Give God a Shot!

The title of this blog may seem quite normal until you see the picture that goes with it. On St. Patricks Day in Hot Springs Arkansas we have a festival downtown where there is the Worlds Shortest Parade and then Pub Crawl that follows. This year we handed out 5000 beads all with a card that told them about Jesus loves for them and inviting them to check out LakePointe if they don't have a church home. We had another crew handing out helium balloons and invites. Then after the parade was over we handed out 1000 shot glasses with "Give God a Shot!" on them to the local bars. The response was pretty amazing! LakePointe's Intern Pastor Ben and I went into a local bar called Maxine's (after getting pre-approval from the owners previously we were welcomed with open arms…literally!) At Maxine's we had some great conversations with people. The whole point was to just love people where they were at, in our team meetings before the event we talked about how we are not there to smack people over the head with a bible but, we are simple there to let them know God loves them and so do we. Our prayer for doing this was that this would be an opportunity for them to know someone really cared about them. The net result was that we had people blown away that we would care enough to give them a shot glass and take time to chat with them about Jesus. We had several people offer to buy drinks :) (I'm only drinking water for Lent) while I did have someone give me some of their pizza (I did't give up pizza for lent:) The owners thought that is was so cool that we would come into their bar and share Jesus with their patrons. In fact they are going to continue to use the glasses and give them away! One of the stories we had was with a man that had a few too many drinks turned down the gift of the shot glass, and then later chased down our team mate and said, "As a matter of fact I do need God even when I'm drunk." Then there was the girl that had been to our church before that was struggling with some issues in her life and we had an opportunity to pray with her right there on the spot. There was another guy that was struggling with his marriage and had relapsed and wanted to get his life back on track with God. These are just a few of the stories where God was at work that night. See, our prayer is that the next morning people may have done things they regret that night, they may wake up in the wrong bed, they may not remember anything but in the floor board of their car or in their jacket they will pick up a shot glass and realize that they really do need God in their life and that things aren't working well without Him.

It was really neat to see how God would use this to spark conversations we would never have the opportunity to have and share His love with them. We are going to continue our "bar ministry" reaching people on their turf building relationships and sharing Jesus. We now have 3 bars that are going to "stock" these shot glasses in their pubs.

We realize this is not for everyone and some will not agree or understand. We are ok with that but we are not ok with the fact that there are many people who don't know of God's love that will never set foot in a church and we are willing to go wherever the people are that are far from God in the name of Jesus!

To God be all glory even from a shot glass that would have His name on it!

Matthew 9:11-13

11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”