But what exactly is a Third Place? According to Oldenburg the first place is our home and the people with whom we live. The second place is where we work and the place we spend the majority of our waking hours. A Third Place is a public setting that hosts regular, voluntary, and informal gatherings of people. It is a place to relax and have the opportunity to know and be known by others. It is a place people like to “hang out.”

Oldenburg identifies eight characteristics that Third Places share:

• Neutral Ground. People are free to come and go as they please. There are no time requirements or invitations needed. Much of our lives in first places and second places are structured, but not so in Third Places.

• Act as a Leveler. People from all walks of life gather in Third Places. There are no social or economic status barriers.

• Conversation is the Main Activity. The talk is lively, stimulating, colorful, and engaging.

• Assessable and Accommodating. They tend to be conveniently located, often within walking distance of one’s home.

• There are Regulars. It is easy to recognize that many patrons are regulars at the establishment. But unlike other places, newcomers are welcomed into the group.

• Low Profile. As a physical structure, they are typically plain and unimpressive in appearance.

• Mood is Playful. With food, drink, games, and conversation present, the mood is light and playful. The mood encourages people to stay longer and to come back repeatedly.

• A Home Away From Home. At their core they are places where people feel at home. They feel like they belong there, and typically have a sense of ownership.

Why is it so important for Christ followers to understand the concept of Third Places? Because the vast majority of people in the United States are living isolated, relationally impoverished lives. And Third Places offer an opportunity for missionally minded people to do life in proximity to others.

We must take the time to identify where the Third Places are in our setting. Where do people gather to spend time with others? Where are the coffee houses, cafes, pubs and other hangouts? But in addition to the typical Third Places as described by Oldenburg, what are some “atypical” places where people congregate? Think of places such as libraries, parks, farmer’s markets, workout centers, etc. We may need to “think outside the box” when identifying where people gather. But once identified we must seek ways to engage those places. This will involve embedding our lives incarnationally into Third Places, listening and learning where God is at work, and asking how we can participate in what God is doing.

Here is a great visual of the concept of Third Places:

Where do you recognize a sense of isolation or loneliness in your neighborhood? Do you yourself experience feelings of isolation from your neighbors? How does the Gospel, the good news of the Kingdom, address the issue of isolation?

Do you believe the sense of community is increasing or decreasing in your neighborhood? Why?

What are the easily identified Third Places in your neighborhood? Describe them.

“A working definition of missional church is a community of God’s people that defines itself by, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the church’s true and authentic ‘organizing principle’ is mission. When the church is on mission, it is the true church. The church itself is not only the result of God’s mission but is obligated and destined to extend it by whatever means possible. The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.” – Alan Hirsch

“Mission as organizing principle means that mission goes way beyond being some sort of optional activity or program for our churches. It actually is the organizing axis of the church. The life of the church revolves around it. This is not to say that we don’t do corporate worship, develop community, and make disciples, but that these are catalyzed by and organized around the mission function. Only in this way can we be truly missional. Merely adding serving events or special outreach days to our church schedules will not develop missional people nor make a missional church.” – Lance Ford

You will have to search hard for a New Testament translation that uses the word “leader” more than a half dozen times. And the majority of instances it is used are in reference to the over-lording religious leaders that Jesus was constantly contending with. Jesus defined himself as a servant, saying, “I have come to serve (Matthew 20:28).” Most all church dudes do not come to serve, they come to lead. Do we need leadership? Certainly. Where we miss the Jesus boat is that we seek to be defined as leaders. We love to be identified as leaders. And that is the big problem. This is why we love titles despite the clear fact that Jesus forbade them. Why wouldn’t we rather be identified and defined as servants? Leadership sucks—it sucks the life out of the body of Christ, and out of those who are striving to live up to all the definitions we have placed on it. Why would we not embrace an ethos and pursuit of Servantship? I say, abandon ship! i.e. Abandon Leader-SHIP and get on board Servantship.

This is more, much more, than semantics. The posture of servantship is humility, not seeking one’s own way but looking out for the interests of others. Servantship means not dominating other staff members, not pulling rank. So, you’re the “senior cat”? Do you use that status to get your way or to be the first with towel and basin? Yes, servantship is miles beyond semantics, and is not remotely close to what we call leadership.

This is an excerpt from Lance Ford’s new book Unleader Reimagining Leadership…and Why We Must, published by Beacon Hill Publishing. Lance will be one of the speakers at this year’s Sentralized gathering.

In the New Testament the Greek word for hospitality is philoxenia. It is the combination of two words; love (phileo), and the word for stranger (xenos). It literally means “love of stranger.”

In order to love the stranger, and open our homes effectively, we need to expand our view of hospitality. Jesus commands us to extend the circle of hospitality beyond friends and relatives, to include those in need:

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just (Luke 14:12-14).

Now lets be clear. There is nothing wrong with sharing a meal with friends and family. That is always a good thing. But the practice of genuine, biblical hospitality is distinctive from the conventional view of hospitality because it reaches out to undesired, neglected people who cannot reciprocate.

But strangers are not simply those we do not know. In a strict sense, strangers are those who are disconnected from basic relationships. Making space for hospitality is not only about creating physical environments that are welcoming to others, but it is also about the posture we take towards human relationships in general.

It is about turning our lives towards those who are isolated. It is about listening well to those who rarely have a voice. It’s really about inclusion. It is about including others into our lives and our network of relationships.

Who are the strangers in your neighborhood?
Who are the strangers in your community?
What are some of the fears that you have towards them?
How can you open your heart and home?

When I use the M-word, I’m doing so to describe the wholesale and thorough reorientation of the church around mission. Coffee at Starbucks or couches in the church building might be in some measure an indication of this reorientation, but they aren’t in themselves the sum total of the call I have been making.

Of course, I’m not the only person calling for this complete paradigm shift for the church. My dear friend and occasional coauthor, Alan Hirsch, has been at the forefront of this movement. Indeed, it was with Alan that I wrote the following challenge in our first book together in 2003:

In writing this book we are advocation a wholesale change in the way Christians do and be the church and because of this ours is not necessarily a popular message. We’ve become disturbingly aware through personal experience and observation that those who advocate such a thoroughgoing recalibration of the church will not always be met with open arms by the prevailing church leadership. And yet we feel compelled to lovingly challenge the church with the taks of dismantling so many of the arcane institutional structures it is now beholden to and to bravely face the future with imagination and courage. (The Shaping of Things to Come).

This is an excerpt from Michael’s latest book, The Road to Missional. Michael will be a speaker at this year’s Sentralized gathering in September.

In the New Testament, sending language is most obvious in the Gospel of John. It begins with the incarnation (or you could say it actually begins with the pre-incarnate Christ) in John 3:16-17 as the Father sends the Son, and it ends with Jesus sending his disciples in John 20:21. In between these two passages Jesus sees himself as one “sent by the Father” more than twenty-five times. Here are a few of those passages. Read through the entire list and reflect on the sending nature of God and the “sentness” of the Son.

John 3:34
“For he whom God has sent utters the words of God.”

John 5:23
“He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”

John 5:24
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life.”

John 5:30
“I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

John 5:36-38
“These very words which I am doing, bear witness that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness to me.”

John 6:38
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.”

John 6:44
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

John 7:28-29
“But I have not come of my own accord; he who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I came from him, and he sent me.”

John 7:33
“I shall be with you a little longer, and then I go to him who sent me.”

John 8:18
“I bear witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness to me.”

John 8:26
“He who sent me is true.”

John 8:29
“And he who sent me is with me.”

John 8:42
“I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.”

John 9:4
“We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day.”

John 12:44-45
“He who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And he who sees me sees him who sent me.”

John 12:49
“The Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment what to say and what to speak.”

John 13:20
“He who receives me receives him who sent me.”

John 14:24
“The word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

John 14:26
“The Counselor will teach you everything and will cause you to remember all that I told you. This Counselor is the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name.”

John 16:7
“If I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

John 17:3
“And they have believed that you have sent me.”

John 17:18
“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

John 17:25
“They know that you have sent me.”

What thoughts come to mind when you read these passages? How does it speak to the missionary nature of God? How might it influence the way you think of the church? How might it influence the way you consider your ministry?

Originally posted on The House Studio blog

The majority of pastors I have discussed the subject with quickly dismiss the suggestion of any type of guidance in the church other than one guy at the top of the command chain. “I’ve never seen it work,” they say. My argument is that the real issue is that work is exactly what it takes. It takes hard relational work for mutually submissive leadership to be successful. Denver pastor, Kathy Escobar—who serves in a co-pastoring relationship—says

For some reason I have always found myself attracted to the creative minority in the church. I feel connected to the dreamers and pot-stirrers who have ideas of toppling unhealthy power structures, practicing equality as a natural rhythm of life together, honoring doubt and questions, pursuing justice and mercy on behalf of others, and destroying the great divide between “us and them.” On the whole, almost every system and structure we live in perpetuates power, strength and policy over relationship.[i]

In many ways it is certainly easier to just set up an organizational chart and make sure everyone stays within their boundaries. Institutions are always less messy than relationships. But institutions can never produce life. They can only contain it, or fake it. The hard work of relationship building produces something that can never be concocted via committees and hierarchies. We will delve into the subject of mutually submissive leadership at depth in the second part of this book.

As I read the excellent Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, one of the people he interviewed called Jobs a Narcissist. Several times throughout reading the book the thought had occurred to me that many of the traits—both good and bad—in Steve Jobs were ones I had seen in a multitude of pastors and church leaders. The Narcissistic traits especially stood out and that took me on a journey of trying to understand more about the clinically defined Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

It is somewhat dumbfounding when you consider the makeup of the narcissist. Their behavior can be charismatic and charming one minute, cold and calculating the next, or on occasion breaking into unpredictable rages.[ii] I have to say that I read more books and articles on the subject than I could have imagined. Again, I found myself saying, “This stuff perfectly describes an inordinate number of pastors and church leaders I know personally, as well as the many stories I have heard from those who have worked with them.”

We are all somewhat narcissistic, whether we are willing to admit it or not. Though only about one of a hundred people are clinically diagnosed with NPD, a large number of people are deeply narcissistic. And the leadership field draws them like ants to a picnic. The field of study on the subject of NPD provides language and handles for us to gain a better understanding of what is going on in the orbit of the narcissistic leader. The following list is a tool professional’s use for help in diagnosing NPD—From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition:

“A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, and indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.”[iii]

A strange phenomenon has occurred with the evolution of social networking and the overall interweb world. A lack of civility, patience, gentleness, and kindness too often prevails. I must begin here by admitting that I have too often jumped into the pool of cynicism and snarkiness myself. I hate it in others and I despise it in myself. For some reason we get really bold when just facing a monitor and keyboard. Our rule for the internet should be never to say/post anything that we wouldn’t do so in the face-to-face presence of Jesus and the person to whom we are referring to. Recently I was called to task by my friend Darrin Patrick regarding an April Fool’s Day post I popped up, aimed at his fellow laborer, Mark Driscoll. Privately, Darrin suggested it would be helpful for me to share thoughtfully if I had concerns regarding Mark. Thanks for the right-hearted rebuke, Darrin. So, here goes. If I were in a room with Mark and Jesus, I would say to Mark…

Brother, your gifts and talents are needed more than ever for the body of Christ and the future of the church. I couldn’t agree with you more that we need Godly men in our churches. I disagree with you theologically regarding the limits you believe are to be placed upon women, and I hurt for our sisters and mothers in Christ, but I must respect that as a conviction of what you sincerely believe. My deepest concern is in the way you conceive of and posture leadership itself. You are far from alone in this, but my concern is with the hierarchical viewpoint and ethos with which you emit and propose. When Jesus rebuked his disciples for their jockeying for position—“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you” Matt. 20:25-26a—He really meant it. I don’t believe you get this. It appears to be very much “so among you”.

I recently watched your recruiting video for the Lead Pastor Residency training program where you spoke of “kingly duties” etc. Not to parse your words, but this is but a micro example of your emphasis on the “Lead” guy, the one great leader who is over the others. This leadership-centric idea leaves the ethos and emphasis of humble servantship in the dust…which is the emphasis of Jesus’ following words in the passage above—”But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” Matthew 20:26b-28.

Young men are in their years of greatest physical strength and stamina. They are out to conquer and prove their “something” in this world. The current hubris that saturates our leadership and church planting conferences and training is offering young men tips and tricks on how to exercise authority and leadership, while giving a wink at best to servantship—the very persona of Jesus. Brother Mark, we don’t need to settle for machismo, masked in leaderese. We need the power that comes from brokenness—genuine, dialed down humility, evidenced in speech and posture. We don’t need an army of testosterone filled dudes for Jesus. We don’t need spiritualized flesh. We need dead men walking. We need millions of emptied out men and women, falling over themselves to serve one another and the world around them trying to get people to forget their own names and shining the spotlight on His name.

If we look to Jesus as our mentor and our model we will reach no other conclusion than to follow him means we will seek to be servants, not leaders. Then when we do lead it is born from the person of Jesus. Our desire and greater obsession must be to develop servantship cultures in our ministries and churches. When we discover that serving is mentioned fifty times more in the New Testament than leading is we should need no more evidence of what is most pressing on the heart of God. And what presses God’s heart must press ours as well.

The command and control ethos that saturates our church leadership cultures is the exact thing Jesus forbade. Mark, you have come across as representing and emphasizing this very thing. Jesus says, “It will not be so among you.” The church needs you, Mark. But it needs a genuinely broken and contrite Mark Driscoll that uses his call and gifts as a servant, not a leader. The leading will happen as the servant manifests.