Fullerton, CA
The downtown area of this small Los Angeles suburb is home to over a dozen bars ranging from Mexican cantinas, Irish pubs and average American bars. Every Friday and Saturday evening, the streets swell with college students, business executives, the poor, the rich, and everyone in between. These bars are filled with these people who are much more interested in just crazy cocktails, boozy beverages, or getting hammered drunk. No, these people in these bars are searching for a purpose and a savior.
Late night in Downtown Fullerton is an escape for most, but for others, like myself, it is a profession. For the past six months, I have been working at one of the restaurant/bars in downtown. I have seen a lot—fights, disgusting dancing, perpetual drug use, sexual immorality, and plenty of vomit. However, what I have seen most are the numerous opportunities for the gospel to be imaged, proclaimed, and witnessed. The harvest is plentiful, yet the laborers are indeed few.
Somehow in particular circles, the issue of Alcohol and its abuse has dominated the Christian conversation. “To Drink or not to Drink” has been our question, and more often than not, our distraction. Where I am from, the mere mention of a bar or an alcoholic beverage would be sure to raise some well intentioned eyebrows. This is not the place to debate alcohol and its use, abuse, or non-use in the Christian life, for it has been done elsewhere. Rather, I want to bring attention to a long-neglected mission field: the local bar down the street.
Christ is king, and the world is his. He is making all things new, and we are able to participate with him in his work of redemption. Bars are the perfect environment in which to do this. Here, the gospel can be imaged and proclaimed by the people of God.
With such a theology, these people, the ones who are searching for a purpose and a savior, encounter not just another bartender, bar-back, or busser, but a person who finds their primary identity in Christ. The encounter is now an opportunity for the gospel to be preached and imaged. Whether it is through the bartender’s craft, or his conversations with his guests, or even the menial task of washing dishes or cleaning vomit from the urinal, all are able to bring God glory and all are springboards for gospel conversations.
Although there are many stories that I can tell from my time working in a bar, there is a particular one that sticks with me. Jack, a server at another bar down the street, was having a drink. I was washing glasses behind the bar and we ended up talking about school. He found that I was a theology major and immediately exclaimed that he loved Christianity because “it had given us all such great morality.” I asked him a question,
“What if I told you that Christianity had nothing to do with morality, but had everything to do with a person named Jesus?”
Jack was thoroughly confused. He loved the idea of a Christian ethic, but had no idea of the Christian Savior. He had never heard the Gospel. The conversation digressed from there, but there it had begun. The good news of Christ as king and savior of the purposeless was introduced that day to Jack. He was at the bar searching for a drink, instead he got streams of living water.
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