Third Places, Church Community, and Why Lounges Matter
Insights from Soul Revival on this week's Shock Absorber podcast
Growing Young — Fuller Youth Institute’s book that profiled the characteristics of churches that had healthy youth and young adult membership — suggests that “warmth” is one of these six essential strategies. But what exactly is “warmth”? How do you know if you have it, and how do you cultivate it if you don’t?
This week on The Shock Absorber podcast, Stuart Crawshaw shares insights into the sociological theory of “Third Place Communities”, as he continues to walk Joel McMaster and me through the themes emerging from his PhD research into the theology, strategy, practice and history of Soul Revival Church.
Third places are community spaces where you choose to congregate, purely for the social benefits found there (as distinct from ‘first places’, where you live, and ‘second places’, where you work or study). According to the work of sociologist Ray Oldenburg, third places are characterised as:
Open and inviting
Comfortable and informal
Convenient
Unpretentious
Having a mixture of regulars and irregulars
Conversation as the main activity
Light-hearted and playful mood.
As I argue in my chapter of Australian Evangelical Perspectives on Youth Ministry, this thick definition of healthy community spaces fleshes out the characteristic of “warmth” that FYI identify as essential to flourishing youth and young adult ministry.
Stuart unpacks his discovery of this sociological strategy and his experimentation with it in the early days of the Soul Revival youth community. Along the way, we discuss the challenges of making churches third places, why members resist making church a place of community, and why lounges play such an iconic role in Soul Revival semiotics.
Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.