Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Daniel Im

What Kind of Church Leader Are You?

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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.

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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.

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The Obscure Link Between Instant Gratification and Change

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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.

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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.

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Systems and an Encyclopedia

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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.

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The 5 Small Shifts

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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.

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The Myth of the Silver Bullet

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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.

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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…

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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:

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