The Crazy Church

JUNE 1973

I had another friend at the Coast Guard station in Peteluma who was a Christian but not Pentecostal. In other words he didn't believe in or didn't know about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with Speaking in tongues. I felt very strongly that this was an important part of living a victorious life in Christ, so I convinced him to go with me to a Pentecostal church - a small Assemblies of God church where the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was taught.

We walked into a church with about 40 people in it. The Pastor who met us at the front was very nice, so I had great hopes that this would be a good service to help my friend get a deeper walk with Christ.

As we sat down a I noticed that the church was a little odd. First a drooling lady in front got up and turned to a friend, "Hi Gerty." She was unusually strange and repulsive, but I thought to myself that I should not be judgmental, so I pushed away my feelings and waited for the service to begin. We sang a few hymns and then the pastor introduced the guest speaker - a traveling evangelist. My heart sank.

Pentecostal preachers that I knew could easily preach 45 minutes to an hour. And if the "Holy Spirit" was leading them, they could go much longer, but in the case of visiting evangelists, anything could happen and usually did in the few times I saw them, which always seemed to be days I brought guests.

This one spent his entire sermon pacing the stage, yelling, frothing at the mouth, and getting all emotional saying one thing over and over and over for the 30 minutes my friend and I could handle being there: "If you want to be free," he preached, "you have to get know how to praise the Lord." No kidding - that's all he said for one half an hour, for 30 long minutes, 1,800 dragged out seconds of my life; and while he paced the stage back and forth the congregation got louder and louder; and while they got louder and louder my friend and I got more and more uncomfortable; and as we got more and more uncomfortable, the travelling visiting evangelist focused his attention more and more on me and my friend looking right at us as he preached, "If you can't praise the Lord, Satan has bound you and you need to get freed. And you can get freed if you praise the Lord, and raise up your hands and shout, Halleluia; Praise the Lord! Amen! Can I hear an amen? Can I hear an amen? Halleluia! Shout to God! Let's get excited and praise God! So many are bound by Satan, they can't praise the Lord (he looked at my friend and me), but you can be free!" Oh everybody got so into it. There was loud praising and excited response from all the congregation. From the drooling lady to Gerty, they were all swept into his excitement, everybody that is except me and my friend.

Finally, after 30 minutes of nonstop verbal abuse, I turned to my friend and without saying anything, we both got up and started walked out of the church. I had given up all hope that God would meet us there in some sort of blessing for my friend.