EP302 - Wait! That's A Church? - (Re)Defining Church

You've got to start to rethink, are we actually accomplishing the mission?

And just start with that question.

Are we accomplishing the mission?

Then go to the Bible and see what the mission is all about.

And then see if we've got an answer.

Like, the things that we do on the weekends, the things that we do on the weekdays,

are we accomplishing the mission?

Are we helping people to go out and make disciples?

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

Through this podcast, we'll talk about the technological innovations within the church.

But more than tech for tech itself, we'll address deeper questions.

Is disciple-making possible digitally?

How should we approach the digital mission field?

Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space?

Oh, and where does the metaverse and artificial intelligence fit into all of this?

Whether you're a big or small church,

the Church Digital's goal is to help churches like yours learn to be a multiplying church,

digitally and physically.

And now here's your host, Jeff Reed.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the Church Digital Podcast.

This is episode 302, if you're keeping track at home,

or the big giant 302 that was on the thumbnail, if you're watching this on YouTube.

But we are in season eight of...

Let me see if I can get my inflection right, Joey, as I'm kicking off here.

Wait!

That's a church?

We are doing...

I'm bringing in Joey Santos, my friend here for this season.

And we're doing an introspective on unique expressions of church.

And so Joey has some experience with unique expressions of churches, with Church at a Bar.

And we're going to get into a deep dive in that here in a little bit.

But through the season and other shows, because I have a feeling this is going to spin off into a standalone show on its own,

but we're going to be talking and highlighting more of the innovation and unique ideas that's happening there

and what ecclesiology looks like at a church at a bar.

What, you know, how community, how discipleship, how connection is happening at churches that meet in bars

and microlocations and a lot of the unique stuff that's out there.

So, man, I'm super excited about this.

Joey, thanks for jumping on the show once again.

We started the conversation last week, 301, kind of an overview, like a big picture type thing.

But here with 302, we're going to do a deep dive, I think, more into Church at a Bar.

So, Hayes, we're kicking off here.

Anything you want to open up with?

Yes, I think we should create a cartoon version of Jeff saying, wait, is that a church?

Do you know what I mean?

Like, we can probably get somebody to make even an animation out of that.

Because I think that would be, that would be the way to launch this thing.

That would be funny.

A little 8-bit animated Super Mario of Jeff jumping up and down in front of a, you know, big giant.

Exactly.

You know, a cathedral that morphs into a bar or something like that.

I'll share this clip with Barbara, Carnero, Barbara and her team, I am sure, can come up with something like that.

That's so good.

And you know what?

You could have, like, somebody, you know, after the church morphs into the bar, you could have, like, another person, like, jumping up and down angry, like, turning red, frustrated that, you know, the church at the bar.

And then, you know, you could, you could walk, the ape version of you could walk up and say, hey, you want to come in?

Let's grab a, let's grab a bourbon.

And, and then they'll, they'll.

It's so funny because you say that because when we launched the church, the bar, the first time we launched, now remember, before we, we had our first service.

It was right at this time, 4th of July, we launched in the fall.

So, 4th of July, we actually had a stand outside the bar because it was a big, big deal at the bar, 4th of July.

So, we had a stand, like, church, the bar, launching this fall.

And I'm telling you, it was so funny to see people come up and, like, is this for real?

And some people would be, like, what do you think you're doing?

You're in the bar.

I mean, and, and that was the reaction that we got from church people, you know, the so-called church people, for some of them, it was, like, I cannot believe you guys are doing this.

This is ridiculous.

This is a joke.

And then we got people come up to us that we asked, you know, do you go to the church?

No, but, man, I think it's incredible you guys are doing this.

You guys are stepping out of a church building and trying to meet us in these different places.

So, it was a weird, like, we got less support from churchgoers at the moment, at the time, than we got from not churchgoers.

They were, like, this is so good.

And then, without us knowing, the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote an article about it.

They saw what we were doing and wrote an article about the church, the bar.

And the social media, it was just interesting to watch, you know, again, some churchgoers saying that this is, you should never, you should do that to the house of the Lord.

And you should never call this thing a church.

And then you got people commenting, saying, man, I've been out of church for a long time, but I may check this out because this seems more interesting to me.

Right?

And I'm so glad you guys are stepping out to meet people outside the church building.

And that kind of painted a picture to me a little bit about, you know, where we are and what we understand to be a church.

What do you kind of see the church is?

And really kind of shape a little bit what we should be doing.

That reaction kind of helps us visualize.

Maybe we've got to shape this a little different than that traditional church because maybe the people there are actually understanding or trying to understand what we're doing.

They're looking for something that actually connects better and is different because they already tried the other one and they did not connect.

Right?

Again, it's not something we're not trying to bash down the traditional model, but not everybody going to connect with that.

So let's figure out a way to connect with them.

In the church, the bar, we believe that we're giving people that option to connect in a different way.

Connect with people and God in a different way.

Yeah, I love it.

You know, it's funny.

Before I even met you, Joey, I blogged this statement back in like 2018 that we needed to lower the standard of church and raise the standard of discipleship.

And, you know, making that one statement was I got brailed, you know, 2018 for that idea.

Pre-COVID, you know, I literally I had pastors calling me out.

People I knew, hey, like Jeff, you really you're going to you're going to hurt.

It was people who were trying to protect my image.

You know, you're hurting your image.

You are physical churches are not wanting to work with you.

Pastors are going to be offended by this.

You need to you need to back off.

And, you know, a lot of what we're experiencing Sunday morning.

It's I mean, I don't mean to disrespect the model.

It's so hard.

I'm learning.

It's so hard to innovate the model that you're, you know, disrupt the model and so respect it.

But it's a lot of what we're doing is extra biblical.

It's outside of the Bible.

How much time did Jesus did go to the to the to the temples, to the to the synagogues?

He also spent a lot of time in the in the in the marketplace, in the town centers and and walking around nature and talking from a boat.

And he was not locked into a building.

He understood how to get outside.

And he was he was rubbing shoulders with prostitutes and tax collectors.

And I mean, crap, he put one of them on his team.

And don't give me start on Mary Magdalene.

So, like, there's so much potential for us once we get outside of the freaking buildings that we've been using as a refuge for all these years.

Exactly.

I love it.

And I think I think that's part of the challenge because we are conditioned to it.

Right.

We've been conditioned to it.

Second, I don't think even though Jesus started the church and he assigned the disciples to begin that journey of what we call church.

I don't think he ever meant for us to to turn into something that where we stay contained in it.

Right.

But he always meant to go out and he set the example for it.

So I don't think I think people listening to this podcast or watching this podcast, I wanted them to understand that maybe it is worth having a conversation.

Because when you talk about church expressions, we're not talking about the fact that you've got to completely dismantle what you have.

But you've got to start to rethink are we actually accomplishing the mission and just start with that question.

Are we accomplishing the mission and go to the Bible and see what the mission is all about and ask and then see if we're getting out an answer.

Like are we the things that we do on the weekends, the things that we do on the weekdays, are we accomplishing the mission?

Are we helping people to go out and make disciples?

If you are, then you're on the right track because you're on the track that Jesus established.

But if you're not, then have the conversation and look what innovation can look like for your church because it's worth having the conversation because that means more souls to the kingdom.

That's all we're talking about.

So no reason to get mad, people.

No reason to get upset.

It's a really good reason to like let's have the conversation because we see the signs.

There are signs showing that less and less people are getting involved with the way the church is going.

And we can fight culture all day long.

If that's our strategy, I can tell you I'm not a prophet or anything like that.

I'm just saying it's going to lose it because we lose that battle the way it stands right now with culture.

So I think there's an opportunity, right?

When we started the church to borrow, we knew like I can tell the number one mistake we made.

Number one was to try to replicate in the church to borrow what we do in a traditional building.

And that was the number one mistake we made because we tried to really like everybody comes, sit down, listen.

And we did three worship songs on video and everybody's just sitting there.

Nobody's engaging.

And soon enough, we see like every Sunday we had new people coming in, but they'll never come back.

They'll never come back.

So one of the best things that actually happened for the church to borrow was COVID.

Because COVID caused us to stop for three or four months.

And when we came back, that's when we're like, we've got to change how we're doing this.

Because people are not staying because they figure, if I'm going to sit in the bar, if I'm going to leave my house to go to a bar to watch you guys play three songs on video, I can do this from home, eating pancakes.

I don't need to be at the bar to do that where you don't even have pancakes.

So we're like, then we've got to change this thing, right?

We've got to figure out a way to connect with people.

And that's when we switch the format.

And when we switch the format by doing, we cut the music completely.

The second thing we did, we changed the message to a format more like a group study, right?

So we make a biblical point and then switch to questions.

So we make a point for five minutes.

So the instruction I gave the pastors was like, preach for five minutes, ask a question.

The question has to be real life related.

So you teach the Bible and then you ask a question that people can relate, meaning you don't have to be a church goer for 20 years to debate this question, right?

So sometimes we ask questions in Bible studies that is like, what do you think Jesus was heading into you?

No, no, no, no.

We want to like, when you battle in this situation with this in your life, what do you think this scripture is trying to tell you about how you handle this in your life, right?

So we're trying to connect the Bible to real life situation and that's the rule for the questions.

And that, that, those changes alone caused us to, for people to come and now like, I'm participating in this conversation.

I can actually talk.

I can actually, I'm getting something more than just watching.

The interesting thing, like when you have a room with 60 people in it, it becomes a very interesting dynamic, right?

And we try different things.

So we try like, okay, if we have 60, 70 people in the room, let's everybody on your own tables have a discussion.

And that lost the energy.

It was so interesting to see it because it lost the energy because we gave people five minutes to discuss these questions, but they would not engage like if it was a big, a one gigantic group in the room.

Yeah.

So again, we started learning more and more by how people responded.

And we, we continue to adjust because the goal was to make disciples, meaning connect with people in a way that really produce fruits.

So we never attach ourselves to the model.

We never attach ourselves to the model.

We always attach ourselves to the mission.

And, and, and that causes us to always be open to it.

So we, it, we, we never close to anything, any ideas, but we always like, are we accomplishing the mission?

And if we are, we stick to it.

If we're not, we remove it and try something else.

I love it.

And it's, it's interesting that, that structure of, of your teaching communication, the Bible study with, uh, you know, it's, it's actually, it's called master teacher.

Master teacher, or at least I was doing that format, you know, back in student ministry days, 25 years ago, early, early 2000s.

You know, you get five minutes of, of monologue of, of teaching, and then you ask a question and everybody's in tables and they're supposed to, you know, talk amongst themselves and come up with an answer.

And then there's a dialogue and then you, you teach for another five minutes and ask.

And so it's like the master teacher teaching to, to the tables.

And, um, and it was, it was very hard to do, um, at, you know, 20, 25 years ago to students because students in a Sunday school environment, Sunday morning, 9am, you know, really weren't that interested in talking or dialoguing.

Um, and, and, but I would imagine, you know, in a more relaxed environment, like a bar, uh, you're able to get people to, to engage in dialogue and, and, and be more open through those conversation points.

Do you find that the environment of, of the bar actually helps you, uh, with some of these conversations?

Yeah, it is.

What I see is like, when I look at the bars, like what, why do people actually come to a bar?

Right.

And just by watching people's behavior, they're sitting around the table talking.

So I was like, if I'm going to do a church, the bar, I want, I want people to, so I want people to do the same thing.

I want them to come sit down and talk and, and, and fellowship, but we're, we're doing something extra here.

We're learning the Bible while we do the same thing.

Right.

And so we don't change the setup of the bar, the same setup in tables, the chairs is the exact same.

We don't, we don't modify anything.

We don't move chairs around.

We don't move tables.

Um, we keep the same way, but I think you're right because the proof of that is that, um, every, every Sunday, Jeff, every Sunday that a new, a new, like there's a new person, a first time guest that come in.

By question two or three, by question two or three, they're talking and it never fails.

And that, that, that told me like, I, there's people that probably watching this podcast, you've been in your small group for three years and there's people's voice that you've never heard before in that, in that, in that small group.

Because if the small group, I've been part of a small groups, church, small groups before.

And I, we don't feel that kind of freedom sometimes.

Some, some groups they do because of the, they're so close together, which that's the key.

They end up, I'll open up more, but I think what the environment of the bar allows people to, they don't feel constrained to the, to the building structure.

They don't feel constrained by the environment that feels like we walk in a church and we want to make it feel sacred.

Right.

I think that's the idea.

I mean, we, for centuries, the Catholic church instilled that idea that once you step into the building, it's a holy ground, it's a sacred ground.

You don't say, you don't talk, you don't do anything.

And the Christian church, even the modern Christian church, we brought that in a little bit.

So when we start the service, sometimes we dim the lights and we, we play this, like some services, like the soft music, and we want people to be like in this quiet mode when they walk into the church, into the worship center prior to worship.

So we, we, we create this environment and expect people to connect with each other.

Right.

So it's hard to do that.

But at the bar, people come their shorts.

Last Sunday, we got four people coming for the first time and right by the bar, there's this bike trail.

There's, if you, if you've been to Ohio before, uh, one of the greatest benefits of Ohio is the bike trail.

It cuts through the entire state.

Like I can go from Cincinnati to Cleveland, just riding my bike through the bike trail to the scenery.

It's, it's, it's an incredible thing.

So we got four people stopped by Sunday because they saw the sign for the first time wearing bike gear.

Like they park their bikes and their bicycles in this, they walk in and they, and they enjoy the service and they, they're talking and they're participating and they like, we just want to see what this thing looks like.

And, and that's what I'm saying.

Like it's the environment counts.

Right.

So, so here's a tip, like in your church, like if you're, sometimes you expect the lobby to be the place to where people talk, but when they walk in a worship center, it's not a place to talk anymore.

And my question I ask is why, why is, why so, why we make that so sacred?

Why we feel so guilty to actually fellowship right before we do an opening prayer while we sing the first song because we are there to worship God and fellowship is part of the act of worship.

Like I'm, I'm in communion with my brothers and sisters and I want to take the, the biggest amount of time that I can connecting with people.

Right.

Uh, anyways, I think, I think the environment really definitely counts.

And I think there's something to be said about that and, and it can happen in any, any environment.

You guys are going to have an experience here soon hearing from Joe, Joe friends from the brew pastors and they do meetings like this in breweries.

And man, he gets the very identical results.

These people come in and they sit down in the brewery and all of a sudden, you know, it doesn't feel like it's no longer, I have to behave a certain way because I'm in the sacred place.

Yeah.

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I have to, I can just sit down and talk and I can talk where two or three are gathering my name.

There I am.

That's what Jesus said, but he didn't define a location for that meeting.

Right.

So he just said, just get there together, but he didn't define a location.

So man, I can do this two or three people in a, in this here, right?

This court.

And Jesus is right here because he said, we just got to gather in his name, but we don't have to get in a specific location, a specific format.

So I think, I think the environment, I think if we can start thinking, can we change the environment to facilitate people, facilitate that people can actually engage with God and each other, whatever we are and what that, what that should look like.

Well, man, now you're talking crazy.

Two or three people gathered in discord and God's here.

I'm pretty sure God does not recognize discord as, as a community.

I don't, I don't, I literally don't understand the words coming out of your mouth.

No, it's, it's funny.

By the way, we are, we are doing this live in discord right now.

And so, uh, discord.thechurch.digital, um, we're, we're doing the show regularly Wednesdays at two o'clock.

And so if you're out there wanting to jump on the stream, we got white beard, Ian, pastor, Dom, Matt, Penny, and flat cap hanging out with us today right now.

And so guys here in the room, um, thanks for coming in.

If you've got any questions, feel free to throw them in chat.

We'll, we'll ask away.

Um, I, I want to get into, let's, let's, let's poke the bears a little bit, a little bit.

All right.

Um, so I was, I, you know, I go to a small church.

If you're watching on YouTube, I'm actually wearing, uh, my, my church's t-shirt right now.

Reality church, Miami.

It's a church plant in, in Miami, Florida, like two years, maybe two and a half years old, maybe 250 people on a weekend.

Um, this past weekend worship was musical worship was really powerful.

Like I, I, I would, I would say that I, it was the, um, emotionally, it was one of the best worship sets I had heard from my church in a long time.

I actually texted the worship leader and lead pastor, like right during the worship service, actually.

Hey guys, this is an incredible service that y'all put together.

Um, and it felt to me like, you know, I was like, man, I felt God in the room.

I felt the presence of God.

Now, whether that was the subwoofer mixed perfectly or whether that was a well-crafted, you know, song selection that tied with the message or, or whether God came in, I don't know.

But, you know, I felt like I felt like I was having one of those God moments.

And as people that do church, we do, I, and we understand what those God moments actually are.

And so my, my, my question for you, Joey is what does a God moment look like at the church at a bar?

You know, you're very relational and, and that's a huge win on, on engaging with people.

But I can, can you tell me moments that it's like, oh my gosh, God is here.

What, what does that look like or feel like in, in a, in a bar environment?

Yeah, I, you know, I, I, it's kind of funny.

I work in a, in a traditional church for a very long time, over 20 years.

And I remember having these conversations like, you know, we, we knew there's moments like, okay, this is really going to, this is going to do something or, you know, we're, we're crafts.

And again, if you're working programming in church, you know what I'm talking about.

We try to craft the service every week and thinking, you know, how we create that moment.

And learn, you know, it took a little while to learn that we, so much we can do, like, let's do things with, with excellence because God deserves our best and deserves everything we can give to him.

But I cannot really control the moment because the moment's going to look different to everybody.

Like, I believe, Jeff, you had a God moment, but that doesn't mean everybody in the room have the same God moment that you had because it's so personal and it's so intimate.

And once I learned, once I really learned that, I was like, okay, now that I'm in front of people every Sunday or most Sundays speaking, I had to let that go.

Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, when I, when I write the sermon or I write the message or I write the questions, I, I don't look at, man, this, this is going to drive home and this is going to bring people up and this is going to, no, I don't.

And what I learned about that is that most God moments that happen in the church, the bar, most, I mean, I'm telling you like 90, 90%, and I'm not kidding about that.

It was happening exactly not when I was talking, but when somebody else was talking.

Because when somebody said something so insightful or something so deep about their own lives or their own walk and moved somebody else and, and, and that happens.

So you see that God moments happen when people like, oh my word, this, they, I mean, it gets them and put them in tears.

And, and I realized, man, I, I just got to watch that because somebody else decided to participate on what God's doing or somebody decided to respond to what the spirit's telling them to do and had nothing to do with me.

And that's, that was like another wake up call to me.

It was like, man, how many, how many times I waste my time trying to figure it out, like, how I'm going to craft this thing.

So this is going to move people this way or going to move them that way and realizing, man, I, I was just trying to get people's emotions to respond, but not spiritually.

And, and you, you know, that because all we can do, all we can do as humans, we can move people emotionally, but we cannot move people spiritually.

And I think that's the part as pastors, as leaders that once we get, once we encounter that reality, man, that's actually freeing.

There's a lot of freedom in that because then you can just do what God's telling you to do.

And, and all you, all you do is just watch what God's going to do in the room.

So I think like, I think I always tell the worship team once, once I was leading, I never led worship because I was never giving the gift of a voice.

Which is great.

And I think when God says, you know, when you see in the Bible, make a joyful noise.

I don't think he was thinking of me, but I led the worship teams and I led programming teams before.

And I always told people, I said, when you're on the stage, people get help by seeing you getting help.

So when you, when you lead the worship from the stage, don't worry about what people are thinking of you or just, just really worship.

Because if you simply worship from the stage and actually you start getting help from God by the way you worship on the stage, people watch you.

They're going to get help from that.

And I think the same way for pastors is the exact same thing.

When they preach the same thing wave, even if you're just ministry, if you teach, that's the same way.

Like if you, if you, if you, if people can see you get help by the things that you're teaching, why you're teaching, you're, you can help them through that.

They get help through it.

But the God moments happen in the bar setting, exactly in moments when somebody that's being moved by God and want to share something and something impact them.

And man, it just gets us, gets around the room and people like, wow.

Because they see, they expect to hear, to hear God's wisdom from me.

But the church setting, we don't expect to hear that from the people sitting around you.

So there's a difference when people sitting around you stand up and say, here's what God's showing me.

And boom, makes a total difference to how people receive and hear.

And that's why when Paul described what church service should look like, I think we should listen.

That it's not just one person, one person act, but it's the whole congregation participating in that environment, in that moment.

And that's kind of like, we look forward to at the church at a bar.

Yeah.

What do you do with kids?

Like, do, do, I mean, children's ministry, do, do, do people at church at a bar bring their children?

Like what, how, what is that interaction look like at church at a bar?

Man, that, that was another fail.

Another big fail.

We tried that.

We tried, try to do kids ministry, do, again, when we started, we started trying to replicate the traditional church model into the church at a bar.

So what we did, we, we went ahead and like, oh, let's, let's get volunteers to help with the kids.

And we have some crafts here.

We, we had a rubber mat and put on the other side of the bar and all that.

And it didn't work.

It simply did not work.

Like it was, it was forcing something that was not made for that environment.

And we learned that.

So when kids come, they, they are part of the conversation.

I mean, they're sitting there.

They're part of the conversation.

They, they listen.

And, and then some parents do, I know they're not coming back because parents says, do you have kids programming?

Like we, no, we don't, we don't have kids programming.

Um, and if you need help finding a church with good kids program or we can recommend some, um, but no, we don't.

And, and that's a limitation that we have, but also we feel like we don't want to force something that we don't have.

And we don't have to pretend to have something we cannot have.

So, but man, the beginning we failed a lot and some families, they loved, like the parents, they loved the church, the bar, but they're like, I want to find a place where my kids can grow.

And I'm like, I understand that.

And I think you should find a place that we can help you with that.

Um, but, and it's interesting because we have, uh, one of the things that we do every Sunday, we do prayer requests and we have an email prayer request that goes out on Mondays.

Um, and, and it's a very interesting thing because we, we only send prayer requests and they may, we say, we don't say anything else.

And a lot of these people that came to the church, the bar, but had to leave because, you know, they need to find the kids programming for the kids or anything like that.

What we did was we just, they like, can you not remove me from the email list?

So I still want to get the prayer requests.

So our prayer request is pretty long because these people were like, they would still want to be connected and they still want to get their emails with prayer requests.

And they, they responded, they're like, Oh, I'm praying for you or praying for this situation, or they submit themselves a prayer request.

Even though they don't come to church, the bar, they submit prayer requests.

Another thing is when they go through something in their lives, some challenges, they reach out to us saying, Hey, I'm going through this.

Can you guys pray for me?

Or Joey, can you come and visit me at my house?

Cause we're going through the situation.

They have not been captured here for over a year.

And when something happened, we were their first call.

So for us, it's like, absolutely.

We'll come and check on you.

We'll come pray for you.

We'll come because it's not about being in our building or not.

You're not part of this community.

And if you need us, we'll be there for you.

Yeah, it's, it's a beautiful way to, to reimagine community, you know, not who's sitting in the pew Sunday morning, 9am, but, but who you are influencing, um, spiritually and who are falling on you.

And now you're through that, that opportunity, you are building relationships and, and, and trying to, to draw them deeper into an understanding of Jesus.

But it's, um, it takes more time, uh, to do that.

And it's, and it's definitely, you know, I need to figure out a better phrase here, Joey.

So I apologize for you for saying this, but it's, you know, the, the, the, it's a boiled and raw slowly approach.

You know, you're building relationships over time, being very relational, engaging in a, in a, a different environment that that's more friendly and more open to conversations.

Um, I'm, I'm, I'm curious with this.

Yeah.

I don't know, Joey, I know you've been a standalone church for a couple of years, I guess at this point, maybe 18 months.

You were doing this as part of the other church for a couple of years.

So you've got some, some time on you.

Is, is somebody going to be a member of the church at the bar members, even a word, word, word for like 10 years?

Like is, is the, is the goal for longevity of the bar is the goal to hand them off to somebody else, to another church at some point?

Like what's long-term look like for the average attender at church at a bar?

Uh, yeah, that's a good question though, but I, I don't know.

We, we talk, uh, constantly.

We talk about, yeah.

So I think that what, what I see is like, we have people attending for years now, two, three years.

Um, and we have people that they came a year ago, they still with us, but we constantly talk about multiplication.

So what I'm hoping to see is people, um, people moving forward as we multiply.

So, and that's a big challenge, right?

But, but I think that we, they still connect, they may still connect it to the church, the bar, but they may, they may not still connect it to this particular church, the bar.

They may be someplace else because we're expanding, we're multiplying.

And that's my hope is that we see that kind of a expansion.

Uh, so people stay around, but they staying in different places because they're leading, they're participating, they're helping to expand.

Got you.

So, man, you are, you are wanting to create a long-term model, um, of, of involvement for, for the churches.

You're not a gateway to help people get connected back to a physical building.

You're looking to, to create a long-term church discipleship experience through the, through the bar.

I love that.

Oh yeah.

Cause that, cause I, I can tell you right now that we have, um, you know, when we, when we split, if you, if you would just say the way it is,

we were connected to a, uh, uh, established church until February last year.

But when we split, when we decided like we're going to be independent, we gave everybody in the room a chance to like, if you, you know, if you, if you don't want to do this, because now we are moving from being connected to the big church to we're all thing here.

Um, and I, I told them, I gave all of them the option.

I said, man, I, if, if, if, if this room gets, get backs down to just three people, three of us, four of us, I'm okay with that.

And I understand if you feel like you still want to be connected to, um, to a larger church environment.

And now one person left.

So I think the group that we have today, that is, you know, the, the, the 30 and 40, 50 people there and there constantly, they are committed to the model that we have.

They style, they, they are very vocal about feeling like I, I'm finally feel part of a community.

And that's why I like this, but what we're trying to do is make sure they don't feel so comfortable because discipleship means we got to go out.

So for example, the, you know, the bar we're meeting today, we're, we're building a second location for the bar four miles down the road.

And the owners of the bar already told us that they want to have a church, the bar there.

So that's going to be by next year, be our second location, most likely.

Um, so I think that's, that's going to be a big part of it.

Awesome. I didn't know that.

That's exciting.

Second, second location for church at the bar.

That'll be, I mean, there's a whole bunch of questions.

Maybe, maybe we'll get into that next week.

Franchise, Ian is saying it in chat.

Dominic's asking the question.

Um, uh, I have to ask the big question.

What, what is the alcohol policy for church at the bar?

Um, I, I'm guessing the answer is yes, please.

But, um, uh, you know, what, what's okay.

What's not okay.

Is there, is there a line?

What, how are you managing that?

Um, I know we, we don't on Sundays, the bar is not open when we meet.

Um, so we, you know, we naturally don't have alcohol because we don't, we meet on the Wednesday nights and on Wednesday nights, the bars open and we tell people you, you, you, you, it's, it's a bar.

It's help yourself.

You know, so you're going to see a glass of beer, bourbon and wine on Wednesday night Bible study, uh, because we're in a bar and people drink.

Um, but outside of that, it, it, on Sunday, you know, I, I make a joke to people because we're meeting in a bar and people like to, you know, oh, in a bar say, yeah, my community is better than yours.

Uh, but, you know, we, I think people just got to understand that at the moment that, that if we're meeting a bar where people meet to, to have a drink and to, to talk, um, at the moment I start putting limitations on what they can do, that's when I start to look like something else.

So, um, we, we, obviously we don't encourage alcoholism.

We don't, we actually fight that and we, we control that.

Remember I work at the bar, right?

I'm operations manager.

So regularly, uh, we're so serious about that because red, like on the weekends, it's very common for me to come out to your customer and say, Hey, we're going to cut you off.

You're crossing the line.

You're drinking too much.

We don't support people abusing the alcohol in the establishment that we sell alcohol.

So we, we have the very clear that as a principle, uh, and we will try to offer any help we can to people who need help.

Um, but no, we don't, we, we don't, people want to enjoy a bourbon, a beer and, and have a conversation.

That's, we're going to have that.

We're going to, we're going to sit down.

I remember I'm the pastor of the church, the bar.

We have signage church, the bar, all over the building.

People know who I am, what I do.

And I lead, um, I, I run the bourbon club that to the bar, which we have over a thousand members.

Uh, so I, you know, I just led with the bourbon tastings every month.

I host this bourbon tastings, right?

And I, I talk about it in every bourbon tasting.

There's a conversation because I want to mention, I said, I'm a pastor and I do the church, the bar.

And then that's the invitation.

And people, they take the bait.

They're like, hold on a second.

You're running church, the bar, and you're here doing bourbon tasting.

Tell me about the church, the bar thing.

Uh, tell me about what you guys are doing, how this works.

Um, and people start to see me as a relatable pastor, as somebody that can actually approach and talk.

Um, and as a result of that, it's, it's not uncommon for people to walk up on a busy Friday night and say, Hey, I just learned that my, my husband got cancer or this happened to my family this week.

And can you guys pray for us?

And, and I'm telling you, that started with the staff.

We have such an influence on our staff because they know, you know, what we do and what we believe, even the owners, they know the owners are, you know, very dedicated Christians.

Um, so they, they go with, to us, they come to us with a question or a request and they say, can you guys pray for me?

Can you guys, and man, it, the, one of the most fun events that happened is when we're meeting on a Wednesday night and a staff member, out of nowhere, uh, she was diagnosed with cancer and she went through a treatment and she got, you know, cured from breast cancer.

And I don't know where she just walked by through our group meeting on a Wednesday night and said, Hey, I don't mean to interrupt.

I just want to thank you guys for praying for me because I knew you were praying for me and I don't attend your church, but I just want to thank for praying for me.

I'm doing a lot.

And I mean, everybody, the church, the bar guy was so excited that that happened.

So it's, it's all over Jeff.

Is it like, you gotta be present and you, you have an opportunity when you do this to be present in people's lives and make an impact in this life.

So it's not just, you know, impressing people with this new idea.

Is customers now know about it.

Staff knows about it and people talk about it and, and they feel that in some level now they can be part of it.

Uh, that it's, it's something that's a lot deeper.

I think, uh, as we get into it, that it can, it can have a huge impact in the local community.

And I appreciate that.

Totally.

Thanks, Joey.

Uh, sorry.

Internet's breaking up here on discord.

And so it was, was, was pretty broken with that.

That being said, uh, the recording is going to be pristine the way that the riverside technology works.

And so, um, we'll hang out, you know, and I would encourage you all in the room to hang over there and do that.

Um, episode we're going to wrap for today.

This has been a great conversation starting to dig into, um, church at a bar and, uh, and a unique, uh, expression of worship.

Um, what I think we're going to do next week is we'll probably scale more into, you know, maybe a minimally ecclesiology.

What is, um, what defines a church and what's the, the minimum as we start to look at other potential expressions of worship, you know, and, and other, uh, spaces, physical spaces or another, uh, digital.

And so Joey's going to come back next week.

Uh, it's going to be Wednesday, same time, 2 PM Eastern.

And we're going to kick into the conversation here.

Uh, if you're listening online and you don't have a discord, uh, account, or you're not part of the TCD server,

open up a web browser and go to discord.thechurch.digital discord.thechurch.digital.

That'll walk you through the ability to create the account.

If you don't have one and then come sign up for the server, you can check out the event board and jump into any of the conversations that we've got going on.

I freaking love discord, but that's another conversation for a different day.

Um, uh, let's talk pastor Dominic.

Let's talk about the metaverse sometime soon.

Jeffrey.

Yes, sir.

Pastor Dominic, you're on my list.

Um, we're not, this, this show is probably not going anywhere.

We're going to be doing this a long time.

And so talking virtual reality is, is one of those expressions.

We're definitely going to get into that.

Uh, tall, skinny kiwi just wrapping up in Europe.

It's very common for us to have the church in a venue where beer and wine is available.

And most of the participants have beer in their hand, uh, in the church.

We started in Prague, the preacher would take his glass of beer, uh, to the front when, I guess, when he was preaching.

That's, that's awesome.

Uh, that being said, the Americans beat Europe in, in their, uh, war.

So no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't know.

Just, I'm kidding.

But, uh, well played.

I, I do, I just, I, I keep coming back to this.

I mean, so much of what we are calling the church in 2024 is extra biblical.

It doesn't make it bad, but recognize that it's not biblical.

And so if it's not biblical, well, then we should have the freedom to reimagine or do something different with that.

And that's really going to be the theme that I think we're going to, to play here, uh, through the show.

Wait, that's a church.

I think that's the right, I haven't, I haven't figured out the trademark, um, excite.

We'll figure it out.

We've got to make it.

We've got to make the cartoon though.

Yeah, I, I will.

I'll pitch that Barbara, uh, Barbara will be getting that conversation.

Um, you know what?

She's in, she's in, uh, uh, Portugal at this point.

She's not, you know, in America.

She doesn't get the fourth off.

Let's get her to work.

Um, sorry, Barbara.

We'll talk soon.

All right.

Hey, uh, Joey, man, thanks for jumping on, on the show, but we're going to land the plane here on, uh, episode 302, episode two of Wait, That's a Church.

Uh, see you next time.

Uh, have a good one.

Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.