The Holy Ghost Bartender and Holy Laughter

It was circa 1993 at Louisville Trinity Church. My wife and I had been remarried for about two years. We both had become involved in serving in the church. Primarily, we both served in the nursery on a regular basis. But, I had decided to start helping with the altar ministry team. The task that I volunteered for was called “catching”. For most of you that are unfamiliar with the Charismatic and Pentecostal style worship services, the ministry at the altar where people are prayed for is one of the most iconic aspects of these churches. It is very common in these types of churches for the pastor or visiting evangelists to make an altar call. During these altar calls, several needs would be mentioned for people to be prayed over for. Usually, there was more than one need mentioned, to ensure the altar was full with people. The altar call is as much a part of a Charismatic/Pentecostal worship service, as preaching and singing. The regular attendees of these meetings would not believe they have actually had church, unless the show at the altar takes place somewhere in the service. Usually, at Louisville Trinity Church, the altar call was at the end of the service, but it could me made at any time the minister felt the leading of the Spirit or the anointing to do it. The anointing was a word that may have had a legitimate meaning in the Old Testament Jewish ceremonies, but as the word was understood in the modern Charismatic movement, the anointing was that special presence of the Holy Spirit that the minister sensed upon him when he was either preaching or praying. Specifically, the real meaning of the words to anoint meant to literally take oil and place it on the person being “anointed” to symbolize the setting apart of that person for a special task. For example, in the Old Testament, Samuel “anointed” both Saul and David to be King of Israel. The words to anoint also could be used in the sense of applying a healing salve to a wound. However, in the Pentecostal/Charismatic churches the word “anointing” came to mean the literal, and this is important, “transferable presence” of the Holy Spirit. So when the minister or ministers were praying for people at the altar, the belief was that when the ministers laid their hands on you, you received, “the anointing”, the presence of the Holy Spirit, to heal you, or meet whatever need you had come to the altar to receive ministry for. Subsequently the person being prayed for would be “slain in the Spirit”. To be “slain in the Spirit” meant that the power of the Holy Spirit had come on the individual being prayed for, so powerfully, that the person would fall back or collapse under the encounter with the Holy Spirit’s presence. So this “falling back” was why the “catchers” were much needed in the Charismatic/Pentecostal worship services. The unspoken truth was that if we were not back there catching people as they fell, they would be hurt, or even knocked out. In my experience catching people at the altar, you would see all sorts of strange ways for people to “fall out” under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Some of the people would fall back immediately, some after several minutes of praying would fall back, so you had to always be ready to catch, and some would either be pushed down, or just refuse to go down.
That was what I understood about the process up to and until Rodney Howard Browne was invited to hold a week long conference at our church in 1993. Mr. Browne was not well known at this point. He had emigrated from South Africa, because, as he said, God told him to. He was to bring the special anointing that God had placed on him to America and “impart” it to the church here. Mr. Browne’s ministry was already gaining attention within Charismatic/Pentecostal circles, but he still was not so big that he could not come to a church the size of Louisville Trinity Church. The sanctuary held 300 to 350 people. I personally had not heard of Mr. Browne. I do remember though, that we held special training sessions for the catchers before he came. I soon found out why. The plan was for Mr. Browne to hold meetings both morning and night for the best part of a week. There was one day that was planned as a rest day. I was working at the time, for a company called Blue Bird Pies and Cakes, as a route salesman. So, I was not able to be at the morning services. I remember the first meeting that I attended the first night well. I loved to hear great preaching. I still do. So after a very long and protracted time of praise and worship, with the mesmerizing and continuous repeating of verses to songs being accomplished, Mr. Browne stepped up to the pulpit. I expected a great sermon. I really did. I had heard what a great preacher he was. During the whole week that I attended every night service, I never saw him complete his actual sermon. The part of his ritual that he employed as he stepped to the pulpit every night that he did complete was the “offering sermon”. Mr. Browne, would preach the offering sermon, as long or longer, than most churches real sermon would ever last. He was so polished, and so persuasive in his offering sermons, that the offering that was received for that meeting was the largest that had ever been taken up for a visiting evangelist up to that point in the church’s history. It was well over 5000 dollars. Our weekly offerings barely came close to this amount, at the time. So, once the offering sermon was complete, Mr. Browne would announce his sermon passage, and we would turn to it, and then he would talk about all that God was doing in his ministry. He would tell us funny stories, tell us funny jokes, and then he would start laughing, or one of the congregation would start laughing, and that would start the next hour to hour and a half of some of the strangest sites I had ever seen any where. People would begin laughing in greater and greater numbers, and some would start to fall out on the floor, and roll in it, totally forgetting their dignity, laughing and laughing uncontrollably. Mr. Browne, would always begin with these first “drunk in the Spirit” individuals, and start interviewing them, asking them how they felt. He would get them to say silly things, and people would laugh all the more. Finally, when he would be done talking with them, or so you thought, he would lay hands on them, and say “be filled, be filled, be filled, and on and on until they reached an even more “drunken state in the Spirit”, and they would fall. Of course at this point, the catchers would catch the falling individuals. The “anointing” was so strong that even the catchers would start to fall out drunk in the Spirit. The “show” would go on, like I said for at least another hour and a half. Once this point in the service was reached, almost all the individuals in the congregation would be laughing uncontrollably. People would be lying all over the floor in the entire sanctuary, laughing uncontrollably. Whole pews of people would be laying all over each other laughing uncontrollably. This was the normal “manifestations” that you would witness every night, however, some of the people would behave even more bizarre than this, howling, mimicking women giving birth, with rhythmic gyrations, and others would be praying loudly in the tongues. It was a shear carnival of bizarre things to see. And this occurred in the sanctuary every night. This was better than anything you were going to see on network television, and probably anything you would see on cable too.
At the end of the bizarre service, Mr. Browne would make the final altar call for anyone who had any need. This was the point when the whole front of the sanctuary would be lined up with people seeking prayer. But, when Mr. Browne would pray for these people, they did not fall back like we were usually use to, they went down very fast and very hard.
One night Mr. Browne was moving so quickly we could not keep up with him. There was 5 to 7 of us catching and plus some of his team helping. He got ahead of his catchers, I was one of them, and a lady fell out and hit a metal chair with the back of her head. It was loud. And I could see she was hurt. We were all afraid to touch her. We were just hoping at that point, that it was really God, who took her down. It was the only way she would not be hurt after such a strike on her head. She laid there for at least 10 minutes. I now believe she was knocked completely silly. I know she was talked to later by the leaders of the church. They knew she was hurt. They were afraid she might sue them.
And this brings me to my summary of the whole affair. I doubted every thing that had taken place that week. I struggled with it for years. That is the sad part. I mean years. I meditated about what had happened and could come to no other conclusion than that it was all fraud using the power of suggestion or even worse demonic. I knew a little about mass audience dynamics and hypnosis techniques because I had read about it before. The only conclusion that I could possibly come up with is that Mr. Browne was the best hypnotist and audience manipulator ever, or it was not of God, and therefore demonic. Real bizarre things occurred, that were being done by very respectable people, who if they saw themselves on video tape would be forever embarrassed. I finally did meet with the Pastor and express my struggle with it all. He soothed me by asking me, do I want him to be my Pastor or my Pope? To restate it another way, he asked me, did I expect him to be infallible. He suggested that I “eat” what I like about his ministry, and spit out the rest. So I did. I wound up staying at the church all the way to 2008. By then the church had its third Pastor who started pastoring in about 1997. I will tell more about my journey through the Word of Faith/Prosperity movement in the next blog.