"Do"s for Mainliners Visiting Pentecostal Church

The Azusa St. Mission, where it all started.

Yesterday was the first day I truly felt Presbyterian.

That's because it was the first time I've experienced pentecostal church.

S. and I went with his dad, who's divorced; he's been a member for 20 years and no one there has ever met any of his family.

It was a three-hour service in a windowless building, filled with speaking in tongues, lay preaching/ yelling, biblical interpretation (not to mention pronunciation) never dreamed of in seminary, ululations, laying-on of hands, and what Pentecostals call "baptisms of the holy ghost."  Just take the title credits of True Blood and you've got the basic idea.

It was the farthest out of my comfort zone I've been in a very long time.

Since my father-in-law had advised us that his church had a more formal dress code than our own wishy-washy denomination's, I had carefully garbed myself in a blue wool dress, low heels, and a knee covering for seated modesty (de rigeur for the ladies of his church.)  I thought I was looking pretty fancy.  That was before we walked into the building.

Here are a few tips for the mainliner aiming to visit a pentecostal church without attracting scrutiny as an obvious outsider:

1. DO dress for a job interview.

Ladies and gents alike wore suits.  (Skirt suits for the ladies.)  These suits were cleaned and pressed to within an inch of their lives.  Mens' shirts were starched and snowy, buttoned to the throat, and without exception worn with ties.   And every man carried a briefcase.  What was in each briefcase?

2. DO bring a well-worn Bible.

Each briefcase held a Bible, and each of those Bibles was highlighted and worn out.  I can't hold with what they read in their Bibles, but I can assure you that they are reading them.  Before I visit again I may have to run my Bible through the dryer to lend it some street cred.

3. DO pack hard candy.

Around hour three of the service, every lady in the pew broke out handfuls of mints, butterscotch rounds, and all manner of little suckables the likes of which I have never seen before.  These were offered all round, in spite of the fact that prayer requests revealed the entire congregation has diabetes.  The candies may be a way to replace precious blood glucose lowered by the exertions of fainting, weeping, sobbing, and ululating. 

4. DO stay for dinner.

To go to a black Southern church and leave before dinner is to completely miss the point.  We had to leave before the meal to drive an hour in the rain to let the babysitter off on time, but I have a feeling that some fried chicken and cornbread would really have been a better note to end on.