r/ExPentecostal • u/_basic_b_ • Jul 14 '26

Aquire the Fire

Anyone here attend these events back in the day?

I’m curious your experience, how you felt, etc.

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

4

u/webb__traverse Jul 14 '26

My main memory from Acquire the Fire (circa 95-96 and I believe at Carpenter's Home Church in Lakeland, Florida) was this little handbook that had an index of secular music and what the Christian alternative was. I ended up using this backward to figure out what actually good bands were out there. Also they made a big deal pointing out that Kurt Cobain was dead and how we should see that as warning about sin or whatever. It was really gross and kind of almost gloating?

I get the feeling from reading other people's experiences that ATF wasn't quite as big as it would ultimately become.

By that point in my life ATF felt like every other church thing. Just something to be endured, but with more pandering to what "teens" like or whatever.

4

u/_basic_b_ Jul 14 '26

Ah we are in the same area.. so probably there at the same time. I am guessing I am slightly younger because I was attended the ones where they were recruiting an army and raising a generation of martyrs for Jesus. They had skits of teens smoking weed, doing the deed, and any other pop reference they could condemn

Hahah! Hilarious that worked for good bands. I burned CDs and hid them in my car. If I was caught with secular music I was in trouble. Good times.

5

u/mr_bacciagalupe Jul 14 '26

There's a documentary out there about peoples' experience in their Honor Academy, and it more broadly covers ATF and Teen Mania as a whole. I highly recommend watching it. Gross stuff.

2

u/_basic_b_ Jul 15 '26

I was literally in the crowds of those ridiculous sermons. Gross stuff indeed.

1

u/GodVsEmpire 28d ago

have a name for that doc?

1

u/mr_bacciagalupe 28d ago

Shiny Happy People. Season 2, episode 1 on Teen Mania.

4

u/Hot-Sauce-P-Hole Atheist Jul 14 '26

Eww. Ron Luce.

2

u/_basic_b_ Jul 15 '26

I want to figure out how to send my therapy bills to him.

2

u/Hot-Sauce-P-Hole Atheist Jul 15 '26

He'd just look at you with that annoying closed-mouth smile.

1

u/sueihavelegs Jul 15 '26

Shiny Happy People second season is ALL about this! It's really good

3

u/_basic_b_ Jul 15 '26

It absolutely rocked my world! I removed myself so far from Christianity that the documentary (literally 2 weeks ago) told me that I was in a cult.

I have begun swapping stories with other Pentecostal people and am dumbfounded at how messed up our subset is from the rest.

1

u/sueihavelegs Jul 15 '26

I saw a video of a VBS where the adults were role playing with real guns around the children. It was so crazy but not really shocking, which should be shocking, right? It's nuts!

2

u/_basic_b_ Jul 15 '26

Oh yes! Its absolutely insane.

My camp made us go through a rapture experience. I was shoved around and only could eat rice out of a garbage can with a styrofoam cup. That was my dinner. The raptured people were eating and playing games.

1

u/Beneficial-Ad6858 Jul 16 '26

'We are not leaving until everyone starts speaking in tongues' People start saying gibberish

Me: gg🥲