I was reading and article over at Phil Cooke’s blog, called “Why “Atmosphere” Matters in Connecting with a Community” and it got me thinking about the trendy phrase ‘third places’. I’ve read a lot about creating third places in emerging church philosophy and the idea’s behind it sound great. For those new to the concept, the basic idea is that people generally spend time at work, at home and at ‘third places’. Good third places sometimes overlap with home and work. The story in Phil’s blog is the story of how Starbucks came to be as successful as it was because it was almost the perfect third place. It allowed for relationship to build, it allowed people to combine work with this, it provided all kinds of benefits OTHER THAN buying and drinking coffee.

The idea of ‘third place’ is behind a lot of missional activity in running coffee shops, or pubs, or other spaces in a missional context. This is great! However another idea for a third place came to mind. It probably is being done somewhere, but is an interesting idea I believe…

Could church buildings be used as third places for people that work ‘from home’?

By this I mean, is it maybe feasible to set up a church building to enable any of its members who USUALLY work from home, or somewhere other than a set office, as a workplace?

I’m having difficulty wording what I mean by this, but the basic idea is to enable believers who normally work from home (or in a coffee shop, or whatever) to ALSO be able to meet together daily?  This wouldn’t really be an option for people who have to work at a specific location, but as the number of home offices has increased maybe this could be an effective use of a church building during the week?

If you know somewhere already doing this I’d love to hear about it!

Thoughts?