I have two friends with whom I meet once a
month at Double Dave's, a pizza and beer place with numerous imported and
otherwise hoity-toity beers on tap. Both of these guys go to church with me.
John is an elder, and Tim is an ex-preacher who now attends Covenant and keeps
me honest with puzzled expressions from the back row while I preach. He's also
our local St. Francis expert and resident Baptist mystic. Tim began attending
our church following an unfortunate incident at his own church. I wrote about
him
once but called him Tom instead of Tim because
I was trying to be anonymous back then.
The three of us meet together in a manner
similar to C.S. Lewis' Oxford friends, who called themselves

"The Inklings." We drink beer as they did, but
our conversations are nowhere near as sophisticated. Tim and I mostly entertain
John with funny church stories like the time at Tim's church when he looked out
the window and saw a boy from the youth group beating the son of a visiting
family with a hockey stick.
I'm pretty sure that family never came back.

Double Dave's has occasional beer tasting
events, during which the manager waxes eloquent on the history and style of a
variety of beers no one has ever heard of except John. Tim and John take their
beer very seriously. I sip a little but mostly have a go at the pizza. You'll be
glad to know that I'm also the designated driver. The whole thing works out very
nicely, to my way of thinking.
Last Friday John had a birthday party at Double
Dave's. At one point I noticed John's wife taking a picture of us, so I grabbed
an empty bottle of John's expensive European snobby beer and acted like I was
drunk, though I was only drinking Diet Coke, as usual.
I don't know why. What would YOU have done?
Later, when John and Lexie discovered that they
had a photo of their pastor looking drunk in a public place, they did exactly
what you'd expect good friends and sensitive parishioners would do in a
situation like that.
They posted it

on the Internet of course.
Nice.
I already knew there was no other Baptist
church in the country that would have me. Now I'm thinking that if I ever hope
to serve another church, I'll have to go back to seminary and hope the "whiskey-palians"
will take me.

rlp