Full marks for creativity to a Des Moines pastor.
A pastor walks into a bar.
He carries a box full of hundreds of shot glasses.
“I do things a little differently than other pastors,” Glen Hanson says with a smile.
Six months ago, Hanson, 45, formed a new United Methodist church that would meet in the Bondurant-Farrar High School auditorium. He didn’t want to be seen as an unapproachable “high church” figure, so Hanson decided to mix things up a bit. Like by using glow sticks instead of candles on Christmas Eve. Or bringing his 140-pound Burmese mountain dog along on ministry calls. Or, on Ash Wednesday, handing out barf bags to symbolize cleansing all our nastiness inside.
Pastoring, you see, is his second career. His first was in marketing — no surprise there. He would market his church to people who don’t regularly go to church. So when the happily married father of three heard a wacky idea at an evangelism conference earlier this year, about advertising churches by passing out shot glasses at bars, it struck a chord. He thought of a weeping George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” drinking shots at Martini’s bar: “Dear Father in heaven, I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. … Show me the way.”
People drinking shots might be trying to escape pain, Hanson thought. What if a message of hope had been served to George Bailey at that bar?
Three-fourths of Americans don’t go to church, Hanson thought. Why can’t churches go to the people?
And so, on a recent afternoon, Hanson takes a paring knife and slices into a fresh batch of shot glasses at Cory’s Irish Pub in Bondurant. When people order shots, bartenders will serve them in this pastor’s shot glasses. Then they can keep the shot glasses.
Hanson takes a sip from his Diet Coke. He hands a waitress one of the shot glasses.
“That’s a church I wanna go to,” Denise Hiller says.
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I’m very glad to see pastors doing things like this. Most people don’t bother to go where the Word can reach them: so why not reach them where they are? Well done, Pastor Hanson!
Peter