Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Leadership

Missional Living and the Scriptures

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Mission is not something that your church does. Nor is it something that your church can opt out of. And it’s not a strategy, preference, or style of ministry either.

Mission needs to be core to the identity of any and every local church. After all, a church without a clear understanding of its mission is a church without power. As scholar Martin Kähler said a century ago, “Mission is the mother of theology.”

What It Means to Be Missional

I’m not talking about having a mission statement. I’m talking about the great and grand mission that God has invited us all into: the mission of God, the missio Dei. The concept of missio Dei is recognition that God is a sending God and that the church is sent.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. (John 20:21 CSB)

In describing the mission of the church, Tim Keller notes: “God does not merely send the church in mission. God already is in mission, and the church must join him. This also means, then, that the church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.”1

The church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.

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The church has been sent to join the most important mission in the Scriptures.2 Jesus Christ embodied that mission; the Holy Spirit empowers for that mission; the church is the instrument of that mission; and the culture is the context in which that mission occurs.3

As missiologist Wilbert Shenk points out: “The Great Commission institutionalizes mission as the raison d’être, the controlling norm, of the church. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a member of his body is to live a missionary experience in the world. There is no doubt that this was how the earliest Christians understood their calling.”
4

And this is how we need to understand the word mission or its adjective, missional, today. A missional church is a church that’s adopting the posture of a missionary, joining God on His mission, and learning and adapting to
 the culture around them while remaining biblically sound.
 Think of it this way: missional means living and acting like 
a missionary, even if you never leave your city.

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Sanctifying Your Ambition and Faith

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If you missed my last two posts on ambition, you might want to start there:

  1. The Paradox of Ambition and Faith
  2. Ambition, Faith, and Timing

Oftentimes God has to bring you through the desert before he can use you.

In other words, he has to sanctify your ambition and faith in order to use you for his purposes.

If you haven’t yet gone through a desert experience where your world has been turned upside down, then expect to. God uses these desert experiences to accomplish things through you that you would never be able to accomplish apart from them.

Oftentimes God has to bring you through the desert before he can use you.

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In fact, spiritual leaders find their greatest insights and contributions in these desert experiences.

Moving back to Canada from from Korea was definitely a desert experience for me. I felt like my world was turned upside down.

I knew that God had called us to Korea, but if that was really true, then why did he allow us to leave Korea the way we did? The ministry was multiplying, people were being transformed, and we had just signed a lease for a new place and bought all new furniture, only then to turn around and leave it all?

My wife, Christina, and I didn’t understand why God was allowing us to go through this, but by his unbelievable grace we did sense his presence along the way.

When we moved back to Canada, we were jobless, hopeless, and our savings were running out fast.

I was disillusioned with ministry and knew I needed a break, but I also knew my family needed to be fed.

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My Seminars for Exponential East 2017

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I’m excited to be speaking this week at Exponential East 2017!

If you are at the conference, I’d love for you to join me at one of my seminars.

Pre-Conference: Developing Better Disciple Makers – Hosted by Discipleship.org

  • Join Jim Putman, Ralph Moore, Bobby Harrington, Bill Hull, Ariyana Rimson and Daniel Im to learn how to get better at personally living out Jesus’ final command. The sessions will be practical and led by some of the nations leading authorities and, more importantly, practitioners of disciple making.
  • Time: Monday 1:00pm – 5:00pm
  • Location: Henry Chapel

Pre-Conference: Embracing Disruption – Repurpose Your Church to Redeem Your Community – Hosted by Mosaix

  • An increasingly diverse and cynical society will no longer find credible the mere explanation of theological truth apart from effective community engagement. Advancing the common good, then, and thus the very Gospel, itself, must involve more than mere words, and the building of large congregations filled with people of a similar race, class, or cultural background. In this present future, our common confession must be validated by concrete action and accompanying measurable results along spiritual, social and economic fronts. Indeed this is the expectation of Christ in Matthew 5:16 and of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10. Whether you’re the pastor of an existing church or soon-to-be church planter, don’t miss this first ever presentation designed to help you advance disruption innovation, effective community engagement, and maximize your church’s influence in the community.
  • Time: Tuesday 8:00am – 11:30am
  • Location: Faith Hall – Room 350

Workshop Session 1: Pathways: The Shift from Level 3 to Becoming a Level 4 Leader and Church

  • Join Daniel Im, Mac Lake and Chris Lagerlof as we discuss the process and steps to successfully shifting from being a Level 3 (growth by addition) church to becoming a Level 4 (reproduction) church. We will look at barriers to making this shift as well the necessary steps you must make in your own personal leadership and ministry to successfully navigate this shift. Our conversation will focus on helping you and your church, network or tribe build a culture of reproduction and a level 4 mindset. We will also discuss the pathway and process to successfully be a Level 4 leader and church.
  • Time: Tuesday, 2:30-3:30pm
  • Location: Henry Chapel

Workshop Session 2: A Discipleship Strategy for Multiplication

  • In order to multiply, you need to have a discipleship strategy in place. After all, the multiplication of your church always begins with the multiplication of disciples. In this workshop, learn how to create a strategic discipleship pathway that will help you develop multipliers, rather than consumers.
  • Time: Wednesday, 8:45-9:45am
  • Location: AP Buildings – AP 7

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Ambition, Faith, and Timing

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Last week I covered the paradox of ambition and faith. Today, I want to add a third variable to the mix: timing.

What relationship does ambition and faith have with timing?

Although spiritual leaders can have ambition and God-placed faith, there’s still one major area they can mess up in—timing.

It’s easy for spiritual leaders to mess up in this one area–timing.

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Abraham had a significant calling on his life, and it was to be the father of a great nation, one that was intended to be a blessing to the entire world and one from which the Savior of the world would come. To even believe that this could be true, for him took a great measure of faith, and only a truly ambitious person would’ve even accepted this grand assignment.

The only problem was that Abraham was impatient.

I don’t blame the guy, though. After all, he was childless and seventy-five years old at the time God commissioned him (Gen 12:2–4). In the ensuing years Abraham moved, experienced a famine, lost his wife, then received her back, moved again, got into a fight with his nephew Lot, experienced war, experienced the destruction of a city, and moved again (did I already say that?), among many other things.

In and through these experiences, God reminded him multiple times about this calling that he had placed on his life.

God will often use your current circumstances to remind you about your calling.

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Eleven years later Abraham and his wife Sarah (their names were Abram and Sarai at that time) got fed up about continually hearing this calling and not seeing it come to pass, so they ambitiously took their faith into their own hands.

“Sarai said to Abram, ‘Since the LORD has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.’ And Abram agreed to what Sarai said” (Gen 16:2).

Spiritual leaders understand that there are two different ways to understand time in the Scriptures.

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The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

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ambition mountain

A 7-Eleven Vision for Church Planting

“What’s your vision for the orphanage and for Thailand?” I asked the pastor of the orphanage.

“You know, whenever I think about you Koreans and South Korea, I get mixed feelings.”

I was starting to think that I shouldn’t have asked this question in the first place.

The pastor continued, “On the one hand, I’m astounded as to the spiritual transformation God can accomplish in a single country over a short period of time. But on the other hand, I’m upset because 100 years ago, Korea and Thailand were basically the same country—rural, economically challenged, and spiritually lost.”

After giving a sigh of relief, I paused, wondering whether I should interject, but then the pastor continued.

“Have you noticed that there are 7-Elevens pretty much on every street corner in Thailand?” asked the pastor.

I nodded.

“I have this dream that God would do such a transformational work in Thailand that, instead of 7-Elevens on every street corner, we had churches. And I want that work to start here in the orphanage with these children,” explained the pastor.

As I walked away from that conversation, I thought to myself, now that’s ambitious.

The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

What does an entrepreneur dreaming up a new solution for the next greatest app have in common with that pastor in Thailand dreaming about planting churches on every street corner?

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