You Want to be Where Everybody Knows Your Name

About ten years ago Ray Oldenburg wrote a couple of small books on the third place (sometimes called the third good place). As far as I can tell the books were not all that well written or all that popular but the concept caught fire. It has spread across a number of disciplines from urban planning to the marketing of Starbuck’s Coffee Shops. I am even beginning to hear the term in discussions concerning the future of the American church.

In a nutshell the author observes that people need three good places in their life. The first good place is the home. With half of American marriages ending in divorce that is something of an assumption, but OK. The second good place is the workplace. Again sociological studies might not agree with that conclusion since most Americans view the workplace as not much more than a necessary evil. In the ideal world home, the workplace, and the third place all have things in common, familiarity, safe relationships, and a convenient location. The third good place is a vital part of our psychological health. It can be found anywhere, a beauty parlor as in the movie Steel Magnolias, another example, a barbershop as in the movie of the same name, and the quintessential example, the neighborhood pub as brilliantly portrayed in the long running TV series, Cheers. Other examples include gyms, hardware stores, diners, and bookstores. Anywhere a number of independent agents coalesce around a physical location qualifies as a third place, any place where everybody knows your name.

Starbucks has quite consciously gone about creating such an environment by offering a pleasant environment, nice music, free electricity, and Wi-Fi for a nominal fee. In some New York coffee houses the Wi-Fi has traditionally been free. This is changing. As more of their customers are becoming unemployed, they have not been buying as much $3.00 a cup coffee and they are using the free Wi-Fi and the restaurant’s chairs and tables as an office for their job search. This is not contributing the bottom line, so they are turning the Wi-Fi off.

What an opportunity for the church! Offering free coffee and free Wi-Fi on Saturday or a few afternoons a week could be a possible opportunity to offer the building as a potential third place. Any business that successfully establishes itself as a third place is probably going to prosper. The greatest expense in running such an establishment is the building itself, the church already has that covered.

From the Cheers theme song

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same;
You want to be where everybody knows your name.