Articles

I LOVE Learning

July 5, 2016 By Daniel Im

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There’s a funny commercial that I recently saw on Hulu. It was a video of Oprah essentially repeating the same thing over and over again. Here’s her script,

This is the joy for me. I LOVE bread. I LOVE bread. I now just manage it. So I don’t deny myself bread. I have bread everyday. I have bread everyday. That’s the genius of this program. I have lost 26 pounds and I have eaten bread every single day!

No, Oprah didn’t pay half a million dollars for these commercial spots just so that she could rant about her love for bread. This was a commercial for…you guessed it, Weight Watchers.

As cheesy as that commercial might be, I get it. When you love something, you just want to tell others about it. You want to proclaim it on the rooftops. And yes, while I do love bread, this post isn’t about ciabatta, focaccia, baguettes, or pretzel buns. This post is about learning.

I LOVE learning.

In the midst of loving and serving my wife and three children, a full-time job leading and running NewChurches.com, preaching at least twice a month at my church, hosting a twice-a-week podcast, writing my new book with B&H (No Silver Bullets), speaking about the book I just co-wrote with Ed Stetzer (Planting Missional Churches) and writing curriculum for Bible Studies for Life and The Gospel Project, I still carve time away to learn.

This is because I know that…

The moment you stop learning is the moment you’ll stop growing

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I love and hate this quote from Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton,

We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!

I hate that! I don’t want to be a beginner, I want to be an expert. But when I chew on the truth of those words, I realize the genius of it.

The moment we see ourselves as experts is the moment we allow pride to subtly seep into our lives.

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5 Steps to Being Missional

June 28, 2016 By Daniel Im

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Last post, I covered some important concepts on serving as a group, but today, I want to go a bit more in detail on being a group that extends and lives out the love of God–a group that is, as Jesus puts it–salt and light.

Evangelism is best done out of the context of a gospel community whose corporate life demonstrates the reality of the word that gave her life. – Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church

In this day and age, how do we tangibly tell others about the good news that has so shaped our lives? Out of love, we want to tell others about Jesus, but how do we do this in a way that doesn’t feel like we are shoving something down someone else’s throat? How do we appropriately engage others with the truth of the Gospel?

Here are five steps that will help us to better share about the wonderful hope that we have in Jesus Christ with our family, coworkers, neighbours, and friends.

1. Developing Trust

This is all about developing trusting relationships. After all, people don’t care what we have to say, unless they know that we care. This isn’t about trying to fake a trusting relationship, this is all about genuinely loving and caring for those around us so that trust is built up between us. This isn’t a bait and switch thing either, it’s simply about being a great friend. Doesn’t everyone need great friends whom they can trust and rely on? That’s what we need to do–be the best friend, coworker, neighbour, and family member that you can be. Why? Because that’s what Jesus would do, wouldn’t he?

2. Having Conversations and Living Life Together

Living as a Missional Community

June 14, 2016 By Daniel Im

One of the things that fascinates me about Jesus was that he was a masterful communicator. One of the ways that he loved to communicate was via word pictures.

Jesus loved to paint word pictures.

He did this because he knew that, through word pictures, we would be able to intrinsically understand and connect the truths that he was teaching us with our real lives today.

Two of the most powerful word pictures that he used to describe you and I were salt and light:

Matt 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

Matt 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

When we read these verses, we, in our western individualistic world views, think that he’s talking about you and I individually–that we are individually the salt of the earth and the light of the world. However, when you look at the original language, the word “you” is actually plural.

You (the community together) are the salt of the earth.

You (the community together) are the light of the world – a city on a hill.

You (the community together) are the body of Christ, and each of us is a part of it (1 Cor 12:27).

Jesus never intended any of us to journey through life alone. Faith is not a private thing, it’s a community thing. We each have our own relationship with God, but it is in the context of community that we live it out and grow.

Cultivating Missional Community in the Summer

June 7, 2016 By Daniel Im

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Back when I lived in Edmonton, Canada, it was literally winter six months out of the year. We used to say that there were only two seasons in Edmonton: winter and construction. So you could guess my excitement for those blissful summer months where it didn’t take a century to get in and out of the house with all of our winter gear, and I could just walk out with flip-flops! For some, summer is about jumping into a pool, with no worries, timelines, or meetings. For others, summer is about hiking, biking, being outside, and enjoying God’s creation. And still for others, summer is about getting those honey-do lists done. In any case, as adults, summer vacation is usually a couple weeks long, and then we have to get back at it and put our noses to the grindstone.

Although we all love taking a break in the summer, and the natural rhythms of life dictate our need for one, the one thing that doesn’t stop over the summer is our need for community.

So here is that infamous question that every small group or missional community needs to ask over the summer, “To continue, or not?”

Here are a few of my suggestions:

Two Ear Active Listening

May 31, 2016 By Daniel Im

There’s this old episode from Everybody Loves Raymond where Debra (Ray’s wife) is scolding their daughter, Ally, because she ripped her brother’s giraffe. When Ray walks into the house, and sees that they’re fighting, he runs to the scene with joy exclaiming, “Oh great!”

“This is Michael’s giraffe and he’s crying, so why did you do it?” says Debra.

Ally responds back, with folded arms, and pursed lips, “Because!”

Debra then says, “Because is not an answer!”

It’s at this point, that Ray responds with, “Active listening. It works. I use it on the worst kids in the neighborhood!”

While the live audience is chuckling to themselves, Ray then goes on to coach his wife—in real time, while she’s trying to talk to Ally—by telling her how she needs to reflect back instead of accuse, while also be accepting, instead of judgmental.

Saying Versus Hearing

Active listening is one of those things that is often made fun of because it seems so elementary and basic. “Why should I repeat back exactly what the other person said? They heard themselves and so did I!” This is one of the common objections that people share while learning the skills of active listening. However, the fact of the matter is, just because something is said, doesn’t mean that we all hear it the same way.

We see this most with children—they are the best at selective listening. For example, we might say, “Go and clean up your room, before we get ice cream,” but they probably heard, “Blah, blah, blah, ice cream.” It’s reminiscent of Charlie Brown’s teacher, isn’t it? Or how about in meetings when someone is rattling off information that doesn’t relate at all with your area—how often do you remember what they say?

Most of us are better at selective listening, than we are at active listening…hence this article.

Active listening is about being fully attentive to the other person during a conversation. While it might require you to verbally reflect back what the person just said—“If I heard you correctly, you are trying to say…”—oftentimes you can convey that you’re listening with your body language as well.

After all, 93 percent of communication is “non-verbal” in nature, according to a UCLA study conducted by Dr. Mehrabian.

SOLER

Gerard Egan developed something called the SOLER theory in 1986 to easily describe the non-verbal techniques required for active listening. He defines SOLER as “micro-skills” that allow you to convey to the other party that you care for them and are present, without using words.

Why We Need to Be Mean About The Vision

May 24, 2016 By Daniel Im

A Personal Conversation with Shawn

I remember having a conversation with Shawn Lovejoy a year after starting my new position with LifeWay Christian Resources. I had moved my family down to Nashville, TN to figure out how LifeWay was going to resource church planters, multisite churches, and multiplying churches (we started NewChurches.com as a result).

So we were together at the Exponential conference, and Shawn asked me, “How’s everything going?”

I just responded the way I normally do with a big grin, “It’s going great!”

But then, he stopped, looked at me straight in the eyes and asked me one more time, “How’s everything going?”

I remember thinking to myself, Shawn’s a really nice guy, and I enjoy working with him, but why is he asking me this question again?? We’re in a public place at a conference…does he expect to “counsel” me here?

Sure, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, but who wasn’t anyway? After all, in the previous months, I was rewriting Planting Missional Churches with Ed Stetzer, developing and launching the strategy for NewChurches.com, leading a major software redevelopment initiative with the North American Mission Board to better assess, train, and coach their church planters, launching The State of Church Planting research project, and now speaking four times at the Exponential conference, but this season was eventually going to pass, right?

I was at a conference and had to put my “game face” on, so who was Shawn to be confronting me like this? Well, the reality was, Shawn was just being himself. He was acting as a wise mentor who had travelled this path many times, and was seeing someone else who was heading down the same path.

So he looked at me and said, “I’ve been where you are bro, I’ve burnt the candle at both ends, and it just wasn’t worth it.”

At that, I decided it was time to sit down and have a real conversation with him.

Trends for Church Conferences

May 17, 2016 By Daniel Im

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Today, I am in New York speaking at the first-ever New City Gathering and spending time with my friend, Drew Hyun and his new network. Learn about the five values that they see as being critical for new churches here.

What’s interesting to me is that their church planting conference is brand new.

I’m not against new conferences, nor am I against church planting; after all, I serve as the Director of Church Multiplication for NewChurches.com! But, what’s fascinating to me is how the trend with church conferences seems to be heading in the direction of small, regional, and specialized.

Take the Catalyst conference for example. They grew their single location conference in Atlanta to 10,000+ attendees, and then started a West Coast version of it. Soon afterwards, they introduced smaller one day regionals across the country.
Exponential went the same route. They had their Exponential East conference of over 5000+ attendees, started a West Coast version of it, and are now introducing regionals in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.
The Verge Network did the same. After growing their Austin based conference to 3000+, they shut it down for a year, and have now opened up with a regional only strategy.
The SEND Network had a 10,000+ sized conference in Nashville last year, and are moving to a regional strategy this next year. They’ve decided to alternate between one big conference and smaller regionals every other year.

–> The tension that big conferences face is the push to generalize their content, in order to broaden their registration base.

–> The benefit of small conferences is knowing your target audience, so you’re able to specialize and specifically equip your niche audience with what they need.

Multisite AND Church Planting

May 10, 2016 By Daniel Im

Through the research LifeWay conducted surveying multisite pastors, we discovered a trend among many pastors considering multisite. For them, “the multi-site strategy [did] not replace any other method of participating in kingdom growth. It [did] not replace church planting, personal evangelism, visitation programs, investing and inviting, servant evangelism, or evangelistic training.”[1]

For them it was merely another strategy to reach their city:

Planting churches, building larger buildings, adding services, adding venues at your current site, and relocating a campus are all still viable solutions today. Multi-site does not replace these other solutions. It adds one more possibility for consideration.[2]

Some once believed this move to grow via multiple campuses was a temporary trend, but it appears to be a trend that’s here to stay. After all, there are more than 8,000 multisite churches in the US alone with more than 5 million people worshipping in them![3] While it was once the domain of only the largest megachurches, multisite is now a common option for smaller churches to consider. In fact, although a thousand is the average size of the church that goes multisite, many have gone multisite at eighty.[4]

What’s interesting though, is the number of churches that utilize a multisite methodology and are also committed to church planting. The two are definitely not exclusive of each other.

Take a look at these three different models that are committed to both multisite and church planting:

Top Quotes and Images for Planting Missional Churches

May 3, 2016 By Daniel Im

Here are my 11 Favorite Quotes for Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply:

Missional means being a missionary without ever leaving your city.
Church planters should be known first and foremost as people of integrity.
Success is measured in multiplication of churches and quality of disciples.
If your church is empty in a single location, it will still be empty with two locations.
Multisite is not a substitute for church planting; it’s a substitute for a large auditorium.
You cannot lead people to godliness when you are not regularly encountering God.
You cannot love a city if you do not know a city.
Without an intentional developmental approach, the church is likely to become a mile wide and an inch deep.
Everywhere Christians have gone to share the gospel churches were formed.
Churches  of all sizes and ages can take part  in church planting.
Your ultimate calling is not to plant a church; it’s a calling to come to Jesus himself.