Tabernacle History

Tabernacle Centennial

1904 - 2004

Mt. Lebanon Campmeeting

Lebanon, PA
 

“Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?

Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?”

Psalms 15:1
 

"In the Beginning . . ."

From 1874-1892 the Heilmandale Campmeeting near Lebanon, Pa., flourished. Founded by local United Brethren in Christ congregations, its purpose was to convert Pennsylvania Germans in the area. For unknown reasons, the campmeeting drew to a close in 1892. However, camp goers were so enamored with the campmeeting that they could not bear to see it go by the wayside.

Searching out possibilities, a group met one night to determine what to do. Gideon Light, a member of the first Heilmandale board, offered his woods north of Lebanon on Rt. 343 as a possible site for meetings. Workers lost no time and enthusiastically tackled the new venture that spring, clearing the virgin forest for the first campmeeting in August, 1892.

The Early Meetings

The first campmeeting was held August 7-15, 1892. It took place in virgin forest with roots so thick that even in daylight one was unsure as to where to place the next step.

Central on the grounds was a preacher’s stand brought to Mt. Lebanon from Heilmandale. The eight-cornered altar had a cottage cornice and a bell on a shingled roof.  Local preachers sat in a semi-circle with the lectern at central stage. From this lectern the wrath and love of Almighty God rained down, depending on the mood of the moment. It was not uncommon to have seven services on the "Big Sunday."

Pews consisted of backless planks nailed to posts in the ground. Eventually, a large tent was erected over the seating area, most likely to protect the crowds from rain and sun. Prior to 1904, this tent was referred to as the Tabernacle.

The earthen floor in this early tabernacle” was strewn with straw in which supplicants knelt for prayer. Surrounding the tent in the outside circle were smaller 12 x 12 foot tents rented by local families.  

The Cottages

By 1900 campers had built 33 cottages and rented more than 100 tents for campmeeting. Fourteen years later, 70 cottages graced the grounds.

Camp goers traveled to the meetings by wagon, on foot, or by horse and buggy. Many walked from the trolley stop south of Lebanon several miles to the campmeeting site north of town. Still others engaged open-air hacks with fringed tops and seats for 25 riders pulled by teams of horses.

 

John H. Cilley, Builder

In 1892, the same year that Mt. Lebanon Campmeeting organized, local carpenter and self-taught architect, John H. Cilley, won Mt. Gretna’s competition for the Pennsylvania Chautauqua auditorium, later known as the Playhouse. Seven years later in 1899 Cilley was procured by the Mt. Gretna's Campmeeting to build a smaller structure for their outdoor church or tabernacle. When completed, the tabernacle hovered, an imposing dome without central posts, in the center of the campground. This graceful structure stretched toward the heavens with a steel finial at its peak.
 

The Purposes of Mt. Lebanon and
Mt. Gretna Campmeetings

The Mt. Gretna and Mt. Lebanon campmeetings were established for two different purposes, Mt. Gretna’s to cater to those who spoke English in the valley, and Mt. Lebanon’s for the German-speaking populace. The two campmeetings held meetings consecutive weeks to allow families to attend services at both if they so desired.

One can imagine the Mt. Lebanonites’ excitement when they learned that John Cilley of Chautauqua fame had procured the bid to build the tabernacle at Mt. Lebanon. Cilley and his crew set to work, constructing the edifice that today seats nearly 1,000 people. The huge rotunda stretched gracefully over the slope, lending a theatrical element to solve a practical need – better vision of programs at the front. The massive roof lapped in cedar shakes stood upright on 23 chestnut posts around the outer rim.

Perhaps Cilley should have built a larger auditorium for the crowds numbered in the 5,000s and filled not only the tabernacle as it, like the big tent, had come to be known. Overflow crowds spilled onto both sides and the back of the grove as well as cottage porches and balconies around the circle. Seating was at such a premium that cottage owners brought their own chairs, leaving the new tabernacle benches, now blessed with backs, for guests. 

In back of the stage and attached to the tabernacle, a conventionally framed two-story gabled dormitory provided a room for preachers to lodge during the annual meetings.

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The Structure of the Tabernacle

The Mt. Lebanon tabernacle is an historic structure, not only for its hundred years, but also by design. In October of 2002, Jeff Steckbeck, P.E. of Steckbeck Engineering & Surveying, Inc. in Lebanon, Pa., assessed Mt. Lebanon’s architectural elements. The tabernacle, Steckbeck says, “... is an interesting study of an ingenious design. None of my textbooks or professional references shows pictures or describes a roof support system, which mirrors that used in the Tabernacle.”

Steckbeck continues, “Comparing the Tabernacle roof with different types of trusses identified in ‘The Wood Truss Handbook,” published by Gang Nail Systems, Inc., in 1981 in consort with Clovis Heimsath, FAIA & Associates, it appears that the Tabernacle roof is a combination of a three hinged arch and a scissors truss. The architect of the Tabernacle replaced the typical wood bottom beam with a steel tension rod. All of the steel tension rods were joined together at the peak of the roof with a steel hoop. The small diameter of the rods allowed for a compact hoop connection, necessary for that tight and compact area at the peak.

“A critical component of this truss design is the connecting hinge where steel rods join wood members. This connection is located approximately at mid-span of the bottom of the truss.”      

In 1989, several years before Mt. Gretna’s Chautauqua playhouse collapsed during the severe snowstorm in February of 1994, Edward Greenbaum, Lancaster, Pa., authored an article on the Mt. Gretna auditoriums in Classic Wood Structures. Published by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Greenbaum’s article indicates that the roofs of the Mt. Gretna auditoriums, and Mt. Lebanon’s tabernacle, by implication, are “supported on a radial pattern of inverted timber Fink Trusses spanning from a timber compression ring at the peak to a post set back from the eaves. Metal tie rods from the ‘valley’ of each truss are connected to an iron tension ring suspended below the center of the roof."

^{Greenbaum continues his analysis of the Mt. Gretna auditoriums: “… these auditoriums possess remarkable aesthetic appeal. The conical shape and exposed timber ceiling creates a sense of warmth and comfort, and the interplay of light and shadow between the radial roof framing and tension ring is exciting to experience."}

John Cilley attained wide recognition for his craftsmanship, constructing similar auditoriums in the Pocono Mountains in Eastern Pennsylvania and his crowning achievement, an auditorium seating 5,000 at Mountain Lake Park Association in Western Maryland. Of the five auditoriums he built, the only ones remaining today are the tabernacles at Mt. Lebanon and Mt. Gretna Campmeetings, with the largest at Mt. Lebanon.  

City of Light

Though the tabernacle itself is a wonder and its design as ingenious as the man who crafted and constructed it, what occurred in this sanctum sanctorum over the last hundred years deserves even more attention.

A century of records at Mt. Lebanon abounds with preachers and bishops, with children’s programs and youth meetings, and with testimonies of congregants who “got happy in the Lord.” One story has it that a Rev. Shoop prayed so earnestly and so loudly in the tabernacle that his voice could be heard by people living between Kochender's and Kimmerling's Churches two miles away. Numerous were the youth on balconies of cottages serenading supplicants below.

The daily regime began when the 6:00 a.m. rising bell beckoned campers to morning prayers.  After breakfast, Bible study began in earnest followed by prayer and praise.  Preaching commenced at 10:00 with dinner at 11:30 and Children’s Hour at 1:30.  More preaching followed at half past two, then a bit of time to mix with friends. After supper a youth service launched evening events, culminating with another big meeting at 7:30.  When the retiring bell rang at 10:00, few had difficulty sleeping, even on their makeshift beds.

The beloved John Adams taught sessions so popular that the Children's Hour filled the stage, numbering between one and two hundred with Rev. Elmer Horst teaching parables through puppet shows, delighting his young charges with cowbells and trumpet music. Youth meetings, pushed out of the central location due to the crowds, met in a tent at the top of the hill.

After services, youngsters rummaged for lost pennies in the sawdust that had replaced the straw of yesteryear. Camp goers knelt for prayer until 1953 when a new amacite floor took its place.

The tabernacle ceiling, also, had a myriad of inverted trusses that provided a protective home for robins and raccoons as some congregants and choir members discovered, to their dismay. Caretakers of the grounds inherited the job of removing nests and pests.

The tabernacle was lighted with coal oil lanterns, followed by gasoline lights. Torch lighters entered the grove every night to illuminate torches fastened to trees and coal oil lanterns on posts in the tabernacle. After services, as preaching drew to an end and supplicants retired to their beds, one by one, lanterns were snuffed in the auditorium while smaller versions of the same transformed the hundred or so white tents into a beautiful city of light.

Over the years, amenities gradually filtered into the woods with the most important the addition of electricity in 1924. Old folks today recall a severe thunderstorm that cut off the tenuous power supply during an evening service. Gingerly, cottage holders felt their ways to the cottages and lined the sanctuary with lanterns to complete the worship.
 

Programs 

For many years, local pastors preached and brought their members with them. Evangelists often occupied central stage. More recent decades have seen professors from the Evangelical School of Theology in Myerstown gracing the pulpit. In the early years, Big Sunday services featured bishops of the Eastern Conference. For most, campmeeting was their sole contact with the bishops each year.

Congregational singing has always been a highlight at Mt. Lebanon.  Acoustics in the tabernacle are superb, with sound reverberating up and around the inside dome of the roof. Accompanists were, and continue to be, vital to the mood of the meetings. As early as 1906, records indicate that a piano and a rented Miller organ were in use.  Many talented musicians have graced the tabernacle with their gifts.

For many years Lebanon Valley College supplied speakers. Old timers from yesteryear recalled Professor Butterwick, a Bible teacher who “prayed around the world.” His knowledge of scripture was so thorough that no one ever won an argument with him.

Nor could one forget spiritual directors of the campmeetings – Rev. Christian Longenecker, for example, who literally "lived campmeeting." Teenagers of the era recall him tapping on their cottages to remind them of nightly curfews.

Through the years, children attended English-speaking schools and the German-speaking population increased in age. Eventually, campmeeting set up Old Peoples’ Days to cater to those with German as their mother tongue. Services in German continued through the 1960s and ‘70s. By 1984 they were gone except for the occasional commemorative service.

The women’s missionary emphasis had programs on the second Tuesday of campmeeting every year.  Streamers, crepe paper, and banners lent splashes of color to the tabernacle. Youth gathered arms full of flowers from cottage porches to decorate the chancel. Missionaries from around the world shared stories of redemption.

Campmeeting traditionally ended with a Ring Service. As the last meeting drew to a close, congregants encircled the tabernacle singing German choruses in the early years and English melodies later. Then one after the other, the people shook hands or hugged until each had bid all, in turn, God-speed until another year.
 

The Fires

The most traumatic events in Mt. Lebanon Campmeeting's history occurred in 1936 and twenty years later in 1956.

On October 20, 1936, it is believed that transients passing through the area started a fire that quickly got out of control. A special cottage at the northeast end of the grove, its porch wrapped so charmingly around a tree, was the first to go. Insatiable flames licked down the hill, taking the little havens with them one by one.

Volunteers mounted the tabernacle roof and doused sparks that landed on the cedar shakes. A cadre of men sheathed Cottage #33 and pulled it from its foundation, halting the fire’s advance. By 5:00 that evening, the wind providentially changed direction, but not in time to save 24 lovely cottages that lay in ashes. Even the trees had burned. The landscape with blackened stumps and haphazard foundation blocks reminded one more of a graveyard than a place of worship.

Fortunately, the tabernacle escaped unscathed. Encouraged, when the board met the following evening, it voted to rebuild. Seventeen new cottages were assured that very night, but depression years denied some families the privilege of rebuilding.

World War II caused hardships for the people. Gasoline rationing in 1943 prevented campmeeting from being held that year except for the Big Sunday.  After the war, crowds increased as couples married and had their families. Also, the merger of the Evangelical Church and the United Brethren in Christ attracted large numbers to the grounds. By the mid ‘50s attendance hovered around 5,000 on Big Sunday.

Late in 1956 a second fire started in a cottage at the northeast side of the grove, but by this time new fire extinguishers and hydrants had been installed. Though three cottages were destroyed and two others damaged, the tabernacle sustained only minor damage.
 

Finale

Changes occurred in the tabernacle, as well. In the early years, a large clock with pendulum and memorial photographs of old preachers graced the platform, but during the 75^th anniversary in 1966, they were removed and not replaced. As the years marched on, the majority of camp goers did not remember these preachers except by hearsay.

Also of interest is the oil painting, Christ in Gethsemane, hovering above the central stage. In the 1950s, Bethany United Methodist Church donated the first painting for the chancel. Some believe the work to  have been painted by an itinerant artist traveling from church to church creating his own version of the original Hofmann painting. A much-needed restoration, unfortunately, lasted less than a decade.

Later, an artistic preacher, Neville West from Newville, Pa., painted a new rendition, setting up a studio in a cottage near the dining hall.  West painstakingly replicated the image of Christ, rendering shades of purple for Jesus’ robe in place of the green in the original.

Through the past century and up to the present day, the "altar in the forest" at Mt. Lebanon has withstood trials wrought by history and time. This imposing structure, lofty and expansive, continues to inspire and lift one Godward, as Rev. Elmer Horst so aptly indicated in his 75^th year history:

“Tents have been exchanged for cottages, kerosene lamps for electric lights, horse and buggies for the modern automobile, and the beard for the ‘clean shave.’ The grove never-the-less continues to resound with the voices of God’s servants who proclaim the changeless Gospel of a changeless Saviour.

“The history of Mt. Lebanon is not so much a history of facts, dates, and statistics, as it is a history of spiritual experiences. It is not so many events, but the warming of so many hearts. It is not a location, as much as it is a fellowship . . . . Its ultimate purpose has always been to lift men Godward . . . .”

And for this sacred space, with David, we sing . . .

“Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?
Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?”

Psalms 15:1

Script written by Jeanne Jacoby Smith for the
Mt. Lebanon Campmeeting Tabernacle Centennial
© 2004

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