Lenard Sweet in his book, The Gospel According to Starbucks people have a general need for what he calls a "third place." It's not work, and it's not home, but it's a comfortable place to hang out and interact with others. As you might have guessed from the title of his work for a lot of people that's a coffee shop. It is for me as well. Steve and I don't have offices at the church, so we gather together every week at the local coffee shop and have coffee, review our notes from the previous week and look ahead to what's coming up. We never fail to interact with other folks from the community while we're enjoying our coffee. (Paul meets with us as well, but doesn't drink coffee, so I don't really count him!)I just finished the installation of a church pew in our wine shop. That sounds a little bit weird, but I think it really works. I found the pew at a garage sale. While visiting my brother in Dallas, Oregon, I saw a church pew for sale next door. It was in pretty tough shape. Several of the pieces had come apart. One piece was missing, and the whole thing was covered in black paint. That black paint was peeling and chipped in several places, and below the black was a layer of blue, and below that sage. Under the sage was a kind of beige, light yellow paint, and under that was the salmon inspired pink layer! The pew was also cut to fit into a church building. Neither end was square to the seat, but slanted about 20 degrees off center in the same direction, so the whole thing was a parallelogram.
To begin work I took the whole thing apart. The back came off in two pieces. The seat was one single board about and inch and an eighth thick by 14 wide. Each end was made up of the upright support, and a scrolled arm rest. I had to manufacture a stringer to run under the seat because it was missing. Luckily I still have a bit of old barn wood in my shop.
Under all of that paint was a beautiful, vertical grain fir pew. I had a heck of a time stripping it. I tried a chemical stripper, but it wasn't able to get through all of the paint, and it bleached out the wood in a way I didn't like. Then I remembered that we owned a heat gun. It worked perfectly. The paint came off in long strips about three inches wide which contained all of those layers of paint, but left the patina on the wood itself. So, I re cut the back and seat of the pew so that the ends would be 90 degrees to the seat, manufactured and installed the new stringer under the seat, sanded down the wood a bit, and finished it with a medium walnut danish oil rub.
After all of that the pew is now in the shop at
Wednesday Wines. A number of people have already come around and tried it out. A friend of mine commented that church pews are a lot easier to sit on when you have a glass of wine in your hands! I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm sure I'll be spending some time in the shop sitting on the pew and working on different church projects, so it kind of ties everything together for me.
Last Friday I was in the shop having a meeting to talk about a Habitat For Humanity project that is coming up this summer. While I was there several members of my church stopped in to say hello. It's so amazing to me that I serve a church that would be enthusiastic about their pastor spending time in a wine shop. These are wonderfully different, authentic, joyful Christian people. I started the meeting with a cup of coffee, but as the day wound down and the sun started to set I enjoyed a glass of a beautiful South American red wine. Trudy, pictured above, sitting on the bench with Kathy, isn't a wine drinker, but enjoys hanging out in the store. I think she's pleased to have another church pew to visit during the week. I'm very thankful for that place, and for the people who allow me to be a part of it.