Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Articles

Stop Chasing the Platform

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“You’re not big enough, smart enough, wealthy enough, strong enough, funny enough, famous enough…”

Ugh, I want to throw up—and it’s not because these messages seem to be everywhere I look. I want to throw up because they’re all true.

It’s true that others are bigger, smarter, richer, stronger, funnier, and more known than you. And it’s also true that you are bigger, smarter, richer, stronger, funnier, and more known than others. But let’s play this out to the end.

Even if you do reach the top and beat out everyone else around you—whatever that looks like—the clouds will eventually clear, only to uncover the fact that there are even higher mountains to climb. And at what loss or expense will you have done this? Only to realize that the success that you apparently achieved is like vapor or a vanishing mist?

Success is like vapor or a vanishing mist. It’s there, but impossible to grasp.

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It.never.ends.

And by “it,” I’m referring to this game of comparison that we always seem to be caught up in. The rat race. And this pursuit for contentment in the very things that never seem to satisfy.

Just consider these words from a famous comedian and actor that seemed to have it all,

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.

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(This is from episode 43 of the IMbetween Podcast that I co-host with my wife.)

Wow. I guess Jim Carrey is finished playing games. I wonder if he’s tired of his mask and God persona.

I was recently interviewed on writing in my thirties and what it takes to get published.

Now if this is something you’re aspiring toward, you’ve likely come across the term, “platform.”

These days, it seems like everywhere you turn, you hear about platform this and platform that. Michael Hyatt even wrote a book on platforms to bring clarity to the concept and help you build one.

And it’s true. Without a platform, you won’t get published. But I believe that an over emphasis on building your platform is actually worse than not getting published at all. I’d rather you stay in obscurity than lose your soul to the very thing that brought the devil down.

Better to stay in obscurity than lose your soul to the very thing that brought the devil down.

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Here’s where we get it wrong.

Your platform is not for you. Yes, you definitely need a platform to get published these days, since without one, it’s nearly impossible to break through all the noise and get your message out. But your platform is ultimately not for you.

Your platform is ultimately not for you.

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In addition, no one else is going to build it for you. There’s no such thing as an overnight success or a silver bullet in life, just as I wrote about in my previous book. Others will help—in fact, you need others to help you—but you still need to grind, hustle, and put the work into building a platform.

And once you’ve built something to stand on, you need to keep on working at building it.

But here’s where we get it wrong. If you think the purpose of your platform is for you, then you’re wrong. Yes, you need to stand on it, but it’s not so that others will look at you and lift you up. It’s so that you can help others up onto your platform, in order to help launch them up higher, further, and faster.

If others are looking up at you as the hero and as the blessed one, you’ve got it all wrong. And you need to be careful because pride comes before the fall. However, if others are looking up at you as the guide, since you’re helping them up onto your platform, you will experience one of the greatest joys of life—that of being a blessing.

Here’s my point.

In everything you do, whether it’s writing, speaking, teaching, coaching, parenting, or helping, make sure you’re doing it to serve, rather than to be served (Matthew 20:28). Don’t let the platform change you, and don’t abandon everyone you trust, love, and care about—especially if God so chooses to amplify your platform.

In other words, don’t chase the platform. Because if you do, you’ll lose your soul and eventually everyone around you.

Don’t chase the platform.

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Don’t Do This If You’re a Church of Under 200

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If you’re under 200 as a church, please don’t do THIS

Since my book, No Silver Bullets was published, I’ve received a ton of questions around mid-size communities. And what I’ve come to discover is that they’re not effective if you’re a church of under 200 people.

Mid-Size Communities, or MSCs for short, are critical if you’re over 200, but unnecessary if you’re under 200.

Why?

Well, before I answer why, here are a few bullet points on what they are in the first place:

  • Mid-Size Communities are groups of twenty to fifty people who journey together to celebrate, grow, and be a blessing to those they live, work, and play with.
  • A community that is formed around a common affinity, geography, or societal need—and this gathering point becomes the mission focus of the group. They are a community on mission with one another.
  • A community where you belong before you believe. It’s not just a scheduled meeting, either. Typically, there is a large group gathering every other week, with smaller groups for study and get-togethers in the off weeks.
  • Not a large small group, nor a small weekend gathering.
  • An open, inclusive, and safe environment where friendships are formed and you can discover who you could potentially grow a “deeper” relationship with.

I get that this might be a new concept for you, so be sure to read through chapter 4 of No Silver Bullets to get a fuller grasp of the concept, but here’s why they’re unnecessary if you’re under 200 people.

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Monopoly for Millennials: Lessons for Boomers, Gen Xers, and Everyone Else

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(C) Hannah Yoest / The Weekly Standard

If you were one of the lucky ones to buy Monopoly for Millennials for MSRP consider yourself blessed.

For the rest of us, it’s nearly 5 times the price of the classic edition of the game. And when you look it up on eBay, I think a lot of people are hoping it becomes the most wanted present this Christmas, much like Tickle Me Elmo, Hatchimals, and BB-8 in previous years.

So what is Monopoly for Millennials and why does it matter?

It’s Hasbro taking a dig at millennials. It’s them putting all the stereotypes of millennials into a box and selling it for a profit. I wonder if any millennials were even on the team creating this, or if it was just a bunch of boomers and Gen Xers?

Let’s try and list all the millennial stereotypes that we find on the box:

  • The tag line is: “Forget real estate. You can’t afford it anyway”
  • The Monopoly man is taking a selfie of himself
  • He’s wearing a medal of participation
  • He has his ear buds in
  • He’s drinking expensive coffee
  • There’s free parking
  • The game pieces are an emoji, camera, bike, hashtag, and a pair of sunglasses
  • Instead of the classic car game piece, you can choose a bike
  • And apparently every millennial is a vegetarian since there’s a picture of a cow crossed out

Inside the box, instead of buying property, you can purchase experiences.

“Money doesn’t always buy a great time, but experiences, whether they’re good—or weird—last forever,” says the description on the box. So forget Boardwalk! On this version of Monopoly you get a week-long meditation retreat instead. And instead of Park Place, you can buy a 3-day music festival.

Who takes the train anyway? On this version, you can use bike share instead. And instead of staying at cheap motels, millennials apparently just live in their parent’s basement or on their friend’s couch.

And let’s not forget that avocado toast that millennials are so famous for. Or that live/work loft that all millennials envy—if they can actually afford it.

I’m a millennial

Does that surprise you? Albeit, I’m an older millennial, but I’m still a millennial—so stereotypes like these are getting pretty old. And knowing how long it takes to create a physical product and then get it out for distribution—this wasn’t someone’s side hustle. Hasbro invested a lot into this, they bet big, and it’s paying off.

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Dealing with Conflict: Boxing Gloves or Broom?

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Conflict is inevitable—in marriage, with your children, at work, and pretty much in all arenas of life.

How do you deal with it when it comes? Do you pick up your boxing gloves or a broom?

On the one hand, if you deal with conflict by picking up your boxing gloves, then you likely face it head on, talk it out, and push through to a resolution—no matter how inconvenient it might be, or how awkward it is to those around you.

On the other hand, if you deal with conflict by picking up your broom, then you might walk out, ignore it, pretend it never happened, change the subject, or tell yourself that it’s not that big of a deal and to stop acting like a baby.

When it comes to conflict, do you pick up your boxing gloves or a broom?

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So how do you deal with conflict when it comes? And have you ever wondered why you deal it with the way you do?

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The Influence of Hugh Hefner and D.L. Moody

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Hugh Hefner and D.L. Moody—these are two names (and pictures) that you don’t typically see side by side.

In a Chicago Sun-Times article on the most influential Illinoisans, Hefner and Moody were listed one after the other. Here was their rationale:

Hugh M. Hefner (1926-2017), publisher and bon vivant. Steinmetz High School graduate Hugh Hefner was a product of the Northwest Side Bungalow Belt. His imagination and drive forged a publishing empire and changed the social and sexual mores of American society in profound ways during the 1950s and 1960s. Whatever else one may think of him, he was one of the most influential people of the mid-to-late-20th Century.

Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899), American Christian evangelist, author, publisher and founder of the Moody Bible Institute. Born in Massachusetts, but influential in Minnesota and Illinois. Moody converted to Evangelical Christianity as a 17-year-old in April 1855. During the Civil War, President Lincoln visited and spoke at a Sunday School meeting he sponsored on November 25, 1860. Moody preached on many battlefronts including Shiloh, Stones River and Richmond. After the Civil war he moved to Chicago begin a congregation in the Illinois Street Church. Wiped out by the Chicago Fire, Moody began anew and over the next 20 years he became internationally known, holding many religious revivals in Great Britain and Sweden. Moody led the Chicago Bible Institute, and after his death the Chicago Avenue Church was renamed the Moody Church and the Chicago Bible Church became the Moody Bible Institute we know today.

If influence is measured by your ability to affect someone else—their opinions, character, development, actions, and thoughts—then yes, both Moody and Hefner are influential.

And if influence is what we truly want, then we’re living in the best time of history, since everyone has a voice—all you need is a smartphone or a computer to amplify it. Just take a look at your social media feed and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

However, what we desperately need to understand is that influence is not neutral.

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A Letter from Eugene Peterson on Christian Celebrities, Transition, and the Megachurch

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Eugene Peterson has deeply shaped my outlook on life, spirituality, ministry, and pastoring—probably more than anyone else. He will be deeply missed.

I’m not here to give you a synopsis of his last days, if you want that, you can read it here. If you want to hear ministry lessons on the life of Eugene from a wide range of church leaders, you can click here. And if you want to read about the one sermon Eugene preached, you can be inspired here.

What I want to share with you today is a letter that Eugene wrote to one of his friends after his friend had told him that he wanted to change churches because he felt that his gifts were being wasted where he was. His friend wanted more of a challenge and an opportunity to multiply his effectiveness. He wanted an opportunity that was more promising, so he was going to leave his small church for a larger one—one that was three times larger than his current pastorate.

Letters like this are precisely why I love Eugene Peterson.

When I came back from Korea—bruised, hurt, devastated and in the desert, thinking that I wasn’t called to ministry anymore—God used Eugene to pick up the pieces in my life (you can read about it here). Not personally, but through his lectures at Regent College and his book on the life of David, Leap Over a Wall.

It’s sad that I never got the chance to personally thank him for just how much God used him in my life, but I guess now that he’s in glory, it doesn’t really matter.

I came across this letter from Eugene as I was preparing a talk for an upcoming conference.

I’ll be speaking at Exponential—a conference for church planters, pastors, and ministry leaders. So while I was writing about the shift that needs to take place so that we can move from being the hero to becoming hero-makers, I immediately thought of this letter that he had written to a friend in his Memoir.

Although it had been several years since I read the book, for some reason, this letter had been seared into my soul as a warning. And am I ever glad that it was—and is—because I don’t want my story to go the way of the recent implosions of pastors that you might’ve come across in the news.

Here it is, it’s from page 156 of his Memoir:

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How to Develop Servant Leaders

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Have you ever tried to change something in your church, only to be met with skepticism? Or with responses like these?

We’ve tried that before!

What makes you think that this will work better than the last idea?

Why can’t we just do things the way we’ve always done them?

Believe it or not, situations like these shape us more than we know. Resistance after resistance, shut down after shut down—they just stock pile on top of each other until we wake up one morning being the one that is now resisting change.

After all, isn’t it easier just to keep the status quo? To let things roll? To continue as is?

Change is difficult to implement in our churches because the immune system of our church body knows when we try to transplant foreign ideas. And not only does it detect the new idea, it sees it as bad bacteria, a virus, or foreign material—thus resulting in its rejection.

In your church, is change usually detected as bad bacteria, a virus, or foreign material?

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But as a leader, you know that change is not only inevitable; it’s necessary to reach a new generation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Although the Gospel is timeless, methods aren’t. After all, when’s the last time you saw teenagers or young adults in your church using a pay phone or hand writing a letter?

If you want to raise up the next generation of leaders in your church, you can’t just do what you’ve always done. Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean that it will continue to work. The rate of change in our culture has sped up to the point where we are now measuring cultural shifts, not by the century or decade, and not even by the year anymore. But now by the month, the weeks, and in some cases, minutes.

Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean that it will continue to work.

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Rather than feeling overwhelmed or suffering from a paralysis of analysis, I want to suggest three shifts that will change the trajectory of your church so that you can raise up a new generation of servant leaders, or harvest workers as Jesus mentions in Matthew 9:35-38.

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3 Wrong and Right Ways to Change and Grow Spiritually

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There are wrong ways to do things, and then there’s my way to do things—so make the right choice.

Have you ever said that to your children or to those you’re discipling? Or perhaps you’ve thought about saying it to your spouse, but quickly made the wise decision to keep your mouth shut?

When it comes to change, we often forget to take our own advice.

We end up telling others to do as we say, not as we do. The reason we’re hypocrites is because of the habits that are already ingrained in our hearts and lives.

When it comes to change, we often forget to take our own advice.

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In Darryl Dash’s book, How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to all of your life, he describes this dilemma aptly: “Growth is possible, and God promises He will change us. But we’re often frustrated because we’re not changing as quickly or as much as we’d like. Is it possible we’ve been going about it in the wrong way?”

In his book, he lists a few wrong ways that we go about change:

  1. “New information—We read books, watch videos, listen to sermons, and attend Bible studies. We think that new information will change us. When this doesn’t work, we go looking for even more information. We become knowledgable, but we often don’t change. We become educated beyond the level of our obedience.”
  2. “Big goals—We also set big goals to start or stop behaviors. We want to read the Bible every year, but then get stuck in Leviticus. We want to stop surfing social media, but find ourselves scrolling through once again in a moment of boredom, avoidance, or procrastination.”
  3. “Willpower—We think we need more willpower, but find it doesn’t last as long as we’d like. Some argue that willpower is quickly depleted. Others argue that we can learn to increase our willpower, and boost it when it’s weak. Either way, willpower can help us, but it can’t create the consistent, sustainable change we want in our lives.”

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The Experience Economy and the Church

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When was the last time you bought a mattress?

Did you walk around a showroom and awkwardly lie down on several of them? Did you close your eyes, try to get comfortable, and imagine what it would be like to sleep on it day after day? Did you then pay too much, and wait too long for it to be delivered to your house?

No wonder the mattress industry was ripe for disruption. In the same way that Amazon disrupted brick and mortar retail, Uber disrupted the Taxi industry, and smart phones disrupted camera, calculator, and flashlight sales, Casper has done the same for mattresses.

Casper, an online mattress retailer, has been so effective at upending a $29 Billion industry, that other companies have quickly followed suit. And just last month, they took things to the next level by building their first brick and mortar store—except, at this one, you can’t buy a mattress.

You buy a nap instead.

Instead of designing their store like other mattress retailers, such as Mattress Firm, The Brick, or Ikea, they decided to create an experience, where the mattress was secondary. It’s called the Dreamery in New York City. Here’s how they describe it on their website,

At Casper, we want everyone to sleep better and live better. So we created The Dreamery, a magical place in NYC where you can rest and recharge whenever you want. Because when you snooze, you win.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Book a nap session: Choose a 45-minute time slot whenever you could use a boost. Walk-ins are welcome, too.
  2. Get some rest: Wind down in the lounge, change into pj’s, and lie down in your own Casper Nook—a perfectly private, quiet pod with an outrageously comfortable bed.
  3. Feel recharged: Embrace your post-nap pep. Freshen up and enjoy a coffee before taking on the rest of your day (or night).[i]

Do you see how the mattress is peripheral to the whole experience? The point is the nap, not the mattress. But what’s genius about this strategy is that they’re actually creating the ideal conditions for customers to fall in love with their mattresses, without having to box it up and ship it back to them if they’re not satisfied.

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To Develop or Not To Develop?

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As the calendar year comes to an end, you’re either looking for ways to spend the rest of your development budget, or you’re planning on how to use it next year.

If you don’t have a budget set aside for development, then make sure you get one next year! If it’ll help, consider sharing this article with your boss. After all, leaders are learners, aren’t they?

But what if you’re the one approving proposals for development?

What if you’re the one who sets the budget? Have you ever considered that the types of proposals coming in, the amount given to each team member, and how your team looks at development reveals a lot about your culture?

If you’re leading a team, here’s the tension that you face as it relates to development:

On the one hand, if you develop your people, they might outgrow their job, realize the weaknesses on your team, and/or now have a new set of skills that’ll set them up for another role somewhere else.

On the other hand, if you don’t develop your people, their performance can stagnate, they might not innovate, and you’ll essentially be cultivating a culture of mediocrity, maintenance, or at best, incremental growth.

So what are you to do? To develop or not to develop?

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