I started writing Out of the 4th Place in August of 2014. Now it’s September of 2018. I originally gave myself the goal of about a year to complete it. Hmmm… that didn’t happen. Just over four years…
The outline for the whole book came to me one morning. I had been contemplating taking a position with Communitas International as their Missional Enterprise Director. I was already in the process of helping them get a coworking space up and running in Denver and was dreaming up several others. In addition, I had just been hanging out at the BiVO conference in Denver with Hugh Halter, Alan Hirsch, Brian Sanders and others. All that to say, I was in a good place to dream.
I was praying that morning with a big question rattling around in my brain: “How would you describe to someone a theological framework that would support a church plant in a coworking space?” All of a sudden I felt inspired so I grabbed a journal. A whole slew of long-time ideas and passions started flowing out of my pencil onto paper. Church as a temple—the holy place. The medium is the message. Temple forms. The Woman at the Well. Constantine. I was so excited I emailed Dudley right away with the outline and asked him if I was crazy for actually contemplating writing a book. He said, “No, you aren’t crazy. You need to do this.” We then spent hours and hours together on his back deck processing the outline and my initial drafts—drinking good coffee mind you… Dudley pours a mean French press.
But I still hadn’t come up with the idea of the fourth place yet.
A workspace isn’t a traditional place for a church plant, you know. Usually people think about hip church plants in concert venues and pubs. Why did the question of planting in a coworking business feel so different?
I realized that it felt different because it was in a different space in society—the second place. I hadn’t ever considered planting church in the second place—productive life (work). I had only contemplated it in the first place—private life (home), and the third place—where people hang out. I had never used those categories, but all of a sudden thinking about the second place introduced a new way of thinking. New questions emerged that I had never considered. “I wonder if there are different methods of planting depending on the social space?”
Then the thought occurred to me, “Where do churches fit into this model, anyway?” I was already familiar with Oldenburg’s work on first, second and third places, but I hadn’t read his book for myself. My theory was that maybe church was a fourth place since it didn’t fit anywhere else. I bought The Great Good Place used, read it, and realized, “Oh my goodness! I was right, but it’s a lot bigger than what I thought!”
There are many organizations that don’t fit into the first three places, not just churches. What do they all have in common? They are all places of members, scheduled events, tickets, etc. There is something formal about each of them. Oldenburg defines the third place as informal public life. I suddenly realized he was missing a whole category—formal public life. Everything started to click. I started to see links between Country Clubs and church campuses. Theaters. Gyms. I started to see how the fourth place must be impacting our message. Our need to self-promote. Our focus on our image. Our obsession with big buildings and big leaders. I read articles on the country club industry and realized my megachurch was having identical conversations.
As I processed this fourth place idea with people, I started to realize what an amazing balance the early church struck. Clearly they had members, but no clubhouse. Strong faith, but no impressive building. They had a formal gatherings but held them in informal spaces—first, second and third places. I realized Jesus lived this way. I read the early church fathers and realized they actually lived like this on purpose—not just due to persecution.
It hit me that this idea is quite theologically significant. Jesus himself was the medium of God—God expressed through a man. The medium of Jesus matters. Common. Humble. Broken. Treasure in jars of clay. God’s glory in weak vessels. Having the church meet in common social spaces is not just practical financially, it is central to the message of Jesus himself.
Then I realized the parachurch is already doing this! And that led to all kinds of new questions. What if the parachurch is actually the local church and the local church is actually the religious temple? What if we have this all backwards? Could that be true?
My original book outline revolved around the temple idea. I didn’t introduce the fourth place idea until chapter seven. As friends read the manuscript in its infancy, I saw common patterns. Light bulbs started to go on when they got to chapter seven—like it all started to click. That is…if they could make it that far. Most people got bogged down in the first few chapters. Several never made it out. I’m still looking for them… poor souls…
I don’t blame them. It was originally really temple-heavy and took a long time to get anywhere. I had a couple extra chapters at that point, one on Constantine’s Wisdom vs God’s Wisdom and one on the Reformation. That was a sad one to cut by the way. I’m thinking about making it a blog post. I spent well over 100 hours doing research on the Reformation and how forms changed or didn’t. It was absolutely fascinating—to me anyway… I read primary source material from Calvin’s Geneva and had so many ideas I wanted to share with the world.
But like my friend Josh who works in film reminded me, “Sometimes you have to kill your babies.” Sometimes you have to sacrifice some of your pet projects and ideas in order to clearly articulate the main idea you are trying to get across.
I ended up doing a full rewrite of the first half of the book. I designed it all around the idea of the fourth place since that seemed to be the key idea that made the temple theology stick in people’s minds.
One of my favorite parts of the writing process is that moment when you are dealing with a big jumble of great ideas, but they lack cohesion and then all of a sudden a unifying idea comes along to help encapsulate all of those big ideas into a digestible package. That was the fourth place idea for me.
I have wanted to write these ideas down for years. I have been a part of so many frustrating conversations where I know we are speaking from totally different paradigms but I also know that for me to explain my paradigm would take too long to make it worth while. Plus, it’s just too much to dump on someone at one time. It needed a book.
It was a unique season of life that finally inspired me to get this all in print. The Communitas job opportunity. The BiVO conference. And probably the main factor—my health. I couldn’t have written this book without the three preceding years being the hardest of my life. I had a major health crisis that stripped me of everything I thought I knew and trusted—more on that in another post. But if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have been in a place of sufficient weakness that enabled me to be so honest.
It’s hard to write in your own voice. I have been a long-time song writer and it’s always tempting to write the song you think other people will want to hear rather than the song from your true self. Honesty is vulnerable. This book is very vulnerable for me because it is me. I didn’t really hide anything in the writing. It speaks what I believe to be true and allows people to do with that truth what they want.
I wrote this book for a lot of reasons. I needed to say something. I had some good ideas worth sharing. I am deeply concerned for the church. I am grieved for those who miss out on Jesus because church distracts them. But probably most of all, I just wanted to have the conversation. I want to talk about this stuff with people willing to talk.
I’m supposed to get my final proof of the book tomorrow. Well, it was supposed to be two days ago, but it’s late. Once I get it, I just need to approve it and it will go up on Amazon immediately.
It’s done. Deep sigh… Four years of hard work. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours. Researching, writing, rewriting, cutting, eyes straining, head aching, wrists begging for mercy, late nights.
I am excited to have written a book. But I am most excited about the conversations to come. If you are ever around Seattle, come on over to my back deck for some good coffee or a beer and let’s chat.
Here’s to the dialogue.
From the back deck,
Matt