My only experience with a scary church.

[Bouncy Ball]

Back in mid-1997, my husband and I had just been back in Texas about a year and decided to start checking out some Methodist churches. We had joined one in the other state we were living in and liked it quite a bit.

This was a big deal for my husband, who has religious/spiritual beliefs but is not big into organized religion.

So we went to this United Methodist church in one suburb, dropped our daughter off in the nursery (she was a toddler) and went to the main part of the church.

There was a huge band on stage, percussion, brass, strings, everything. Enormous overhead screens were on either side and the place was like a sports auditorium. We sat down toward the back and two guys came out and one started preaching.

He started getting really agitated and said he could "sense" a "DEMON in this church!" He was so melodramatic, I started having to stifle a giggle fit. I whispered in my husband's ear "He's talking about YOU!" and my husband snorted and then he had to try to keep from laughing.

But the guy went on and on, talking about this evil presence and he started acting SCARED of it, mopping the sweat off his brow and looking out over the audience as if he could find the demon. The other guy up there kinda tag-teamed him and I figured out pretty quickly it was a "good cop, bad cop" routine. We stopped feeling giggly and started getting a bit freaked out.

Then the lady in the pew in front of us, on the end, fell out onto the floor and started flopping around like a fish out of water. Her eyes were rolling back in her head and I got up to help her, because I thought she might be having a seizure, but people immediately gathered around her, put their palms out toward her and started muttering. The scared of the demon minister jumped up and started yelling "YES!!! YES!! GET IT OUT!!! GET IT OUT!!!"

Then OTHER people started falling out of their pews onto the aisles, doing the same thing. I did notice this ONLY happened to people sitting on the ends of pews. Meanwhile both ministers have gone stark raving mad up on stage yelling and jumping about, sweating and screaming about demons.

My husband turned to me and growled through gritted teeth "Get up and go to the nursery NOW."

I did so, paused to talk to him in the hallway and he said "JUST KEEP GOING."

We asked for our daughter, I said my husband wasn't feeling well. I scooped her up and he held my elbow in a death grip and we marched to the car, got in, drove off.

At home I tried to tell him that was NOT a United Methodist church. Methodists do not do that! But you can imagine--he was already sort of skittish about churches, so it took another three years before he would visit one again.

[Rowdyboy]

1. It was a United Methodist Church?

:shrug: Never seen that shit in a YM church before....Sure you guys didn't get lost?

[Bouncy Ball]

3. I know, I kept checking the sign on the church as we were driving

off. That's what really got me, we specifically were only visiting UM churches, because we were comfortable with them and agreed with them.

:shrug:

I could even give you the name of it, I still remember. I should take a look on the internet and see if they are still around.

[MadHound]

2. Geez, no, that doesn't sound very Methodist to me.

Sounds more Pentacostal or one of the other more evangelical/charasmatic sects. Weird.

True story. I used to own an arcade next door to a very fundemental Pentacostal church. Weirdness to the point where on Sunday mornings, while I was doing cleaning(I opene Sundays at noon during tourist season), I could hear these people falling out and flopping around, speaking in tongues and just freaking out in general. One day I had just opened up, and the church had just gotten out when a little old lady walked in. I said Hi, she said nothing but started stalking from machine to machine, peering intently into each one. I asked if I could help her, she said no. I asked if she was looking for something, she said that she was looking for the sign of the devil on the machines. I said huh? She continued that apparently every video game has the mark of the beast on it somewhere, and she wanted to find it on mine. I let her continue to wander around, but my mind immediately thought of a great business opportunity that would fit right in with this buckle of the bible belt I was living in. Cobble up a quick motherboard, slap it in a case with a coin counter, such that when somebody put a quarter in, a leering devil face and the numbers 666 would come on screen. I was having a great little, albeit silent, giggle when the little old lady left, completely dissatisfied in her search.

[Bouncy Ball]

6. Oh my.

Um, wow. I'm kind of cracking up that there was an arcade next door!

[MadHound]

15. Yeah, I was sort of reviled by the grown-ups around those parts

But damn their kids loved me:evilgrin: This was at a four stop that was generously called a town in SW Missouri, back in the early eighties. Made money hand over fist, for there was nothing for these poor bored kids to do for sixty miles. But the adults thought I was leading their kids astray. Didn't help matters that I was an outsider, having moved there. Fun times, fun times in many ways, but I wouldn't do it again.

Yeah, I always thought that the placement of the arcade was a bit odd. The arcade building I rented from the guy next door, who owned/operated the bowling alley. Cemetary was next to me, then the church. Real odd thing is that in the back of the cemetary were a couple of old Native American burial mounds, thankfully undisturbed.

SW Missouri, Northern Arkansas is some of the most beautiful land on this planet, but you have to take into consideration that it is filled with some of the strangest people on this planet also. Of course being exposed to this sort of RW weirdness long ago kind of innoculated me to the weirdness being perpetuated by the Bush gang, it is all cut from the same cloth:crazy: And just think, this is the same place Ashcroft came from:scared:

[xmas74]

25. May I ask what town it was?

Curious if I know it by name.

[Art_from_Ark]

28. Sounds like Washburn to me

or maybe Seligman or Cassville

[xmas74]

29. I could go for Cassville.

I just wondered about it-there are some strange people in that area.

[Art_from_Ark]

31. You're not kidding

I was driving up MO 37 one night between Cassville and Monett, when some @&$# in a pickup truck threw a hard-boiled egg at me and broke my windshield-- and that was just the beginning of one of the weirdest nights in my life.

[xmas74]

33. Monett's just as bad.

I have met people from there-crazy.

[Art_from_Ark]

34. Barry County, Missouri

Like another poster said, there's some lovely places there (like Roaring River State Park and Mark Twain National Forest), but...

I knew a girl who lived in Barry County but made the 30-mile trek to a high school in Arkansas (and paid tuition to boot) because she couldn't stand the thought of going to Washburn or Cassville High.

[TlalocW]

16. Believe it or not, in Tulsa

There's an old strip mall that's been redeveloped to have three main sections. Section 1 is a Baptist church. Section 3 is a New Age Church. Section 2, in between 1 and 3, is a nightclub predominantly visited by gays.

I've always wanted to get up some Sunday and drive out there and watch how the various groups interact with each other - Baptists and new agers arriving at the same time, and maybe the owners and a few close friends of the nightclub going home for the "night" in the morning.

TlalocW

[Bouncy Ball]

17. Ha! LMAO!

That would be very interesting, sociologically speaking.

[asjr]

4. That sort of drama never happened in any Methodist church

I went to. I wonder if they ever got that devil out.

[Bouncy Ball]

5. Well, my husband left so...

:rofl:

He always used to joke if he step foot in a church he'd burst into flames, which is why were were initially giggling so much.

But I get the sense they say that stuff every Sunday.

[MrScorpio]

7. That was a common occurance at my old church

You're right... It wasn't Methodist

[jandrok]

9. Funny, but those folks look a lot like the ones that Jim Jones...

...piled up like cordwood at Guyana many years ago after they all drank the kool-aid. They're splayed out in exactly the same way...fetal positions....almost like they're sleeping.

Really scary.

[MrScorpio]

13. It's a reaction to the Holy Ghost

I was baptised Apostolic but the Holy Ghost never found me.

[Bouncy Ball]

14. So, they did all the same

rolling of eyes and grunting and seizure behavior? I kind of knew about it (I once visited a church when I was a teenager where they spoke in tongues), but I had never actually seen it up close and personal.

And it's extra disturbing when you are expecting a nice, staid United Methodist service. Sing a little, greet your neighbor, sit very still and listen to sermon, sing some more, etc etc.

[Bouncy Ball]

8. Aha!

I found them on the internet. Here's a blurb in which they say they are evangelical:

"If on your first few visits to First United Methodist of Carrollton you get a sense that FUMCC is a little different from other churches you have visited, your hunch is correct. With more than 100 years of a rich, diverse history, there is a depth and commitment that has left an unmistakable imprint on our faith, our worship, our evangelistic focus, our missions activities and our commitment to Christian Education."

[Rowdyboy]

20. That is truly bizarre....I've never heard of Evangelical United Methodists

Its almost a contradiction in terms. Things just get stranger and stranger.

[Bouncy Ball]

21. According to their website they became evangelical in 1994

and are now in the process of moving into bigger digs a bit further north.

Can you imagine how disturbing it would be to go in expecting a typical UMC experience and have THAT happen? I mean, if I had known I was walking into an Apostolic/Pentacostal church, I would have been prepared.

And no one sang the "world without end" song I love so much. Well at least they didn't while we were in there.

[jandrok]

10. Creepy stuff, Bouncy.

I'd a left straightaways, too.

[Bouncy Ball]

11. Well something was setting Mr. Bouncy's radar off big-time.

I mean, I was uncomfortable and freaked out but he was like "Get the HELL OUT."

I remember about a week later he commented "it's a good thing we left before they brought out the snakes."

[dbonds]

12. That is pretty scary.

I grew up in rural Alabama going to a southern baptist fire and brimstone church. The preacher was the authority figure for the community. When I was young I wanted to be a preacher. He talked of demons and satan, how we all were sinners but could be forgiven. When I got about high school age I started to question, it took me a few more years before I emotionally escaped. For me what got me 'thinking' was actually trying to learn more about the bible to understand it better and realizing the god in the old testimate is crazy and egotistical. There was no consistancy in anything. The stories didn't talk to me. So I went to learn more about all religions, that is when I realized what a mutt christianity is. It is formost a political structure using the name jesus combined with some of the existing archetypical stories. But the stories instead of their enlightening meaning was taken litteraly.

After much searching, today I am somewhat pagan. But more closely think R.J. Stewart has found the spiritual links in the old stories that really ring true.

[skygazer]

18. Wow, what a freaky experience

A friend and I once went to a tent meeting together - the local loonies were putting on a tent revival and out of curiosity (and because we had been the ones to mow the field the tent was put up in), we decided to go.

It was very gloomy and pouring rain when we left the house and by the time we got there, the thunder and lightning had begun. This all took place in a large open field so the tallest thing in it was the tent with all its (metal) poles. I'd been pretty sure I'd be struck dead just for being there - the weather made me certain. To calm my nerves, I took several large swallows off the jug we just happened to have in the car and then we headed in.

It was bizarre, to say the least. First, there was a long prayer from some old man which got louder and louder and more and more frenzied (as the lightning pounded down all around us - we could see it kicking up divots outside since we'd planted ourselves near an exit). Then, just as we thought the guy was going to have a coronary, four guys in sweater vests got up and sang some hymns which was actually rather nice, though strange.

But then it got really odd because a younger preacher got up and I think he was possessed. He was shouting and hollering and the congregation was "amen"ing and "hallelujah"ing and that's when people started flocking up to the front to "wrestle with the devil". It was the most incredibly bizarre experience I've ever had - my seemingly normal neighbors all worked up and acting like they were on a bad acid trip. No speaking in tongues but the wrestling with the devil was quite enough.

[Bouncy Ball]

19. Yeeesh.

Yep, I'd have been a bit creeped out too. Heck the weather alone would have done it for me.

[Arugula Latte]

22. "I did notice this ONLY happened to people sitting on the ends of pews. "

How conveeeeeeenient! ... Isn't that special? :rofl:

[Bouncy Ball]

26. My scientific mind noticed that convenient little bit of data.

How come no one in the middle of the pews got to throw themselves all over the floor, roll their eyes, grunt, sweat, get all that attention and get the demons out of THEM?

Seems patently unfair that the demons pick on people on the end of the pews, doesn't it?

[Catherine Vincent]

23. People that act like that always turned me off.

It always scared me. And in my book hollering and screaming isn't preaching.

[xmas74]

24. I know that is not a Methodist Church.

But some evangelical churches are using the names of traditionally known churches. I have gone to a Methodist and a Presbyterian that did just that and they were no better than a circus. I looked them up online through the links for UMC and the Presbyterians-no mentions of either of those churches as a part of their organizations.

[yellowdogintexas]

27. Carollton, huh? I figured it was Bedford...

I have heard the Bedford UMC is a little on the unconventional side too, lots of hands to the sky, swaying with the music, so called Christian pop and rock music...bleechhh. Video screens...ick


Life long Methodist here: MY church is exactly like what you were expecting to find in that church. And we sing the "world without end" song you love so much too. Just like Methodists are supposed to.

[Spider Jerusalem]

30. Charismatic Methodists?

That is scary. I'd expect that from Pentecostals. Or the Church of God. Or one of those other fringe-Protestant sects that seems to exist only in the deep South. But NOT Methodists.

[Neoma]

32. Your right, that is scary.