The idea behind Green Drinks is simple. There's no agenda, no selling, no politics.

"It's just people coming together to discuss issues they're interested in and learn about others in the community with a similar passion," organizer Brent Reynolds said.

Green Drinks began with an informal gathering of enviro-minded colleagues in 1989 at a pub called the Slug and Lettuce in northern London. The idea of bringing together people who worked in fields related to environmental issues to network spread to at least 641 cities worldwide, to date, including a Quincy group launched this summer by Reynolds, spurred by a college friend who helped found the first U.S. group in Savannah, Ga.

The group meets the third Thursday of each month at O'Griff's, 415 Hampshire.

"We start at 5:30 and go until about 7 or whenever people need to go home. Some people eat. Some have a drink after work," Reynolds said. "We talk about what's going on. We've had people come by and talk to us about what they're doing -- sustainable farming, environmental issues, recycling."

Sessions, based on the Green Drinks code, are informal and mostly unstructured to give the conversation a chance to grow among the small group from Quincy and area communities like Canton, Mo., where Reynolds and his family live.

Reynolds said the idea is to complement, not duplicate or replace, ongoing efforts in the community like the Adams County Green Coalition.

"It's just real loose, real casual," Reynolds said.

The idea of acting as steward for the environment is nothing new to Reynolds, a man of the cloth most comfortable in jeans who serves as half-time chaplain and half-time professor at Culver-Stockton College.

In college and grad school, he worked with organizations concerned with the environment, particularly churches and religious groups.

"Connecting faith with responsibility for the environment has been going on for a long time. It's getting even more and more widespread," Reynolds said. "It used to be just a few churches, a few denominations, but now every single one, no matter your stand on the political spectrum, have an interest and are developing resources."

A Christian Church Disciples of Christ in Indianapolis, for example, offers church audits as a way to help lower energy usage and bills. The Culver-Stockton campus launched a recycling program and is looking at ways to trim its energy usage.

"You look at any kind of church, Catholic, Protestant, and they all have resources now, people geared toward these issues," Reynolds said.

Green Drinks provides another outlet for Reynolds' interest in the environment.

"I'd like to see it grow. I'd like to see more people stop by, a diversity of folks in different fields with different passions. It could be expanded to other areas if people felt it was something worthwhile."

More information about Green Drinks is available by contacting Reynolds at branchingstreams@gmail.com.

-- dhusar@whig.com/221-3379