Daniel Im

What Didn’t Work With Small Groups? (Part 1 – SG or MSC)

March 11, 2014 By Daniel Im

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?” He has since joined the staff at Lifeway, and thus the previous posts have gone away. Here’s the first post:

1. What were you trying to accomplish in your small groups that was not being achieved and why do you think the smallness of group life was keeping you from accomplishing that?

If someone were to tell you that 25% of their church was in some form of community life (i.e. small group or mid-week programming), how would you react? Other than a slight, “Yeah, that’s pretty typical” response, you probably wouldn’t think much of it. Well, what if someone were to tell you that their church had grown by 31% over the past 10 years, but that the number of people engaged in community remained the same? You’d probably think that was pathetic, and move on to learn from someone else.

That was the case at my church, and I was hired to do something about it.

Being a learner, entrepreneur, and systems thinker, I quickly learned and piloted every small group technique and method under the sun (not all at the same time though – I’m not that crazy). I wanted to experience the astronomical growth that the books promised me. I tried everything from a semester model to a sermon-based group model. I even launched new groups every month, in addition to piloting online groups. Sure, I saw growth and new people getting connected regardless of the method that I used, but there was always a bottleneck and people who didn’t want to join. The growth wasn’t exponential, it was additional – and that wasn’t good enough for me.

How Can Your Church Keep Your Talent? [INFOGRAPH]

February 18, 2014 By Daniel Im

Here is a fascinating infograph that illustrates how Google, Microsoft, SC Johnson, Facebook, Netflix and other organizations are keeping their talent by providing employee perks.

Companies often use perks and incentives to make sure their talented employees never leave. But some of these perks mean that employees literally never have to leave.

Read through this infograph to discover the disparity between what employees say they want versus what employers think their employees want.

In light of this, do you have a plan to keep your talented staff?

The New Wave in Storytelling

February 11, 2014 By Daniel Im

Gary Vaynerchuk, the founder of VaynerMedia and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author as well as a self-trained wine and social media expert, does a great job challenging us to stop storytelling like it’s 2007.

Although his language is a bit crude at times, he challenges us to story tell in micro moments because times have changed. People don’t open email marketing anymore, banner click throughs are obsolete, TV advertising is useless since people just PVR everything, and billboards don’t always work since people are texting while driving.

He asserts that story telling is more about the context than it is about the content – so what is the psychology around people who use Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter? And how should that alter the way you advertise on those means? What would it look like to figure out where people’s eyes and ears are, and then develop our marketing strategy around that?

He concludes with an assertion that we need to give people value. He says, “Let’s give, give, give, then ask…You don’t need a business objective for everything.”

In light of this fascinating talk, how ought our advertising in the church change? How can we continue to give our congregants value, and help them understand that it’s value?

Mid-Size Community Values – BELONG

February 6, 2014 By Daniel Im

Values influence behaviour and decision making – both implicitly and explicitly. They are essentially the personality of an organization, or in this case regarding mid-size communities, the personality of a movement.

If these six BELONG core values are embraced in your mid-size community, then you will not only find your mid-size community to be a place of community and mission, but you will discover that others will be irresistibly attracted to your mid-size community.

What do you think? Would you change anything about these six BELONG values?

MSC Core Values

Why Every Healthy Church Needs The Second Gen

November 27, 2013 By Daniel Im

While I was reading The Next Evangelicalism, which is a must read for every North American church leader, I was deeply impacted with the profound truths that Rah put forth regarding the current state of our churches and the way forward (Click here to read my review of the book)

Like Rah, I am a second-generation Korean immigrant, the only difference is that I am Korean-Canadian, and not American. As a result, for the past 10 years, I have been reflecting on issues of ethnicity and the second generation, but I have never heard someone state the importance of my experience and the potential of my role quite like he has. For example, “in the next evangelicalism, the second generation, with their unique ethos and strength…will be the ones best equipped to face the next stage of the church” (181).

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