The pioneering preachers did their work well and established many congregations all over East Texas. The East Texas I grew up in was known for having many faithful churches of Christ. In fact, the East Texas region was the springboard for evangelism into the rest of the state even into my time. Since my parents and most all their folks going back to the early 1800s were members of the church, I can tap their memories for how things were among Christians before the 1950s.

In the days before World War II, meetinghouses of the churches of Christ could be found in nearly every community. In the small towns and rural communities they were typically very simple wood frame buildings, painted white, with tall windows to try and regulate some air drafts in warm weather and most did not sport steeples or any kind of bell towers, to show an obvious difference with denominational meeting houses. There was no indoor plumbing so outhouses, men's and women's were provided behind the meetinghouse. In good weather places of worship were often overcrowded with the faithful. However, inclement weather made dirt roads impassible and forced folks to worship in family groups in their homes.

My father, Truman Smith, who began preaching as a teenaged boy in the 1940s tells me that as a boy he heard such men preach as C. R. Nichol, John Hedge, Foy Wallace Jr. and many other well known men of the time. Such as these had the reputation as "fire and brimstone preachers." Their natural voices were trained to be loud and forceful and they backed every word with the profuse quoting of scripture as their authority. Their motto was to "speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent." The faithful who listened to their oratory were often just as knowledgeable as the speakers and if they found inconsistency as they carefully weighed the lesson, they would call it to the attention of the preacher for correction.

Gospel meetings were the high point of the year in those days. Typically, gospel meetings lasted ten days to two weeks in the summertime, after "the crops were laid by," a time when not much could be done by farmers awaiting the crops to ripen before harvest. The preachers would often speak for two and three hours at a time. There was little entertainment in those days to detract from such events, so a gospel meeting was a community event attended by nearly everyone. When the time drew close for the gospel meeting, a group of volunteers would go into the woods and cut down a number of pine trees and would construct a "brush arbor" for the preaching to be done in and to avoid the confinement and heat inside the meetinghouse. This structure of pine poles would be roofed over with pine boughs to provide shade and scant protection from the occasional "frog strangler" (thunderstorm). Kerosene lanterns and pine rosin torches provided light during the evening. However, air was moved by handheld fans only. A local saw mill would be visited for fresh sawdust to spread on the ground as a pleasant smelling ground cover. Listeners would pour in from many miles around and those unable to be seated under the brush arbor on the rough plank pews would sit in their wagons or buggies, and even in their early automobiles.