Towards the end of the 100-minute service at St Luke’s in Birmingham on a sunny Sunday morning, Taryn Nabi began to shake uncontrollably. Near her, a man fell to his knees with head bowed and arms outstretched. Several people wept; some embraced.
“I can’t explain it. It starts here,” said Nabi
after the service, pointing at her diaphragm. “It’s the Holy Spirit, it takes over. I just surrender.”
Nabi was among about 200 people who had come to sing, sway and pray at St Luke’s, a beautifully renovated warehouse in Gas Street, which opened its doors as a church in February. Now, according to priest-in-charge Tim Hughes, it regularly attracts a total of 500 people to its two Sunday services, which are characterised by loud rock music, chatty homilies rather than formal sermons, group prayer, and manifestations of God in the form of shaking or speaking in tongues.
Before moving to Birmingham, Hughes, 39, and his wife Rachel spent 10 years at Holy Trinity Brompton, an [...]
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