Barnabas File

One of the most significant things I have learned in recent years is a new way of looking at missions.  Some excellent mentors—Eliot Roberts, Pat Anderson, Rob Nash, Mart Gray, Steve Street, Mike Young and others--have shown me that we must respect the humanity of those with whom we minister.  I have too often seen ministry as something that I or my group “do for” someone else without any regard for whether they want “to be done unto.”  They are not recipients by partners. Dave Gibbons follows this perspective in The Monkey and The Fish:  Liquid Leadership for a Third- Culture Church.   If we are to mesh smoothly as ministry partners with others, we must observe certain principles.  Gibbons outlines them in this way. First, we must listen more than we speak.  This is a skill that is often difficult to learn! Second, we must believe that “the locals” know more than we do and learn from them.  They live there; they know the situation ...

Dave Gibbons, pastor of Newsong Church, has mined his own life and experiences in writing The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third Culture Church.     In embracing his Korean and Anglo background, he has learned the value of seeing needs with different eyes—those of the “outsider.” Gibbons writes, “Third culture is the mindset and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort.”   He expands this definition by explaining that third culture is not simply a strategy but a way that believers are to live—loving God and loving neighbor. In order to do this, we must be like water.   As a liquid, water adapts to fit its environment.   Using the metaphor of water as the Good News for a thirsty world, Gibbons challenges the church “to be open to creatively designing or embracing new forms, languages, customs, and containers to deliver that water.” Doing this will require a radical change in the way mo...