Many moons ago when I was a teenager, we went to a few different Pentecostal churches. Looking back it was quite interesting. They had quite different, yet similar views on spiritual gifts and things like that. It made for some interesting times. I did get quite a few free personality tests out of it. Apparently matching your MB profile to your spiritual gifts will let you enhance them and figure out just how to serve God in the best way possible.

Church 1 believed that spiritual gifts are still imparted today by the Holy Spirit among believers but that they differ in the frequency that they appear in. Where faith is great (apparently in Africa) and people aren't hindering the Spirit's work, gifts of healing are more frequent than in Western churches. Apparently Western society is too comfy and lacks the faith for that. Prophesy and speaking in tongues are gifts given to some believers.

Church 2 believed that spiritual gifts are imparted today and all gifts are able to be obtained by all people. In fact they went so far as to say that all Christians are known by the fact they can speak in tongues. We had sermons based around what was claimed to be linguistic research around people speaking in tongues. This church was very much emotion driven, and if you didn't feel like raising your hands during worship time, well the worship leader would have no problem singling you out and encouraging you to do just that for the next few songs. Because all gifts were available to all Christians, they weren't exactly 'rare'. But they could be temporarily given to you or something. I never quite understood that.

So digging in the archives here has brought back some memories:

1) Prophesy. This wasn't so frequent in church 1, because rarity. It did still happen, and in my opinion the people with this gift were usually the biggest busybody gossips. In church 2 what they claimed was prophecy I don't always believe was. It was a sermon topic reasonably frequently though. We used to go to youth events, and at youth events the guest speakers loved to prophesy over people. Cue the weirdness. Because on two separate occasions I was standing in the crowd and the quest speaker would single me out, and start prophesy over how I was going to grow up to be a "great man of God" and a whole lot of other random generalized stuff full of male pronouns. I am female, so yes, it was weird. The first time the other people in my youth group were busy yelling at the person that I was female, while I was dying with shame. That person heard and ignored them. The second time was just as embarrassing. I didn't appreciate being told "that boy with the long hair, stand up." twice (second time was "young man",) while everyone was staring while I though they must have been pointing to someone behind me, because hello - female. According to my youth leader the prophesies were still valid. Apparently God could tell someone about my future but not about my gender.

2)Speaking in tongues. In Church 1 this wasn't done much and was considered a bit weird. It was meant to be a personal thing, not something you shoved into people's faces. And if you were to do it publicly you may only do it if there is an interpreter around. Moving to church 2, that was fun. There everyone was meant to speak in tongues. There were 'lessons' in how to do it. The biggest lesson "fake it until you make it". Apparently if you say things like "bah, bah ca, sa la, ab ba" a lot eventually tongues would roll out of your mouth. It was likened to a baby babbling before speaking proper words. Personally I'd go for a mass hysteria explanation. YMMV

3) despite the above, anything like snake handling was still considered weird. Thankfully, because snakes in church would have made me go

Most amusingly, Church 1 was considered really happy clappy, hanging from the rafters in its town, whereas Church 2 wasn't. Church 2 was way more happy clappy rafter weirdness than Church 1. It made me wonder what other churches did in Church 2's town to make it seem normal. I guess I will never find out.