** ‘God and Guinness’ Reaches Out to Post-Modern Generation **

(ENS) Two Episcopal priests are exploring a way to “make religion more significant” to the post-modern generation. Instead of attempting to lure post-moderns into church with promises of salvation or threats of brimstone and hellfire, Lisa Senuta and Helen Svoboda-Barber are using a different kind of age-old enticement: beer.

“My conviction is that people of my age group are a little timid about walking through church doors,” said Senuta, a priest at St. Thomas the Apostle in Overland Park, Kansas. The two friends, both graduates of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Texas and members of Generation X themselves, began discussing the problem of reaching out to the post-modern generation and possible ways to overcome it. Svoboda-Barber said, “We decided to host a weekly meeting [in a bar] and focus on conversations that have to do with God in our everyday lives.”

Using a bar as a religious meeting place is not a new idea. According to Senuta, she first hit upon the idea after reading The Post-Evangelical by Dave Tomlinson, former leader of the House Church movement in Britain, who called for reformation of evangelical denominations to appeal to post-modern generations. “C.S. Lewis even held philosophical and theological discussions in pubs,” Senuta added.

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Friday, May 31, 2002