“If you don’t touch the actors, they won’t touch you.” These aren’t normal instructions to attend church. Neither is paying $5. But standing in line for Searcy’s third consecutive Faith Assembly of God’s “Hell House,” I was embarking on the spiritual adventure aiming to scare the devil out of me—by letting me meet him face-to-face. This week, thousands of churches nationwide offered a moral-conscious “Hell House” alternative to Halloween, leaving many wondering: Are evangelism and scare tactics mutually exclusive in 2007?
Hell Houses, also known as “Revelation Walks” and “Torment Tours,” took off in the mid-90’s when Pastor Keenan Roberts decided to re-gain the attention of teenagers by creating “the most in-your-face, death-defyin’, satan-be-cryin’, keep-ya-from-fryin’, cutting-edge evangelism tool of the new millennium.” The concept is simple: deliver a fire and brimstone sermon in a spook house attraction. Groups are led by a demon, or multiple demons, through short scenes where unrepentant sinners are cast into Hell. Scenarios range from drunk-driving and pre-marital sex to political scenes like 9/11 ground zero and the Columbine shootings. The journey ends with heaven’s angels rescuing the group from Satan and taking them to meet Jesus, where they can respond to their experience and pray for salvation.
Roberts mass-produces Hell House outreach kits (chainsaw not included) which he sells for $299. Included is an instructional DVD, a special effects tape of Lucifer’s voice, and a 263-page manual on everything your church needs to know to run a Hell House, including this prop advice for an abortion scene: “Do your very best to purchase a meat product that will resemble as much as possible pieces of a baby that are being placed in the glass for all to see.” New for this fall were also $45 scripts of a dance club overdose and a gay wedding where Satan performs the ceremony.
The Searcy Hell House was unique in that, after the opening séance where demons circle the group chanting “nobody wants to go to Hell,” the skits build around Abby, a depressed teen, and her suicide. I was too terrified, however, to get the full plot effect and at one point was told by the head demon (possibly Screwtape) that if I didn’t settle down I would have to leave. This really served as my only moment of spiritual reflection: Where do you go if you get kicked out of Hell? The local tour also replaced the Heaven meet-and-greet with a guy handing out the “Book of Hope”—a copy-and-pasting of the gospels into a single “more complete account” of Christ’s life (for those youngsters who couldn’t possibly understand four separate books about him).
Still, not even Hell House can escape judgment. Many continue to criticize this radical evangelism’s gory nature (often including graphic abortions), attempts to scare people into converting, and the literal demonization of homosexuals. A Hell House in Florida featured the coffin on an AIDS victim where a demon joyously proclaims “I tricked him into believing he was born gay.” Pastor Roberts’ justifies these methods by citing 1 Cor. 9:23, “I do all this for the sake of the Gospel.” But how far does this logic go?
Last Monday, I called Roberts—who has appeared on the Phil Donahue Show and in the New York Times—and asked him if the ends always justifies the means in evangelism today. He defended his ministry by saying it wasn’t as if they were walking up to non-believers and hitting them with baseball bats (which I found very ironic since I was chased by a ghoul holding a two-by-four). He likened Hell House to modern day parables with multimedia. “And as these desperate times call for drastic measures,” Roberts said, “sometimes you’ve got to shake em’ to wake em’.”
While I appreciate the motive behind such productions, souls can not be won and issues debunked in 10-minute spook houses to the humming of demon chainsaws. We must be conscious of the fine line between adapting our evangelism and compromising it when trying to stay relevant. Does the gospel have to be an X-rated video game for kids to respond?
Upon exiting my first (and hopefully last time) in Hell, a kind demon held open the door for me and I asked where the baptistery was, to which he laughed and said “God bless you, and watch out for Satan in those bushes.” Satan in the bushes—now that’s something I’d pay $5 to see.
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