Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Articles

My Seminars for Exponential East 2017

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I’m excited to be speaking this week at Exponential East 2017!

If you are at the conference, I’d love for you to join me at one of my seminars.

Pre-Conference: Developing Better Disciple Makers – Hosted by Discipleship.org

  • Join Jim Putman, Ralph Moore, Bobby Harrington, Bill Hull, Ariyana Rimson and Daniel Im to learn how to get better at personally living out Jesus’ final command. The sessions will be practical and led by some of the nations leading authorities and, more importantly, practitioners of disciple making.
  • Time: Monday 1:00pm – 5:00pm
  • Location: Henry Chapel

Pre-Conference: Embracing Disruption – Repurpose Your Church to Redeem Your Community – Hosted by Mosaix

  • An increasingly diverse and cynical society will no longer find credible the mere explanation of theological truth apart from effective community engagement. Advancing the common good, then, and thus the very Gospel, itself, must involve more than mere words, and the building of large congregations filled with people of a similar race, class, or cultural background. In this present future, our common confession must be validated by concrete action and accompanying measurable results along spiritual, social and economic fronts. Indeed this is the expectation of Christ in Matthew 5:16 and of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10. Whether you’re the pastor of an existing church or soon-to-be church planter, don’t miss this first ever presentation designed to help you advance disruption innovation, effective community engagement, and maximize your church’s influence in the community.
  • Time: Tuesday 8:00am – 11:30am
  • Location: Faith Hall – Room 350

Workshop Session 1: Pathways: The Shift from Level 3 to Becoming a Level 4 Leader and Church

  • Join Daniel Im, Mac Lake and Chris Lagerlof as we discuss the process and steps to successfully shifting from being a Level 3 (growth by addition) church to becoming a Level 4 (reproduction) church. We will look at barriers to making this shift as well the necessary steps you must make in your own personal leadership and ministry to successfully navigate this shift. Our conversation will focus on helping you and your church, network or tribe build a culture of reproduction and a level 4 mindset. We will also discuss the pathway and process to successfully be a Level 4 leader and church.
  • Time: Tuesday, 2:30-3:30pm
  • Location: Henry Chapel

Workshop Session 2: A Discipleship Strategy for Multiplication

  • In order to multiply, you need to have a discipleship strategy in place. After all, the multiplication of your church always begins with the multiplication of disciples. In this workshop, learn how to create a strategic discipleship pathway that will help you develop multipliers, rather than consumers.
  • Time: Wednesday, 8:45-9:45am
  • Location: AP Buildings – AP 7

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Ambition, Faith, and Timing

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Last week I covered the paradox of ambition and faith. Today, I want to add a third variable to the mix: timing.

What relationship does ambition and faith have with timing?

Although spiritual leaders can have ambition and God-placed faith, there’s still one major area they can mess up in—timing.

It’s easy for spiritual leaders to mess up in this one area–timing.

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Abraham had a significant calling on his life, and it was to be the father of a great nation, one that was intended to be a blessing to the entire world and one from which the Savior of the world would come. To even believe that this could be true, for him took a great measure of faith, and only a truly ambitious person would’ve even accepted this grand assignment.

The only problem was that Abraham was impatient.

I don’t blame the guy, though. After all, he was childless and seventy-five years old at the time God commissioned him (Gen 12:2–4). In the ensuing years Abraham moved, experienced a famine, lost his wife, then received her back, moved again, got into a fight with his nephew Lot, experienced war, experienced the destruction of a city, and moved again (did I already say that?), among many other things.

In and through these experiences, God reminded him multiple times about this calling that he had placed on his life.

God will often use your current circumstances to remind you about your calling.

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Eleven years later Abraham and his wife Sarah (their names were Abram and Sarai at that time) got fed up about continually hearing this calling and not seeing it come to pass, so they ambitiously took their faith into their own hands.

“Sarai said to Abram, ‘Since the LORD has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.’ And Abram agreed to what Sarai said” (Gen 16:2).

Spiritual leaders understand that there are two different ways to understand time in the Scriptures.

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The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

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A 7-Eleven Vision for Church Planting

“What’s your vision for the orphanage and for Thailand?” I asked the pastor of the orphanage.

“You know, whenever I think about you Koreans and South Korea, I get mixed feelings.”

I was starting to think that I shouldn’t have asked this question in the first place.

The pastor continued, “On the one hand, I’m astounded as to the spiritual transformation God can accomplish in a single country over a short period of time. But on the other hand, I’m upset because 100 years ago, Korea and Thailand were basically the same country—rural, economically challenged, and spiritually lost.”

After giving a sigh of relief, I paused, wondering whether I should interject, but then the pastor continued.

“Have you noticed that there are 7-Elevens pretty much on every street corner in Thailand?” asked the pastor.

I nodded.

“I have this dream that God would do such a transformational work in Thailand that, instead of 7-Elevens on every street corner, we had churches. And I want that work to start here in the orphanage with these children,” explained the pastor.

As I walked away from that conversation, I thought to myself, now that’s ambitious.

The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

What does an entrepreneur dreaming up a new solution for the next greatest app have in common with that pastor in Thailand dreaming about planting churches on every street corner?

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The End of the Sermon?

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“Online news isn’t journalism; it’s copy-and-paste from the newspaper.”

Guess what year that was written? …in the year 2000…🎶🎤🎹 

There used to be a day when getting your news online carried this sort of stigma. To the public, it was seen as sub-par, less than adequate, mediocre, and untrustworthy. To journalists and news organizations, it was an after-thought.

All of this began to shift in 1998 when the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal first broke on The Drudge Report (an Internet news aggregation site) before any newspaper was able to publish it.

Now fast forward 19 years to March 26, 2017, and at 8:36 am, the same thing happened when two young girls weren’t allowed on a United Airlines flight because they were wearing leggings. Yes you heard me…leggings. It’s not like they had burned their bras or were wearing mini-skirts, short-shorts, or anything revealing by any means.

Well, as you’d expect, within minutes a Twitter storm erupted. By the time United “officially” responded and explained why those girls weren’t allowed to board, the damage had already been done. And when this story hit print the next day, it was considered old hat.

In a day and age when seconds matter in the world of information and breaking news, how do newspapers still exist?

How are they even still profitable? Aside from shrinking margins, high fixed costs, and declining advertising revenue, how are they even still relevant?

The front page of a newspaper was the viral Instagram and the trending Tweet of ol’—it was the breaking news and the historic story. That’s where we got the phrase, “Read all about it! Get your paper, and read all about it!”

It’s what many looked forward to in the morning. It was regular reading over breakfast, during the commute to work, and over the water cooler. However, today, it’s nothing but a reminder of what already happened. It’s something we already knew about within minutes, if not seconds of the actual event.

Are live sermons still relevant?

Is it possible that the traditional live sermon could go the way of the newspaper?

There used to be a day when the only way you could hear a sermon was by going to a local church. Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday nights were the typical selection. If you were a part of a Korean church that held early morning prayer, then you could get your prepared biblical exposition every morning before work.

But what about today? Well, as churches continue to cut traditional programming (often starting with their Sunday evening service) and put their sermons online, do you think a day is coming when the Sunday morning live sermon could face the same fate as the newspaper?

I’m not talking about profitability, I’m talking about relevance.

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Faith Like Broccoli

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“What are we going to do? There’s not enough food to feed the children. How did we end up here? How are the children going to react?”

These were the questions the orphanage leaders were asking one another on a hot summer day in Chiang Rai, Thailand. When I was pastoring in South Korea, I had led a team to serve the orphans at this particular orphanage in Thailand. The orphanage had close to 100 children. Some came from poverty-stricken homes where their parents couldn’t afford to feed and house them, and others lost their parents due to one circumstance or another.

These were children who, in the world’s standards, didn’t have much, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Constant laughter, joy, and childish pranks filled this orphanage, whether the children were in school, eating a bowl of rice, or playing games with sticks and vegetables.

…that is, until they ran out of food…

When the orphanage leaders realized they had no way to feed the children, they decided to break the news to the children before they prayed over their last supper.

“Children, we need to pray,” said the orphanage director, “we’ve run out of food, money, and all means to go and buy groceries at the market.”

The childish atmosphere immediately turned into nervous silence.

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Why You Shouldn’t Be Worried About “Job Security”

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“It’s all about job security, right?”

Over the course of my adult life, I’ve heard this phrase multiple times. And it’s always irked me the wrong way.

Now I understand where someone might be coming from—they want to be irreplaceable so that they’re never faced with a pink slip and are without a job. As a result, they never write down their process or train others to do what they can do. They hold onto “industry secrets” and proudly declare that they were certified or educated to do these certain tasks. If they get hit by a bus, then the organization will suffer, since no one else can do their job.

I guess that’s job security…but it sounds pretty selfish to me.

In today’s open-share economy, do “industry secrets” even exist anymore? Sure, education and certification are proof that you’ve gone through the steps, but they don’t prove whether or not you’re competent in an area. After all, there are plenty of courses that I’ve received an “A” in, but I’ll be the first one to tell you that I’m incompetent in Calculus and Organic Chemistry.

No one wants to lose their job. I get it. I’m in the same boat.

But what if I were to tell you that there was another way to guarantee your job security?

It’s about having a posture of generosity, rather than scarcity

  • Scarcity is a closed fist approach to work and life.
  • Generosity is an open palm approach to work and life.
  • Scarcity says, “Cutbacks are inevitable, so I need to make myself irreplaceable.”
  • Generosity says, “Those who develop others will never be without a job.”
  • Scarcity says, “I need to add more tasks onto my list of responsibilities so that I become more valuable to the organization.”
  • Generosity says, “When I develop others to do what I can do, I’ll be entrusted with greater responsibility.”

One of the most selfish things a leader can do is to refuse to reproduce themselves.

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Unity vs Uniformity: A Key Issue for Urban Ministry

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Is your mission to fulfill God’s purpose? Or is it your fame within God’s purposes?

This is a valid question for every Christian leader, but as Dhati Lewis states in his book, Among Wolves: Disciple-Making in the City, it’s especially important for leaders in the urban context.

What is Urban?

As sociologists Gottdiener and Hutchinson explain,

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than 3 billion persons—about half of the world’s population—lived in urban areas. By 2030, this number is expected to increase from 3 to more than 5 billion persons—some 60 percent of the total world population. This will be the first urban century in human history.

In the face of this emerging reality, Dhati and his team—through the church he’s planted, and the ministry he leads—have developed a strategy for indigenous disciple-making in the urban context. They’ve done this by embracing both density and diversity in the city context, and by creating a culture of effective disciple-making.

By 2030, 60 percent of the world is expected to live in urban areas.

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Urban ministry is not the same thing as inner city ministry to the homeless.

Ministry to the homeless that happens in the inner city is definitely urban, but there are other dimensions that must be taken into account. For example, when a neighborhood is undergoing gentrification, you’ll have a ton of socioeconomic diversity.

Extreme poverty can be right beside extreme wealth.

For example, a family who has owned their house for generations may be forced out of their gentrifying neighborhood because they can’t pay the rising property taxes. Sure they might make a lot on the sale of their home, but where will they move? Their life and community are right there…and it has been there for decades. Is that fair just because some developer wants to build condos and make a quick buck?

Complex issues like gentrification and the mixing of socioeconomic classes are one of the many reasons Dhati defines urban as a combination of two words: density and diversity.

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Dealing with Conflict and Criticism

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When collaborating with others, conflict is to be expected.

Conflict is inevitable when you’re actually doing the hard work of collaborating. After all, if there’s anything that’s a guarantee in leadership, it’s conflict and criticism. So how do you respond? Do you embrace it? Or avoid it?

If there’s anything that’s a guarantee in leadership, it’s conflict and criticism.

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Conflict is not the problem, avoiding conflict resolution is.

So have conflict, and then wrestle to resolution. But whatever you do, don’t avoid conflict; it’s necessary for a healthy team. If you never have conflict on your team, then this might be symptomatic of a deeper issue.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your team:

  • Do people feel the freedom to say what they really think?
  • Are you, as a leader or manager giving enough ownership to those that you lead that mistakes are inevitable?
  • Or is the rope so short because you have control issues and you want everything to be “just right”? And by “just right,” I mean it’s your way or the highway?
Whatever you do, don’t avoid conflict; it’s necessary for a healthy team.

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Allow people to disagree with you, but create environments for this.

In other words, when it’s planning and strategizing time, have a cone of safety where anyone can say anything. This is where differing points of view can come up and be wrestled with. But once you agree on a way forward, make sure everyone is on board. 

Now what if people on your team have conflict with one another?

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Collaboration is a Leadership Competency

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There’s a children’s book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It starts off like this,

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Have you ever had one of those days? In 2004, the US Basketball team sure did.

1992 was the first year that professional basketball players were allowed to compete in the Summer Olympic games. This was the birth of the “Dream Team.” I remember watching Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Magic Johnson, and Charles Barkley dominate. I had their basketball cards. I played them in video games. Man, this was the year for basketball.

From that year on, just like Canadians were always expected to dominate hockey, the Americans were expected to do the same with Basketball. After all, who could ever challenge them? Who could beat them? The Americans had not only won gold every time since the Dream Team had competed, but they had also never lost a game—they were undefeated.

But in 2004 it happened in Athens, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics.

And although the US team had superstars like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwayne Wade, they lost their opening game in the tournament against Puerto Rico—a team that they should’ve crushed. Instead, they got crushed and were beat 92-73. This was the biggest loss in Olympic history for the US; in fact, it was their first loss ever. Their performance was a far cry from the original Dream Team who typically beat their opponents by 44 points.

Was this the end of the Dream Team?

Well, as much as they scrapped their way to the semifinals, they were eventually defeated by Argentina. Since NBA players were allowed to compete in the Olympics, 2004 was the only year that the USA men’s team did not win gold. In fact, 2004 was the only year they ever lost a game too. In 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, and 2016, not only did the US men’s basketball team win gold, but they went undefeated.

So what went wrong?

I only have one thing to say—just one thing. You know that phrase, “Teamwork makes the dream work?” Yeah…I know, pretty amazing, right? Well, apparently they didn’t know that…

Collaboration is the ability to work with others

In this previous article, I outlined the two-year process that I was a part of to identify the universal core competencies of church leaders. Collaboration was one of them. This was a competency that just kept on coming up.

In order to collaborate well, you need to start by working with others

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While collaboration is simply defined as the ability to work with others, it goes far beyond that. To collaborate well, yes, you do need to display proficiency in your ability to work with others.

But as you grow in this competency, as a leader, you need to learn how to:

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Should You Love Those You Lead?

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The only people who can hurt you deeply are the ones you allow to get deep inside your soul. This is what makes love so dangerous. – Erwin McManus

In order to be an effective leader, do you need to love those you’re leading? Is love a competency that a leader needs to display proficiency in?

When it comes to the task or the domain of your work, love will go a long way. After all, when you love what you’re doing, time flies. Can’t you remember doing something for hours upon end, only to realize that it’s past midnight? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this flow. This is what it means to work in your area of greatest talent or strength.

But what about the people you’re working with? Do you need to love them in order to be an effective leader?

The straightforward answer is no. There are a lot of people that I’ve worked with that I definitely did not love. Now obviously, I’m not talking about the romantic sense of love. I’m talking about the sort of brotherly love that causes you to care for, think about, and want to hang out with others outside of work hours.

For some, this sounds like crossing boundaries. “Shouldn’t work be work and personal life be personal life?” While there are many that still hold to this view, there are an increasing number of leaders–millennials especially–that want to see that line done away with.

Just think about it. If you had the choice, wouldn’t you want to love what you’re doing and love who you’re doing it with?

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