Where, exactly, do you "do ministry"?

As a freelance writer, I work from home. But I often pack up my laptop and head for a local coffee shop to work. A recent Chicago Tribune article referred to people like me, who take over a table with a laptop and slowly nurse one Venti latte for three hours, as "laptop squatters." Nice, right?

That same article quoted Kate Lister, president of Telework Research Network, a research firm that focuses on work done outside the office. (It's an interesting commentary on our culture that there's a whole firm just researching the work we do when we're not at work!) She compared today's coffee shops to "the marketplaces of medieval times," where groups of entrepreneurs gather to make business connections.

You may have an office or at least a cubicle in a church or parachurch organization. But using a coffee shop as a remote office or meeting room is, I believe, a great strategy for leaders.

The people you lead, and the people your church is trying to reach, are ...