Book Review: The Monkey and the Fish

I recently read Dave Gibbons book The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church. Perhaps the best part of the book for me was the analogy he uses through an Eastern parable. It is the parable of the Monkey and the Fish. In essence we have a monkey, whom perhaps is well-intentioned, who sees a fish in the water. There has been a recent typhoon and the fish is struggling with all its might to get to up river. The monkey sees this and reaches down into the volatile waters at great personal risk to save the fish. The monkey grabs him and places him on dry land. To the monkey the fish showed great excitement but soon fell into a peaceful sleep. As Gibbons so eloquently puts it, it died. As so his revelation to the church in the 21st is that we are flapping away in excitement on the land, but soon if we are not careful we will to will be asleep with the fishes.

With that Dave walks us through the concept of Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church. In other words, how do we in the church world lead in the global world of today? In order for us to do that we need to live like Christ did in a culturally contextual world that allows us to understand the people to whom we are trying to reach. It essence it shatters the old mission concept of going into a land and build churches that look like western churches with their big pillars and pews, instead it asks us to look at how we can meld faith into the cultural context of the group we seek to be missionaries to.

Dave goes on to explain that to be first culture is to embrace one culture, to be second culture is to embrace another culture. The synergy point is the third culture or that you do not embrace either/or, but to embrace both/and, working synergistically hand in hand with both cultures.

He talks about how to lead in a third culture church through his chapters Liquid, Wardrobe, Neighbor, Liquid Bruce Lee, Three Questions That Become the Answer, cWoWs: Everyone Plays and Ripples. Liquid focuses on the need to understand globalism and how this impacts the church. It also focuses on how we can understand and embrace other people’s culture better in the vein of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In other words, we need to be willing to cross lines, whatever they are, in order to reach people, where they are, not where we think that they should be.

This is a warning cry for the church. The more we try to reach people the way we think, the more we push them away from us. Just think about the story that Gibbons uses with the Good Samaritan. The way of the church at that time was to think of the Samaritan as a lesser person, someone that did not deserve the time of day, yet Jesus uses this person as a powerful example of what it means to live in a “Third Culture “ world where you are friends to all. Being a good neighbor means being good to those who are different than us. It also means to be a good neighbor to people who believe different than us.

This book is a must read for anyone in church leadership, but it also has some powerful things to think about for those of us who are lay leader and just members. Gibbons not only points us in the direction of leadership in a “Third Culture” world, but gives us just some good life lessons to live by as a people who are called to follow Jesus and embrace His calling and fulfill the Great Commission.

Some people have said that they do not think that Dave’s exploitation of “Third Culture” is clear. However, he tells us that it emerges from Genesis 12. This is a great passage. This is the call to Abram to go out to a land that he is not familiar with and God’s promise that “all peoples on earth will be bless through you.” (Genesis 12:3) “Third Culture” is about being called to go out, to love, to server and to do it no matter what even if it is difficult. Why? Because all people will be blessed through all of us that go and serve as God has commanded us to.

We are often too worried about our own kingdoms that we forget about those who are on the outside, marginalized and cast aside. These are the people that Jesus went to do his ministry with. He meets them where they were. He ate with them. He walked with them. He cured them. He saved them. He died for them….and us.

The good news is that this it is not too late. We have been given a tremendous challenge by Dave’s book. We can either watch the fish swim upstream and pull it out to be with us, or we can just into the water with the fish and help it get to its destination. The choice is yours. God has prepared you. Now you need to take the next step.



Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”