacle design was its sheer enormity. Watching the gigantic building being erected practically overnight got the whole town talking about the upcoming campaign, and people couldn’t wait to enter the structure and become a part of the revival experience. With two services held every day but Monday and three services on Sunday, the “marketing” campaign worked, as the tabernacle consistently drew crowds throughout the four-week campaign.
The Monmouth tabernacle was 80 x 110 feet in size and accommodated an estimated 2,500 persons. An annex to the rear of the pulpit, 40 feet long and 16 feet wide, was built to house a large chorus choir, led by the popular gospel singer Charles Alexander. There were five entrances and electric lighting for night services.
The idea for Monmouth to host a tabernacle campaign was apparently born in February 1898, when Williams conducted a successful six-day revival at Monmouth College. During that campaign, 40 attendees were “born again.”
A contract was let on March 8 by a committee composed of Monmouth businessmen John C. Dunbar, J.F. Searles and Harrison Frantz. While details about the actual construction are uncertain, a similar tabernacle was erected the previous March in Ravenswood, Ill. Only slightly larger than the Monmouth structure, it was erected in one day by an army of 200 men and consumed 50,000 feet of lumber. Cost of materials was $1,000 (approximately $30,000 in today’s currency), most of which was paid in advance through donations.
Originally scheduled to begin in March, the revival was delayed one week when Evangelist Williams telegrammed the committee that his campaign then being conducted in Joliet was so successful that he couldn’t possibly leave yet.
Between April 3 and May 1, more than 70 meetings were held in the tabernacle. While not all services were filled to capacity, the Easter services on April 10 were standing-room only. On April 20, the city observed a day of prayer and fasting. Prayer meetings were held in 40 homes throughout the city that morning and most of the businesses in town closed at noon so their employees could attend the meeting. About 300 high school and college students marched through the streets and around the square singing praises to God on their way to the service.
The Evening Gazette reported that the closing services on May 1 extended until 1 a.m. “The evening and closing services of the tabernacle meetings were visited by everybody in the city and surrounding country that could possibly get inside the building,” the reporter wrote, “and the windows and doors being open, a perfect jam of women, children and men thronged on the outside, eager to listen to the beautiful singing, and earnest words of the evangelist.”
An estimated 500 townspeople were converted during the course of the campaign.
For Maple City Memories, I’m Jeff Rankin.
