A Pennsylvania pastor hoped to teach his church’s youth group something about religious persecution. Instead, the pastor may be in some serious trouble himself. According to authorities, several teens were attending a regular youth group meeting at the Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Middletown, Pa., when several adults barged in, put bags over the childrens’ heads and pushed them into a church van. The kids wound up in a house where they saw an assistant pastor who apparently had been beaten. By all appearances, the youth and the assistant pastor were all victims of a strange, scary, anti-religious plot.

The plot was a ruse; the pastor actually was unharmed, but none of the teens were unaware the whole episode was merely a stunt. Many were scared to death. “They said, ‘Just do what we say and you won’t be hurt,'” a 14-year-old church member told WHTM, a local television station. “I thought, ‘Why not tell us that it was a joke?'” Pastor John Lanza told the station he didn’t reveal the truth to the students to “secure the shock value of it and make it much more real because those who are threatened don’t have a warning. It was a youth event to illustrate what others have encountered on a regular basis.” Local police are considering charging Lanza with several counts of false imprisonment of a child—a felony. (ABC News)