Diversity in the Church

by Dave Gibbons

Gabe Lyons: Today we're talking with Dave Gibbons. He's the founding pastor of New Song Church, a multigenerational, multicultural, and multisite church in inner city L.A., North Orange County, Irvine, Bangkok. So, they not only are doing things in the U.S. but also have an international focus. One of the things that's great about listening to Dave is his incredible perspective on how we can transition from culture to culture and on what's important to a culture and on how we, as Christians and as human beings, can relate to each other in different kinds of environments.

Gabe: Thanks for being with us, Dave. Lets get started. What are some of things that you're struggling with within your church and with having multiple sites and that kind of a format for your church? What are some of your thoughts on churches with multiple sites and what advice might you offer?

Dave Gibbons: The multisite movement, I believe, is a move towards decentralization but I want to say to you that I'm not sure if it's far enough. I think a lot it can happen if we're willing not to take credit for it and put your name brand on it, being our churches. And if you're willing to do that and you truly believe this kingdom, I think we can release the movement to really be multiple forms. So I'd say multisite is that you're starting from the center of your big church and then you're moving one step out. But, you still have the logo brand connected to the center—which is not bad, we're not saying it's bad—but I guess that the next step is going to be the organic thing with the bigger churches as the simple church. Try to figure out who you are as a leader, what your DNA is about, and your context. Most likely, you're going to need all sizes and styles of leaders to develop this. My background had been mostly developing mega church for multisites.

My encouragement is to the state of your mind, to say “I need to keep letting this thing go.” The more you try to control it, the more you have to manage. I'm not sure about you, but for myself, I'm an entrepreneur. I get bored after three years. So, do you really want to manage this monster? And then, do you want to manage it to the point where you're the charismatic leader that's leading this thing? If you're gone, what are you going to do?

You can do that but really examine your life. I don't know if I can give you the answer on what you've got to do, but in terms of the challenge, that to me was the challenge is can I create these multiple forms and that we don't have to get credit for it.

So, for example, in Bangkok, we partnered with the Pentecostal Assembly of God of Canada. It's one of the biggest denominations in Canada. Well, they love what we're doing and they say, "Hey, can we partner with you?" I said, "Of course." I go, "You can actually have your name brand on it. That's the big thing with you." I basically said, "We'll wear your T-shirts." And so, to me, if we have that type of mentality, it’s going to be awesome. So when you do multisites, consider that.

There is a book out by Leadership Network on Multisite Revolution. This could be a whole other talk, but that book had a macro picture and it comes to my mind right away.

Gabe: How and what are you doing differently to lead, direct, and even manage these international campuses of your church versus the U.S. campuses? What are some of the different dynamics at play?

Dave: We're still working through that process. That's really a hard, difficult process. Several things that we've done to help us with is to try to determine what the collaborative platforms are. If you're not going to be under the same 501(c)(3) or nonprofit entity and you don't have this legal structure that you're accountable to, what really binds us together. And we said bottom line has to be relationship, right?

So, we said there are three platforms; there's creative resources (let's share creative resources); leadership development; let's do residency models or residential models of each of our sites where we can transfer people back and forth, kind of like Francis Schaeffer's house L’Abri, or YWAM. And then the last platform is mission and initiatives; there are some things you can't do by yourself. It's better to get other people with you. So, what can we do together that would have greater impact?

So, we decided on those three platforms. The other covenant that we made is to share best practices with each other. When I was in Southeast Asia or Korea I talked to a Coca-Cola executive and he says they have global partnerships. So I just asked him, "What do you do when you come together?" And he says, "Well, we just come together and we share best practices. And then if people want to pursue it, then they have side meetings, offline meetings." I said, "That's brilliant."

So that's all we do is once a month we try now to gather our site pastors, we have a phone conference call, each person shares his best practices and the highlight. And then, we pray for each other, done for that month. Then, once a year, we come together at what we call, our Vibe Conference.

Gabe: Each of the multisites is so unique when a lot of times when you think of multi site, it's pumping in the preacher to a video venue and there they're all kind of all the same services. Talk about each city and what's going on and what that looks like.

Dave: We want to be contextualized to the leadership of that community and to the people of the community. Like our Crenshaw site, even though there's like 70 percent of Asians at that site, it's led by predominant African-American staff because the vision is that as time goes on, there's going to be increasingly more African Americans. And so, what's key for each of our sites is to utilize local leadership, people who are adapted to that culture and who represent that culture. We don't franchise our music, either. Each of the sites determines the music they're going to do. So, Crenshaw has more of a gospel style of music, which we wouldn’t necessarily do in Irvine.

Now Bangkok. If you do international churches, they're typically all white or all internationals, Westerners. Rarely do you see the indigenous people as part of those international churches and that bugged the tar out of me. I remember going in these churches going, "Why in the world are they here?" And I imagine the business guys are asking that, too, "Why did God bring me to this foreign place?" My guess is not just to make a buck but to also make a difference, right?

And so, to me, the church has to get a grip of where we want to focus on both; again the third culture, the indigenous people. Raise up indigenous leadership and also the expats who can do multiple cultures. But you'll find that there are these two spheres that come together of those who are indigenous and those who are more international.

There is a circle inside here between the two that's luminal; that's third culture. They are the ones that the apostle called. This is the group, man. If we're targeting anybody, it's those people where they say I can become all things to all men. So, each of our sites has local leadership and they represent the culture of that community.

Gabe: What is your ongoing relationship with the different multisite leaders? Do you have regular conference calls with these leaders? What is that intentional time like and what do each of you take away from those times?"

Dave: Yeah, we do once a month now. Those are the best calls. I look forward to that. We just started a few months ago. It's so cool to hear what God is doing in Mexico City, London, India, Bangkok, Seoul or North Orange County L.A., Dallas. And then when they come together, what you get is this cool picture of God because you got to remember when it comes with pain, your theology is formed by pain and there's a different view of God you get and appreciation of God. So when you hear these different perspectives, I'm enriched, man.

I go, “We're missing out so much when we just have a homogeneous type of conversation and community. It's pretty homogeneous in modern church times, right? But, man, when you try to bring in the globe to this and you hear a person who's been in South Africa dealing with the reconciliation issues, you deal with the real person, man watch out. Your vision of God really grows and your love for the world.”

Gabe: How do you bridge the way of thinking you encounter between the East and the West and, particularly, how might that relate to someone who lives in the Southeast.

Dave: There's a great book called "The Medici Effect" by Frans Johansson and it has to do with this idea that the greatest innovation and creativity happens at the intersections of culture. So, what you want to do is help bring your people into those intersections. And so that's what we do, whenever we're trying to bridge a gap, we take them to the intersection.

For example, instead of just franchising New Song's model, our first multisite was actually in Crenshaw, which is polar opposite with New Song's prominent culture is which is Asian and White. And so, we went to an African-American community. Before we did that, we did a lot of work. We did prayer walks, we exposed them to the leadership in that community. So there wasn't this suspicion or fear because that's what usually occurs is when you're dealing with multiple cultures is that aspect. And with Asians, there's a positive stereotyping sometimes where they're always thought of as academics and the brightest. Asians ruin their curves in the classroom, that kind of thing, right?

So, another piece of that is them also seeing the broad range of Asians. One of the reasons why I went to develop the third culture concept was because I've noticed how much people are talking about multi-ethnicity or diversity. They look at our church and they say, "You know, that's not really diverse or multi ethnic, that's Asian." And I'd say, "Would you look at Europeans that way?" You see that they're distinct cultures. France or England, although they look alike, they're very distinct.

And so the same is true within the Asian context. When we transfer or transcend the Japanese-Korean gap, that's black-white because there is hostility against the Japanese because of the oppression. They changed the names of Koreans. They forced them to do that. And so, there are some real hostilities there.

So, again, we're having to go to intersections of culture by experiencing it. I'd have them read people they're uncomfortable with. I'd take a look at Malcolm X, a lot of people are afraid of Malcolm X but, man, when you understand that guy's spirit and what he went through, I'd be mad too. So I could understand his vitriolic tone.

And so, have them read people that they're not comfortable with of other cultures, like the Malcolm X. There's also a good book called Martin & Malcolm that's actually a good book for people to read. We actually encourage our people to read this when we're talking about the racial reconciliation issue.

The other thing I would recommend is don't do like the pastor pulpit exchange as much. I don't think that's a big deal for most people, pulpit exchanges. A lot of times what pulpit exchange does is it makes you feel like you did racial reconciliation when really it's nothing at all like that. What I would strongly encourage is for you to go make a friend with somebody that's have a totally different culture than you and challenge your people to do that and then it starts with you.

When I talk about justice and compassion, it's easy for me to preach it, but then I say if I'm going to be I real about it, how do I dedicate my time because that's really our commodity. That one's priceless, right? How much time do I dedicate towards this? So I said, let's start off by 10 percent. So I looked at my work-week and then I said, "OK, 10 percent of my time is going to be devoted towards loving the unlovely to me or the marginalized and the French." Those are a couple of things that I did.

The other thing is to look at best practices around the world. You can go look in your city probably and also in cities around North America and the world. Go to your vision trips to those best practices and how they're doing the racial reconciliation, crossing the bridges. That'll help your congregation. And then you do a sermon series. That alway helps too, right?

Gabe: PreviouslyDave brought up a question, a really important question that he emphasized was one of the clearest ways for us to connect with people in different cultures. That question is, "What is my pain?" And so in his answer, he really deals with how important that question is in dealing with people from other cultures.

Dave: You know, most people can't relate to your strengths and to your gifts and I find, a lot of times, that’s what people talk about. So you're introduced, they introduce a speaker, here are all the gifts, and so you have a wild moment but the truth is most people don't relate to it, they don't connect. And so what I found is, especially when I speak, if I talk about my mom's death and I talk about my parents' divorce, there's an immediate connection. And when you find that you go cross-cultural, the same is true. Most people can't relate to you sort of touchdown an American football. Most people don't even like American football. They love soccer, which is football to them, right? So the key though is the issue of pain, we find out, as I went even in Bangkok, I really connected to people. So I just told stories.

The other pain element is when I think about the Asians and Buddhism. I think that Buddhism is a real attempt to address suffering. And so that's why, again, that's part of our culture. It's really cool. When I was in Northeast Thailand, there was a theologian I met in the rural villages and this guy was amazing. Is John still here? He knows Adam Edgerly. Adam's being trained at the Billy Graham Center. He's one of the top African-American leaders emerging in this country.

Adam went with me to rural parts of Thailand and listened to this guy named Bob Holt. He's about 60 years of age and talked about contextualization and missiology. When he spoke, Adam's mouth was agape and he said, "Dave, I learned more from this guy in one hour than I did in my professors' classes."

The reason why Bob was so deep was because of his pain. He's been ostracized, he's crippled, handicapped, physically challenged, whatever you want to say, but he's really, really a beautiful man once you get to know his heart and the struggles that he's gone through. So. that's probably what I'm talking about in terms of pain and that's the bridge. It's the platform for credibility, authority, and communication.

John: May I just say a quick follow-up to that? Why do you think within the Christian culture and especially with Christian leadership embracing pain is a very difficult thing to do and talk about their pain as a difficult thing to be in something that just doesn't happen a lot?

Dave: I think our whole secret movement and our trying to reach the masses movement, the question that we like to ask primarily is what's going to make people comfortable to stay. I'd like to take a contrarian position to that. What should they feel uncomfortable about? There are a lot of things we should be uncomfortable about that we should highlight within our ministries.

Gabe: Dave, please briefly discuss your book, "The Monkey and The Fish." This is where you’re really dealing with this concept about third cultures and shares specifically where that title came from.

Dave: It's based upon the Eastern parable where the monkey is in the branches and he sees this fish in distress in the water. So he said, "Man, I got to help this thing out." He had compassion. And so, he jumps into the water to save the fish. He pulls the fish out and says, "Man, I'm here to rescue you and take care of you." So he goes, "Hey, you look tired. Why don't you rest a while?" So then he puts him on dry land. And then he feels really good and said, "OK, there you go." And he takes off thinking he did a heroic deed. And I said man, that's how we do business and that's how we do church around the world. We go in with our ideas, our frameworks and we go in and screw it all up. We kill people and we say "Man, we're martyrs" but the truth is it wasn't you being a martyr for Jesus, it was just you. And so, I say, "Hey, we've got to be a little bit more flexible with this." Going to a culture and listening, that's the key skills, listening set and hearing, really hearing it out, right, and seeing who the people are because you're going to find languages emerge.

Just as much as you being a student of that language, you've got to be a student of not just the language that's the nomenclature, the word, the text itself but how do they do life because how they do life really connects with them. So, yes, that's "The Monkey and The Fish" and then the subtitle is "Liquid Leadership for Third-Culture Church."

Gabe: I hope you enjoyed this opportunity to really get behind the scenes, understanding more about Dave Gibbons, about New Song Church, about their philosophy and relating to multiple cultures, really investing in the context in which they've been placed. Continue to just check out more of what we have at Qideas.org to just continue to stimulate this kind of learning and conversations.

Is your church truly diverse? What can you do to make your community more hospitable to ethnic, cultural, and economic differences?
How can you take Dave's ideas of Third-Culture and apply them to the racially divided church in America?

Editor's Note: This piece has been adopted from this Q Audio.

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