Rev. Phil Heinze remembers having lunch with an intern at Hot Damn, Tamales! on Magnolia Avenue in the early 2000s and talking about the future of the church.
He still recalls the question his lunchmate asked him: “How are you going to reach people who are never going to come to church?”
“What if we were to bring church to them?” Heinze answered on that day, over 20 years ago.
In 2000, about 45% of Americans identified as practicing Christians, according to Barna’s State of the Church report. Over the past two decades, that number decreased by almost half. Now, 8 in 10 Americans say religion is losing influence in public life, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center.
Heinze’s conversation over lunch brewed into the idea of Kyrie Pub Church, a worshiping community “for the wicked and thirsty” that meets at a bar in Fort Worth. The church aims to get people curious about faith and make worship accessible to people who might have had negative experiences attending church services.
“We’ve had a lot of people just wander in, and had all kinds of beautiful moments, especially with people who have been hurt by the church and would never think about going to church ever again,” Heinze said.
Kyrie Pub Church is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Heinze, who founded the group in 2010, also is a pastor at Calvary Lutheran Church in Richland Hills. However, Kyrie Pub Church describes itself as interdenominational and has clergy and attendees from different Protestant denominational backgrounds.
Views on alcohol vary among Christian denominations. Kyrie Pub Church doesn’t encourage or discourage alcohol consumption, according to its website.
“If you say you’re Christian, and you are meeting in a bar, I think that just confuses people,” said Kristin Klade, pastor of the church. “I hope that there’s not a misconception that we’re encouraging sinfulness.”
Playing the guitar at services is 73-year-old Guthrie Kennard, a musician who has been coming to Kyrie Pub Church for the past four years. Kennard grew up Southern Baptist. He stopped attending church as a teenager because he felt judged for having long hair.
“It’s not that I’ve ever quit loving God or anything. I just didn’t want to be around these people,” Kennard said. “I’m not saying those other people are not good people. It’s just that it wasn’t for me.”
If you go
Anyone can attend Kyrie Pub Church services at 5 p.m. Sunday evenings at Shaw’s Patio Bar & Grill, 1051 W. Magnolia Ave. Service attendees gather out on the patio to listen to worship music and sermons from clergy and receive communion. Drinking is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Learn more at the church’s website.
Dreama Lumpkins travels from Crowley to Fort Worth for Kyrie Pub Church. She started coming to the service after leaving her church in October 2022 due to its stance on LGBTQ+ issues and abortion. Lumpkins said she felt uncomfortable because she has family and friends who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
“I would often come home (from her former church) on Sunday afternoon and feel very disillusioned or apart from the community. I felt like I was kind of putting on a mask,” Lumpkins said. “It just felt wrong to be going to a place that thought they were wrong the way they were living their life.”
John Lobley has been a regular at Kyrie Pub Church for 11 years. Lobley said he was agnostic until he was 40 years old.
He said he likes the idea of spending his Sunday attending service at his Presbyterian church in the morning and continuing worship in the evening with Kyrie Pub Church.
“It’s just a comfortable setting for me. We sit around and debate certain things and we have Bible study. But we’re not trying to outdo each other in our faith,” Lobley said.
About 30 to 40 people regularly attend Kyrie Pub Church. Lobley thought that the church would have grown to hundreds by now, but people visit for different reasons, he said. Some are looking for a church home while others are passing through.
For Heinze, that’s OK.
“We’re here for the moment and we’ll just live in that moment,” Heinze said. “And if a person comes back, wonderful. If not, then we’re here for a reason.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or @marissaygreene.
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