ANCHORAGE, AK - Attendees of Faith Fellowship Church's Tuesday Bible study confirmed that the group sat in unbelievably awkward silence for a full 17 seconds together, as the group of believers each waited for someone else to spontaneously begin praying.

"Let's all just kinda pray as we feel led, mkay?" Pastor Jim reportedly began before offering a short introductory prayer. After finishing the first prayer of the night, the pastor left the group stranded in the awkward silence.

Oscar Ramon, 32, later reported that he almost jumped in to break the painfully awkward quiet several times, but kept hearing Elizabeth from across the room take a deep breath. "I thought for sure she was going to start in, any second there. And the only thing more awkward than all of us sitting there in silence is two people trying to start at the same time."

"Dodged a bullet there," Ramon added.

Other participants stated that as the agonizing seconds dragged on, they were tempted to silently flee the room, but instead endured, secretly begging God the whole time that He would end the silence.

Finally, after enduring the perilous 17 seconds of total quiet, Pastor Jim came to the rescue, offering some closing words to finish off the time of communal prayer in which only he ended up doing any praying aloud, before launching into the group's study of 1 Thessalonians 5.