Once upon a time, long before the term "Micro-brew" was a household word……..
I was a salesman in St. Louis and part of my territory extended into the Metro East area. I'll never forget the lunch I had one day at a small out of the way place, "Bud's Place" to be exact. Bud owned a little hole in the wall and served up viddles along with his very own brew. I hear tell Bud's brew was smooth and Bud's brew was light. Can you guess what he called his micro? Why, what else? "Bud's Light" - of course! After all, he WAS Bud…and it WAS light ale.
Now, Bud was having a great time making his viddles and light ale until another local family who ran a little brewery across the river and through the woods got wind of his little micro's name and growing fame. That's when the trouble started for our friend Bud. Next thing you know, stretch limo's too long to make the turn into Bud's Place, were trying to. They were Bud's lawyers. No, not our bud - Bud, but Budweiser's buds.
So, Bud's Light was quickly renamed. But, if you look close at the label on the bottle, right near the bottom you'll see the following footnote:
(The beer formerly known as Bud's Light)
Micro-brews…they almost always have an interesting story behind the label, don't they?
And they're almost always fun to visit. You can keep your Budweiser manufacturing tour with its' vats large enough to swallow an entire team of Clydesdale horses. Oh, and the free sample at the end of the tour - of course.
As for me, give me a visit to a good old local micro-brewery struggling to survive! In the land of consumerism, where everything is "me too" we now relish the sight, and are starving for the smooth taste of stark raving authentic individuality.
Enter: the micro brew rave.
I had a strong sense that Church planting was making a transition but had no real proof of it, that was two or more years ago. Now, comments like the following are becoming commonplace among those discussing emerging ministries…..
""I remember the good old days of church planting the old fashioned way. The glory days of toys and more toys. Picking out mega-wattage sound systems. Shopping for electronics. Designing kick-butt graphics for the invitation. Discovering the building. Raising the money. The gut-twisting suspense of Opening Service. The relief of the big crowd that came. Those lovely, dear people that came. God bless'em, everyone! And then the disappointment of the smaller crowd the following week. And the week after. And the week after that. The grief of losing steam. The guilt of swiping people from other churches to replace those horrible, spiteful deserters who came the first week to see the big fuss and then left forever. Stood us up. Not caring for our feelings. Or our budget. And after all we did for them . . . "
http://areka.org/viewpost.asp?postID=462
Or how about this comment made to me by a former denominational leader respected the world over. "Yea, I think I'll plant a Church, I think I'll open a Dairy Queen".
Now, please keep in mind both the comments above - in fact all three (including our micro parable) are meant to be provoking and somewhat tongue and cheek. The point is this folks, we are in desperate need of some authentic missional communities of Christ that are not concentrating so much on "doing" church as they are BEING the Church.
There are occasional micro-brewers who make it "big". But most never will, because they are not concentrating on commercialization of their product. They are concentrating on taste and quality and gaining a very LOCAL following, albeit a very STRONG local following. Would a small brewer pass up an "inside" tour of the Budweiser plant here in St. Louis, NO WAY! But I don't think they'd go through it looking for methodology - Budweiser is in a completely different category.
Enter: Willow Creek Church in Chicago.
Willow Creek was the methodology Mecca of evangelical Christianity in the USA during the 90's. Every other micro-brewer (read: small Church) in America made their semi-annual pilgrimage to Willow in hopes that one day they could do business just like their big brother in the windy city.
Willow Creek is a huge, successful, WONDERFUL Church (read: large brewery). But unfortunately what works in Chicago doesn't always work in Peoria. People brought the recipe home and served it up. But alas, it was often received by the local populace with as much gusto of an Irishmen drinking a Coors Light.
What we need is a good old fashioned Macedonian call. The Lord's calls are customized, both for us and for the people we are called to reach. We need to stop brewing up me too products and services that worked yesterday in a place far, far away. Stop trying to convince the naysayers to drink and start going to those who are thirsty. Thirsty for the brew only your local Christian community is capable of delivering.
The key word in my mind is delivery, and we'll talk about that next time.
Good Brewing!
Rob
