Jon Hunter rants

One of the largest Pentecostal churches in PE, is the large Word of Faith church and without being nasty about them its not my theology, its not my style and they definitely don’t have the same values as me. But because it is so large and important to the city I thought should visit at some point.

Anyway April points out to me the large advert they have placed in the local paper, and we notice that have a evening meeting with a sermon they are playing on the news item of one boy who in some delusion, took a samurai sword and killed another, after listening to slipknot. The title of the ilk “Satansim how to stop your child going the way of *******. The ****** being the name of this deluded child.

Anyway if they were going to sue the tragedy to further the course of the church I felt a little mischief coming on. So come Sunday afternoon I shave my head completely, put on my dragon t-shirt and knackered black leather jacket and head for the Word of Faith church looking well rather dubious in nature.

The church is a large 1000 seater auditorium and I head in with about 5 mins to go, fond myself an empty pew near the back, sat down waited to see what church experience I would have.

Well no one talked to me, actually no one even made eye contact with me. In a pretty full a auditorium I had a 12 seater pew all to myself, it was strange people just seemed to move round me. I did get the impression however that the senior Pastor and a couple of the ushers may have been disturbed by my presence. Something tells me a few word of faith guys have been praying for/against me and thought they had a Satanist within the meeting. I wonder how they could of come to that conclusion?

The worship wasn’t bad, the rhythm section to the band was awesome but I go the distinct impression from a few of the songs God was the third most important person in them after the singer and the church. But when the guy got up to preach well I had to restrain myself from standing up and shouting bollocks on more than one occasion.

The gist of the sermon was heavy metal is the occult and it will make your child a Satanist and murder you and your friends.

Particular lines that annoyed me were the introduction “Pastor James is a real man of God he casts out 7 or 8 demons a day”, “if you listen to heavy metal music you will become a Satanist” and “if any of your friends listen to heavy metal, you shouldn’t associate with them because they will drag you down.” And “buy my book on how to do deliverance, only 80 rand today with a free vial of anointing oil so you can go home anoint your house and drive all the demons out of it!”

Ok I admit it was childish and I may have a slight critical spirit about the whole thing, but anyone who takes a teenagers death, sensationalises it and then uses to further the financial cause of there ministry deserves everything criticism they get.