Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Articles

Book Review: The Next Evangelicalism by Soong-Chan Rah

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Soong-Chan Rah is the Milton B. Engebretson Assistant Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. He has experience in church planting, as well as campus ministry experience. He also serves on several boards, such as the Catalyst Leadership Center, and he has involvement across many organizations, such as the Boston Ten-Point Coalition. His upbringing as a Korean American second generation immigrant is deeply reflected in his life work as portrayed in this book.

The thesis of this book is that Christianity, in the United States, needs to be released from the captivity of the white, Western American culture, in order for the gospel to spread effectively into the future. Rah accomplishes this feat by organizing his book into three different sections.

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Why I’m Getting Ordained

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Growing up in a Korean Presbyterian church, I was always starkly aware of the difference between an ordained pastor and a non-ordained pastor. In Korean, it’s the difference between being a Moksanim and a Jundosanim. The difference is so stark that you are almost, in a sense, involved in child’s play until you become an ordained pastor.

It wasn’t until I responded to this call to ministry that I began questioning the whole matter of ordination. Why did it bother me so much that Koreans were calling me a non-ordained pastor? Why did they treat me very differently from the ordained pastors? Why would their mood and attitude towards me shift once they discovered that I wasn’t ordained?

Yes, I understand that in Acts 13 the church set apart Paul and Barnabas for the work of ministry, and then prayed for them and sent them off. And I also understand the whole concept of the priesthood in the Old Testament and their required role for the Israelites.

But what about the call in Ephesians 4 to the whole church? That “grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift?” That God has given EACH OF US a calling and a measure of grace to do the work that God has set out for us?

I guess what bothered me about this ordained and non-ordained distinction was that it felt like the plain wasn’t level.

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Top 10 Insights to Successfully Launch and Grow Mid-Size Communities

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From my research and years of leading mid-size communities, coaching others, and forming them, here are my top 10 insights to successfully launch and grow mid-size communities:

10. Plan your gathering schedule 3-4 months out at a time.

9. Meet bi-weekly with your leadership team to have a meal where you are discipling one another, rather than a meeting where you are planning together.

8. Share resources, lessons, and email template ideas with other mid-size community leaders.

7. It’s better to delay the launch date of your mid-size community than starting it with a thin or small leadership team.

6. The gathering focus of your mid-size community (affinity, geography, or societal need) becomes your mission focus.

5. Don’t create rules to obtain behavior; instead, be a cultural architect that shapes an ethos, which leads to your desired behavior.

4. Inclusivity and smaller groups meeting in the off weeks are key factors for depth and growth.

3. Don’t let attendance become your success factor. Instead, look for vital behaviors that you can control to measure success. In other words, create a dashboard for health.

2. A clear mission focus for your mid-size community will keep it on track and ensure that it does not become a lame social gathering without purpose.

1. The health of your leadership team determines the health and longevity of the mid-size community.

What are your thoughts?

Planning a Semester Ahead (Best Practices for Mid-Size Communities)

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One of the best things that you can do for your MSC is to plan a semester out.

This not only frees up your MSC lead team to allow your bi-weekly lead team meals to actually be “discipleship meals” instead of “planning meetings,” but it also allows you to strategize as to the overall direction of your MSC. This way, you can take a longer term perspective and not be constantly stressed with thinking and planning for your next gathering.

Here are the steps to planning a successful semester for your MSC:

  1. Once a semester, organize a 2-3 hour block of time for your MSC lead team to come together and plan out the focus of all the gatherings for the next 3-4 months.
  2. Make sure that your MSC gatherings have some sort of rhythm. For example, since my MSC has a young families focus, our rotation looks like this: mission focus, marriage focus, mission focus, parent focus, mission focus, marriage focus, etc. We also do an occasional fun gathering once every 6-8 weeks (see the attached files for an idea of this).
  3. Once you brainstorm and plan out what the focus of all your gatherings are, assign a point leader for each of the gatherings. This person doesn’t have to do all the work and necessarily teach that gathering, but they are the representative on your lead team who will make sure everything will happen for that day. So they are the master coordinator of that gathering.
  4. Share the plan with your MSC using some sort of template like the one below.

Tools to Use:

As you’ll see on the “Calendar and Groups Template,” I also wrote out all the different open small groups that are happening in the off weeks of my regular MSC gathering. This is to help the people in my MSC realize all the different options of small groups they can join for deeper study and community. If you don’t have small groups formed yet, or don’t have as many as I do, then please use that space as a way to envision people to form smaller groups.

Mid-Size Communities or Small Groups? Interview with Rick Howerton

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Back in May 2013, I was featured on Rick Howerton’s Blog with NavPress for a four day interview on “Small Groups or Mid-Size Communities?”

Rick Howerton is one of the most genuine guys that I’ve met and I’m so grateful for his ministry to me and to the global church! Since then, he has joined the staff at Lifeway, and thus the previous posts have gone away. So I’ve taken the content that I wrote for that interview and put it up on my site in the links below:

I encourage you to read through my answers to the following questions on his site and engage in a conversation with us about this viral concept. Click on the links below to see my answers.

Let’s talk!

Mid-Size Communities Part 4: The Theological Rationale

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In part 3, I shared a FAQ list regarding mid-size communities (MSCs). You can get a good feeling as to what an MSC is by reading through the FAQs, or by looking at this infographic, but what’s the theological rationale for them anyway? Are MSCs just a repackaged version of Adult Bible Fellowship? Are they just the new hot thing? Or are they merely a different version of missional communities?

Well, let’s dig in. In order to look at the theological rationale for MSCs, we first need to ask more of a fundamental question: What is the church and what is her mission?

Is the Church, as Hans Kung suggests, the visible church building that people can belong to, as well as the invisible global Church composed of all true believers? Or is the Church better described, in a biblical way, as “God’s household” (Eph 2:19), “the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27), and a place where all of the biblical “one another’s” are lived out?

There is nothing wrong with describing the Church in those ways, but perhaps a better way to understand the Church is to begin with the end in mind? What if the Church was defined and understood through the lens of its mission? If it were, then the Church would not fall into the trap of being a loving community for its own sake or be mistaken as a rotary club. Although William Rush states that “the more the Church understands its own nature, the more it gets hold of its own vocation,” I actually believe the opposite is just as true. The more the Church understands its own mission or vocation, the more it will grab hold of its own nature.

So what is the mission that God has given the Church?

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A Framework for Discipleship

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Framework

Can we use research to discover the core attributes of a disciple? Or is this a purely biblical matter?

In a previous post, I shared different methods that we use to filter whether or not someone is a disciple of Jesus. The only problem with those common methods is that they are often anecdotal, and purely based on situational experiences.

Take Greg Ogden’s list, for example. He presents a biblical standard for discipleship by outlining how disciples:

  • Are proactive ministers
  • Live a disciplined way of life
  • Understand that discipleship affects all of life
  • Are a countercultural force
  • Are an essential, chosen organism
  • Are a biblically informed people
  • Are people who share their faith

This is a fantastic list, and very difficult to disagree with, since it is biblical. The problem with his list and everyone else’s is that they are merely anecdotal good ideas and frameworks. There is no evidence that these ideas, when transformed into a discipleship pathway, will actually produce the attributes of a healthy disciple.

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Is Your Neighbour a Disciple?

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How can you tell if someone is a disciple of Jesus?

In a previous post, I summarized six expert definitions of a disciple and concluded with this as my definition: “A disciple of Jesus is an individual who is continually being transformed into the likeness of Christ, as he or she is learning and participating in the mission of God with others.”

If that’s what a disciple is, is there some easy way to tell if the guy that you are passing by on the street, or the lady that is in the cubicle next to you, is a disciple? After all, how can you really tell if someone is “continually being transformed into the likeness of Christ” when you only have a two minute interaction with them?

Perhaps it’s a list of visible outer actions and attitudes? Such as, whether or not you know John 3:16 by heart, sponsor a Compassion child, or file your income taxes honestly and on time? Although these are outer actions that you would expect a Christian to embody and live out, these are not actions exclusive to Christians.

Instead, what if it’s a combination of both outer and inner actions and attitudes? What if the evidence of being a disciple of Jesus is the presence of the following three aspects in your life?

  • The faithful acceptance of everyday problems
  • The inner presence (fruit of the Spirit) and outer evidence (gifts of the Spirit) of the Holy Spirit in your life
  • The regular practice of the spiritual disciplines

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What is a Disciple? Six Expert Views

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Do you know how many times the word “Christian” occurs in the New Testament? A measly three times. On the other hand, the word “disciple” occurs 269 times. Although the term “Christian” has been watered down, and many see discipleship as an optional matter, it is clear that this is not what Jesus intended (see previous post). After all, the early disciples were called Christians because they were learners, students, and apprentices of Christ. Thus, just as “being Canadian” is a part of the identity of a Canadian citizen, “being Christian” or “being a disciple” is an identity issue.

But what exactly is a disciple? What sort of definition should we use to understand our identity?

Here are six different definitions of a disciple by experts:

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Where Did All the Disciples Go?

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abandonedhouse

“There is a discipleship deficiency in most churches resulting in a lack of transformation.” This was one of many findings from the Transformational Discipleship Project that surveyed four thousand Protestants and one thousand Protestant pastors in North America. Their research revealed that pastors “know lives are being changed at some level but not with consistency from the ministries of the church.” Furthermore, the Joint Statement on Discipleship at the Eastbourne Consultation reiterated a similar statement,

“As we face the new millennium, we acknowledge that the state of the Church is marked by growth without depth. Our zeal to go wider has not been matched by a commitment to go deeper.”

Why is there such a great disparity between the magnificent life of Jesus and his early followers with the present state of Christians today? Why is there such a dearth of disciples within the Church? Where did they all go?

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