city

Investing In Your City For The Long Haul

January 23, 2018 By Daniel Im

I love this paragraph from Rich Perez’s Mi Casa Uptown,

I realized that if I was going to contribute to the much-needed reform in culture, personally and as a spiritual leader in my community, I was going to have to plant roots here—a tall order, for sure, and intimidating in some ways. But why does this matter? Because I’m convinced more than ever that in our constantly changing culture, anything that takes root will take time.

“Anything that takes root will take time.”

As I mentioned in my book, No Silver Bullets, our obsession with the quick fix, the instant solution, and the “to-go” option in life and in ministry handicaps the work that God wants to do in us and through us…

…and when the best things in life often require time to mature, marinate, and develop the flavor profiles that aren’t there instantaneously, we cheat ourselves and those around us when we carelessly just go from one thing to the next.

We cheat ourselves and those around us when we carelessly just go from one thing to the next.

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Rich makes a good point about this,

And if we, as kingdom-of-God citizens, don’t look to the long haul, we won’t have a considerable effect. Time will be one of our greatest assets. Risk will be one of our closest friends. Transforming love will be our greatest motivation. Is it worth our time? Is it worth the risk? Is it worth the sacrifice? Ask any kid who doesn’t have a dad or big brother. Ask the parents working long hours to make sure their kids have book bags for school. Ask the young girl who sees no other way to feel accepted and cared for than to give herself away to men. Ask the older gentleman who feels enslaved by his ambition to climb the financial ladder. Ask the immigrants who quietly move about the community, gripped by fear because they’re unable to communicate in a foreign country. Ask them. They will all say that it is worth the time, risk, and sacrifice.

If we don’t look to the long haul, we won’t have a considerable effect. – @richperez729

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So what should we do about this?

Pastor, What Makes Your City Unique?

July 26, 2016 By Daniel Im

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The type of leader who plants an urban church looks different than the one who plants a rural one.

This is a relatively unimpressive statement for obvious reasons. After all, those who would want to live on a 20 acre piece of land and raise chickens are typically not the same type of people who would want to live in an 800 square foot high rise and prune a banzai tree or a Chia pet. (Remember when that was a thing?)

This is kind of like someone who asks you if they can ask you a question, when by virtue of asking you that question, they’ve already asked you a question. Or, as the great philosopher and comedian Steve Martin said, “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”

What makes something obvious anyway? And who determines what constitutes as common knowledge?

Okay, before I cause you to have an existential breakdown, let me get to the point of this nonsense.

The Point

In the past few months, I’ve been traveling quite a bit talking about church planting, leadership, and discipleship. I’ve been sharing from my latest book that I co-authored with Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches, as well as from the latest research we conducted on church planting and multiplication. You can download that research for free here.

As a result, I’ve had the privilege and blessing to meet with church planters and pastors in major metropolitan cities like New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. And I’ve noticed something.

The type of leader who plants a church in New York is different than the type of leader who plants in Houston or Los Angeles.

It’s not that they necessarily look different, or require distinctive theological education, but there’s definitely a difference. It’s almost…intangible.

It’s kind of like when someone asks a happily married couple how to tell if someone is the one. The answer is often, “You just know when you know.”

Is relocation required for urban ministry?

December 18, 2012 By Daniel Im

A picture I took in downtown Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics

Did you know that in 2010, slightly over half of the world’s population lived in major urban centres, but that by 2050, the estimate is 70%?

What are the implications of this massive shift? Well, this scale of an urban migration can often lead to the separation of families due to work and a loss of a communal identity. It can also lead to ecological challenges, increasingly concentrated areas of poverty, and a decrease in family support systems.

Thus, cities need to be on our radar, since this massive shift IS happening.

Doing ministry in the city is going to be an increasingly talked about issue in the 21st century, but is it actually necessary to move into the city? Or is it possible to have an effective and fruitful ministry in the city, while living in the suburbs and just driving in?

Ray Bakke, in his book, A Theology as Big as the City (click here for a book review), has a strong view on this issue. He deeply believes that there is no substitute for “the conscious relocation of Christians to set up residency and witness in the midst of the evil” in the cities. He even goes as far to say that there exists a relationship between the preservation of urban communities and the presence of the godly.

Incarnational Ministry in the Inner City

November 17, 2012 By Daniel Im

During my recent visit to L.A., I visited Macarthur Park with my classmates. It was originally built in 1880 as a vacation destination for the rich, but then it degraded into a gang banging, drug filled, crime scene from the 1960’s-1980’s. Now, it is a cleaned up multicultural neighborhood that is predominantly Mexican and Central American.

While I was there, I visited Innerchange, which is an incarnational Christian order among the poor with locations across the world. They are communities of missionaries who are intentionally choosing to live in marginalized neighborhoods in order to live out the Gospel there, in both word and deed. It’s because of their presence in that neighbourhood, along with Mama’s Hot Tamales, that MacArthur Park is now what it is.

What impacts me the most about this experience is how Innerchange is not just in the neighborhood to temporarily fix a problem, but that they are there living in the neighborhood with the people.

They are ministers amongst the poor who are critically thinking about how to transform problems into assets.