DA: Lancaster pastor ‘terrorized’ kids – The York Daily Record.
I’m not sure what to think about this Lancaster pastor. Good intentions gone wrong would sum it up.
I understand what their goal was: to educate and bring awareness to what could happen on a missionary trip in a foreign country.
I’ve been on a missionary trip with a huge group of teenagers. We traveled as a group and rarely separated into groups of less than three. This was for our own protection.
(As a side note I will add that after our flight to California we went to eat at a fast food restaurant. When I came out of the restroom, I realized our entire missionary group had left in the two rented vans. Thank God it was me who was left behind because I don’t know how a teenager would have reacted. No one told us what hotel we were staying at and it took quite some time for me to even find our group and have them come back for me. Poor planning…everyone should have know what hotel we were staying at before continuing on to Mexico.)
Foreign countries are unpredictable. What this pastor staged has the real possibility of happening on a missionary trip. It takes faith in God to leave your home and enter foreign territory to spread His word.
What this Assembly of God Church should have done was inform the parents and youth what was going to happen. Even knowing it is staged would still get the point across. After the staged kidnapping, a discussion on how to react to capture should have taken place.
In my humble opinion, no teenagers should be taken to a hostile country for missionary purposes. Adult missionaries risk their lives to spread God’s word and understand the risks they are taking.
Teenagers believe they are indestructible.
~P.
girlboxer1970 
Oh dear, what was this pastor thinking? That’s terrible to do to children. It’s abuse. I think this man should go to jail for what he did.
Wow, that’s just… I have no words.
Surely the off-duty policeman wouldn’t have been involved had he known it was a surprise to the kids? Disgraceful.
that’s really off. He went far too far. The kids in that most likely will have suffered some trauma despite finding out it was ‘fake’. Plus anyone who was frail and even people who weren’t could have been triggered into a medical emergency from the shock. And last but nowhere near least, he abused their TRUST. I agree, teens are far too young and immature to go overseas for missionary purposes. I also would never travel with this pastor! If you can’t trust him at home and with your own, you can’t trust him away either.