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

You 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 got an answer. Like, are we? The things that we do on the weekends, the things that we do on 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 the big questions. Is discipleship making possible digitally? How should we approach the digital mission field? Can a biblically grounded church operate in digital space? 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. Let me see if I can get my inflection right, Joey, as I'm kicking off here. Wait, is that a church? We are doing an introspective on unique expressions of church. And so Joey has some experience with unique expressions of churches with church at a bar. Yeah. 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, we're going to be talking, me 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 micro locations. And a lot of the neat, unique stuff that's out there. So man, I'm super excited about this. Joey, thanks for jumping on the show once again. We had, we started the conversation last week, episode 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, hey, is we're kicking off here, anything want to open up with?

Yes. I think we should create a cartoon version of Jeff saying, "Wait, is that a church?" You know, I mean, like, we can probably get somebody to make even an animation out of that because I think that would be the way to launch this thing.

That would be funny. A little eight-bit animated Super Mario of Jeff jumping up and down in front of a big giant cathedral that morphs into a bar or something like that.

I'll share this clip with Barbara Carrero. 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 jumping up and down, angry, like turning red, frustrated that, you know, the church at the bar. And then, you know, you could have the animated version of you could walk up and say, "Hey, you want to come in? Let's grab a bourbon." And then they'll—it's so funny because you say that because when we launched the church at the bar the first time, we launched—now remember, before we had our first service, it was right at this time, Fourth of July. We launch in the fall. So Fourth of July, we actually had a stand outside the bar because it was a big deal at the bar, Fourth of July. So we had a stand like, "Church at the Bar launching this fall." And I'm telling you, it's so funny to see people come up and like, "Is this for real?" And some people be like, "What do you think you're doing? You're in a bar?" I mean, 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 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 thing. We got less support from church goers at the moment, at the time, than we got from non-church goers. They were like, "This is so good." And then, without us knowing, the Ascent wrote an article about it. They saw what we're doing and wrote an article about the church at the bar. And the social media, it was just interesting to watch. You know, again, some church goers saying that you never 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 at a 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 I think that kind of paints 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 helped us visualize maybe we got a shape that's 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 do not connect, right?

Again, it's not something we're trying to bash down the traditional model, but not everybody's going to connect with that. So let's figure out a way to connect with them. And the church at 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 railed, you know, 2018, for that idea, pre-COVID. I literally had pastors calling me out, people I knew. "Hey, like, Jeff, you're going to hurt it." 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 back off." And you know, a lot of what we're experiencing Sunday morning, 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 disrupt the model and so respect it. But a lot of what we're doing is extra-biblical. It's outside of the Bible. How much time did Jesus go to the temples, to the synagogues? He also spent a lot of time in the marketplace, in the town centers, and walking around nature and talking from a boat. And he was not locked into a building. He understood how to get outside it. And he was rubbing shoulders with prostitutes and tax collectors. And I mean, crap, he put one of them on his team. And don't get me started 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 that's part of the challenge because we are conditioned to it, right? We've been conditioned to it. I don't think, even though Jesus started the church and he assigned disciples to begin that journey of what we call church, I don't think he ever meant for us to turn into something 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 the conversation because when you talk about church expressions, we're not talking about the fact that you got to completely dismantle what you have. But you 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 got an answer. Like, are we? The things that we do on weekends, the things that we do on 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 at 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 get involved with the church 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's going to lose that battle the way it stands right now with culture. So I think there's an opportunity.

Right. When we started the church at the bar, we knew like, what—I can tell the number one mistake we made. Number one was to try to replicate in a church at a bar 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, you know, 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 at the bar 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 got to change how we're doing this because people are not staying because they figure if I'm going to sit in a 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 gotta change this thing, right? We got to figure out a way to connect with people." And that's when we switched the format.

And when we switched 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 to. Meaning, you don't have to be a church goer for twenty years to debate this question, right? So sometimes we ask questions in Bible studies that it's like, "What do you think Jesus was heading into?" No, no, no, no. We want to like, "When you battle in a 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.

Life situation and that's the rule for the questions and 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. Um 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 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. Uh so we never attach ourselves to the model we always attach ourselves to the mission and yeah and and that caused us to always be open to it. So we it we we're 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 of your teaching communication the Bible study with uh you know it's it's actually it's called 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 teach for another five minutes and ask and so it's like the master teacher teaching to to the tables and um yeah and it was it was very hard to do um you know 20 25 years ago to to students because students in a Sunday school environment Sunday morning 9:00 am you know really weren't that interested in talking or dialoguing um 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's what I see is like when I look at the bar I like why 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 going to do a church the bar I want I wanted people to so I wanted people to do the same thing I wanted them to come sit down and talk talk in in in 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 tables of chair 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 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 they're talking and it never fails and 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 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 they they're so close together which that's the key they end up 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 they 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 uh instilled that idea that when she step into the building it's a holy ground it's a sacred ground you don't say we 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 we dim the lights and we we play this like some is like the soft music and we wanted 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 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 and 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 they 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 is not a place to talk anymore and my question I ask is why why is why so why we make that so sacred and why we feel so guilty to actually fellowship right before we do a opening prayer while we 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 going to have an experience to here soon hearing from Joe Joe friend 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 the brewery and all of the 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 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 gather together but he didn't define a location so man I can do this two or three people in a in this here right Discord and this is right here because he said we just got to gather his name but we don't have to get in a specific location specific format so I think I think the environment I think if we can start thinking can we change the environment the facilitate people facilitate that people can actually engage with God and each other whatever we are and what that what it should look like.

Well man now you're talking crazy two or three people gathered in Discord and and God's here I I'm pretty sure God does not recognize Discord as as a community I don't I I don't I literally don't understand the words coming out of your mouth.

No it's funny by the way we are we are doing this live in Discord right now and so uh discord.theechurch.digital U we're doing the show regularly Wednesdays at 2 o'clock and so if you're out there want to jump on the stream we got Whitebeard 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 got any questions feel 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 with 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 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 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 was having one of those God moments and as people that do church we do and we understand what those God moments actually are and so 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 that it's like oh my gosh God is here what what does that look like or 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 gonna this is going to do something or and we we're craft and again if you're work in 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 the moments and learn you know it took a little while to learn that we so much we can do like let's do things 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 when I when I write the sermon or write the message I write the questions I I don't look at um 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 99% and I'm not kidding about that it was happen 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 move somebody else and and and that happens so you see that God moments happen when people like oh my word this they me get them and put them in tears and and I realize man I I just got to watch that because somebody else decide to participate on what God's doing or somebody decide to respond to what the spirit's telling them to do and had nothing to do with me and that that was like another wakeup call to me it was like man how many how many times I waste my time trying to figure out like how going to craft this thing so this going to move people this way or going.

To move them that way and realizing man, I was just trying to get people's emotions to respond but not spiritually. And 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 all you do is just watch what God's going to do in the room.

So I think like, I always tell the worship team, once I was leading, I never led worship because I was never given the gift of a voice, which is great. And I think when God says, you know, in the Bible, "Make a joyful noise," I don't think he was thinking of me. But I led worship teams and I led programming teams before, and I always told people, I said, "When you're on the stage, people get helped by seeing you getting helped. So when you lead the worship from the stage, don't worry about what people are thinking of you. 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 way, even if you're just in ministry, if you teach, that's the same way. Like if people can see you get helped by the things that you're teaching while you're teaching, 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 wants to share something and something impacts them, and man, it just gets around the room and people like, "Wow," because they see. They expect to hear God's wisdom from me, but in the church setting, we don't expect to hear 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 to that. It's not just one person, one person act, but is the whole congregation participating in that environment in that moment. And that's kind of like what we look forward to at the church at the bar.

Yeah, what do you do with kids? Like, do I mean children's ministry? Do people at church at a bar bring their children? Like, what does that interaction look like at church at a bar? Man, that was another fail, another big fail. We tried that. We tried to do kids ministry too. Again, when we started, we started trying to replicate the traditional church model at the church at the bar. So what we did, we went ahead and like, "Oh, let's get volunteers to help with the kids and we have some crafts here." 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 forcing something that was not made for that environment. And we learned that. So when kids come, they are part of the conversation. I mean, they're sitting there, they're part of the conversation. They listen. And then some parents do know, I know they're not coming back because parents say, "Do you have kids programming?" Like, we know we don't. We don't have kids programming. And if you need help finding a church with good kids program, we can recommend some. But no, we don't. 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 want to pretend to have something we cannot have. So but man, in the beginning we failed a lot. And some families, they love it. Like the parents, they love the church at the bar, but they're like, "I want to find a place where my kids can grow." And like, I understand that. And I think you should find a place and we can help you with that. But it's interesting because we have 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. And it's a very interesting thing because we only send prayer requests through the email. We don't say anything else. And a lot of these people that came to the church at the bar but had to leave because, you know, they need to find kids programming for the kids or anything like that, what we did was, they like, "Can you not remove me from the email list? 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 responded. They're like, "Oh, I'm praying for you," or "Pray for this situation," or they submit themselves a prayer request even though they don't come to church at the bar. They get prayer requests. Another thing is when they go through some things in their lives, some challenges, they reach out to us and say, "Hey, I'm going through this. Can you guys pray for me?" Or "Joey, can you come and visit me at my house because we're going through a situation?" They have not been coming to church at the bar for over a year. And when something happened, we're 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 now part of this community and if you need us, we'll be there for you."

Yeah, it's a beautiful way to reimagine community, you know, not who's sitting in the pew Sunday morning at nine a.m., but who you are influencing spiritually and who are leaning on you. And now you're through that opportunity you are building relationships and trying to draw them deeper into an understanding of Jesus. But it's, um, it takes more time to do that. And it's definitely, you know, I need to figure out a better phrase here, Joey, so I apologize for you saying this, but it's, you know, the slow boil approach, you know? You're building relationships over time, being very relational, engaging in a different environment that's more friendly and more open to conversations. Um, I'm curious with this. Yeah, I don't know, Joey. I know you've been a standalone church for a couple years, I guess at this point, maybe eighteen months? You were doing this as part of the other church for a couple years, so you've got some time on you. Is somebody going to be a member of the church at the bar, member is even a weird word for like ten years? Like, is the goal for longevity at 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?

That's a good question though. But I don't know. We talk constantly. We talk about, yeah, so I think that what I see is like we have people attending for years now, two, three years. And we have people that they came a year ago and they stay 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 bigger challenge, right? But I think that they still connect. They may still be connected to the church at the bar, but they may need, they may not still be connected to this particular church at 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 expansion. So people stay around but they stay in different places because they're leading, they're participating, they're helping to expand the ministry.

Gotcha. So man, you are wanting to create a long-term model of involvement for the church. Just you're not a gateway to help people get connected back to a physical building. You're looking to create a long-term church discipleship experience through the bar. I love that.

Oh yeah, because, hey, because I can tell you right now that we have, um, you know, when we split, if you just say it the way it is, we were connected to an 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 don't want to do this because now we're moving from being connected to the big church to we're our own thing here," um, and I told, I gave all of them the option. I said, "Man, if this room gets back down to just three people, three of us, four of us, I'm okay with that. And I understand if you feel like you want to be connected to a larger church environment and not one person left." So I think the group that we have today that is, you know, the thirty, forty, fifty people, they are there constantly. They are committed to the model that we have, the style. They're very vocal about feeling like, "I 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 bar we're meeting today, we're building a second location four miles down the road. And the owners of the bar already told us that they want to have a church at the bar there. So that's going to be, by next year, be our second location most likely. So I think that's going to be a, I didn't know that. That's exciting. Second church at the bar. That'll be, I mean, there's a whole bunch of questions. Maybe we'll get into that next week. Franchise, yeah. Ian is saying it in chat. Dominic's asking a question. Um, I have to ask the big question. What is the alcohol policy for church at the bar? Um, I'm guessing the answer is yes, please. But, um, you know, what's okay, what's not okay? Is there a line? What how are you managing that?

Um, I know 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 the Wednesday nights the bar is open. And we tell people, "You, you, it's a bar. Help yourself. You know, so you're going to see glasses of beer, bourbon, and wine on Wednesday night Bible study because we're in a bar and people drink." But outside of that, on Sunday, you know, I make a joke to people because we're meeting in a bar and people like to know, "Oh, in the bar?" Say, "Yeah, my community is better than yours." But you know, we, I think people just got to understand that at the moment that if I start putting limitations on what they can do, that's when I start to look like something else. So um, we obviously we don't encourage alcoholism. We don't. We actually fight that and we control that. Remember, I work at the bar, right? I'm operations manager. So regularly, um, we're so serious about that because regularly, like on the weekends, it's very common for me to come out to a 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 have a very clear principle. And we try to offer any help we can to people who need help. But no, we don't. We don't. People want to enjoy a bourbon, a beer, and have a conversation? That's what we're going to have. We're going to sit down. I remember I'm the pastor of the church at the bar. We have signage, "Church at the bar," all over the building. People know who I am, what I do. And I lead. I'm running the bourbon club at the bar, which we have over a thousand members. So I, you know, I just lead. We do bourbon tastings every month.

I host these bourbon tastings, right? And I talk about it in every bourbon tasting. There's a conversation because I'm going to mention 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. 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 not uncommon for people to walk up on a busy Friday night and say, "Hey, I just learned that my husband got cancer," or "This happened to my family this week. Can you guys pray for us?" And I'm telling you, that started with the staff. We have such an influence on our staff because they know what we do and what we believe. Even the owners, the owners are to know very dedicated Christians. Um, so they go with 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, one of the most fun events that happened is when we're meeting on Wednesday nights and a staff member out of nowhere, she was diagnosed with cancer and she went through a treatment and she got, you know, cured from breast cancer. And out of nowhere, she just walked by to our group meeting on 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 you for praying for me. I'm doing a lot." And I mean, everybody at Church the Bar was so excited that that happens. So it's all over, Jeff. It's like, you got to be present and you have an opportunity when you do this to be present in people's lives. They make an impact in their lives. So it's not just, you know, impressing people with this new idea. Customers now know about it. Staff knows about it. And people talk about it and they feel that on some level now they can be part of it. Uh, that it's something that's a lot deeper, I think. Uh, as we get into it, that 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 pretty broken with that. That being said, the recording is going to be pristine the way that this Riverside technology works. So, um, we'll hang out, you know, and 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 a unique 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 minimal ecclesiology. What is, um, what defines a church and what's the minimum as we start to look at other potential expressions of worship, you know, in other spaces, physical spaces or in other 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 account or you're not part of the TCD server, open up a web browser and go to discord.theechurch.digital. Discord.theechurch.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. Jeff Reed, yes sir. Pastor Dominic, you're on my list. Um, we're not, this show is probably not going anywhere. We're going to be doing this a long time, and so talking virtual reality is one of those expressions we're definitely going to get into that.

Tall, skinny key, we just wrapping up in Europe. It's very common for us to have a 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 to the front when, I guess, when it was preaching. That's awesome.

Um, that being said, the Americans beat Europe in their war, so I don't know. I'm just kidding. But, uh, well played. I do, I just, 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 play here through the show.

Wait, that's a church. I think that's the right. I haven't figured out the trademark, um, excitement. We'll figure it out. We got to make it. We got to make the cartoon though. Yeah, I will. I'll pitch that, Barbara. Uh, Barbara will be getting that conversation. Uh, you know what, she's in, she's in 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, for the list, but we'll talk soon.

All right, hey, Joey, man, thanks for jumping on the show. But we're going to land the plane here on episode 302. Episode 2 of "Wait, That's a Church." See you next time. Have a good one.