How do I start this post? Let me first preface what I'm about to describe it pretty interesting and was pretty dang surreal. I'm not saying that these people are wrong or judging them, but let's just say that Annie and I felt pretty dang uncomfortable.
I was watching TV the other day and I found out that a national minister was going to be speaking at a local church. So Annie and I are decided to go and see him, knowing nothing about the church itself (insert eerie foreshadowing here).
Let me say first that I had never seen this pastor actually preach. I had just seen him lecture. When he lectured, he simply talked normally, like any one of us do. What happened to us was nothing of the sort.
We show up to the church, and it's a very nice building. The service was supposed to start at 10:30, and by about 10:29, only 1/2 of the seats were filled. That's when I got a the feeling that this was going to be a long, long service. I told her that and she looked thrilled. The reason that I thought that was because churches that have long services, tend to not "fill up" until about 30 minutes into the service. Oh how I was right.
The people are very, very into the service, most of the people are dancing in some way, and a lot of them are crying. Crying. Almost everybody was speaking out loud different things. Different, but we are still half-way O.K. with the situation. We just figured that they were really into the music.
After an hour (an hour!!!) of music and singing (which I think was a tad much), the pastor of the church came up to introduce the guest minister. While he did that, he all of a sudden started "speaking in tongues." For a long time. We just sat there, not really sure what to think about what was going on.
Then the guest pastor gave his sermon, which was fine. What was about to happen, neither Annie or I were quite prepared for.
He then asked people to come up front if they had certain problems in their life. So a dozen or so folks went up front, and he started praying for them. OK.
Pretty soon, we see people starting to drop. I mean he was laying his hand on their heads, and then they would fall back and onto the floor. One woman, after seeing another woman drop, came over to her with a small blanket and fanned her for a while and then placed it over her like a blanket. The woman was laid out for about 10 minutes.
While in the midst of this, the pastor started speaking in tongues too, all the while, people are dropping like flies. He would put his hand on their heads, shake violently, and then the person would fall to the floor. No lie.
I have to say, that I was hoping that he was going to lay Annie out too. I think that she would have enjoyed it. :)
Needless to say, we were at a loss for words. At this point the service has been going on for over 2 hours, and we really didn't want to leave it early, but since there was no end in sight, we discretely exited stage left.
Talk about "The Road Goes On Forever." Wow.
After we left, Annie said, "I feel like I need to either cry or take a 3 hour nap." I told her that I was pretty drained too.
So we made a deal to head back there next week.
Just kidding.
I'm still trying to absorb all that occurred during that church service. I'm not quite sure what to make of it all. For instance, what do the people "feel" when they get laid out? Do they feel anything when they are laid out on the floor? Or are they just exhausted and they can't get up? And can I get them to do that to Annie? Or can I do that to Big R on command? I'd like to be able to do that; I think it would be pretty fun.
Well, keep on keepin' on. And the moral to the story: Research a church before you attend it.
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