Samuel Adams plays damn good live music on Tybee Island whenever he gets around to it and is the founder of Bar Church.
Bar Church is exactly what it sounds like ... a church that meets in a Bar ... has breakfast for Communion ... smokers are welcomed ... flip flops are encouraged ... cussing is allowed ... sinners find an unpretentious community of fellow strugglers ... the pious feel out of place ... and the music beats the shit out of Hymns in most "Steeples".
Sarah and I spent a the better part of a year in Bar Church as members of the Band and we had a righteous and Holy time doing it.
We helped get Sean McNally and the demon possessed guitar player Stephen Groose in the band.
There was a lot of media coverage too.We got popular so Bar Church had to move a bigger place.
As an ordained Southern Baptist minister, once paid to believe, I'm very distrustful of churches that need bigger places but we relocated from a tiny bar to a vast one with two pool tables!
Everything was going fine until one Sunday morning we all hit the wrong chords at the same time.
Now I can bear witness to many terrible things occurring during worship ... a Maid of Honor faints and falls backwards knocking one Bridesmaid after another down like dominos ... a wedding that caught on fire during a severe thunderstorm ... naked homeless men conducting hostile takeovers of the Baptismal Pool ... a young man called by God to the ministry being ordained with his zipper down while keeling in front of the congregation ... and thousands of really putrid sermons that made you throw up a little and choking it back down.
I seen lots of bad things in church.
But that day in Bar Church God told Sam to play one thing and Sam didn't tell us so we all played something different and let me tell you it sounded like the Devil really did go down to Georgia!
Right there in the middle of the service, Sam just beat his head against the microphone in front of his face.
That afternoon God told Sam to kick us out of the band ... well, Sarah, Sean and I ... but not the satanic guitar player Stephen because God still needed him.
We were cool with it.
It was time to downsize anyway.
Now God is evidently calling again which is almost always inconvenient when you're pretty happy with your Sunday morning routines, ethics, belief system, choices of music and the joys of sex on Sundays.
But it's hard to say no to God.
Or to Sam.
We're back in good graces again.
Dammit!
