I am pressed for time this week, but I didn’t want to skimp out on my weekly post so I thought I’d simply write about a few things that were going down this week; a conversation in particular and I’d love to hear your feedback.

Earlier this week, I was talking with Nano (that’s Nathanael—he’s from Indiana and is our Missions Director, but we don’t know what Indiana is so we simply call him “Nano”) and I pitched the idea of hosting a regular event called Theology on Tap (or something to that extent) at Roosevelt’s, a local pub that’s down the street from our building.

If you’ve never heard of “Theology on Tap” then you may have come across a few other similar event names such as “Pubtalk,” “Theology Pub,” or something similar to those names. In any case, the idea and hope behind Theology on Tap is that we would host a regular event/gathering at Roosevelt’s where we’d simply create a space for open dialogue about faith and culture. Theology on Tap is nothing new in the life of churches or community engagement so I’m not saying we have all of the answers or that we’re reinventing the wheel, but I have been to a few of these gatherings in other cities and they seem to have done well. I’ve gone to one here in McAllen where the Catholic Church held a Pubtalk one evening. I smoked a Romeo y Julieta with the priest and that was pretty legit although I don’t think I was supposed to say anything. But I digress...

Theology on Tap is meant to be a discussion where we talk about important subject and pressing matters; perhaps they’re topics in theology or culture that we rarely talk about or simply shy away from. But the goal is to create an atmosphere where we get to express and exchange opinions, even differing ones and allow for our convictions to be examined. In the end, I think this helps to create conversation over great food and really good beer for the sake of building relationships with other individuals, the church and our community, and ultimately on going opportunity for gospel conversations to take place.

I figured hosting something like this at Roosevelt’s kills several birds with one stone. To begin and I know I sound repetitive, but Roosevelt’s is simply great. Secondly, a space like a pub is neutral ground for everyone. And finally, these are discussions on topics everyone is already talking about, might as well pull up a chair and have a beer with them!

Nano and I don’t have all (or any actually) of the details right now, but this is something that we’re going to spend a lot of time thinking through and praying about and later on I can share what we’ve come up with; hopefully we can come up with something for the Fall of 2018. I have no idea how regular we’ll have this gathering/event and I’m not even sure if Roosevelt’s will allow us to host something like this, but we hope so. We love Roosevelt’s and their staff is amazing and very friendly.

Until then, I’d love to hear if you’ve been to something like this, have hosted something similar, and what kind of things you experienced. I’ve heard and seen several good pub talks and I’m hoping we can create something similar. We’re excited and I hope you can join us in the fall!

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