Monday, October 1, 2012

Beer and Bibles

We're Methodists, which means we're left to our own devices to figure stuff out.  We're given credit for our brains and expected to use them.  John Wesley, our founder, felt like there were only a few things that he was profoundly adamant about—love God, treat other folk well, trust the God stories in the Bible.  That's about it.  Otherwise, he wasn't particularly particular.

So lots of people wind up under our cathedral ceilings.  The refugees are there weekly, have many different spiritualities, and we love them.  The homeless and  the penniless are there daily, and we love them.  We feed them weekly or if they need a sack lunch.  Our organist actually belongs to another religion, but there are few people who can master our immense, world-class, bigger-than-any-other organ in the northwest, let alone levitate all of us a good six inches off our pews.  And we love him.

So Wesley wasn't explicit about what we were to drink.  We could go either way.  A beer here or there was up to us.  We were left to our own good judgement.  A glass of wine with dinner, OK.  Eight or ten, not so OK.

We have a new pastor, one who ardently believes you oughta go where the people are, just hosted his first Bible study in a bar.  You heard me right.   It's a neighborhood bar, with an immense patio on the front side, and a garage in back.  It has a garage door that can be opened on a summer night.  A few tables.  A few people were there too who weren't part of our congregation, two drunk girls were outlasted.  About 20 other people.  We talked. We studied the first chapter of the gospel of Mark.  So it was a real Bible study.  I've never been in a livelier discussion.  We laughed often.  People, who didn't know each other, communicated easily.  The pastor had a beer.

I just don't think we're going to be hampered with too much stuffiness.






2 comments:

  1. Very interesting to have Bible study in a bar. Sounds like the new pastor has some innovative ideas to reach out to people. Good post. :-)

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  2. So tempting to join in! A pastor in a bar is a pastor I can wrap my spirit around. I love your blog site, by the way. Everything about it. the background, the content..of course, the variety of subjects, all of it. So comfortable.

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