Last night was incredible!
We had our first "official" service in the bar. About ten minutes before it started it was still pretty empty and most of the people who were there were Forefronters. Then people started pouring in - and most of them were people we had never seen. It was absolutely packed. Every chair was taken, and about 20 people had to stand ... and did so throughout the entire service. Crazy!
People were totally into it. They loved the music. You could have heard a pin drop during the sermon. (Actually right towards the beginning of the message two guys were talking at the bar and one said, pretty loudly, to the other, "Bullsh*t!" - which is something I'm not used to hearing while I'm preaching. The cool thing is that several people around him, including the owner, were like, "Sshhhhh," "Shut up!")
Afterwards people surrounded me to say, "Thank you for doing this!" and "I'll be back next week with friends!" One big, tough looking guy had tears in his eyes and said, "Thank you for teaching me about forgiveness." One lady went to our "Welcome Table" and asked for one of the free bibles we provide, when she received it she turned to her friend and said, "This is the first time I've ever touched a bible." -- Awesome!
The other crazy thing that happened was that about 40 minutes before the service two different news camera crews showed up. Joe (our worship leader and campus pastor for this location) and I spent the half hour before the service doing interviews. Then the cameras were moving around all during the service and pulling people out of the service for interviews.
Thank you to everyone who prayed - your prayers were powerful and effective! If you'd like to keep praying for us, this Sunday we have the Grand Opening of our brand new Chesapeake campus......
- Featured on newchurches.com
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Report on First Real Bar Service
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
That's fantastic Vince
I hate to admit it (cause I'm a *Man*) but when I read your post, I started weeping for joy. This is what Jesus would be doing!
Please give us more details!
Previously, you had problems with people talking during your teaching. Other than the bartender telling these to "shush" did you do anything else to solve this problem?
How long is the "service?" How long did you teach? How did you get the bar owner to agree to this? What do you (if anything) for people under 21?
that's awesome!
Hey Jeremy,
Thanks for your comments!
Details: Other than one or two people right in the beginning of the message, the people were totally silent and focused. It was amazing. I tuaght for about about 25 minutes. The service was 65 minutes.
I have no idea why the bar owner was willing. We went around and asked several people - he said yes. (We did get one other yes, and hope to do something there in the future.) I think the big reason for him is that he's not doing a lot of business in general, and almost none on Tuesday nights - so he sees this as a chance to make money.
We have two Sunday morning locations where we offer full children's ministries from birth through High School. However, on Tuesday nights there is nothing for people under 21.
Thanks for your support!
Couple of questions:
1) how did you approach the bars that you asked?
2) Do you set any boundaries for your people who come and serve (ie no drinking, lots of drinking, etc.)
3) Are people under 21 permitted into the bar, or do they check ID's at the door?
4) Do you have any vision for growth?
Nate
Hey Milepost (or is it Mr. Post),
To answer your questions: (1) I actually wasn't at the initial mtg w/ this bar owner, but basically we explained that we're church for people who don't like church, and where better to do that than in a bar? We assured them that our music rocks and that we don't come off as judgmental. We told them we'd bring in lots of people.
(2) The boundary we set for our people was: Don't get drunk. I told them, "I don't drink at all and I think that's a wise choice. But I can't mandate that for you, because the bible doesn't say you can't drink at all. However, the bible does say you can't get drunk, so I can tell you to do that."
(3) It's a restaurant/bar, so I think people under 21 can go in. However the owner told us he really didn't want younger people in there.
(4) Great question. We are discussing that. We have talked about having two services, one at 7:00 and one at 8:30 (or something like that). The (big) problem is we can't figure out how we could get people to leave after the first service. It's weird asking people to leave a bar/restaurant. We've also discussed the possibility of doing another bar on a different night of the week. The difficulty with that is having bands for each week, and me committing to preach two nights a week (plus Sundays) OR trying video sermons at the second bar location - which we're not sure would work.
good stuff! I'm really interested in this...it's something I think would go down really well down on the OBX.
Awesome stuff Vince. We have been praying this thing would be great. Glad to hear it.
Post a Comment