I’ve heard it my whole life, that you won’t make it to heaven sitting in a bar on the weekends. And listen, I get it. There’s a fair point there. Scripture calls us to be set apart, to live holy, to walk away from the old man and put on the new. There’s absolutely a call to live righteously.
But let me tell you something that most folks don’t want to admit out loud. You know what you’ll often find in a bar that you can’t find in a lot of churches? The answer is simple, it’s GRACE.
That drunk sitting on a barstool might hand you his last dollar if you looked like you needed it. That woman sipping a cocktail might ask how you’re really doing and mean it more than someone dressed in THEIR Sunday’s best. That regular bartender? He might listen to your whole story without judging a single word. I know that might mess with some folks theology. But it’s the truth.
People don’t skip church and head to bars because they’re all trying to rebel. A lot of them just don’t feel safe in the church. They walk into a sanctuary and get side eyed over their clothes, over their past, or the fact that they still smell like last night’s mistakes. But they walk into a bar and feel seen, heard, even loved for who they are, not who they pretend to be. Somewhere along the way, we got it wrong.
Jesus didn’t sit with the righteous. He sat with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the outcasts. All of the ones that religious people crossed the street to avoid. He didn’t run from messes. He stepped right into them.
He didn’t throw stones. He offered grace.
And the ones He did rebuke the most? The Pharisees. All of the religious elite who knew all the scriptures but couldn’t recognize the Savior standing in front of them.
The body of Christ wasn’t called to be a gated community of the perfect. It was called to be a hospital for the broken. A safe place, a refuge. A place where people with addictions, baggage, trauma, doubt, and sin can walk in, not be fixed on the spot, but be loved through the process.
Churches need to start looking less like country clubs and more like those late night bar stools where real conversations happen.
Where vulnerability is allowed. Where masks come off. Where grace pours like cheap whiskey and love flows like an open tab.
We’ve been too busy acting like the Pharisees in the synagogue instead of the Friend who sat at the well. The truth?
Sitting in a bar doesn’t get you to heaven.
BUT SITTING IN A PEW EVERY SUNDAY DOESN’T EITHER. Jesus does. And He’s not afraid to walk into the darkest places to find His people.
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