Exiles - Third Places by Michael Frost
Third Places
Many of these amateur missionaries are discovering that the best place for building proximity with members of a host culture is in a third place. The term ‘third place’ was coined by sociologist Roy Oldenburg and appeared in his 1990 book The Great Good Place, a celebration of the places where people can regularly go to take it easy and commune with friends, neighbours, and whoever just shows up. The title of the book says it all: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centres, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day. According to Oldenburg, third places are those environments in which people meet to develop friendships, discuss issues, and interact with others. Sometimes referred to by other sociologists as ‘social condensers,’ these places have always been an important way in which community develops and retains cohesion and a sense of identity. Oldenburg says that these third places are crucial to a community for a number of reasons:
They are distinctive informal gathering places
They make the citizen feel at home
They nourish relationships and a diversity of human contact
They help create a sense of place and community
They invoke a sense of civic pride
They promote companionship
They allow people to relax and unwind after a long day at work
They are socially binding
They encourage sociability instead of isolation
They make life more colorful
They enrich public life and democracy
In Oldenburg’s thinking, our first place is the home and the people with whom we live. Our second place is the workplace, the place where we spend most of our waking life. But the third places in our society are the bedrock of community life and all the benefits that come from such interaction. It might be a restaurant or a bar. It might be a social group such as a Rotary or Elks club or a quilting circle or a water-skiing community. It might be a physical location such as a coffee shop or a beach or a mall. Your third place is the place where you like to just relax and be you.
All societies have informal meeting places, such as the Forum in ancient Rome or the contemporary British pub. In other societies it might be the gathering of elders at the city gate or the casual lounging of warriors around the campfire. Oldenburg concludes that for the healthy functioning of a community, we all need such third places, places of easygoing conviviality and safety.
Third places are the most significant places for Christian mission to occur because in a third place people are more relaxed, less guarded, more open to meaningful conversation and interaction. Contrast that with the situation in many homes today. People enter their houses by driving discreetly into the garage, the automatic doors closing quietly behind them. Their kids play in yards enclosed by tall wooden fences. The quest for privacy is taken to an even higher level by people who choose to live in gated communities. We have people over to our homes if we already know and like them. We tend to have perfunctory conversations with neighbors. Many people don’t even know their neighbors’ names, and a great many of them are perfectly happy this way. The home – the first place – is becoming less and less a place for proximity and intimacy. Likewise the second place. The workplace is more often than not a place where conversations and personal interactions are purely functional. We speak about what needs to be discussed in order to get the job done. Over lunch, work colleagues might ask each other how their weekend was or comment on an important news item. But often colleagues are guarded at work, and the conversations are kept casual.
It’s in the third place that we let those guards down. It’s here that we allow people to know us more fully. It’s here that people are more willing to discuss the core issues of life, death, faith, meaning, and purpose. For example, have you worked with a colleague who you considered to be fairly buttoned-down and straight-laced, until the annual Christmas party, when after a few drinks this person is dancing on the tables and telling uproarious (often dirty) jokes? Or what about the office clown who’s always making light of every issue at work, until at a bar after 5.00 pm one Friday this comedian tearfully opens up to you about a personal tragedy? Why? Because there seem to be different rules about the appropriateness of intimate conversation at work than there are in a social context.
Any cursory reading of the Gospels will reveal Jesus’ interest in being in third places. In the previous chapter we explored his enjoyment at sharing food with so-called sinners. In a society where every third-place experience revolved around food (the Middle East), Jesus finds himself at the center of a place where people feel free to, well, just be! I would argue that in today’s society, any attempt to model your life on the life of Christ must include a genuine attempt to hang out regularly in third places. Genuine incarnational living demands it. Missional proximity can best be developed in bars, pubs, gyms, grocery stores, beauty parlors, community groups, and coffee shops.
Taken from ‘Exiles: living missionally in a post-Christian culture,’ by Mike Frost, pages 56-59.
Copyright © Hendrickson publishers 2006. Used with permission.
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