RICE en:trust

Church at the Pub

by admin on Dec.07, 2009, under church planting, missional

CT Studd, a hero of mine, once said:

Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell


outside signLast year, while watching stand-up comedy at a pub in Glebe, I couldn’t help noticing that stand-up venues would make a great venue for church. They are a comfortable and relaxed, have good facilities (food, drink and amenities) and are natural meeting places for people in our city. They are  setup so that all the chairs, couches, stools and tables face a small stage from which a person speaks for 30 minutes. Perfect!

At the same time as this began to dawn on me, I heard about Guy Mason who planted a churchJames Squire Brewhouse in Docklands, Melbourne. It surprises me that so few churches have used pubs as a venue for church planting. Well not really. A columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: in the

A paper prepared by the NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service for the 2003 NSW summit on alcohol abuse outlines the costs: alcohol played a role in 50 per cent of cases of domestic violence and sexual violence, 37 per cent of road injuries, 44 per cent of injuries resulting from fire, 47 per cent of assaults and 16 per cent of child abuse cases. It was a factor in more than one-third of homicides. More than 3600 people were dying each year from alcohol use and about 72,000 were hospitalised. The last time it was calculated at the end of the 1990s, alcohol misuse cost the community $7.5 billion a year.

Christian’s hate the abuse of Alcohol and the harm it inflicts on the innocent, so we reject pubs as a place to be used for by Jesus to build his church.

I am a fan, however, of the three-fold approach to engaging culture: reject what is evil, receive what is good, and redeem what is broken/lost. Though we lament and reject Alcohol abuse, we seek to redeem its use in moderation, receiving it as a good gift from God to his world. Hence, hold church in a pub may be a good way to begin to redeem something which is so often abused.

The last two Sunday nights I visited two pubs between the City and Bondi.

The first was The Light Brigade in Paddington. It  was almost empty at 9pm when we visited one Sunday night. The girl behind the bar said that its quite a slow season for pubs at the moment. She said their upstairs bistro is not open on a sunday night, but is able to be rented during the week. I told her my plans to plant a church in a function room at a pub and she said some pub owners would like it because pubs are fairly empty on a sunday night, and at present the season is fairly slow.

Taphouse-DarlinghurstThe second was The Local Taphouse in Darlinghurst. This pub surprised me, because despite what the bar lady said at The Light Brigade, this pub was packed on a Sunday night with Stand-Up Comedy downstairs, and a busy upstairs restaurant and bar. This pub defineately wins the points for the best range of Beers on tap, and for being very artistic birdcages hanging from the roof.

Over the next coming months I will be joining a group of young guys who are dreaming to creatively transform the City with the story of Jesus. Please join us or pray for us.

Because the tomb is empty.

Toby Neal

Note: Toby is a student at Moore College and also part of the group of 30 men who are part of the en:trust coaching group.  We would love for you to pray for him and his family as they prepare for the work of church planting.  Check out his blog at Middle Children Of History.

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4 Comments for this entry

  • mattW
    December 7th, 2009 on 10:19 pm

    Hey Toby, If you are interested in church planting in the area you should come along to Vox, our little church plant in Paddington. We’re still building a core team (we’ve been meeting for about a month) and are doing church round a dining table in a little terrace. We’re getting ready to launch next year when we’ve built some momentum and found a venue. Even if you wanted to do your own thing I’m sure you could learn from our mistakes if you came along with us for a while. We’re really keen about sending out people in the next 3-5 years to replant.
    It would be good to meet up for a chat anyway.
    Cheers
    Matt

  • Toby Neal
    December 8th, 2009 on 8:00 am

    Hey Matt
    I would love to meet up. I just sent you an email.
    Toby

  • Dan Harding
    December 10th, 2009 on 2:51 pm

    thanks for the post…hope to see great things in the future!
    @danharding

  • Adam Witanowski
    December 18th, 2009 on 9:48 am

    Hey Toby,

    Pub church is a hot idea I have got to say and something that I am super keen to try out as one of the plants that I want to do in 2011+. My wife and I (as well as a couple of others) are going down to Melb. early in the New year to catch up with Guy, and to visit his church at squires if you are keen to come (I will note that we have met by the by… I am in entrust also). There is also a pub church at the Oaks in Neutral Bay/Mosman… we are probably checking it out this Sunday Night (20/12/2009) if you want to come. Other wise we will probably hit it up early in the new year also. RE: the Taphouse… Oh My Goodness! what a great little pub (upstairs)… and it has like 300 beers… thats reason enough to run a church there! The place should be a freakin’ Monkistery in the long and wonderful tradition of Trappist genius. I visited the Trappists when OS a couple of years ago… they love beer and they love Jesus… I had to pause for a moment at the revelation. Anyhow man, will pray for you as you do this… as we talk about church in a pub with people responses have been everything from applause to cussing us out (I did point out to those cussing that there was nothing in the bible about doing church in the pub but that there certainly was about the language they were using)… though I found this second bunch usually hail from churches that believe something of the divinity of pews and piano-organs that cannot be played in tune or at pace; or too by people who puzzle at the idea of planting all together (the vast majority of Christian Australia I fear… which is a blessing in and of itself, because hopefully it means we will not be shuffling the deck of Christians in our city, but rather creating a new deck all together as we introduce lost people, deserving of an eternal conscious consequence to the God Man Jesus Christ who visited a prostitute on the corner she was working to tell her that God forgives her… “go and sin no more”… ). In this it is also important to note that the pub is simply a place for the church to gather, rather than the church itself, which unfortunately is the truth for so many Christians in Australia. Erect a building, put up a sign, and wait for the Christians to come a flooding in. And so church becomes more about geography, than it does about Jesus gathering a people who will glorify himself in spite of venue, comforts, sound systems, lights that flash and even rooms that dont smell like stale beer, musty hops and last nights parties… but as I say, great beer at the Taphouse…

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