The 3rd Place: Is it the future of Multipurpose Buildings?

Published August 17th, 2004

By: Ken Dean

www.churchbusiness.com

My life decision to become an advocate for coffeehouses and bookstores was largely influenced by the simple vision of a couple who “caught” the vision to start a simple gathering place in Washington DC in 1960.  Mary and Gordon Cosby caught the idea for creating a “third place” where conversations of consequence could happen in a welcoming spiritually receptive environment.  I grew up in the San Francisco area in the 1960’s, so there were bohemian coffeehouses around in SF’s North Beach and Berkeley, as they were scattered around the country in intellectual counter culture settings.  When I ran across this little place in DC in 1971 I was not interested at all in “spiritual matters”, I was more interested in traveling and experiencing new lands and cultures….  I was more about the vacation and the tourist way of living than I was about anything resembling an “inner journey” or pilgrimage.  Two years after my first visit I experienced this place anew as a spiritually sensitive seeker and pilgrim, and I caught the same vision that Mary and Gordon caught a dozen years earlier. I also had several friends involved at the Church of the Savior who shared the deeper story with me and it changed my life forever.  

That is why over the past 30 years I have started bookstores and coffeehouses with names like “Pilgrim Place” and “The Phoenix” and been involved with helping people start dozens of community coffeehouses that have the spirit of this original coffeehouse vision that Mary and Gordon made real in their lives. Read the rest of this entry →

From the back cover of this book.

Historian Sidney Mead has observed: “In America space has played the part that time has played in older cultures of the world.”  In Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, Jon Pahl examines this provocative statement in conversation with what he calls the “spatial character” of American theology.  He argues that places are always imaginatively constructed by the human beings who inhabit them.

Sometimes this spatial theology works to our benefit; other times it poses spiritual risks.  What happens when our banal “clothing of the sacred” violates our genuine needs for comfort and intimacy?”  Or when we remember that the fleeting pleasures of a shopping trip or  Disneyland escape are designed to fill someone else’s pocket rather than the spiritual emptiness in our own hearts?

Read the rest of this entry →

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Postmodern Wells
By Mark Batterson

A few years ago I had a Starbucks moment. I was studying for a sermon at a Starbucks on Capitol Hill, and I usually tune out the mood music, but one line of lyrics slipped through my reticular activating system. I’d never heard the song before and I didn’t know who the artist was. And maybe I just had too much caffeine in my system, but the juxtaposition of words struck me:

There’s a church on the periphery, Lady of our Epiphany.

And I had a thought as I sipped my vanilla latte: as long as the church stays on the periphery, our culture will never experience an epiphany. Read the rest of this entry →

Larry’s Notes:

Christine Pohl has written a book that should be required reading for any Christian thinking about the importance of hospitality. We live in an age where the Christian tradition of hospitality is often confused with so many other forms of “hospitality” practices… From common social niceties like dinner parties that return the favor as a form of reciprocity or the restaurant hotel industry which is called the “hospitality industry…” Read the rest of this entry →

Larry’s Notes:

This wonderful little book by Lucinda Mosher, published by Seabury Books (2005) is the first in a series of books on “Understanding America’s Religious Diversity”. The theme of “belonging” is the first topic in a series of six or more topics. What impressed me about this book was how wise it was and how accesible it was to an “average” reader. Here is what I have in mind as an example of what I am saying. Read the rest of this entry →

Slow Food Movement – huge celebration in San Francisco

Larry’s Notes:

The slow philosophy is often summed up in one word… “balance”. The Slow Movement is a conversation about quality of life and not just the quantity of life or the efficiency of going about “doing things…” The things that people talk about missing in life often are missed because no one “takes the time” to make room for them. I think this generation of young adults who are committed to thinking about the importance of community and friendships are also very committed to taking time out… to do more practices that make a difference in the quality of life. Read the rest of this entry →

From the overview.

Food and Faith is both an anthology of essays and a community building Study Guide similar to Earth Ministry’s previous book Simpler Living, Compassionate Life. This book is an invitation to come home to eat, to remember foods sacramentality, then everyone is invited- farmers, environmentalists,corporate executives, grocery store clerks, migrant workers, ecnonomists, theologians, artists, politicians, truck drivers, scientists and activists…

The authors hope is that “the book helps you discern ways you might embody love and compassion through your everyday food choices and see how choices can help create agricultural and economic systems that embody love.”

Larry’s Notes:

Coffeehouses from around the world and down the ages are introduced and described here in terms of their cultural and historical significance… It covers the creation of coffeehouses as a new social institution- a meeting place and focal point in social gatherings of the various social strata, and a cultural forum.