How can Youth Work/Ministry be in the Third Places

The Third Place is a term coined by US sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his 1990 book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

Oldenburg sees the “first” place as our home and those we live with. Our second place is the workplace (school, college, university) — where we spend most of our days. But third places anchor community life and offer the benefits that come with broader interaction. All societies have informal meeting places.

Oldenburg sees the essential ingredients of third places as:

• they must be free or inexpensive
• food and drink, while not essential, are important
• they must be highly accessible
• they must be proximate for many (walking distance)
• they should involve regulars - those who habitually hang there
• they should be welcoming and comfortable
• both new friends and old should be found there

Third Places are crucial to a community because:

• They are distinctive informal gathering places.
• They make people feel at home.
• They foster relationships and a diversity of human contact.
• They help create a sense of place and community.
• They invoke a sense of civic pride.
• They provide numerous opportunities for serendipity.
• They promote friendship.
• They allow people to relax and unwind after a long day at work.
• They are socially binding.
• They encourage sociability instead of isolation.
• They make life more colorful.

Michael Frost in Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture writes that it’s in third places where we let down our guard, and where core issues of life are likely to be part of conversation. He goes on to note that in the old Christendom model believers are far too busy in their protected spaces and church meetings to be in third places “Exiles have realized that they are to practice the presence of Christ right there under people’s noses, where the aroma of Jesus can be sensed.”

Praxis:

• How the idea of the third places can affect youth work/ministry?
• Where in our community’s are ‘youth friendly’ third places?
• Should we as workers/ministers ‘purposefully’ hang out in already existing third places to interact with young people
• Or should we seek to create youth third places ourself?
• Do/should our churches and/or ministries meet the third place criteria (1st list above)?
• Do/should our churches and/or ministries fulfill the crucial (2nd list above) that third places do?

More on this:
A “Bridge” to a Lost Generation?

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