But anyway, yeah, I guess that’s true about the US. We have a history here of Christians being afraid of those outside the Christian world. They’re aliens to us. We don’t know how to “be” when we’re not around other Christians. We have a history of being the very model of propriety and morality and “the world” is corrupt dirty and we don’t know how to deal with that. We’ve been taught that the world will lead you astray so your friends have to be Christians, your kids need to go to christian schools or be homeschooled, you fill your calendar with church activities. Because of this, we have no real sincere connection with those who aren’t Christians. So the idea of “third space” is to say that we as Christians cannot fill our calendar with church activities, we cannot just hang out with other Christians, we have GOT to get OUT. We cannot expect people to come to us, to come into our buildings because they won’t. Non Christians have no interest in coming to church unless they’re already seeking. and on top of it all, we have created a horrible reputation for ourselves that we have to try to remedy.

hope that long winded response clarifies

I think that when a church allows its space to be used for other things – THAT is a valuable use of the building and THAT I can totally get on board with.

But I don’t see that as the same thing as seeing church as third place or church IN third place or even looking at qualifiers of third place and attempting to apply them to the church structure.

I want to emphasize though that I’m not trying to diminish the value of your experience – thanks to God for the work he did through that church in your life. It just goes to show that God is moving in churches regardless of their affiliation, size, location, structure, etc. And for that I’m grateful

However, after your last comments Paul I’ve now got mental images of me putting my diary, bible and various other symbols of the different components of ‘life’ and putting them in a blender…

With the drawing of circles – I think we can all have the tendency to do that, especially when life gets busy. I think it’s also because of that temptation to have space where ‘we don’t have to be too Christian’.

It’s a daily challenge to remember to live out my beliefs at all times with every part of my life…not just the days I’m at work, or meeting with housegroup.

Mak et al who have said it – I too have concerns about having church IN a third space. I wish I could articulate the reasons why, but the honest answer for the moment is there is something that just doesn’t sit right with me when considering that.

If you like that’s me going back to Luke Bretherton’s point of church being an orginal 3rd place – something that transcends and transforms the values/orientatation of the other 2 chief places that existed before.

For example St Paul in writig to the Ephesian church is completely upturning the Roman household code with husbands loving wives, masters loving slaves and vice versa – the church values rooted in the cruciform christ compelling christians to live differently in the other spaces of their life they inhabit (despite the struggle with the existing values coded into the household or why else did Paul need to write the letter ;)

That is different when church is set up deliberately to use/mimic an existing 3rd space such as a cafe as the form of church – the danger there as i see it is that we see a social platform which has its own value system pre-loaded into it which may be very different from the base values/practices of church.

I’m not saying it can’t be done and the church in that space uses the form and finds ways of subverting the values in the style of the early church – who afterall met in households and subverted the values of them (imagine how you feel when you go and find that the slave who answered the door is the person you are now serving communion too?).

I am saying we just need to be aware of the underlying value systems of all the spaces in our lives.

Cos of the % the norm of most of the social spaces/places in our life is that we are not hanging out with christians.

I guess you can say in the UK christians are trying to break into the societal space and in the USA maybe you folks are trying to break out of church spaces into society?

I’m guessing though it is a church branded space in that you know it’s x baptist church cos of the sign on the door, location and interaction of volunteers but it is not the same as if you went to the baptist church on a sunday – i’m guessing you aren’t made to participate in a church service/christian practices as part of attending the group?