Earlier this week, we carried a feature about Ed Stetzer’s talk to a recent church planting seminar, including the story about a pastor who attracted a crowd to his launch by using a blog, Twitter and Facebook.

That isn’t the only atypical church-starting method these days. Paul Borden, an executive minister with Growing Healthy Churches—an American Baptist outreach in California and Nevada—tells of a "shot glass" strategy used in several places.

On a video you can watch elsewhere on this site, Borden talks about the church in Ventura, Calif., that planned its launch in a movie theater in July of 2007.

Six months prior, the planters bought 1,000 shot glasses with the church logo on one side and "Give us a shot" on the other. Then, every weekend for six months, the 65 members of the core group visited bars, taverns and clubs where 30-somethings congregate.

Two hundred people who showed up for the launch came because of those shot glasses. One Sunday, a visitor said, "I wanted to meet the pastor of a church that thinks enough of my two wayward, 30-year-old sons who still live at home to go to the bars every night…and give them a free shot glass."

The same strategy has been used in Charlotte, N.C., and Fresno, Calif. When it came time for a Fresno church to open its fourth campus, a new Christian who still played in a band suggested they start it in the bar.

Borden said they knew they were on the right track when they held a preview service and the bar next door complained that the music was too loud.

More significantly, the new campus had an evangelistic bent.

"Within four weeks four patrons had come to Christ," Borden said. "We’ve seen that happen time after time after time."

Mixing church with such worldly environments is bound to attract controversy. Case in point: the missional Acts 29 Network. Despite its conservative Calvinist leanings, it has attracted criticism and been blackballed in some quarters.

The problem originated with two churches affiliated with the network that host outreaches at places that serve alcohol. That prompted the Missouri Baptist Convention to cut off financial support for any Acts 29 work.

Ironically, the action came despite a statement from the network’s director that "Acts 29 does not promote alcohol, nor do we decry the personal decision of each church planter to decide what the Scriptures teach about alcohol. We strongly believe drunkenness and/or being controlled by or addicted by alcohol is a sin."

Even though I’m sympathetic to the abstinence forces who seek to keep a lid on drunken behavior that has ruined many a public gathering, critics need to remember that Christ was also criticized for dining with sinners.

If a church can reach people by going into areas familiar to non-members, more power to them. One can argue that shot glasses will be used for sinful purposes. Yet, if the end result is that people come to Christ and lay down those glasses, then I think the Lord is pleased.

The bottom line is that every tool, no matter how theologically grounded, is subject to being abused. But don’t assume that because an outreach doesn’t fit narrow parameters it is automatically unscriptural.