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A message from Ann Rosendale

The ‘Third Place’

By Ann Rosendale, pastoral intern

We all have a third place.

What’s yours? 

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg first coined the term “third place.” Third places are places different than home (our “first place”) or work (our “second place”). Third places function to foster community, identity, and a sense of belonging. They are “extra” places in our lives where we spend much of our time and our energy. Coffee houses, pubs, and traditional main streets are good examples of third places. We all have a third place. For some of us, it’s a friend’s house, for others a barbershop, and for still others the mall.

Third places are perhaps most important for adolescents — teenagers searching for belonging and identity, seeking a time and place apart from associations and demands of home and school. Youth need a place where they can express themselves openly and creatively, a place to be with people they trust, a place that they want to invest in and a place where they feel that others invest in them.

I wonder how many of our St. Paul teenagers would describe the church as their “third place.” Do teenagers feel welcomed and wanted here? Do they feel a sense of ownership in this community of faith? If a confirmation student at St. Paul Lutheran Church could choose to be anywhere in the world other than home or school, would they choose to be at church? Do they find of sense of meaning and purpose here? Do they find people here to love? Do they find people here who love them?

At St. Paul, we do many things to try to make this space a “third place” for everyone, but especially for youth. This month we’re opening up our doors for two lock-ins: up-all-night experiences that are sometimes hard on the heavy eyelids of adults, but that serve as profound and memorable faith experiences in the lives of adolescents. 

How can such a crazy night of games, pizza, and little sleep foster faith in young people? How can it not! For a whole night we turn the church over to our kids (and the responsible adults that lead them). For a whole night this space is theirs… to run in and hide in and laugh in. They find a deep sense of ownership in this building and this community when we entrust it to them. A sleep-deprived 15-year-old might never admit it, but through that lock-in, he has found a “third place” in the church.

What can each of us do to make St. Paul more of a “third place” for people of all ages? What can each of us do, especially for teenagers, to foster a sense of belonging and identity grounded in Christ and his church? What can we “give over” to the next generation so that they feel a sense of ownership in this good work of bringing in the kingdom of God?

I pray that this congregation would become a third place for all who enter its doors. I pray that you and I would not just pop in and out for an hour every Sunday, but that we would find a place, a warmth and hearth here, where we come in out of the cold and sit and stay for a while. I pray that this space would be a place of grace where, if we could be anywhere in the world, we would above all choose to be.

Ann Rosendale,

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