The Monkey and the Fish.

Book Review.
Gibbons, Dave. The Monkey and the Fish. Liquid leadership for a third-culture church. Zondervan. 2009
Comment. Henry.
Doing church in a global and cultural context is the contemporary challenge that churches must be prepared to respond to. This is a huge challenge. This resource is a helpful tool in attempting to do just that. Like most books (authors) Dave has developed his own vocabulary for presenting his thesis, i.e. third culture church. There are some good take-a-ways here for those who desire to be third-culture personally, to be salt and light. Although the word does not come up, this is really emergent stuff.
“Third culture is the mindset and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort.” (38) This is the church’s mandate. We need to continually evaluate how well we are doing when it comes to embracing our third culture. How are we doing when it comes to loving people who are different from us, perhaps even threatening? When we do this we love God. Third-culture churches have made some significant shifts, e.g. individual to community, comfort to painful, etc.
Great leadership focuses more on asking questions than giving answers. “When we make a church not about a place or form but instead a home where everyone plays- a church without walls- we end up with something liberating, empowering, and engaging”. (127)
A third-culture roundtable discussion involving multi-national, multicultural leaders tackled the following topics, “the third-culture concept, crisis in the church, big issues facing the church, and third-culture ministry movements”. (153-163)
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