By Tim Schraeder from Leadership Summit 2009
Dave Gibbons is the founding pastor of Newsong Church, a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-continental, multi-site church in Irvine, CA, named as one of the most innovative churches in America by Outreach Magazine. Gibbons also leads the Newsong Global Alliance, a catalytic church organization with expanding, worldwide reach into Asia, Central America, and Europe. The author of The Monkey and the Fish, Gibbons is a vision-oriented leader known for his insightful thinking on the future of the church. He brings expertise on “Third Culture” leadership and the top skills and experiences every leader will need to reach our global culture with the gospel.
Weakness guides us more than our strengths.
> How do we quantify our vision?
> Haven’t we already been given the vision? Love God. Love your neighbor.
Relationships trump vision.
> You can’t have great vision unless you have a great relationship with God.
> Jesus only did what He saw His father doing (John 5)
> We need more relationaries, not visionaries.
> People who know what it’s like to see and feel the pain, not just know about it.
> We need different metrics in the church.
> We usually don’t see them until God allows pain into our lives.
How His Life Changed
Priority Shifts… what’s your 70/30?
> He spends more time equipping leaders than on sermon prep.
> The best discipleship happens with life on life, not programmed through five classes.
> It’s a decision and resolve to live with people.
> He made a decision to live with people who are different than him.
> He reads people different than him.
> Goes to conferences where he doesn’t see the same people.
> Medici Effect: effect that happens when you get multiple domains together and the brilliance that emerges from them.
> Design/Space shifts – each location has it’s own style and is it’s own not-for-profit.
> Lets the indigienous leaders lead.
Third Culture Leaders Value Obedience More than Passion
> To often we equate passion to a feeling.
> Jesus didn’t “feel” like going to the cross.
> It’s more about obedience than what you feel.
Four Acts of Obedience
1. Deeper collaboration
> When we talk about spiritual gifts, it’s not just contained to an individual church, what if the gifts were all of the churches in the individual cities? Each contributing its own strengths.
2. Communal living
> We need to choose to live together.
> We need to have an “open door” policy.
3. Prayer
> All great movements of God have a fundamental element of prayer.
> The church doesn’t believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.
> Do you beleive the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you?
> If you did, you’d pray!
4. Radical sacrifice for the outsider.
> Are you willing to die to your own values?
> Are you willing to move to another culture?
Our calling is lovely to us, but we need to see the beauty of it.
The world will take notice of our great God if we embrace the vision of adaptation.
