Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Leadership

Mars, Contextualization, and Church Leadership

By

Image: NASA

What time is it on Mars?

I was obsessed with space as a child. In fact, I still have my old books about space, and now my children are reading them! I can assure you that it was their decision, not mine. Going along the theme of loving space, I was naturally into Star Wars, but it was Star Trek that won the day for me. Now I’m definitely revealing my inner nerd, but I even had a manual that talked about all the intricate systems on the USS Enterprise.

I recently watched a TED Talk from Nagin Cox, a Spacecraft Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In it, she explained what life on Mars was like—she even referred to herself as a Martian! Now before you ask Google, Siri, or Alexa when humans first landed on Mars, let me clarify. She’s a Martian because she works on the team that controls the four rovers that the U.S. has placed on Mars since the mid-90s.

When the rovers are “sleeping” at night—in order to recharge their batteries—Cox and her team are hard at work creating the rover’s program for the next day. So essentially, Cox works the night shift.

Now unlike individuals who work the graveyard shift from 11 pm – 7 am here on Earth, things are a bit different on Mars. This is because a day on Mars is 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth. In other words, it takes 24 hours and 40 minutes for Mars to rotate once.

Not only that, but a year on Mars is almost twice as long as a year on Earth.

While this might sound like a minute detail (pun intended), this has actually created quite a couple of issues for Cox and her Martian colleagues, such as:

  • When you say the words yesterday, today, and tomorrow, how do you know if someone is referring to yesterday, today, and tomorrow on Earth time or Martian time?
  • Do you work the 11 pm – 7 am shift according to Earth time or Martian time?

Now what does this all have to do with church planting and leadership in the church?

[Read more…] about Mars, Contextualization, and Church Leadership

Missional Living and the Scriptures

By

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.

Click To Tweet

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.

[Read more…] about Missional Living and the Scriptures

Sanctifying Your Ambition and Faith

By

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.

Click To Tweet

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.

[Read more…] about Sanctifying Your Ambition and Faith

My Seminars for Exponential East 2017

By

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

[Read more…] about My Seminars for Exponential East 2017

Ambition, Faith, and Timing

By

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.

Click To Tweet

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.

Click To Tweet

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.

[Read more…] about Ambition, Faith, and Timing