To begin, I will first review a classic on the topic of cultural engagement, namely H. Richard Niebuhr’s book, Christ and Culture. So, if you wish to join me in this process, you may enjoy reading it too. After reading Niebuhr, I would like to re-read few subsequent books that built off of Niebuhr’s classic, such as D. A. Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited and Andy Crouch’s Culture Making.

In other words, if you are the adventuresome type, why not dig out an old copy of his book or order a new one on Amazon. It is a fairly inexpensive and enjoyable read. I look forward to sharing my observations with you next year.

Until then … happy “homework” … and of course, happy New Year!

I’m still unclear what it specifically was in the text that lit the night. Pascal was a relentless and subtle thinker. He could be bold—especially in the Provincial Letters—and yet running throughout the Pensées is an anguished questioning of it all. There is a harrowing play in his frequent shifts between the infinite expanse of the universe and the threatening void within.

Something of these tensions, I think, is what captured me. Even in my university years, I felt a fissure between the speed required to keep up with assignments and the expected style of submissions required by the administration that passed as a mastery of material. That was never me. It still isn’t. Everything I do is slow: I read slow, write slower, and think slower still. I’m always lost in questions and concepts. And Pascal slowed everything down even further.

Undeniably, then, there is something in the style of the Pensées that accounts for its continued hold over me. A good share of the Pensées, in fact, do quite little for me: e.g., his messianic proofs—or, depending on the day, the so-called wager. It was his wry honesty that kept me reading.

A few concepts stuck as well. One had to do—as alluded to above—with the frequent shifting between external spaces and internal thoughts. How does the churning within relate to cosmos without? What is the relationship between thought and space—between consciousness and the universe? Reflecting on this relationship, Pascal wrote:

It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it.

There is little reward these days in staying with a question—not least in a medium such as this. This channel, that I’m entitling, “Half-Baked and a Little Space-y,” is my attempt to sit with the questions Pascal arranged along the lines of spatiality. In a real sense, of course, what we see is the result of our inner perceptual measures. We see what we’ve been disciplined to see. And yet beyond our perceptual abilities, an infinite unfurling of sights, sounds, touches, smells, and tastes exist. We perceive what we are able to perceive. And that perception works over us a lived form—a form of life. Our being in the world is thus our sense of spatial orientation.

“Half-Baked and a Little Space-y” coordinates a series of reflections on spatial orientation. It is where I’ll wrestle and play with Pascal and a host of others on how to order our thoughts in and about space. I hope you’ll check in from time to time.

Currently, the discussions go like this: “Do your work as unto the Lord.” “Be an example of Christ to your co-workers.” “Profitability is important, because by it you can support your family, provide jobs for others, and give back to the work of God,” and so on. And while these are important points, the conversation has gotten stuck in them and has yet to advance into the other important areas of theology of work. As a result, here is my contribution toward advancing the discussion.

The discussion should also focus on the product that the worker is producing. After all, the actual point of Gen 1:26–28 is not simply to get people busy! Rather, the point of Gen 1:26–28 is that the world needs to develop (“be subdued”). In other words, the plan of God involves us changing the world in ways that reflect God as its Owner.

The mission of Gen 1 has an objective—advancing the place of God from as it exists now to a better form of place. We measure success in this mission by measuring the “placiality” of the world, with greater locales and sense of place as the place that God created.

Workers, especially Christian workers and businesspeople, need to consider thoughtfully every aspect of their services or products. What are we producing, pondering how our products and services are changing the world as the place of God? And what are the implications of those products and services in the world—in our immediate neighborhood, in our state, in our country, and in the world—as applicable?

Sometimes, for example, the bottom line as the ultimate goal is not enough. Policies and laws need to reflect a benchmark in terms of a sense of place that aims to exude a fair and level playing field, that breads a habitus or atmosphere of opportunity for all—individually, culturally, nationally, and internationally (for the whole world is what God has in mind as the place of God).

Yes, we will never bring the New Jerusalem to earth before Christ’s return; only God will do that. Yes, we will never achieve utopia, because Satan and his team are actively working in the opposite direction. But the mission of Gen 1:26–28 (i.e., placemaking) still requires us to push the placiality forward.
So, yes, while theology of work needs workers who are busy little bees who emulate a good work ethic and are kind to their coworkers, we also need to pay attention to changes that we are making in the world itself. Is the world—as the place of God that God created and is returning to—being advanced placially as a place that reflects God?

And yet, whenever someone asks about our website, I receive polite but blank looks. If asked to elaborate on what place is or what placemaking entails, I reply that we discuss the notion that the Bible has a grand mission of place, one that runs throughout all of its chapters. This mission is about God’s opening command to humans to make the world more like what God wants it to be. But … at that point, my friends usually smile and agree that this would be nice, and then the conversation changes. However, the implications are vast, perhaps too vast.

So, as I begin writing these posts, I need to find a point in common with friends. I have said in the past that to advance a theology of place is to embark on an interdisciplinary project, one that involves philosophy, geography (both human and physical), and several fields of theology, such as the theologies of work, of mission, of culture (and culture making), and of the kingdom of God.

And since one needs to start somewhere, I will choose (drum roll please) … the theology of work (TOW!). This theology is a good selection, if I may say so myself, because many of you have already read a TOW previously, making a comparison/contrast easier.

Big picture, I’m proposing to advance the current understanding of theology of work. In other words, I’m suggesting TOW 2.0. Building upon TOW 1.0, you will not need to unlearn anything. Instead you simply will need to incorporate new sets of questions and discussion points.

For today, I begin with the familiar (and first) Great Commission of the Bible, Gen 1:26–28. This is a standard text in TOW 1.0. Typically, TOW 1.0 focuses on humans as workers, noting that work itself is not from the curse of Gen 3 but is commanded prior to “the Fall.” Or as someone has said before, to be human is to be a worker; that is God’s design. From this observation, TOW 1.0 then expands to consider how work can open doors for effective ministry, such as in conversations of Business As Mission (BAM).

But TOW 1.0 focuses on the act of working. In TOW 2.0, the focus shifts to explore the rest of the text of Gen 1:26–28. The human worker is to produce something, namely a place. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue her and rule over (creation),” reads Gen 1:28a. In other words, TOW 2.0 will focus on the direct object of the verbs of the Great Commission. Or, to make a long story shorter, TOW 2.0 adds a focus on the production of place, or more specifically of God’s place. TOW 2.0 is about the placial “thing” that is to be produced. (Note: “Thing” is slightly misleading, since “the place of God” includes God, people, and all creation within the vicinity of God’s place.)

In many ways, you may be thinking, this sounds like, “culture making.” Yes, but as I will note in future posts, placemaking is larger, conceptually speaking, than culture making. In future posts I will propose a similar need for Culture Making 2.0. But for now, with one step at a time, I begin with a focus on how theology of place advances theology of work in new and fascinating ways.

The opening and closing bookends of the Bible reveal the context for reading the Bible, and these bookends are a story about God’s place, from its inception to its culmination in the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2–22:5). Additionally, however, God’s world includes the lands outside of the city’s gates (Rev 21:24-26). The story of the Bible is the story of God getting God’s own place. Of course, the rest of the story gets quite complicated.

People are not only placemakers (Gen 1:26–28), but also they themselves are also a part of God’s place (Gen 1:26–28; Rev 21:7). Because people are part of God’s place, and because they are a critical steward in God’s plan for ongoing placemaking, the original sin (Gen 3) along with our ongoing failures (Eph 2:1–10) jeopardizes this placial narrative entirely.

Thus, God created a solution—salvation and redemption of the people of God so that the placemaking might continue through them as placemakers who think creatively and do good placemaking (Eph 2:10; Col 3:17, 23–24).

In other words, we believe that salvation is not the final purpose for Christianity but rather is actually the beginning, being the resumption of the original human mission of placemaking. The biblical mission of salvation and redemption, which permeates the Bible, therefore has its own agenda—so that the saved might resume their human mission of good placemaking. In this manner, the mission of salvation is set within the mission of placemaking.
When asked, why does God want placemaking to occur by placemakers? The answer in Genesis 1 is basically because God likes the idea. One cannot help but notice that throughout the creation account there is an emphasis on God’s volitional and/or experiential statements—“let us” or “let there be” or “God saw that” or “God said that this or that is good”. God did, because God wanted; and what God wanted was a place in creation. This fact also relates to the creation of humanity, along with God issuing a human mission to them (Gen 1:26–28). From the first creation account to the canon’s close in Rev 21–22, this placemaking story builds off of a placemaking mission that God gave to humans, creating the narrative that we now call The Bible.

Big picture in summary, a canonical reader sees God enjoying creation initially, Gen 1–3. Then, after sin creates complications both for humans and for creation (Gen 3), God begins a long journey back—through Gen 6; through Gen 10; through Gen 12; through the tabernacle; through the temple; through carefully planned allotment of the land as God’s place (Joshua–Judges); through the incarnation of Christ, and now through us as God’s placemakers appearing throughout the entire world (Mt 28). Ultimately, one sees God getting what God always planned, the experience of life in creation with God’s family (Rev 21–22).

So, to repeat myself, yes, there is a grand narrative of place in the Bible, and this grand narrative is a story that plays itself out across the entire Bible. This narrative provides the context and purpose for the salvation of God’s people (Eph 2:1–10), contextualizes all other stories, missions, and themes within the Bible.

Together, these two grand narratives, one about place and the other about salvation, form the one grand story of the Bible, and together they are the grid that The Placial Project will use for reading the Bible.

Naturally, we cannot produce new locations nor even adjust old locations. Location cannot be changed by any human, only by God. GPS coordinates will always be what they are, despite how a place is being experienced by others.
Locale and sense of place, however, can be produced. For example, a terrain and climate may influence the production of a specific place when they change the locale or its sense of place. Artists can produce place. Moms and Dads can produce place. Corporations can produce place. Governmental officials and policies can change old places or even produce new ones. `Technology can produce new placial change. Thus, in The Placial Project we focus on the development of locale and its sense of place.

When we refer to placemaking, we shall mean the analysis of changes in locale and sense of place over time, from the place’s past to its present to its future. Naturally, as Christians, we realize that not all placial change is good, which, itself, begs the question of “good in the eyes of whom?” We would therefore, as Christians, define good placemaking as good in the eyes of God as God’s perspective is revealed in the Bible. (Examples of where this distinction will become important will be topics of our newsletters.)

We look at a place in time, contextualizing it within the larger placial journey that the Bible reveals for making creation to be the sort of place that God would want it to. Every detail about a place’s locale and sense of place is open to analysis. Both placial components, locale and sense of place, are to be assessed from all four perspectives of firstspace through futurespace.

We ask questions such as: How is a place doing on this journey, placially speaking when using the Bible as the criteria? What needs to be affirmed? What needs to change? What needs to be challenged? What is the responsibility of a Christian, both as an individual Christian and as a collective group who are the people of God in the world?

Placemakers care deeply about this placial mission. So, while all peoples of the world are placemakers by default, Christians are responsible to be a different kind of person, being people of God who are the salt of the earth and who are passionate about contributing to good placemaking, the type that God is pleased with.

The answer lies at the heart of our most basic purpose, one that God envisioned for all humanity and especially for His people. As one might expect, I could, and should, elaborate fully, but in the interest of the brevity of a newsletter, I will focus on a few basic explanations.

First, I begin with Great Commission. Matthew 28:18–20 records,

And Jesus, coming to them, spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that which I have commanded. And behold, I am with you for all the days until the completion of the age.”

This instruction is basically this: teaching disciples to perform all of Christ’s commands. Taken at face value, one might ask, just exactly what did Jesus teach, which the disciples were to obey and teach others to do likewise? Was it just the commands of Christ that Matthew recorded in his Gospel, and no other commands? Did Matthew mean to tell us that one could exclude all other teachings that are not in his Gospel, perhaps the ones that Paul, James, or other apostles recorded?

Without getting overly technical, it is safe to say, “to obey all” means to obey all that the pre-existent Word of God ever taught the people of God, and it does not limit the command only to the commands that Matthew recorded Christ taught his earthly disciples before His crucifixion. The “all” includes everything, and this is where place and placemaking comes into the conversation.

One cannot help but notice that the Bible begins with God creating a place (Gen 1:1–31). This makes God, a placemaker. Furthermore, one cannot help but notice that humans were created in God’s image (Gen 1:26–27), implying that humans are also to be placemakers. In fact, the imago dei is never defined in the text of Genesis, however it is contextually related to the purpose of humanity—to rule creation (Gen 1:26), which is then further clarifies as involving multiplication, filling of the earth, being fruitful, subduing the unfinished placiality of creation, and ruling creation.

Envisioned in the human mission is changing creation’s placiality, or human placemaking. Human placemaking has God’s placemaking activity (Gen 1:1–31) as a template. Placemaking is the only statement by God to humanity that appears in the first creation account, and the image and likeness of God will enable them in their placemaking activities (Gen 1:26–28). This is how the Bible first introduces itself to its readers, explain why humans were created and what they are to do.

One also cannot help but notice that the very next example of human activity reveals humans commencing in their placemaking project (Gen 2:4–25). In fact, the very last thing that the Bible records is that God’s place finally and fully realized on earth (Rev 21:1–22:5). Placemaking, is the context in which one reads the Bible, and thus placemaking certainly qualifies as part of the “all” of Matthew 28:19-20.

But, getting back to the opening question—why is placemaking important for Christians?—because placemaking is implied in the Great Commission itself (Mt 28:18–20). Placemaking still is the human mission that began in Gen 1:26–28, that still points toward the arrival of God’s in Rev 21–22, and that still is part of our mission today. Placemaking and humans belong together.
And since placemaking involves making locales with a sense of place that reflects God, then ethics, social justice, and kindness to one’s neighbor (to name just a few placial implications) are also as much a part of the Great Commission as are evangelism, Bible studies, prayer, and discipleship are. That is, assuming one wishes to obey “all” that Christ taught.

To summarize, Gen 1 passes through Matthew 28 on its way to Rev 21–22. At The Placial Project we aim to explore all passages, along with their implications, noting when and how placemaking reveals itself in the Bible.
To illustrate this, one can easily paraphrase the placemaking mission by many biblical metaphors: Christians are to be salt in the world (Mt 5); Christians are to do their work for the human mission as unto the Lord (Col 3:17, 23–24); good works, including placemaking works, are the mission to which Christians were saved unto; and so on.

The process that I follow is intentionally methodical to tease out a place’s placiality. Each of the three components (location, locale, and sense of place) which were discussed in the prior newsletter, undergoes analysis from four perspectives. While this many not exhaust the full placiality of a place, it certainly is a big step in the right direction.

Also, this process is the same whether the place is physically real or imaginary place in virtual reality or is a place found in a book, whether the book is fictional, non-fictional book, or religious. The process will always be the same. One component at a time, I consider each component from four perspectives, writing down observations and implications. (For more detailed discussion of this process, see my dissertation, which makes use of Critical Spatial Theory.)

The first perspective is the perspective of face value, in other words a simple but uninterpreted observation. This is called firstspace. In the case of Calvary at the time of the first century, firstspace is likely the perspective that you normally would use. Observe what you see in the place (whether a physically real place or an imaginary one) by means of the naked eye—its raw location, locale and any noticeable data that reveals its sense of place.

Second, I ask what the “naked facts” of firstspace indicate about underlying systems and ideologies that were present in the place. In the case of Calvary, for example, what do the naked facts that I see in one of the Gospels have to say about Roman governance? About Jewish resistance or religious governance? About governance by unseen spiritual powers? About God’s governance over history? What ideologies can one discern? This perspective is called secondspace. Again, each component (location, locale, and sense of place) is considered from this perspective of secondspace.

Admittedly, determinations about systems of politics, economics, morality, or culture, including generalized observations relative to entire groups, require me to make value judgements. Complicating this, I further admit that I myself have my own beliefs and values which influence what I notice. For Christians, I assume the benchmark for values of dominance versus oppression to be the perspective of God as it is revealed in the Bible. God’s perspective is assumed to represent the perspective of the dominant system, morality, and culture by which a place is evaluated, even if a place seems to be dominated by the oppressors who oppose God’s system.

Third, we ask what firstspace indicates about the experiences of each individual. This perspective assumes that not everyone in a group feels the same about a place. In the case of Calvary, Roman individuals might differ from the experiences of Calvary by Jewish and Christian individual observers. Thirdspace is the name of this perspective.

Perhaps it is obvious, but just as groups differ one from another, so individual experiences of a place might differ from others in the same group. For instance, each disciple of Jesus might have had a different perspective on Jesus on the day of Christ’s crucifixion. Each view is unique, and each persepctive is the perspective of thirdspace.

We at The Placial Project are claiming that place and placemaking are extremely important concepts for correctly reading the Bible. In fact, we would rank them alongside other more familiar topics, such as kingdom or Trinity. The difference, however, is that place and placemaking have a mission in the Bible, one that humans are to accomplish and that the Bible then records in progress throughout the Bible.

Place and placemaking, having a mission, also have their own narrative, as the Bible records the mission in progress. This placial narrative is one of only two grand narratives of the Bible. The other grand narrative, of course, is the story of sin and God’s provision of salvation. Together, these two stories unite and develop together throughout the Bible, forming the Bible’s one master story.

No doubt this is catching you by surprise. Two grand narratives, each with its own mission that the Bible then records in progress throughout its pages? If correct, however, you can understand why we are claiming that this is a very important concept, and why its neglect would be significant. This neglect is what we aim to address.

To repeat then, we ask the question, “What is place?” After which, we ask two corollary questions: “What is placemaking?” And “Does placemaking really have its own mission that has its own grand narrative throughout the Bible?”

This first newsletter addresses the first question—what is a place? What is it that constitutes a place as a place? (For more clarification, please see my dissertation.) In short, place has three constituent parts. One is location. The second is locale, meaning the people and things that are in the location. The third is sense of place, or how one experiences the location and locale.

Thus, in the case of the place called Calvary, as found in Jerusalem of the first century, it had a GPS location. It had an urban, hilly locale, market by Jewish and Roman features from local people, and their businesses, and their homes, etc. And, It had a sense of place that varied from person to person, ranging from a tragic sense, to religious, to governmental, to executionary, and so on.

It is important to remember, however, that people are also part of a place; they are not separate from it. A place therefore includes the people who are there in the locale, as well as including the space itself plus the non-living things, the plants, the animals, and all that is in the locale.

So, in the case of Calvary there were Romans who helped to mark Calvary as a place for Christians and Jews. Then, there were also Jews who helped define Calvary for Romans and Christians. And there were Christians who helped to define Calvary for Romans and Jews. Together, Calvary became a specific place in time, and it still continues today as a place that builds on its past and that looks toward its future.

In short, place is a person’s meaningful experience of the location, locale, and sense of place. With this basic definition in hand, we can move into the next discussions by The Placial Project.