Searching for the Third Place

In The Great Good Place (Paragon House, 1991), Ray Oldenburg suggests that most adults organize their lives around three places. The first place is the home, where words like wife, husband, mother, father, parent, and breadwinner express their identity. Next is the workplace, where they find identity in a job title, their professional expertise, and the ebb and flow of the workday. But what is the third place? According to Oldenburg, the third place is the informal setting outside of home and work where your identity is defined simply by who you are as a person, not by what you do for a living or who you count as kin. The third place is a home away from home where friends accept you just as you are.

For some, the third place is the local tavern. For others it's a bowling league, softball team, or coffee shop. In a bygone era, the third place was a blacksmith shop, hardware store, or quilting club. For a large number of teenage boys in today's inner-city, the third place is a gang. For a workaholic, there is no third place, only the place where work gets done.

Where is your third place? For many Christians the third place is a small Bible study group, Sunday school class, youth group, choir, or ministry team. Does your church provide lots of opportunities for people to fit in? No matter how good the preaching and music might be, unless new members connect with others in genuine friendship they're unlikely to stick around.

Many don't find the support they need in their own families. In his book on The Very Large Church (Abingdon, 2000), Lyle Schaller notes that today, one out of every four American households includes only one person, compared to one out of every 10 in 1950. There are at least 25 million one-person households in America, plus more than 11 million one-parent families. "Millions of churchgoers," Schaller says, "look to the church to be the first, not the third, place in their lives." For them, home is a place where they cannot live, only sleep, but it does not meet their needs for a predictable, supportive, and healthy first place. Hungry for healthy relationships, they think of the church as their true family.

Jesus said something similar: "Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother" (Mark 3:35). Likewise, the apostle Paul described the church as "God's household" (1 Timothy 3:15)—a place where the old and young intermingle, where people bear one another's burdens, rejoicing and weeping together in the body of Christ.

Gary Smalley and John Trent wrote about the family custom they call The Blessing (Thomas Nelson, 1986). In biblical times, parental blessings usually included meaningful touch and spoken messages that attached high value to the children. Parents encouraged the younger generation to be positive about the future, and offered an active commitment to see the blessing come to pass. But what about all the people who haven't received any spiritual blessing from their parents? Smalley and Trent point out, "God has equipped the church, the local body of believers, to provide each aspect of the blessing to people in need." A healthy church surrounds its members with encouragement, assures them of their value in the eyes of God, and provides meaningful touch. (For some, a friendly handshake or hug on Sunday morning is the only time they touch another human being all week.)

What is the most promising place to look for genuine community? Not the singles bar, workplace, or golf course, but in the church where we come face to face with a remarkable truth: When we get to know Jesus, we discover our own identity as well.