Monday, August 10, 2009

Leadership Summit Learning I - "Third Culture"

Thoughts from Dave Gibbons, The Monkey and the Fish

"Third culture is the mindset and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort."

"If there's one quality that matters most to the fate of the church in the twenty-first century, it's adaptability."

"The church has an amazing opportunity to become what God is hoping we will become. We need fresh counter intuitive ways of leading-in practice and in philosophy."

"Our task as the church is to be water. To flow. Not crash."

"Our water--our message--remains what it always has been: the love of Jesus. Our forms, our containers can change. Must change. Furthermore, our conflicts shouldn't be about forms."

"Being third culture is about being water to a world that is deeply thirsty when it comes to spirituality and meaning, and is in need of adaptive and contextualized language and forms when talking about God and Christianity."

"The mindset-a passion to be open to new cultures and new ways, and a devotion to see shifts in society and the world at large and to respond exuberantly and artfully --is at the heart of being a third-culture church."

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