This morning, the church I attended as a child burnt to the ground. I heard about the fire via Facebook, and have spent a lot of my day mobilizing congregation members past and present, as well as fellow alumni of the church's attached elementary school. We'd like to hold some kind of fundraising event to help with the reconstruction effort.
Obviously there are many venues for events which are not bars. And there may be other hitches involved with hosting an event in a bar. That's not really the question I have though.
My question is whether it would be
appropriate to hold some kind of alumni mixer/happy hour in a bar, charge a cover, maybe do some other fundraising at the event (a raffle? silent auction?), and donate the proceeds to the church.
This is nothing for me; I'm young and I live in the big city where this would not be seen as strange at all. I'm also a political liberal who considers myself largely agnostic at this point. But most of the currently active congregation members are elderly. And it's a small conservative town in the South. So I just want to get a read from Mefites outside my City Girl bubble as to whether this would be offensive in any way.
Things to note:
It's an Episcopal church. We're not known for our teetotaling ways.
It's in southern Louisiana, which has a far more liberal attitude to drinking than the rest of the Bible Belt.
Getting in touch with local bands, bar/venue owners, and a group that puts on the local Downtown After Dark events was suggested to me by an older friend of the family who, while not a church member, is more familiar with the cultural lay of the land.
Advice? Support? Alternative ideas that would be more appropriate (but hopefully still youthful and fun)?
posted by Felex at 5:07 PM on November 11, 2010