At the time, we were interns at an after-school children's ministry, and we had a lot of time on our hands. We thought we were super social and super spiritual, so we went to churches, worship nights, small groups, and coffee shops a lot. I'd been attending some weeknight worship nights held at a few churches, and I'd heard about another one, and I talked Sara into trying it out with me.
At first it was totally normal. We walked in, it was crowded with all typical hipster Nashville Christians, there was a table full of donuts in the back, and there was a vibe-y band on stage wearing beanies and fedoras. Nobody said hello or welcomed us, but that's unfortunately kinda common in churches, so I didn't think much of it. The room was the size of a small gymnasium, and there were about 200 people present. The pastor started praying for the Holy Spirit to come... we started singing some worship songs... all seemed normal.
Then the pastor was like, "Raise your hand if you have not yet experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, and one of our Holy Spirit interns will come pray over you." What? We laid low, glanced at each other, and kept our eyes peeled. I tried to keep singing along to the worship songs, thinking, "Okay, sure, they're just slightly more Pentecostal than I'm used to, but it's all the same God, no biggie."
Then the pastor goes on, "Raise your hand if you have any physical ailment, and I will come use the power of the Holy Spirit to heal you." WHAT? This pastor gets to decide who God will heal? He can harness the power of God to do whatever he wants?
"Raise your hand if you are not yet experiencing drunkenness the Holy Spirit." WHAT? At this point the interns were rolling around on the ground, twitching, laughing, crying, yelling out at the Holy Spirit. Sara and I made eye contact, and she said, "Do you think we can leave?" Honestly I was getting so creeped out I thought they would stop us at the door. We bolted. No one looked at us. No one talked to us. The doors weren't locked shut.
The cherry on top...
As we were leaving, in the parking lot we saw another young woman leaving early, by herself. She saw us and said, half-laughing, "Were you guys in there? What was that? Look at this!" and she pointed to the handicapped parking sign right by the entrance:
We got into our car safely and couldn't stop nervously laughing.
"Was that a cult?"
"Yeah, maybe... let's say yes."
And we sped off quickly.
The next day, we talked it out with some of our coworkers, and upon further reflection, we realized more of why we were so freaked out. The whole, time they never once mentioned God or Jesus. Only the Holy Spirit. And actually, never the goodness or righteousness of the Holy Spirit, just the "power you can have" through the Holy Spirit. Because that's definitely what human people need and deserve: power. And that's definitely who should decide who gets miraculously healed: people.
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