The Theology of Shared Space

Before the business case, there's a deeper question.

I've sat in a lot of church board meetings where the coworking conversation starts with spreadsheets — revenue projections, occupancy rates, break-even timelines. Those numbers matter. But when the financial case is the only case being made, something important gets missed.

The more interesting question — and the one that tends to determine whether a pilot actually takes root — is a theological one: What does it mean for this congregation to open its doors to the neighborhood?

Hospitality as Vocation

The Christian tradition has a long and rich theology of hospitality. From Abraham welcoming strangers at Mamre to the early church's practice of table fellowship across social boundaries, the opening of one's home — and one's community — to the stranger is not incidental to the faith. It is, in many traditions, close to its center.

The word xenia — the ancient Greek concept of hospitality to strangers — carried with it a sacred weight. The stranger at your door might be a messenger from God. To turn them away was not merely impolite; it was a failure of something essential.

Most churches would affirm this theology in the abstract. The question coworking raises is whether they're willing to practice it concretely — not just on Sunday mornings, but on Tuesday afternoons, when the person at the door is a freelance graphic designer looking for a quiet place to work.

Stewardship of Space

There's a second theological thread worth pulling: stewardship.

The buildings that congregations occupy represent enormous accumulated investment — decades of giving, sacrifice, and community effort. Many of those buildings sit largely empty for 80–90% of the week. The question of what faithful stewardship of that resource looks like is not a new one, but it's become more urgent as maintenance costs rise and congregations shrink.

Stewardship, in the biblical tradition, is not about preservation for its own sake. The servant who buried his talent rather than putting it to work was not commended. Faithful stewardship means using what you've been given in ways that generate life — for the community, for the mission, for the world.

Opening a building to coworking is, in this frame, not a compromise of sacred space. It's an act of faithful stewardship — putting a resource to work in service of the neighborhood.

The Ancient Practice of Sacred Space as Public Good

This is not actually a new idea.

For most of Christian history, the church building was the most public building in the community. It was where people gathered not just for worship but for education, for dispute resolution, for shelter in times of crisis. The sharp distinction between "sacred" and "secular" use of church buildings is, historically speaking, a relatively recent development.

Medieval cathedrals hosted markets. Colonial meetinghouses served as town halls. The church building as a resource for the whole community — not just the congregation — is a recovery of something ancient, not an innovation.

When a congregation opens its doors to coworking, it is, in a sense, returning to a more historically grounded understanding of what a church building is for.

The Harder Question

None of this means the theological work is easy.

There are real questions about what it means for a space to be "sacred" — whether the presence of laptops and coffee cups changes something essential about a room that has been used for prayer and worship. There are questions about whose community the church is serving, and whether coworking members become part of the congregation's story or remain permanently outside it.

These are good questions. They deserve honest conversation, not dismissal.

What I've found, in the congregations that navigate this well, is that the coworking pilot often deepens the congregation's sense of mission rather than diluting it. When the person who's been working in your building for six months shows up at a community dinner, or when a coworking member becomes a regular at Sunday worship, the boundary between "church community" and "neighborhood" starts to blur in ways that feel more like the kingdom than the alternative.

Starting the Conversation

If your congregation is considering coworking, I'd encourage you to start not with the spreadsheet but with the theological question.

What does it mean for us, in this place, at this moment, to open our doors? What are we afraid of? What are we hoping for? What does faithfulness look like here?

The business case will follow. But the theological clarity needs to come first.

Interested in exploring what coworking could look like for your congregation? Reach out — I'm glad to have that conversation.