Day 4: Church at the Pub

One of the highlights of my week is attending church in two different places. The first place is at a building on Sunday mornings with a church called Radiant Fellowship which is in Waupaca, WI. The second place where we meet for church is located at the Paca Pub, also located in Waupaca. I am SO thankful for the great group from Radiant Fellowship that comes out to support this ministry.

Let me dwell on the second location for awhile because on any given Sunday you will see status updates on facebook from people talking about how great their worship experiences were in the morning. I find that very few comment on how their outreach experience was that night at the local pub/tavern/watering hole.

Tonight was the 5^th time we met for “church at the pub.” I am still amazed at the bridges God is building as he is with us at this place. Tonight the jukebox was in full effect. We heard everything from Lady Antebellum to the Black Eyed Peas (requested by Ben from our church because we played a snip-it of their song in church for the announcements lol). As always a classic rock song comes on and a lady in her 50’s at the end of the bar started to sing along to is and I said, “Ah….Marshall Tucker Band…just downloaded this one to my iPod.” She was pretty happy that someone knew the name of that band given the younger crowd in the pub tonight. I said, “Not too bad for a pastor is it?” Just then a friend of hers asked me what church I was the pastor of in which I responded, “Radiant Fellowship.” The lady that asked me knew where it was but what was key is the other lady asked, “Are you Pastor Bob?” It ends up that this lady is the manager of the pub and was there on her off time to celebrate her birthday. See, this lady originally told me that we could not meet at the pub because we were a church. After I talked with her on the phone a couple of months ago she finally gave us permission to meet there. Tonight she got to meet about ten of us from the church and kept telling us how great it is that we are there. She was really impressed by our group and that we just enjoyed conversations with people without ulterior motives. The only thing I do is pray before I go in and pray when I leave that God would work on these people’s hearts (and mine as well) to show them that they have a friend in this church that meets there on Sunday nights.

If you are going to be a Christian then you have to meet people where they are. Is this a radical thing to do? Perhaps. I will share something even more radical in days come. DON’T BE AFRAID TO REACH THE LOST.