TWO HARBORS, Minn. – It was a Sunday during Advent, and in a small pub a few blocks up from the north shore of Lake Superior, 17 people gathered around four bar-top tables shoved into a ring.

Betsy Nelson, the bar’s cook, lit two candles with a cigarette lighter as Addison Houle strapped on an acoustic guitar and sang a slightly off-key rendition of “We Three Kings.” Curt “Fish” Anderson sipped a beer as TVs overhead flickered with NFL pregame shows.

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Chris Fletcher (with goatee), a seminary student, leads a Sunday morning session of "Bar Church" at Dunnigan's North Shore Pub & Grub in Two Harbors, Minn. The Associated Press

“Father, thank you for this time we can share on Sunday morning with new friends,” prayed Chris Fletcher, an emergency medical technician, part-time bartender and seminary student who has led this service every Sunday at Dunnigan’s Pub & Grub since last summer. “We’re getting to know you, and getting to know each other better.”

Spending Sunday mornings in a bar sounds like an activity for those running from God. For this small group in a watering hole in Twin Harbors, it’s about chasing God. It’s one unconventional place of worship around the country fostered by an evangelical movement known as “the emerging church.”

“I feel closer to God here than I do at a conventional church,” said Nelson, 56, a lifelong churchgoer. “Jesus said we’re supposed to be a light to the world. What better place to do that than at a bar?”

After the opening prayer, Fletcher read a brief passage from the Bible before opening the floor to a discussion. Gene Shank, a 68-year-old retired police officer making his first visit after reading a notice Fletcher put in the local newspaper, confessed to a bit of discomfort.

“I’m a reality person, and I’m finding a little too much established religion here to be honest,” Shank said. “I believe, I pray — but I don’t like structured religion.”

Fletcher responded that, while he wants to be as informal as possible, the goal is still “creating an open space for Jesus to come into our lives, then he does the transforming work.”

He adds that anyone who questions the way he runs the service has come to the right place.

“We’re all messed up,” he said. “We’re all screwed up some way.”

Fletcher, a balding 43-year-old with a goatee, is his own first example. The native of Sudbury, Ontario, grew up in the Worldwide Church of God, a small evangelical sect he described as “almost cult-like.” He left religion behind as a young man, but was drawn back as he was hitting 40.

Last spring, Fletcher was accepted at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, where he commutes 150 miles south to classes a few times a week, and as he began his studies he found common ground with a recent wave of evangelical thinkers including Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne.

McLaren and Claiborne have criticized some of Christianity’s traditions as they try to attract people disinterested in traditional church attendance, especially younger people.

One Saturday night last summer, Fletcher was having a drink at Dunnigan’s when a stranger approached and asked to talk. She shared some personal problems and as Fletcher lent a sympathetic ear, and an idea was born. Six months later, Sunday attendance at what Fletcher calls “Bar Church” (“For those who are thirsty” reads a poster on the wall in Dunnigan’s) has grown to as many as 25 people.

The Rev. Scott Nelson, pastor at First Baptist Church Two Harbors, is happy to see Fletcher reach people unlikely to set foot in a traditional church. But he’s concerned by the linking of Christian worship and alcohol.

Most of the participants usually choose coffee, but alcohol isn’t forbidden: at this particular gathering, Anderson — a local resort employee and a musician — downed a couple brews as Fletcher preached.

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