At roughly the same time that Saint Augustine wrote the world’s most famous “Confession,” another well-known European figure penned a work of the same title, “The Confessio of (Saint) Patrick.” Although Patrick begins his work with a formal recognition of his sinful nature and a humble acknowledgment of his limited mortal perspective, the major motivation for Patrick is to give answer for his work among the Celts of Ireland to the ecclesiastical authorities of Rome and elsewhere that considered him to be rogue and disruptive to the orderly standards of bishops at that time.

The word “confession” can denote either a desire to report and repent of sin or to offer an explanation of one’s behavior when one anticipates misunderstanding. In the spirit of Saint Paddy, I would like to confess here (to those who may be quite perplexed and concerned) my delight in drinking and home-brewing beer.

Fear not, I won’t pontificate on the wonders of beer itself, the richness and depth of flavors and aromas, at this point. Such geekish cultivation may come in future articles. Instead, I’ll focus here upon the spiritual and missional journey that beer has come to represent for me tangibly.

When my co-worker friend Callaway and I began brewing together a couple of years ago, we bought a new book of recipes called Radical Brewing, by Randy Mosher. Several weeks into our new hobby, I was asked to lead a round table discussion with church leaders that had come to be challenged by well-known author David Miller (Blue Like Jazz). I began the discussion by reading this quote from the book:

Yeast is not so much an ingredient as a process. It's job in brewing is to turn sugar into alcohol. Along the way, wort is transformed from a sickly sweet syrup into something balanced and beautiful. It is alive, as we now know, reacting to it's surroundings, stamping a deep and lasting imprint on the finished product, then getting out of the way when it's work is done. Yeast is so magical it was called Godisgood before Louis Pasteur discovered the true nature of yeast. Science took it out of the metaphysical realm, but it’s still pretty amazing.

As I closed the book, I looked up and proclaimed “the Kingdom of God is like brewer’s yeast. Discuss.” For the next hour we all (even the most conservative pastors among us!) participated in a very lively and encouraging chat. I reported the exhilaration I feel as a brewer when, after pitching the yeast slurry into the malty liquid wort and waiting 12ish hours, I am able to watch the evidence of invisible yeast creatures ravenously churning and swirling and foaming as they eat the sugars and naturally convert them into alcohol. When fermentation is over, after several days, the beer is a different color and has brand new fragrances and complexities. The yeast is quite literally the catalyst for transformation.

This living metaphor speaks profoundly to me each time I brew. My housemates make fun of me every time I open the cabinet simply to watch the action going on inside the glass carboy. But I am regularly humbled to realize that all the hours I dedicated to cleaning and boiling grains were important, but the most important work of all is done organically by the yeast itself, without my assistance. I am reminded anew that my work in the world is important for preparing the way for the Kingdom -- that I am to love the world, to be a blessing, to serve and to be alert for ways to describe the wonders of Christ. But the Spirit of God, like yeast, does the true work of transformation and sanctification.

There is another potent motive for my surging interest in beer - I’m a Southern Baptist. Yes, Southern Baptists have been all about abstinence since at least the upswing of prohibition; and yes, my parents and grandparents on my mom’s side are among the most teetotalling persons in all of Baptistville. And yet, ironically, there is a stronger dynamic from my Baptist upbringing that drives me with greater conviction, namely, the belief that all persons that follow Jesus are missionaries.

The Baptist emphasis on the term “missionary” still connotes something both simpler and grander than the horrible by-products of culture wars we see in history books. Although many saints and martyrs since the days of Christ held dearly their purpose in the world as heralds and apostles, the Dutch radical reformers known as the Anabaptists gave the greatest emphasis on the idea that each believer was assigned the same tasks as Jesus’ original disciples. The Great Commission had come to preoccupy the Baptist legacy as the penultimate measure of one’s sincerity and faithfulness to Christ.

Having thoroughly digested this wonderful and burdensome truth since I was a wee lad, I have once and for all embraced Christ’s mandate on my life by uprooting my family from the comforts of “Christian ministry” and gone underground, so to speak, in the heart of Austin, now a fiery-eyed and desperate missionary to the natives.

The ethical code of the missionary reverberates “love everything you can about your newfound culture and affirm the work of the Spirit before you ever utter a derogatory comment or confront an unredeemable quality.” Saint Patrick, the first missionary to the barbarians, felt obliged to explain this mindset to his critics. The repercussions of my present confession carry a significantly lighter burden. Nevertheless, I confess that I have truly found beer to be far more of a bridge than a roadblock in loving this strange new world in which I now find myself.

Slainte.