Dragging this slightly back towards at least general topic-ness....
Or not.
I think my experiences are very similar to yours fistful. At least once we moved up to the US. We moved here in 1987, and my family began attending a local Foursquare church (for those not familiar, Foursquare is a moderately to very charismatic denomination of Christians). For the first 12 or 13 years, I absolutely loved it. The teaching was great, the worship phenomenal. Granted, that had more to do with the pastors than anything else. I was thoroughly involved with the church, helping to lead worship for the main services, leading worship for the college age, high school, and junior high groups throughout the years. I was getting fed, I was growing, and I was feeding others. Had gone on a number of missions trips, helped in the community, our church did the things that a church was *supposed* to do. We got plugged in with the community and we LOVED people.
When the founding pastor and his wife decided it was time to retire and hand the reins to someone else, that is when things soured. These people were the heart of the church, but they had a STRONG pastoral leadership team around them. Everyone pretty much assumed that one of the associate pastors would be promoted up to head the church, as most of them had been with the church from day 1. Instead, the current head pastor decided to bring his son in, and put him in charge of the church. People were a little surprised, a couple of people were hurt, but we moved on, and the church really rallied around the new head pastor.
Now, this coincided with a lot of the Toronto/Vineyard movement stuff, and we had people coming back from visiting those churches who had been "touched". They would have body spasms. Holy "twitches" if you will. Others would start shaking uncontrollably. Yelling. Grunting. Groaning. Laughing. Now, I don't doubt that some of them were genuine. Others, I really think (but can't say for sure) were people who considered themselves "holy" but weren't "manifesting" in the same way, and therefore started to on their own. I have a hard time with it, but I really tried not to judge those people. Just kind of ignored them as they were in their corner, doing their thing. It didn't interfere between me and God. But then people started seeking the experience more than the substance. We had a couple of big falling outs in the church over it, and a few prominent families left over it, but then things seemed to settle back down.
The straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, was the direction that the new head pastor had taken. Before, we'd had a lot of balance in the sermons. There was some "milk and honey" stuff for the newer Christians, the slightly more simplified sermons that really was what was needed as a younger believer. But there were also the "meat and potatoes" sermons for the people that had been Christians for longer, that needed more substance, more detail, more challenge. The new pastor, though, focused solely on the younger Christians, teaching only the "milk and honey" but never giving the rest of the congregation the substance they needed. People at first thought it was just a transition phase until he "felt out" the new congregation and learned what they needed. But when this continued for 12-18 months, people realized that it just wasn't gonna change, and started leaving to get fed elsewhere.
And that's what happened to me. About 100 people from the church split off to form their own church, including a large portion of the old churches pastoral staff. They decided to be a non-denominational church, albeit one with a decidedly Foursquare flavor. I went with those families, and instead of just finding a home, helped create a new church home. It's a place that is comforting, but is still challenging. We're again plugging into the community, investing in the community. We have a ministry that was birthed out of several trips to Mississippi to help rebuild after Katrina, that works to help people in the community do work on their homes that they otherwise couldn't afford (we have several contractors that attend our church). We put on a big community "block party" as it were with several other churches to involve them, invite them in, and love them.
And, on topic. Do I believe angels and demons exist? absolutely? Leprechauns, etc? I highly doubt it.
