(e)mergent Voyageurs

“What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably -- a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile.”

- Ray Oldenburg

This past Saturday, I was honoured to accept an invitation by my friend Brother Maynard to share at his house church gathering. He invited me to share my journey, focusing specifically on our vision and plans to develop a missional "third place"- a used bookstore currently being called "The Dusty Cover"- in our West End neighbourhood. In addition to some great conversation with some excellent people, it afforded me the opportunity to process even further the ideas and values that are shaping this vision.

One of the questions that I was asked was "What are the core things you hope to accomplish with this third place?". While I would probably develop this further given more time, but in that moment I responded"

1. To create a safe, neutral space for genuine relationships to be built with our neighhours.

2. To assess and serve some felt needs of the community out of specific giftings/abilities.

3. To model and "proclaim" the Gospel in a mutual pursuit of salvation.

Over the next week, I want to explore each of these points. First, however, I went on to explain that, though the Gospel was listed third it does not reflect a reduced importance or value placed on it. Rather, it reflects an intentional pattern in our approach. I hope this will become more clear with each successive post.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term "third places", urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg described those social environments, in contrast to the first and second places of home and work, where we interact with our neighbours and form community. Missiologists recognize that, with the diminishment of Christendom, the local church is no longer a safe "third place" for those who are not actively identified with Christianity. Add to this that Western Evangelicalism has created something of a "Christian ghetto" and we find that the remaining third places in our culture have been largely abandon by Christians.

To further complicate matters, most of the third places in our culture are significantly market driven- that is to say it costs people to participate in them. Starbucks, a business whose success has been built largely on creating a third place, offers customers not only a product, but also a culture and experience. However, it comes with a steep price tag, as anyone who has paid for a coffee there can attest to.

Facing this, Christians need to be intentional about engaging in existing third places. As these are become few and far between, and those that are there are becoming highly commodified, it also means that we will need to aid in the creation of new third places. However, the biggest challenge in respect to creating such spaces is that, as Christians, we need to recognize that they are by necessity somewhat neutral.

By this I mean that if a space is to truly be a safe and natural place for all people in the community to gather and participate, it must allow for a diversity of ethnic, racial, socio-economic, religious, etc. representation. While we do not hide or deny our Christian identity and beliefs, we must intentionally limit the degree to which we create the space out of that foundation. Third places cannot be created as attractional lures to draw non-Christians into a context where we can evangelize them. In fact, if we do this, it is not truly a third place.

The third place is not created to primarily be a place of evangelism, but rather be a place where genuine relationships and understanding with our neighbours can be developed. If we seek to know the people of our community primarily out of a desire simply to know them, only then will true relationships of mutual trust develop. Only then will we be able to live our lives in front of each other, out of which missional opportunities are born.

As the group quickly and wisely pointed Saturday evening, the biggest sacrafice this approach requires of us as Christians is control. We need to let go of the urgent sense of needing to guide and direct every relationship, conversation, program, etc. towards a "spiritual sales pitch", and rather begin to enter relationships with a mutual interest and humility.

What do you think? Is that neutrality a compromise to our evangelistic calling as Christians? How neutral is neutral enough? Share your thoughts.

In the next post I will explore the second point, that of assessing and serving a felt need(s) out of the context of our own calling, giftings and abilities.



Emerging Church Missional Third Place