Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Articles

How Do You Disciple Others?

By

When was the last time you reflected on the way that you personally disciple others?

  • Are you more of a teacher or a shepherd?
  • Do you like to take people through formal curriculum, or do you use their life situation as the starting point?
  • Do you like to disciple one-on-one, in triads, in small groups, or in classrooms?
  • When are people most apt to change?
  • What role does the Holy Spirit, Scripture, and prayer play in the discipleship process?

Unless you have intentionally spent time studying the way people learn and different methods for discipleship, you probably disciple others the way you were discipled (or in the exact opposite manner). This is because our natural bias is to start with what we already know and have personally experienced.

Our natural bias is to start with what we already know and have personally experienced.

Click To Tweet

If you are a parent, have you ever caught yourself saying or doing something to your children that your parents use to say or do to you?

I catch myself doing this all the time.

When my children are not listening, I just begin counting down from the number five. It’s not like my parents told me this is what I should do, but it’s what they did to me, and it worked.

When I stop to think about it, I don’t even feel like this is the best method for discipline; in fact, my wife, Christina, and I agree that it’s not! But I often catch myself still doing it because of that natural bias.

[Read more…] about How Do You Disciple Others?

A Both/And Approach to Sharing the Gospel

By

I remember walking through my college cafeteria with the Four Spiritual Laws in hand looking for people who might be interested in having a spiritual conversation with me.

Sometimes I’d open up the conversation with, “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go?” Or I’d ask, “On a scale of 1–10, how interested are you in spiritual conversations?”

I was often rejected…

Other times, I was met with skepticism. And on the odd occasion, I was actually able to share the gospel and see that individual discover a new life in Christ.

While evangelism strategies that rely solely on the verbal proclamation of the gospel still have their place, they are definitely waning in influence.

The solution is not necessarily to swing the pendulum the other way and just live out the gospel and love people to conversion, either.

Tim Keller frames it well,

If the gospel were primarily about what we must do to be saved, it could be communicated as well by actions (to be imitated) as by words. But if the gospel is primarily about what God has done to save us, and how we can receive it through faith, it can only be expressed through words. Faith cannot come without hearing.[1]

Since the gospel is more about what God has done than what we can do, it needs to be proclaimed through words.

But since crusades, street preaching, and spontaneous evangelism are waning in their effectiveness and influence in many parts of the West, we need to figure out different ways to invite non-Christians into the types of environments where they can hear the gospel proclaimed to them.

This is why we need a both/and approach to sharing the gospel!

There needs to be something different about the way Christians live that forces non-Christians to ask questions. If a non-Christian looks at your life and sees the same fruit, or lack thereof, as theirs, they will see your faith as mere empty religious behavior. Isn’t that why Peter urges us to live as “foreigners and exiles” and “to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Pet. 2:11)?

We need to live as outsiders and be distinctly different from society. We need to “live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Pet. 2:12)!

[Read more…] about A Both/And Approach to Sharing the Gospel

Freelancing and Pastoral Ministry

By

Have you got your side hustle on?

“I love it, I’ve been ubering for the last year, and for the first time in my life, I actually have spending money!”

This past year, when I was invited to speak on No Silver Bullets to a group of church planters in the San Francisco Bay Area, I ubered over to see one of my friends in the city. During the 30 minute ride, it was fascinating to hear the story of a mid-50s Mexican mother who immigrated 30+ years ago.

Although she had been working full-time for the last 30 years taking care of her family, she had never brought home a paycheck that could be deposited at the bank. While she was definitely competent to work outside the home, adhering to a strict part-time work schedule simply wasn’t manageable due to her family life.

Enter Uber.

Since she could drive whenever she wanted to, Uber was a perfect fit for her. So for the last year, this mother of teenagers has been driving from 9 pm-1 am, since by that time, everything’s settled down at home.

When asked whether or not she enjoyed driving, her response was eye-opening, as it precisely illustrated the new economy that we’re now living in,

“I love it, I’ve been ubering for the last year, and for the first time in my life, I have spending money!”

Welcome to the “gig economy”

The “gig economy” was originally coined during the financial crisis of 2009, when so many people were forced to “gig” or freelance to make a living by working one-or-more part-time jobs.

Though this phrase is now almost 10 years old, it has only recently normalized and become a part of our everyday language.

There are many reasons for its normalization, like the affordability and mass adoption of smart phones, our shortening attention span, our desire to be our own boss, our culture’s obsession with experiences (we are living in the experience economy), and the rising number of jobs that an individual will work in his or her lifetime, just to name a few.

So today, if you have a car, you can drive for Uber or Lyft (click here to read an article I wrote on What Church Leaders Can Learn From Uber and Lyft). If you have a spare bedroom, you can rent it out on Airbnb. If you are handy, you can charge for your services on TaskRabbit. And if you love pets, you can take care of them through Dogvacay.

According to a recent study, on freelancing and the “gig economy,” there are now 55 million freelancers in the U.S.

[Read more…] about Freelancing and Pastoral Ministry

Building a Discipleship Culture That Will Grow Your Church

By

Are you happy with your existing vision, strategy, and values, or do you need to revisit them?

Are you producing disciple-makers, disciples, or consumers? Are you worried that what you’re currently doing isn’t sustainable or scalable? Do you need to overhaul your church, but aren’t sure what to do differently?

The fact is, we often lead the way we’ve been led, disciple the way we’ve been discipled, and teach the way we’ve been taught…unless we consciously decide to do otherwise.

We often lead the way we’ve been led and disciple the way we’ve been discipled!

Click To Tweet

And with the accelerated pace of life, the unceasing demands of ministry, and the relentless fact that Sunday is always around the corner, who has the luxury of time to stop, audit, and make systemic changes to the way we lead, disciple, and teach?

As a result, the two things that we often (unintentionally) end up neglecting is self-development and team-development.

In a previous article, I address the issue of self-development and provide you with a list of questions from my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry. So be sure to go back and answer those questions before moving on.

Let’s now talk about staff or team development.

The fact is, as a pastor and church leader, you are both a boss and a disciple-maker—and this applies whether or not you’re the senior leader.

(Now I understand that you may not like the word boss because it sounds domineering, but I’m simply trying to emphasize the fact that you’re the leader and that you have responsibilities that directly affect others.)

So take a moment and think about everyone on your team—whether it’s your staff team as the senior leader, or your volunteer team as a staff member.

On the one hand, you are responsible for the ministry that God has entrusted you with.

So in order to get things done in a scalable manner, you can’t do it yourself. You need to work with and through your team—just think about Exodus 18 and the account between Moses and Jethro. This makes you the boss, the leader, or depending on your culture, the chief cheerleader or number one servant.

On the other hand, you are also responsible to equip those under and around you for the work of ministry (Eph 4:12-13).

And I’m not talking about equipping others to make coffee, clean the toilets, and carry your purse, or murse…I’m talking about “equipping the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness” (Eph 4:12-13).

While making coffee and cleaning toilets can definitely be a character shaping exercise and be a part of moving you to maturity, that’s not what I’m talking about…

I’m talking about building a culture that allows your team to develop both professionally and spiritually.

[Read more…] about Building a Discipleship Culture That Will Grow Your Church

What Kind of Church Leader Are You?

By

In order to grow and multiply your church, you have to start with yourself.

I’m not talking about picking up a self-help book to learn how to get your best life now. I’m talking about figuring out why it is that you lead the way that you do.

But Daniel, that means I need to slow down and reflect…I don’t have time for that! Sunday’s coming, and I need to…

Yes I understand that Sunday is coming and that you have things to do! But here’s the thing…

If you don’t take the necessary time to learn why you lead the way you lead, disciple the way you disciple, and teach the way you teach, you will never be able to grow and multiply your church.

In order to grow and multiply your church, you have to start with yourself.

Click To Tweet

In my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry, I start the first chapter with a self-assessment to help you discover why it is that you lead the way you do.

Here’s a portion of it. I hope you’ll slow down and take a moment to work through each of these questions:

1. Who do you look up to as a pastor and church leader?

Who has shaped your view of church practice and practical theology? Is it Eugene Peterson? J. I. Packer? Tim Keller? It could be someone you know personally, or someone you’ve admired from a distance.

[Read more…] about What Kind of Church Leader Are You?

The Obscure Link Between Instant Gratification and Change

By

Do you remember when it would take so long for your computer to start up, that you’d have time to brew a cup of coffee or make yourself a sandwich?

Oh how times have changed…

If we want to read a book, we can download it instantly. If we want to listen to one, we can literally press play the moment after we purchase it. If we want toothpaste, laundry detergent, or a few bananas, we can order it on Prime Now and get it within two hours. And now, with the launch of Amazon Go, we don’t even need to line up and pay the cashier at the grocery store!

Sure, this is convenient, but the unfortunate side effect is that we’ve been conditioned to need, want, and long for change.

We’re addicted to change…and secretly we love it.

Now change isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but change for the sake of change must be avoided. It demoralizes your team, causes unnecessary stress, and is simply unproductive. However, if you have decided that change needs to take place in your life and in your ministry, following this eight-step process that I wrote about in a previous article, is critical.

Change for the sake of change must be avoided at all costs.

Click To Tweet

Now while the likelihood of succeeding in leading change without the eight-step process—or some variation of it—is pretty low, how you view and approach change matters even more.

When burdened with a new idea, or a desire to change something specifically in your life or your church, definitely start with prayer. But don’t move straight to implementation after you say “Amen.”

We need to slow down and take a different approach.

Now I understand that this is hard to do because of our on-demand, stream-anytime, find-an-answer-to-anything, go-anywhere, and swipe-now-pay-later instant gratification culture.

[Read more…] about The Obscure Link Between Instant Gratification and Change

Systems and an Encyclopedia

By

As a child, I remember flipping through the human anatomy section in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

As a curious child with an insatiable love for learning—I remember times when I would just open up the encyclopedia and read. My favorite section was the human anatomy, since I wanted to be a doctor. In fact, I vividly remember looking through and being amazed by the layers of complexity that the human body presented.

This section was always several pages long.

In fact, it always stuck out from the other pages in the encyclopedia, since each system in the human body was printed on its own plastic, transparent page.

If you had one of these old-school encyclopedias in front of you, the first system you’d see would be the integumentary system—the body’s outer covering. In other words, you’d see a naked human body with skin, hair, and nails. If you flipped that transparent page over to the next—I apologize for the graphic nature of this next phrase—it would almost be like you were peeling the skin off of a human. You’d be left with the muscular system. If you flipped that page over again, you would see the circulatory system.

With every progressive page turn, you would uncover another system that makes up the human body. The nervous system, the lymphatic system, the skeletal system, and so on.

Just like there are different layers of systems in the human body, so it is with the church.

The systems in your church are designed to work together, like they do in the human body, to help your church function as God intends it to. After all, “God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted” (1 Cor. 12:18).

So what exactly are those systems for your church?

While there are many more than just these two, your discipleship pathway and leadership pipeline are what makes up the two core systems that drive everything in your church.

Your discipleship pathway & leadership pipeline are the two core systems that drive everything.

Click To Tweet

[Read more…] about Systems and an Encyclopedia

The 5 Small Shifts

By

Are you happy with your existing vision, strategy, and values? Are you producing disciple-makers, disciples, or consumers? Are you worried that what you’re currently doing isn’t sustainable or scalable? Do you need to overhaul your church, but aren’t sure how?

I want to invite you to consider what God might do through you, if you were to implement five small shifts.

In my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry, you’ll discover five micro-shifts that have the potential to produce macro-change in your church. Here’s a quick overview.

Shift #1: From Destination to Direction

This first shift is about viewing discipleship from a systems perspective. In this shift, you’ll uncover the various ways churches approach discipleship from a fifty-thousand-foot level. We’ll do this by looking at the two spectrums that influence your approach, and then by examining how they intersect.

Shift #2: From Output to Input

In this second shift, you’ll zoom into discipleship at the individual level. We’ll go from looking at the systematic discipleship of the many to the personal discipleship of the one. We’ll do this by unpacking the results of one of the largest research projects on discipleship to date, in order to determine the right metrics for maturity.

Shift #3: From Sage to Guide

Technology has forever changed the way individuals learn. Moreover, adults learn differently than children. We simply can’t teach the way we were taught. In this shift, we’ll unpack these issues and you’ll explore what it looks like to move from being a sage on the stage to a guide on the side when it comes to discipleship and leadership development.

[Read more…] about The 5 Small Shifts

The Myth of the Silver Bullet

By

Have you ever noticed the deep longing inside of you for the silver bullet? For that one quick, magical solution that will solve all of your problems?

I know I have. I remember thinking to myself that this one sermon I was getting ready to preach was going to be so powerful that the chains of apathy in my church would finally be broken. The consumeristic tendencies hidden in everyone’s hearts were going to be rooted out once and for all. Everyone in the church would befriend those far from God, share the gospel with them, see them experience new life in Christ, and then disciple them to do the same.

People were going to move from being merely disciples to being disciple-makers.

Instead of the church being a place to get their needs met, the church was going to see itself as a house of prayer for all nations, a hospital for sinners and not a hotel for saints, a disciple-making institute, and a tangible sign, instrument, and foretaste of the kingdom of God. This was going to be the day, the sermon, and the moment that would go down in history.

When it didn’t quite happen the way I had envisioned it, I realized my mistake.

Oh, how naïve I was. I thought the sermon was the silver bullet, when it was actually the discipleship model that the church down the road was using! I mean, just look at how successful they were.

Well, when that didn’t work either, I turned to secular management books. And then to church consultants. And then to . . .

Does any of this sound familiar?

The myth of the silver bullet is alive and well…

…and it’s not because of old reruns of The Lone Ranger, or teenage novels about werewolves. It’s alive and well because we want the quick fix. We have been conditioned for the instant. It’s our hidden addiction.

We have been conditioned for the instant. It’s our hidden addiction.

Click To Tweet

If our computers take longer than a minute to start, we think something’s wrong. If we want to read a book, we can download it instantly. If we want to listen to one, we can literally press play the moment after we purchase it. If we want toothpaste, laundry detergent, or a few bananas, we can order it on Prime Now and get it within two hours. And now, with the launch of Amazon Go, we don’t even need to line up and pay the cashier at the grocery store!

Sure, this is convenient, but the unfortunate side effect is that we’ve been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog to salivate at the sound of a bell.

The availability of goods and resources—and our consumption of them—have conditioned us to need instant gratification. Regrettably, this has seeped into our spiritual lives and the way we lead our churches.

If you’ve been around ministry long enough, you’ll know that there are no perfect models, no one right way of doing ministry or leading a church (I’m talking about church practice, not theology).

There are no silver bullets—one-decision solutions that will solve all your woes and unleash your church into a new season of fruitfulness.

The only way change happens— significant, long-lasting, macro-level change—is through a series of small decisions, steps, or micro-shifts, that are put into action and completed one at a time.

The only way change happens is through a series of small decisions, steps, or micro-shifts…

Click To Tweet

Isn’t that why the late great preacher of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, Charles Spurgeon, said, “By perseverance the snail reached the ark”?

The snail had no silver bullet. It got to the ark one small step at a time.

Let me ask you a few questions:

[Read more…] about The Myth of the Silver Bullet

The Off-Beaten Path to Stress Relief

By

What are you holding onto? Or maybe the real question is, what’s holding onto you?

Take a moment and think through each of these questions:

  • When you post a picture on social media, how often do you find yourself pulling out your phone to check the number of likes, views, or comments?
  • When things get stressful, what do you do to relieve the pressure?
  • When you feel like you’re at the end of your rope, what do you turn to?
  • When you’re happy and joyful, what caused it?
  • When you’re satisfied and content, what were the factors that led to it?

Your answers to each of these questions reveal what you’re holding onto, or what’s holding onto you…

…because we don’t turn to the things we do for no reason.

Matthew 11:28-30 has always been one of those passages that I would not only use when counseling, discipling, and mentoring others…but also personally when feeling burdened and overwhelmed.

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. – Matt 11:28-30 CSB

Last year, while preaching through the wisdom literature in the Scriptures, there was this one particular Sunday where I compared Godly wisdom against Earthly wisdom in Proverbs 7. While this is a common theme throughout the wisdom literature, this proverb explicitly illustrates what happens when you walk down the path of the world versus the path of God.

There are no shades of grey in this Proverb.

It clearly shows that sin has a cost, and its name is death. Sin results in hell, but I’m not just talking about eternity here…I’m also talking about hell on earth.

Sin has a cost, and its name is death.

Click To Tweet

After all, while the enemy might whisper into our ears to try and convince us that we can outsmart others, or live duplicitous lives, God’s ways will always prevail because his light will shine and cast out darkness.

Sin is like a teenager with a credit card—enjoy now, pay later. After all, “Can a man embrace fire and his clothes not be burned? Can a man walk on burning coals without scorching his feet?” (Prov 6:27-28 CSB)

Sin is like a teenager with a credit card—enjoy now, pay later.

Click To Tweet

I ended the sermon by sharing the way to embrace Godly wisdom.

No, I didn’t preach behavior modification, since it’s only the Holy Spirit through the power of the gospel that can truly bring about change in our hearts.

I shared that we need to humble ourselves and come before the Lord in confession, so that we can rest in the one who truly cares for our souls. And that’s when I read Matt 11:28-30 and unpacked it for my church.

To be honest, for the longest time, what stood out to me about this passage was Jesus’ call to come to him—it wasn’t the reference to take up his yoke.

In fact, while I sort of understood what a yoke was, I often deemphasized those words and instead focused on coming to Christ and finding rest in him.

Oh how I missed the point of this passage!

Jesus is essentially saying, “Stop yoking yourself to what can only further burden and slow you down. Stop yoking yourself to the ways of this world—the temporary and the fleeting. Instead, take up my yoke…”

When I think of a yoke, I think of a pair of oxen working with one another to pull something.

While the yoke is helpful, since two can obviously pull more weight than one, it is also helpful to maintain forward movement, even when one of the oxen’s are tired or weak.

In this passage, Jesus is inviting us to join him and take up his yoke!

He’s not asking us to coast by getting on his back or jumping on the trailer that he’s pulling. He’s asking us to pull with him, and learn from him.

If that’s not a picture for how we ought to disciple others, I don’t know what is.

But let’s be honest with ourselves here…it’s ridiculous to think that we’ll ever pull our fair share of the weight when yoked with Jesus. But that’s what’s beautiful about this specific invitation from Christ.

Life is stressful.

Life is burdensome. And there’s always more to do than there is time in the day. With the 5000+ marketing messages that we get on a daily basis, we’re consistently barraged by the world telling us that we are what we do, we are what we have, and we are who we know.

But Jesus is saying, “Come to me.”

He is inviting us to come to him with our burdens, needs, everything we’re holding onto, and everything that’s holding onto us, and he promises us freedom, rest, and peace from all of it.

Will you accept his invitation today?