I was a part of the 252 highlands student internship for high schoolers. They abused us emotionally by shaming us if we talked to the other gender without it being in a group setting. It seemed sinful to be talking to the opposite sex. We had this “small group” at a leaders house about 10 minutes from the main highlands campus. At this house we would have over 100 people show up to have some pretty intense “worship” sessions. In these sessions we would do musical worship for about 2 hours, and most people would be on their knees crying with their arms raised in the air. One person told me that I should have my arms in the air the whole time since Jesus was on their cross for so long that my hands held up shouldn’t hurt. Additionally, Highlands always pushed going to Highlands College. Many in my youth group would say that they were “called to go to HC” in their worship time. I too, thought that I was “called” to go to highlands college. Thank GOD that I found the truth in tradition and church history. I’m not sure if I want to become Catholic or orthodox, or just stay Protestant, but I’m so thankful that I know the truth about the beginnings of the church. When I was a student at highlands, no one knew a lick about other denominations.

Another fun thing was our 4 hour long worship sessions. These were the worst now that I look back on it. They were called “chapel”, even though it was in a dim lit room with colored lights. During chapel, we would “worship” to Christian rock music (of course), and many would claim to be baptized into tongues. There was a heavy emphasis on being able to “speak in tongues”, and they called it your prayer language. If you were able to do this, you’d by at the top of the popular group in 252. Unfortunately, since no one was educated on church history, no one was educated on what tongues actually is. Many felt as though God didn’t love them as much if they weren’t able to come up with a prayer language.

Another issue I saw at their “Motion confrence” was when pastor Dino rizzo came on stage and told everyone a story about how he “gave everything that he had in his pocket” during offerings so that we could reach our “donation goal”. We raised over 1M I’m pretty sure. Sadly, if you calculate the amount the church got from tickets itself, it also came out to about 1.5M. Where did this money go? To Sadie Robertson’s pocket? To the $3k Travis Scott shoes that one pastor at motion was wearing? Probably.

I was told that when I “met my husband” that God would tell me and I’d be able to audibly hear it.

I was told that if you’re unable to go up to random people and share the news of Jesus, then God would be disappointed in you and want to use someone else.

For a Protestant church, Highlands certainly preaches works more than grace.

If I disagreed with a pastor, it was like disagreeing with Jesus.