The Power Team Response

While reading Sharon Mazer's passage about The Power Team and their "evangecial crusades" as the author puts it, I can't help but feel a bit irritated.  I guess it goes back to my childhood and how I was raised, but the thought of putting on a huge spectacle to get people to donate money while being pulled into faith just doesn't sit right with me.  A person should develop their own beliefs and it seems that the main point of The Power Team's performances is to do just the opposite.  A perfect example of this is when the author is explaining how John Jacobs believes a man should run his family. Mazer states, "...but a truly devoted husband and father should build his family - and his community - in his image; he should, that is, control and constrain them as well as himself."  The main point in the performance is for people to conform to this one type of worship and to make those who think for themselves to feel like unwelcome outcasts.  If you ask me that is not what faith should be like.  Also, I found disheartening and cold to use the team members children in a plot to get more donations out of the observers.  I feel that this act alone diminishes a certain amount of their credibility.  Causing people to feel pity and therefore making them for susceptible to give the team their money.  Finally,  although their tactics are overbearing, deep down The Power Team is trying to open peoples minds up to a higher power and that I can encourage.  But the way in which they try to do this is often times for off-putting than not. A person should be allowed to come to their belief conclusions on their own unless they want otherwise.