Third Place Serendipities

I just smiled and kept a straight face.

I hope.

The woman was from a traditional ecclesial background; and meant well. She knew me from my days as a denominational pastor of a church with a sizable building. And she knew that I had launched out as pastor of a church plant; we have met in a school, a furniture store, a conference room and a storefront. So she asked a question which befuddled me:

"Do you have a church yet?"

I realized, of course, she meant

"Do you have your own permanent traditional 'church' building yet?"

A completely different question and ballpark.

The answer to that question would be “God forbid it ever come to pass.”

I am not sure what I said; I explained our various meeting places.

It didn’t compute for her.

"Oh, that's nice. But I'm still praying for you to find a church," she said.

I was tempted to say “You can stop praying, we’ve been one from day one.”

But I should have said “Thank you. May your prayers come true.”

I was fresh from a more confrontational meeting; having to defend the legitimacy of what we as a church were doing . I might have been tempted to use Mike Furches stock answer for Pharisees; or call her the dirty word Jesus called Herod.. She was no Pharisee; no need to be sarcastic, Dave.

I have learned to be glad when questions like this come up. A few years ago I got this question on the website:

Dave, You wrote: "The word 'church' is not used in Bible for a building or a Sunday gathering. So to emphasize this, we try not to say 'at church,' for example, because we are the church. "

Do not take this wrong... I am trying to learn all that is possible. You used the above sentence. I am trying to learn why... Yes I know each person is the ultimate church or should be. Yet to have a regular spot such as a "temple" or "building" seems to have been what is being said in the Scriptures below:
...Yes I understand in the below that Peter IS the rock... but what did Peter do and build?
....One last thought. "Church" by it's pure definition means:
[Old English cir(i)ce , from a prehistoric Germanic word that is also the ancestor of German Kirche; ultimately from Greek kuriakon doma “house of the lord,” from kurios “lord”].

A scoffer's reply to some of your statements (about not saying "in church") might be: "Funny, Jesus used that term (church) several times while on planet earth...I thought He liked it."


Dave, just hit me over the head and point me in the right direction.

My answer is here.

Obviously (I hope) the church is people. We need no building to be church.

But we all need to become more of what we already are (Philippians 3:16).

Now that our church (as people) is seeking to become more of a Third Place
(See the link to several wonderful bloggers who have written about church as Third Place in the Wikipedia article here), our prayers are that if we do rent a building in public space(coffee shop etc) that we can become even more churchified…in the biblical sense, please!

We don’t want to aquire an edifice complex.

We fear buying into the bankruptcy of the attractional model

We don’t want to baptize the “indrag” model.

Like that term? In “The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church”by Michael Frost and Hirsch offer:

The church bids people to come and hear the gospel in the holy confines of the church and its community. This seems so natural to us after seventeen centuries of Christendom, but at what price and to what avail have we allowed it to continue? If our actions imply that God is really only present in official church activities - worship, Bible studies, Christian youth meetings, ladies fellowships - then it follows that mission and evangelism simply involve inviting people to church-related meetings.

In fact, this is one of the core assumptions that the attractional church is based upon - the assumption that God cannot really be accessed outside sanctioned church meetings or, at least, that these meetings are the best place for not-yet-Christians to learn about God. Evangelism therefore is primarily about mobilizing church members to attract unbelievers into church where they can experience God. Rather than being genuine "out-reach," it effectively becomes something more like an "in-drag." (p. 41)

The age, its emerging creativity (finally) and its wrestling with technology, raises new (?) questions:

Is XXXchurch a 'church?"

Is The Virtual Pew a "church"?

No building.

“We are God’s building”1 Cor 3:9

In these early stages of morphing into a more missional Third Place, I am sensing we might encounter these Holy Serendipitites:

1)As we move into a Third Place building, if we pray our cards right, we’ll increase our discernment about the will of God for our in house matters. Huh? Chapter and verse?

“The sons of Isacchar…who knew and understood the secular times and culture, and thus knew what God’s people should do” (1 Chron 12.32)

2)Ironically, our fear of koinonitis may be unfounded, the richest fellowship happens as we are being missional; befriending and learning from the unchurched.

3) There may well be biblical precedent for a huge spiritual blessing inliterally founding our cornerstone in pagan territory..Ray Van Der Laan’s classic video “The Gates of Hell” is to be wrestled and reckoned with. He suggests that the rock of “On this rock I will build my church” is the rock at Ceaserea Phillipi dedicated to Pan ; a rock often called “gates of hell.” In the study guide, van Der Laan summarizes:

“He assured them that on that ‘rock’—the place where Satan is strongest in society, where ungodly values and beliefs are boldly promoted—that he will build his church.” (56)

My recent experiences of church at the liquor store ,pizza joint; and even (no!) McDonalds are formational and foundational for our church

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation. – Madeleine L’Engle \

4)I often dreamed of traveling back in time to re-seed our original DNA (even bylaws) with a more intentionally missional embedding. But we are experiencing the equivalent now. I am tempted to say “Churches don’t have outreach. The church is outreach.”

But that doesn't go far enough. Or it may be backwards. How bout:

“The outreach is the church”

Please follow the fruitful conversation Len stirred up by asking "Does missiology precede ecclesiology...or is it the other way round?"

"It's not the Church of god that has a mission, but the God of mission who has a church." Rowan Williams

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