Five Things We Plan to do in 2016

We've got big plans for 2016. What better place to tell you than in the first post of this brand new blog...so here you go!

1. Visit a bar in every state

For a lot of people, a bar is community. We're curious what people in bars in different states think makes a good bar...and a good church, so we plan to ask them.

2. Visit a church in every state

We've visited and posted about many California churches this last year but now we're crossing the state line. We plan to ask ask people in a church in every state these two questions. "What makes for a good church?" And "What makes for a good bar?" Which leads us to...

3. Test the limits of our 2006 Dodge Caravan

We plan to leave California on New Year's Eve, 2015, beginning the New Year in Las Vegas. The minivan, which has well over 160,000 miles on it currently, may or may not make it through the year (but we're hopeful).

4. Maintain three blogs with unique content (and the occasional crossover)

We began Church and States (deanandmindygotochurch.blogspot.com) about a year ago in order to write about visiting churches in California and to write about churches in movies. After a few months, we spun off Movie Churches (moviechurches.com) into its own thing. Today's the first day we're posting on Dean and Mindy Walk into a Bar, where we'll write about visiting bars as non-bar people. Among the three, we plan to post 5-7 times a week in 2016. Feel free to follow any or all of them.

5. See a lot of old friends and make a lot of new friends

In each state, we hope to spend three or four days (including Sunday) in one place getting to know one church community and one bar community. We'd like to stay with friends who can introduce us to their church and/or their bar. In places where we don't already know people, we hope to connect with friends of friends. And when the minivan breaks down, we're hoping somebody can recommend a good mechanic wherever we find ourselves.

Why are we doing this? Because we believe God is working through His church with great variety and creativity, and we hope to give those who faithfully attend one church (or don't go to church at all) a glimpse of His work. We'd love to have you along for the ride, so please add your questions, comments and suggestions in the comments section.

-- Dean and Mindy