If you’ve spent any time with me I love to eat, so naturally, being the type of person I am I ask myself, “how can I make that?” This has led to several wonderful adventures as I try my hand at creating my own recipes & delectable treats for my friends & family.
If you’ve spent any time with me you know I love good, robust, & tasty beer; so naturally I ask, “How can I make that?” Over the course of the past year I’ve become rather intrigued & delighted in brewing my own beer. However, with this cooking adventure I’ve stumbled upon a whole people group that enjoys the craft as well.
We are fortunate enough in our small coastal city to have a great, all organic of course, home brewing store & through my journey it has led to some pretty cool friendships with the employees. One could assume that I just as might bring in some chick tracks, in the form of recipes, & place them in the store, but I’ve found that brewing a good beer instead delights my people group, & myself, a bit more.
I don’t know any other Christ followers who regularly enter the store & share the craft with the homebrew people & that said, my friends at the homebrew store are intrigued that I, a pastor of a local church do; however, as I’ve journeyed along this road, & started brewing some good beers, my friends have started to talk to me on deeper levels, which has led to genuine friendships, questions, & better beers.
All of the guys at the shop know I make small batches: 1 to 3 gallons. This was/is confusing to them because they all brew 10 to 30 gallons at a time; yet when they’ve asked, & they all do, I share with them that I choose to make small batches because, “beer is certainly good, but certain people within my community struggle with alcohol & I want to respect them.” This of course brings up great conversations of: faith, restraint, living to love others, & the celebration of creation vs. prohibition.
One day I entered the shop to share one of my brews & was wearing my work shirt that happened to be a shirt from a ½ marathon. My friend asked, “Do you run?” I mentioned that I did & he said, “I do too. We should go running sometime.”We decided on a day we could run together.
Yesterday morning we rose early, drank our coffee, & met at the Buttery, which is a Santa Cruz landmark of sorts. When we started running he asked about the previous day & I mentioned I spent most of the day at the Farmers Market where our church runs a booth selling “Meditational Arts: Prayer flags, candles, etc.” This coupled with my home brewing obviously intrigued him enough that he blurted out, “What type of church are you a part of anyways?” I guess a pastor who brews good beer & sells meditational arts at the Market is pretty interesting. I told him about our church & he said, “It sounds like you are a church for misfits.” I agreed whole-heartedly that we were in fact a church of misfits & that Jesus himself was always to be found amongst misfits. Then as we continued on for a bit, caught up in the rhythms of our feet striking the ground he said, “I’m a misfit,” & I remarked, “I am too.”
ay de mi...chick tracts...I'd forgotten them until you mentioned them...help, I think I'm going tio hell because I just listened to the Beatles again...
ReplyDeletegreat story...I'm a misfit right there with you
and I love me some Meditational arts!
ps - I love me some home brew...when can I expect some? ;-)
ReplyDeleteHey Sean! Great blog post! Santa Cruz surely is unique in so many ways - and always encouraged hearing your heart and what you are doing on mission here!
ReplyDeleteThe order in which you read something can have an impact on how you process information… in my case, I just read this post after your “All Over the Country” post on your main site (hmm…can you tell that I’m behind on my RSS feeds?). The combination of these two posts brought out the following thought:
ReplyDeleteOriginal Questions: “How do we within the church help everyone to see they are as important as Heidi [Baker]? How do we within the church help our teachers present us with a bio that reflects day-to-day faith? How do we in the church learn how to appreciate simple acts of faith like going next door?”
Response: Tell stories like this one… stories about interacting with the folks at the beer store…stores about running with misfits….stories about seeing Jesus move in everyday situations… in doing so the people around us will begin to see that what is valued is not ‘singing/teaching across the country’ but loving people and following Jesus at home, at work, in the store, etc.
The hard part (as least for me) about telling these kinds of stories is that I often forget about them…they just happen along the road of life and they pass with out much of a thought… yet, the more I reflect on things, the more I realize that it is these simple things that matter more then the big, flashy, miraculous things. After all, it didn’t take the Israelites long to forget about the ten plagues, Red Sea crossing, water from a rock…..
That's great Josh. I too am challenged to engage God in the small things, which is very counter-culture to the "big" ideas within American culture & therefore theology. This is why I'm starting to admire (apart from the seperated life from people) the lives of monks: There is no sacred or secular divide.
ReplyDelete