Leadership

Input vs Output Goals for Discipleship

August 15, 2017 By Daniel Im

Have you ever judged the effectiveness of your ministry by the size of attendance?

On Easter Sunday, after setting up extra chairs, perhaps you had to pull out even more to accommodate the influx of people. It may have felt good to preach to a full room. Lives were changed and there was a tangible buzz in the air.

By all accounts, that service felt like a win.

But then what happened in the following weeks? Where did all the people go? Did they stick with their faith? Or did everything go back to “normal?”

And if that happened, did you end up feeling like a failure?

The fact is, we can’t help having responses like this.

From report cards and standardized testing scores to gas mileage in our cars and the square footage of our homes, we measure everything—especially what “success” looks like in ministry.

How many people were baptized last year?
What is your average weekend attendance?
How many campuses do you have?
How many do you have on staff?
What about your budget?

Those can be great indicators of health. But they don’t measure matters of the heart. And they don’t tell us whether someone in our church is a disciple and whether people are maturing in their faith.

I want to introduce a different way to measure success in discipleship—one that is based on one of the largest studies done to date on discipleship in North America. So let’s dig in.

Measuring discipleship can be a little like measuring other kinds of human endeavors aimed at changing your life—like losing weight or saving money.

There are two factors to keep in mind: input goals and output goals.

Input goals are the behaviors or habits you adopt when trying to make a change.

In weight loss, input goals would be things like counting calories, exercising, or cutting back on fast food. For saving money, they’d be things like bringing your lunch to work or setting a family budget.

We adopt those input goals in order to see some kind of output in the future.

Output goals equal feeling better physically, losing a certain number of pounds, or having a certain amount of money in the bank.

The two are linked; certain kinds of inputs lead to certain kinds of outputs.

Churches often measure success in ministry and whether someone is a mature disciple by using output goals, such as attendance, giving, and serving. But we need to think about input goals as well.

Taking Credit for Others Work

August 8, 2017 By Daniel Im

Have you ever taken credit for others work? For something you didn’t do? For something that wasn’t yours?

I know I have…

In fact, I’ve never admitted the following story to anyone…ever. So here we go.

That shoe wasn’t mine. Yet I took it home and pretended that it was mine. I took credit for it. My teacher and my parents thought it was gorgeous. But the stark truth is that it wasn’t actually my work.

I’m talking about a clay model of a shoe…

Now to my defense, when I grabbed that shoe, I honestly thought it was mine. After all, it had the Nike swoosh on it and it was a high top. And while those two characteristics of a clay shoe didn’t necessarily thin the pack or narrow the options, when I grabbed that shoe, I was convinced it was mine.

Okay…I wasn’t fully convinced, since there was another shoe on the table that had the same characteristics. But surely, that ugly thing wasn’t my creation. I was definitely more talented than that. After all, doesn’t baking clay get rid of all the imperfections?

It wasn’t until another student went to the teacher, and I overheard him describe what his shoe looked like, that I realized I had taken the wrong one. But at that point, it was too late. I had already committed. And I didn’t want to say anything.

So I just kept the shoe, took credit for it, and brought it home.

While that might seem like a silly story, it revealed something about my heart, and the condition of the human heart.

5 Myths That Block Disciple Making

August 1, 2017 By Daniel Im

“I want to make my life count. I want to do big things for the kingdom. I only want to do things that have an eternal significance.”

Have you ever prayed such prayers? I know I definitely have.

In fact, when I was getting serious about my relationship with Christ, this is what I regularly prayed for because I wanted my life to count. I wanted to make a difference in this world. I didn’t want to live for what was temporal—my fame and my glory—but for what was eternal.

And the only way that I knew how to judge whether or not something was a “big thing” for the kingdom was by its size. This is what I thought:

Small churches = small impact
Small conferences = not significant
Small platform = lack of the right gifting

Years later, after God broke me and stripped away everything I had, I realized my ambitions weren’t as pure as I made them out to be.

Sure, I said that I wanted to make a big impact for the kingdom, but that was contingent upon me making the big impact for God. Yes, I obviously wanted to do things that had an eternal significance, but only if I could share that eternal significance with God…

I tried to sanctify my ambition with the right words, but it was all a sham.

Under Appreciating vs Over Celebrating

July 25, 2017 By Daniel Im

Why is Tuesday pizza day for Stephen Colbert and his team? And why has it been for a few weeks now?

This time last year, Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” was losing to Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” by over a million viewers. However, when Trump became president, something happened for Colbert…there was a turning point for his show.

You can read this recent NY Times article for a hypothesis as to why this happened, but essentially, the turning point was a result of a three-hour heart-to-heart conversation between Colbert and his executive producer, Chris Licht.

And during that meeting, they made a deal…

“The deal was, he said, ‘Listen, let me make these decisions and don’t try to take them back from me,’” Mr. Colbert remembered. “And I said, ‘O.K., well, don’t debate with me what’s funny.’”

So Mr. Colbert focused on the comedy and his performance, and Mr. Licht dealt with management issues that the host had been expending energy on: staffing, budgets, sales meetings, the works. [1]

After that meeting, Colbert started to ease up and focus on the things that came naturally to him. Leaving the rest to others.

7 Constants for Church Planting

July 18, 2017 By Daniel Im

Let’s go on a short journey exploring the recent history of significant movements that have shaped what we’re seeing in the West today.

This history is important to digest as we look forward to the possibilities that lie ahead—with God! Less than 50 years ago, a movement was birthed to reach a specific subculture in the United States: the hippies. At a time when America was infatuated with drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll, there was a great awakening of individuals who decided to reject that lifestyle and seek God instead. This was the Jesus People movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

When Kenn Gulliksen was sent out by the Calvary Chapel in 1974 to start a church in West Los Angeles, no one would’ve guessed or even imagined that less than 50 years later, there would be over 2,400 churches in 95 countries that would share the same name: Vineyard.

Eight years after Gulliksen planted  the first Vineyard church, there were at least seven Vineyard churches in this loosely defined network. It was at this point, in 1982, when John Wimber became the first director of this growing Vineyard movement.

Sure, your church may not be  Vineyard and may not affirm all they do, but you can’t deny the tangible, movemental impact they have had planting new churches. This impact is, without question, one of their greatest attributes.

In fact, here are seven constants to church planting that John Wimber outlined and lived by as he led the Vineyard movement to plant over 1,000 churches in their lifetime:

1) Constantly Tell Your Story.

When church planters were getting ready to launch, Wimber would commonly teach them to share why they were there.

Tell everyone why you are there. And once you’ve told them ten times—tell them five hundred more…The problem is many pastors get bored of telling their own story—so they quit telling it. And then they wonder why their church quits growing. People thrive on narrative, that’s how God created us as humans, and a powerful narrative becomes the key factor of vision-casting and leadership. Not telling your story can be a contributing factor to lack of church growth, because people lose focus when you’re not consistently telling who you are and where you’re going. And they lose their reason for existence.

2) Constantly Tell His Story.

As important as your story is, the true priority is His story—Jesus’ story. Because people thrive on narratives, you need to consider how to share your story in a way that connects  with God’s grand narrative for the world.

How does Jesus fit into why you are there? Wimber would teach church planters that, “Every occasion ought to have His story in it. Jesus is the Son of God. It’s always in there, always wrapped up in the midst of any exchange with people.”

How can you share your story in a way that connects with God’s grand narrative for the world?

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3) Constantly Explain the Mysteries of Life.

This point was twofold for Wimber.  On the one hand, he emphasized  the importance of calling people to a deeper commitment to Christ—not just to salvation but also to mission. Then he elaborated on the importance of metrics to help you know how you’re doing in ministry.