Dave Gibbons - Third Culture Leadership

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.

• God has called us to a church that is contrarian.

• Third Culture is adaptation. It is painful adaptation. It is the mindset and will to love learn and serve in any culture.

• The 3rd culture leader is focused on the fringe. The misfit, not the masses.

• It isn’t the masses that lead us…it is the fringe.

• If there is ever a time to impact culture it is now. The margins lead the movements.

• How does vision typically move. Starts with the leader…moves to exec team…and continues to move out.

• IN God’s economy the misfit on the fringe develops the vision and it moves INTERNALLY.

• In our communities we need to be asking, ’ who is the outsider?’

• What hinders us from loving on the fringe? It is our metrics. 3rd culture leaders must have a different set of of metrics.

• Up and to the right is an illusion.

• Failure is success to God.

• Your pain is your platform to your community. Your failures are gifts to God so you can make a difference.

• The world doesn’t understand America’s success but they do understand suffering.

• Do you have the time to listen to the stories from your congregation?

• How do we quantify vision? Relationships always trump vision. We don’t need to more visionaries. We need more relation-aries.

• The best discipleship is life on life. NOT 5 classes.

• Obedience is more important than passion.

• Four acts of obedience if you want to start a revolution:

1. Deeper collaboration - Working with other churches and organizations
2. Communal living - Choosing to live together.
3. Prayer - The church needs to believe in the power of the holy spirit.
4. Radical sacrifice for the outsider -  Are you willing to die to your own values?

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