The Monkey and the
Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church
I’m a white American and I have a ton to learn. Did I say
that out loud? I can’t tell you how refreshing The
Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church by Dave Gibbons has been for me to read. I read
a lot of books, but few with such timely insight and exhortations like this.
The entire time I was reading this, I felt my spirit resonating with the spirit
of the book and inside I was shouting “Yes! Yes!” I thank Dave for his humility
and hard work to put this treasure together for the Church, capital “C”.
Dave tells us in the book that his definition of third
culture emerges from a look at Genesis 12 and from the second greatest
commandment: Third culture is the mindset
and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain
and discomfort (I just typed that from memory because it’s ingrained in my
heart now).
I especially like Dave’s insight into the second greatest
commandment (“Love your neighbor as yourself”). My heart for the poor and
homeless connected with his vision as he described our neighbor as “instead of
being someone like him, was someone not like him at all, someone he would be
uncomfortable with or even hate.” He goes on to say that the second most
important commandment “is all about loving people we don’t understand… People
who are misfits. People who are marginalized. People who are outsiders…
Instead, it’s about people I would not normally choose to befriend, people who
might make me feel uncomfortable to be around.”
Another truth that God has been teaching me lately and this
book confirms is that ministry and leadership is not so much about having the
answers, but rather about asking questions. As Dave writes, “Questions should
lead us.” Dave points to how Christ’s MO was to answer a question with a
question or a story. His example was a very Eastern thing to do and one that we
as Western Christians should really wrestle with and try to put in practice.
As a young leader and one who God has been teaching what it
truly means to live by the Spirit, I especially appreciated his candidness and
honesty about his early years of going to conferences and watching people like
Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. He wrote that they “warned us not to imitate them,
but when you’re young and feel the need to make it happen, you tend to plug and
play rather than innovate and pray.” I’m traveling the country a lot these days
meeting with Church leaders and I’m urging people to let their innovation come
out of prayer. This book and Dave’s own testimony and confession affirmed that
conviction.
Last week at The Idea Camp’s pre-conference meet-up I said
on video that I believe “the future of the Church is going to be messy”. Then
on the flight home I read where Dave writes that “loving the other can be
messy, ugly, unnatural, and perhaps not fun…” He also talked about the
specialness and bonding that happens with people over food. As one who loves to
eat and fellowship with others, this is something I definitely can testify to
and resonate with. He teaches that the metric for this type of ministry is
relational. I think we, as Church leaders, need to hear that and need someone
to get in our face and ask when the last time we ate and drank with people
different from us and people that don’t believe the same way we do.
I’ll close with more praise for how Dave addresses
bottlenecks in the Church. This is something that I, too, see and am praying
through how we can remove these bottlenecks. Dave asks a hard question: “What
squeezes the life out of what is intended to be a sanctuary of strength and a
source of life, hope, and intimacy?” He questions how many churches are about a
place and not nearly enough about the people. I encourage you to read this book
and ask yourself how many in your own church or organization feel “like the
third-string team that plays only if the game is well in hand.” I’ll let him
set that quote up for you in his book and let you chew on it.
The good news is that this is a tremendous and challenging
book. The bad news (not really bad) is that you must wrestle through it and in
a third culture way ask yourself, your leadership and your local church some
very tough and thought provoking questions. If you’re up for a book that will
read you, I encourage you to get a copy and devour it.
-- Greg Atkinson – www.GregAtkinson.com
QUESTIONS FOR DAVE GIBBONS:
- In your book you mention the Medici effect. You
describe the Medici effect as what happens when you’re at a place of multiple
cultural intersections, where learning and innovation are heightened. This took
place for you at various times in your life as you have traveled and especially
when you got to live in Thailand for about a year. What are ways that an
average Joe can try to create or seek out opportunities for the Medici effect to
take place in our own lives? Can it happen through other means than a mission
trip?
- In your book you write that at moments of
desperation people often give up (sell their golden ticket). You say that we
can’t let worrying about something “as common as money get in the way of our
calling or mission or values.” You expressed your new-found freedom and that
pursuing your God-given vision is a feeling beyond words. I appreciate your
encouragement that “God will sustain you.” What would you say to that pastor or
Church leader that is ready to cash in their golden ticket today?
n an earlier chapter, Crouch, in reviewing another work that says
“a worldview… comprises a culture’s answer to four crucial questions: Who are we? Where are we? What’s wrong? What’s the remedy?
, Crouch writes, 
