The Weight...

I pulled into Nazareth, was feeling 'bout half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head

We took a "load off" at The Pub Church last week. Andrew Prete was there to play one of my favorite songs, The Weight by The Band and it was awesome. It really is a song that helps take me to a better place...


The DugOut, the pub where we met, turned out to be our favorite location so far - we'll definitely be going back there...


Our conversational sermon continued on the gospel of Mark 1:1-8. John the Baptizer is preparing the way for the one whose sandal straps he finds himself unworthy of tying! We talked about being excited about the arrival of something, someone for whom we makes tons of preparation...and the disappointment we most commonly end up experiencing, even with Jesus and especially with the church. In our Telling Our Stories part of the gathering, one person shared how their experience of church was just like this...we invest and prepare, we are excited for something new and different, we make all the preparations we can think of, we go above and beyond in our hope and anticipation. But then we are left crushed and disappointed. Sadly, this is the experience many people have with Christianity and the church.

So we were ended by noting that the critical question is, what do we do then? How do we respond and what will we do after this kind of experience? It's an open ended question for sure.

A light note to end on huh?! ;-)


But, then Andrew played The Weight, we put our loads down, shared resources and shared communion...I think in openness and uncertainty, we are already practicing a response to the experience of being let down by so much. We drink in the Spirit and in the end, we had tons of FUN!

Our sharing of resources this week was for Common Ground Relief. They are a community-initiated volunteer organization that was started in order to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area . Their founder, Malik Rahim, was invited to speak at Boston University the week before - telling us about the devastating situation that continues in New Orleans. And so we were inspired to send them our shared resources from this week.

We also stuck around and played pool afterward...

JOIN US NEXT TIME! :-)

Welcome to The Pub Church's Blog!

We basically needed a way to share up-to-date info on the happenings of The Pub Church (TPC) without bombarding folks with too many emails...So here it is, a blog to serve the purpose! This will be the place you can come to and get the "latest"!

For example, here's some of the latest:

At our next gathering of TPC - Saturday, May 3rd at The DougOut - Andrew Prete will be providing the musical inspiration! All I can tell you about him is that I saw him playing in the Orange Line (if I remember correctly - it was a while back!), he was singing one of my favorite songs, The Weight , by The Band, and I immediately thought that it would be awesome if we could have him play at pub church one day - And now he is! Yay :-)

Also, last week at TPC we decided to help out a family who just recently arrived from Cuba. As with most people who leave Cuba, they arrived in this country with nothing more than what they were wearing. So people who were able shared from their resources and this week I mailed off a card to the family with our gift to them. I'll let you all know what I hear back!

Here's a picture, but of course I wrote the card in Spanish.


So, there it is, our blog with the latest! Enjoy and come often!

Update: Andrew Prete's website!