WCA Leadership Summit Session 5: Dave Gibbons

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.

Notes from this session follow…

• Things aren’t always what they seem.
• Two greatest commandments. Love God, love your neighbor.
• Who is my neighbor? We usually think they’re people like us.
• He’s called us to build a church that is contrarian, abnormal
• Third-culture leader? Painful adaptation. The mindset and will to live…??? (missed the rest of the definition)
• It’s normal for us to love someone like us, but the world stops and looks when we love someone who seems unforgivable.
• Third-culture leader focuses on the misfit rather than the masses.
• The fringe and the margins lead the movements.
• What hinders us from loving on the fringe? Our metrics.
• 1) Your pain is God’s success. Your weaknesses and failures are a gift from God so you can make a difference in this world.
• Another issue is how we quantify vision.
• 3) Relationships trump vision
• We don’t need more visionaries but more relationaries.
• We say it’s not about the building but what happens within the building. But maybe it’s what happens outside the building that’s most important.
• How my life changed?
• 1) My priorities changed
• What if your 70% is leadership development instead of programs.
• My main task is the inviting and equiping leaders.
• I have an open door policy – anyone can walk in my front door any time of day.
• A commitment and resolve to hang out with people and live with them.
• Obedience is more important than passion
• 4 acts of obedience 1) Deeper collaboration, 2) Communal living, 3) Prayer, 4) Radical love for the outsider
• Story about his mom.