Though I have officiated plenty funerals in my not-so lengthy history in ministry, this memorial service overwhelmed me. I was nervous that the memorial actually taking place in a bar might become disrespectful to Dan if I wasn’t careful. We had to manage our time and presentations wisely, but even more importantly, what I said and how I said it was crucial. Amazingly, what I call a holy synchronicity occured: when this incredible invitation came I was nudged into discovering more of who I am as a pastor and person. And wouldn’t you know it - what I felt and heard was something the Spirit is currently saying to many - (something that has always been a subtle theme with me and my wife, swimming beneath our surface and impacting the way we see ministry): People like Jesus – it’s the church that gets in the way.
Before he died, Dan had chosen to have his memorial in a local sports bar. He knew that more of his friends would come there rather than any church building or funeral parlor. Dan had been turned off by the dryness and unwelcoming atmosphere of the local church at some point in his past. He was entrusting me and Shannon to represent the kindness of God to his closest friends and relatives that would gather at the bar.
Often, when people in the Church hear this message that they are to be in the world and not of it - they choose to become judges of the world, and thus the church falls into pharisaical attitude. When faced with the real, day-to-day life situations outside of Sunday morning, outside the 4 walls of places of worship, outside home, outside our experience and comfort (like in those places you wrote off years ago as places of “darkness”) applying the fruit of kindness and salting your words with grace is anything but easy. Engaging others without all the jargon and religious assumptions is not easy without solid planning and intentionality.
So with a lot of prayer and preparation, here’s how my first Bar Room Memorial played out:
1. I dressed in a Michigan State sweatshirt (the bar was in Lansing, MI), had a Spartan tattoo on my face, a cup a beer next to the pulpit and was armed with a retooled version of the Beverly Hillbilly’s theme song I played with Dan’s brother-in-law.
2. The gathering was advertised in the newspaper as a 3-hour event. We spent the first hour performing songs, playing a PowerPoint with images from Dan’s life, giving a message and inviting others to share prepared letters in honor of Dan.
3. My message was brief, with the main theme, based on Dan’s desire: We all like Jesus, we’re just not sure about “the church”. In fact, I apologized for many of the actions of the church, and stated that I was personally more comfortable in this setting. The bar was packed with over 300 of Dan’s friends and loved ones, and the whole time I had a sense of oneness as God’s love infiltrated our senses.
4. When it was all said and done, people I had never met before told me that if I started a church, they would come. Those comments were a direct answer to my recent prayers about church planting. A few people even suggested that if I started holding meetings in that bar on Sunday mornings, they would come. These comments came from people of a wide age range, and people who admitted that they had never, that’s never, been to church or even a funeral parlor.
This experience suggests that we as humans are looking for grace-filled invitations. What my old, “come and see” church perspective did not realize is that neither hell, fire and brimstone nor empire-esque church fortresses are as powerful as noticing real people and meeting them in their real places of life.
God bless you, Dan, for thinking of your friends first.
