three questions

Dave Gibbons leaves his listeners with 3 questions (in an interview by Wendy Seidman  in a 2009 supplemental Global Leadership Summit conversation):

"Think about your hand.  What is in your hand?  You have everything you need right now to accomplish God's thing in your city.  Don't compare yourself to the big church or to the small church or to that leader.  What's in your hand?  Really ask God to help you see. What's in your hand may be very uniquely not your strength but maybe again your weakness.  And that leads me to the second question.

When you think about your hand think about the nail print hand of Jesus in the middle.  Think of pain.  So, what is your pain?  Your pain will often guide you better than again your strength.  God allows the pain to dictate who you maybe are feeling compelled to serve.  But also, your pain gives you resonance.  It gives your voice authority cause this world doesn't relate to your accomplishments, to your degrees, to your gifts, but they immediately relate to your pain.  So, your pain is your platform.  It's your voice of authority.  It's your credibility to the world.  Cause remember most of the world lives in suffering.  It's a norm.  They don't live the happy life.

And the last thing is when you think about the hand think about the outskirts of your hand.  Think about the fringe.  Who are the fringe?  Mostly the American movements focus on the masses.  Cause we're thinking we gotta grow our churches..it's a numbers game again.  But I realize Jesus' style, he cared about the masses but he really focused upon the few. And you see intentionality about the fringe, the outsider, the mutants, the misfits, the  freaks of a culture.  The ones who weren't seen- many times they were children and even the women.  So, who are the fringe in your local community? That will guide you in terms of who you actually need to serve and minister.  That doesn't mean we forget about the people like us. But in terms of what we're known for, what's beautiful again, is that we love our neighbor, our neighbor is someone not like us, who's uncomfortable many times to be around, who's maybe even offended us, but as we love these people that's when people realize that's supernatural and that's when they take a closer look at who Jesus is."