Chautauqua Reflection IV: Front Porches

Every dwelling at Chautauqua has a front porch.  Personal homes, denominational houses, hotels, public buildings, meeting rooms...they all have the front porch.  Whether it's facing the lake, the amphitheater, or simply the buildings across the street, every home has a front porch.

Front porches serve as a "third place," as Leonard Sweet describes in his book, The Gospel According to Starbucks.  A third place is a place that is not home and not work that allows us to connect relationally with other people.  Third places used to be everywhere.  However, in the second half of the 20th Century, we did away with third places, choosing instead to limit our interaction with strangers to a minimum.  However, Sweet writes:

In a culture without a front porch, in a culture where we built up the backs of our houses with decks and walls, not the fronts of our houses where we might connect with a passing neighbor; in a world where we invested in privacy over hospitality, Starbucks spoke these words: "We'll be your front porch.  Hang out here."


Sweet's point is that church used to be a third place, a connection point for relating with fellow humans.  Yet, we have drifted away from that, and perhaps we should follow the example and return to such an idea.

Most of the meaningful conversations and connections I made with others came on front porches at Chautauqua:

• Meeting fellow United Methodists at the denominational house.
• Sharing the beauty of a summer morning with a new friend, gazing at the peaceful waters of the lake while discussing the importance of Sabbath.
• Analyzing the prospective 2012 fantasy baseball values of Pedro Alvarez and Domonic Brown with a fellow baseball fan.
• Playfully debating which denomination has the best preachers, and whether it is appropriate for United Methodists to learn preaching from Tom Long, who happens to be Presbyterian.
• Listening to a colleague sharing struggles from her current ministry setting.
• Chatting with members of our congregation on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

All these conversations happened on front porches.  Half of them probably would not have occurred had it not been for Chautauqua's front porch culture.  All week, I reflected back on Sweet's words, wondering how the church might find a way to serve as a third place, as a point of connection, as a front porch to our culture. How are our churches acting as front porches?  If they are not, what might we need to change?