Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Church wants to scare the devil out of teens Date: Thu, 29 Oct 92 14:38:17 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD Church wants to scare the devil out of teens \BY Jennifer L. Stevenson \CR ST. PETERSBURG TIMES \DT BRADENTON, Fla. BRADENTON, Fla. - Gary stands by his school locker, sobbing. He holds a gun to his head. Hovering nearby, whispering seductive words only Gary can hear, a disciple from the devil urges him to the pull the trigger. Gary does. Down the hall, a human sacrifice is under way. Just ahead is a coffin, made specially for you, my friend. It's your personal ticket to a never-ending inferno where souls are chained for eternity and demons shriek in the darkness. This is hell. Shock you? Scare you? Good. That's just what preachers Phil Derstine and Rob Sandefur want you to think about this Hallow's Eve. They call it Hell House and, for once, there is no hype in this advertising. The sign is painted a bright, almost lurid, neon orange and it is the tamest thing about the building in downtown Bradenton. Inside two vacant storefronts, Mr. Derstine and Mr. Sandefur are fashioning their version of hell on earth. It's a haunted house with a shocking twist Bradenton's Christian Retreat Family Church has been plotting for months as a way to convert new Christians and counter the secular Halloween celebrations. It's a 15-minute, $3 tour of hell. Gary isn't really going to kill himself. "If I can shock a few people into heaven," Mr. Sandefur, 33, says, "I'll do it." Their targets are teen-agers gone astray and lost in a moral morass. But the church's variation on the traditional haunted house has provoked a fierce debate among some area Christian leaders. All applaud the idea of trying to help teen-agers, but some question the Christian Retreat's shock-em and shake-em methods. "It's ghoulish," says the Rev. Eugene Ryan of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Sarasota. "Even though it's well-intentioned, I really have a problem with it." The first stop in a tour guided by an angel of death is a pretty pink bedroom, where a girl dies of a drug overdose, with the needle hanging out of her arm. In the next, a teen-age girl shrieks for the fetus she's just aborted, then dies of a heart attack. "Remember when you said you wanted to party?" the death angel hisses as the girl dies. "Well, party with me in hell!" In another room, a boy retches into a toilet. Now, the group sees a human sacrifice. Then they meet Gary and the sound of the gun going off shakes the small room as he "kills" himself. Finally visitors are ordered to go to hell, where strobes flash and the devil looms on a platform as actors scream and writhe on the floor. "They are going to be screaming bloody murder," Mr. Sandefur promises. But a reprieve is offered at the end of the tour in the form of "heaven," where the light is soft and a fog machine simulates clouds. Here, the group meets Moses, Christ on the cross, a minister and the resurrected Christ, who looks in a large book to see if members of the group are going to heaven. Finally, the whole group departs - into the arms of counselors from the Christian Retreat Church. "It's a harsh reality," admits Mr. Derstine, the senior pastor of the conservative church. "Hell is not pretty. Hell is hot. Hell House is going to show heaven and hell so people can decide where they want to spend eternity." But not everyone is sure the storefront hell is appropriate or will even work. City officials tried to block the church's sign because they had so many complaints that the word "Hell" is offensive. They backed off when they found out it was legal under city code. A local Catholic priest wrote Mayor Bill Evers that Hell House was "greatly offensive" and an example of vulgarity. Psychologists and other religious leaders are not worried about the sign, but what's behind the plain black door. "It's going to get their attention, but it sounds pretty intense to me," says Pat Bernhart, coordinator of school psychological services for the Manatee County school system. "I would think there are other ways to get the message across." But Mr. Sandefur says Hell House offers "hope" for troubled teen-agers. "They can receive forgiveness for anything they've done as long as they accept Christ. What's wrong with that?" This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM