When Third Place Is the Right Place

Colossians 3:12-17   |   12/28/2003

If our first place is home and our second place is work, what’s our third place?

Victoria Bruce wrote her novel, No Apparent Danger, in the bay window of a café in Annapolis, Maryland.

After it was published last year, she gave the owner a copy of the book, inscribing it with her thanks for the office space she’d used for the price of a latte.

Eric Funk frequented the same café, the City Dock Café, along with Navy midshipmen, sockless sailors, wandering tourists and state-government types. He used the space every morning to work on math problems. When he moved to Colorado, he also thanked the owner, telling him that the café had been like a second home for three years.

Home is a good thing. Home for the holidays. But home is not the only thing.
In fact, sometimes family closeness gets just a little too close, especially during the holidays. After a few days of togetherness — right about now, three days after Christmas — many of us would probably welcome a little time away from home.

That second place, home being the first place, is usually work. At work we form friendships, socialize and spend a considerable chunk of the week. It’s a place where we practice our vocation and participate in a community of colleagues.

But home and work are not enough. Sometimes we need to get away from work.

We need a third place.

No one understands this better than Howard Schultz, founder and CEO of Starbucks.

Schultz founded Starbucks on the premise that Americans are missing a third place in their lives — a place that his coffeehouses can fill.

While on a business trip to Italy, Schultz discovered that Italians were living remarkably balanced lives. He was impressed by the passion they brought to their work, their rest and their enjoyment, and he noticed that a great deal of enjoyment was being found in the camaraderie and community of Italy’s 200,000 coffee bars. Because there was nothing similar in the United States, Schultz began to dream of establishing Italian-influenced third places where people could congregate. He hoped that after the first place of home and the second place of work, Americans would come to consider his coffeehouses to be their third place, a place to experience camaraderie and genuine community.

He understood that in America, as well as in Italy, it’s not about coffee, it’s about connection.

That’s the Starbucks Principle. And for many, it seems to be working.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: How can we introduce the church, not the coffeehouse, as a third place where community and connection take place. Why isn’t the church serving as a third place for many of our neighbors today? Why aren’t we creating a community marked by the qualities lifted up by Paul in his letter to the Colossians?

After all, it’s hard to resist “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). It’s difficult for people to turn away from “love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (v. 14). And if we did “everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (v. 17), we’d have a long line outside our door.

A church with a frappuccino faith like this is going to make a connection with the community.

So what is the Starbucks Principle, and how can it teach our congregation to offer connection and community? Billy Coburn, writing in the Strategic Adult Ministries Journal, offers some insights into how churches can learn from coffee-centered cafés of community.

First, take seriously the deep human hunger for a third place. Howard Schultz has given people an inviting, stimulating, soulful environment; he has offered them a place to enjoy community and camaraderie within the attractively decorated walls of Starbucks. Are we doing the same within the walls of our church? Are we being inviting, open and inclusive of all people, or are we behaving in ways that are exclusive and isolationist?

Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. These qualities are irresistible, and they should fill the air of our congregation, like the intoxicating aroma of freshly ground coffee beans. Any other smell is going to drive people away.

People are more hungry for an inviting third place than ever before. In his book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg writes that, due in part to the suburbanization of modern cities, “we do not have that third realm of satisfaction and social cohesion beyond the portals of home and work that for others is an essential element of the good life.” Our neighbors crave a place of satisfaction and social cohesion — it’s something they need at the very deepest levels of their hearts and souls.

The question is: Will they find it here? Or only at Starbucks?

Second, remember that “everything matters.” Starbucks pays attention to detail, and it desperately wants to meet people’s needs for enjoyment. It’s hard to have a bad experience at Starbucks, given the delicious coffee, tasty snacks, lovely decor and comfortable chairs.

Fortunately, there is an almost unlimited supply of people who are in the market for an experience of quality community. We don’t have to be in competition with the congregation down the street, since the majority of Americans today don’t attend any church in a given week. The challenge for us is to remember that “everything matters,” and to draw new people in by caring about their needs and focusing on a broad spectrum of Christian concerns.

“Bear with one another,” advises Paul, but also “forgive each other” (v. 13). Both are important, not just one or the other. “Clothe yourselves with love,” he recommends, and also “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (vv. 14-15). Everything matters in a quality Christian community, not just one issue or concern. Forbearance, forgiveness, love, peace — all are going to be noticed by people looking for a third place, and all are worthy of our attention.

Third, extend the church into the marketplace. Notice that Starbucks cafés aren’t located in isolated areas, but instead are always placed in the middle of the marketplace in high-volume areas. Drive through a congested area, and you are going to see a Starbucks, guaranteed — sometimes two or three.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” implores the apostle Paul; “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” (v. 16).

Paul encourages us to teach and to sing, and those are two things that the marketplace is anxious for us to do. In a world of moral confusion, our neighbors are looking for conversation and guidance about difficult and thorny issues, everything from raising teenagers to responding to terrorism, so the time is right for the church to think creatively about addressing these concerns.

Finally, care about community. Don’t simply care about church attendance figures and the maintenance of this institution. Care about community, and about the filling of needs that people may not even be aware they have. This is what Howard Schultz did, when he opened the first Starbucks to fill an emptiness that people couldn’t even articulate. He gave them a third place before they even knew they needed a third place.

“Whatever you do,” writes Paul to the Colossians, “in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (v. 17). If we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, we will surely meet the needs of our neighbors, because our neighbors are desperately in need of Jesus Christ. Whether they can articulate it or not, they have a hunger for Jesus in their lives — they long for Immanuel, God with us, the One Eternal God in human form. They need a Savior to bring them forgiveness and new life, and a Lord to lead them through the twists and turns of daily existence. What they require, whether they realize it or not, is a community of Christ-followers that can function as their third place, because only a community centered on Christ can help them to make sense of their first two places, their homes and their workplaces.

In the new year to come we’re challenged to give our neighbors an adventure of hope and discovery — a Christ experience, not a coffee experience — although many churches offer both. We can do this through respecting the human hunger for a third place, remembering that everything matters, extending the church into the marketplace and always caring about community.

We need more than coffee grounds. We need Christ grounds — everything the apostle Paul has described in these few words: love, gratitude, teaching, singing, joy.

Offer this as a third place, and the church will be a source of “customer” satisfaction that no Starbucks can ever reach.

Participation Pointers:
• Modify your coffee strategy for this Sunday. If it is offered after the worship service, offer it before instead. Grind the coffee in the narthex or wherever you set up so that the aroma fills your worship space. This will prepare the congregation for your explanation of coffee as a metaphor for connection and community.

• Offer the thoughts above in the form of a dialogue sermon in which you and another colleague or lay person discuss the appeal of the Starbucks coffeehouses. Perhaps you could study the material above and each of you take two of the four principles.

Source:
Coburn, Billy. “Cafés of community: the Starbucks principle.” Strategic Adult Ministries Journal (Vol. 18, No. 5, Issue 145), 8-9.