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| - I had gone to Redemption Tempe a number of times, but had started to look for a church in earnest that my girlfriend and I could attend together. I suggested we try Redemption Arcadia, as it is closer to both of our apartments than the Tempe location.
I had gone to a Bible study a few months earlier with the main pastor (F_____). I thought we'd give this place a try., but Arcadia's main pastor was announced as being on vacation.
With the guy that was there instead, the first thing I noticed was that the pastor that day walked on stage and immediately began screaming at the congregants. And I mean in less than 10 seconds from the time he started speaking.
I was actually flinching when he would speak. At some points he leaned forward about 45 degrees toward the audience and waved his arms emphatically, yelling 'WELCOME to Christianity! If anyone told you it would be different, THEY LIED...THEY LIED!" If I had not brought my girlfriend with me, I would have simply walked out at this point. Someone needs to take some video of this guy and show him what he looks like. With two huge speakers above the stage, there is absolutely no reason to yell like that. Plus, he looked crazy when he was waving his hands around...like the type of person you avoid on a downtown sidewalk in a major city.
For nearly 90 minutes, this man's antics made me absolutely sick with anxiety, particularly since we had fasted before the service after reading that there would be communion that week. The pastor's tone seemed like depictions of the stereotypical 'abusive husband' in movies or TV [ie. 'Dinner ready is PIZZA?!?"]
Additionally, what made the yelling worse was that the speaker addressed his audience at a 9th grade reading level and his points seemed a little redundant. Was he raising the volume of his voice to compensate for an argument that was not otherwise compelling? The pastor also kept talking about the band "Linkin Park", and I'm not even kidding...
Also a few other things I couldn't help but notice (since they were screamed at me). The pastor presented a (probably fake) narrative about getting into a car wreck on some kind of missionary trip, but *repeatedly* (like 6x) said that it was on I-95. In Iowa. Well, I-95 goes nowhere near Iowa. It runs north-south along the east coast. Did he mean I-35? Who knows? I once had a car totaled by a drunk driver on I-10 many years ago, and to this day, I remember correctly that it was on I-10. The pastor also related rather awkwardly that a "black Nigerian" (is there any other kind?) helped to pull people from the vehicle afterward.
At another point in the "sermon" the pastor, who actually professed himself a patriot, offered that Americans were less apt to be give selflessly of their own resources, when they harbored some typical American tendency to "keep what's mine and look out for my own". Anyone can look up the stats and see that on a per capita basis and GDP-percentage basis, America is the most charitable nation on earth, probably the most charitable in human history, in fact.
Finally, what the sermon lacked in insight, it thankfully made up for it in brevity, as the pastor ("Hey, I'm killin' it on the time thing today!") concluded his remarks after about 40 minutes or so of caterwauling. I don't think I'll be going back to the Arcadia location.
I almost forgot...the pastor also said that his toddler son had a "demon heart" because he sometimes did not want to give 10 percent of his allowance to the church. No, sir, your son is not a demon. He probably just hopes--perhaps naively--that if the building's electricity bill goes unpaid, maybe your microphone will be turned off.
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