dave gibbons’ new book, the monkey and the fish, is a great look at the kind of perspective and leadership we need in the global church today. i’ll post a longer review of it soon.
but there were so many moments, while reading it, that i felt like i was reading a parallel book to youth ministry 3.0. i had that sense (and i told dave this, in an email) that i was driving down a city street and, at the intersections, noticing another vehicle on a parallel streets traveling the same direction and speed.
i’m starting to sense that some of the stuff i wrote about in ym3.0 isn’t merely epochal, but broader and more fluid than that. one of the places i really sensed this was in a little chart gibbons included deep into the book. the sentences leading up to the chart say:
some of us thought it would be a helpful exercise to list the attributes of jesus — especially those that people through the centuries have been so captivated by — and then list what the church at large is known for. here is what came up with:
don’t misread me here: i’m not saying i have it all figured out, or that youth ministry 3.0 is clearly a reflection of everything about jesus. but i so resonated with the words on this chart, and felt they reflected much of the shift i wrote about us needing. not in every case, but in many of the rows, it would be easy to swap out “youth ministry 3.0” for the left column heading and “youth ministry 2.0” for the right column heading.
book i’m in the midst of: finished dave gibbons’