Lead Worship

Essential Church – Chapter 2: Looking For a Different Kind of Community

Posted on June 19th, 2009 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Essential Church.

“The ‘third place’ term was coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg. The concept of a third place involves a gathering place for people separate from home (the first place) and work (the second place). The third place is an anchor of the community, which facilitates relational interaction between people in the community. These informal meeting places have existed throughout history, but they have increased in importance the last decade. As the lines between home and work blur due to the increasing mobility of society and as people travel a greater distance from home to work, the thrid place has become an important gathering point for people wanting to break between the first and second place…

“Through our research we found that churches who are reaching the unchurched and dechurched understand this trend of creating community. Most of them offer a third place in their churches. While only one out of five churches with recent facitlity additions built a third-place facility, almost three-fourths of the formerly unchurched say they were attracted to a church with a third-place facility” (page 61-62).

0 comments.