Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Leadership

Interview with Jeff Vanderstelt on Missional Practices

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Recently, my friend Jeff Vanderstelt shared his heart on the Saturate Field Guide that he developed with Ben Connelly, another one of my friends and one of our regular authors at NewChurches.com. Here is the interview.

Q. How can an attractional church move towards being more missional using this book?

A. The book guides believers through a study whereby they will come to understand the gospel and its implications for discipleship and mission. As participants work through the daily study and exercises, they will learn to embrace their identity as God’s family, sent as servants and missionaries to the world. The guidebook is most effective when a small group of believers commit to go through it together. As they travel together through the study, not only will they be led to personally grow as God’s missionary people, but collectively they will learn to realign their lives together around God’s purposes and mission. The guide was designed to move people from being Sunday only believers to everyday disciples who make disciples together in community while on mission.

Q. How do we normalize mission in the life of my church?

A. First of all, we need to preach the gospel indicatives – What is true about 1) who God is as revealed by 2) what God has done (especially in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ) leading to understanding 3) who we are in Christ. Then, we need to help people see how believing the gospel leads to new behaviors. The indicatives of the gospel lead to the imperatives of obedience.

The outcome of the gospel is mission

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The reason this is key to normalizing mission in the church is because the church needs to understand that the outcome of the gospel is mission. God is a missionary God who sent his only son to rescue and redeem a people for his mission on the earth. God is missionary, and we are his missionary people. It begins with us understanding our true identity as God’s people. Charles Spurgeon was famous for saying: “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” There is not a category for non-missionary Christian. If you are a Christian, you are a missionary.

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A Lesson From a Reluctant Leader

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Joseph is probably one of the most awkwardly and reluctantly blessed men in the world.

No I’m not talking about Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I’m talking about the man in those nativity scenes that always seems to be awkwardly standing beside Mary. In the Scriptures, while he was prominent at the beginning of Jesus’ life, he surprisingly fades away from the narrative as Jesus gets older. This doesn’t mean he was absent. It just means that we don’t know much about him.

One of the things that we do know about Joseph is that he was Jesus’ dad.

Just think about the implications of that for a moment. How would Jesus have been different if Joseph didn’t raise him as his son? What if Joseph left? What if he did actually divorce Mary in secret (Matt 1:19)? What if Jesus grew up fatherless? Or if another man entered the scene? Would Jesus have been different?

Recently, my wife and I have been watching a show called, Designated Survivor. It’s about a low-level cabinet minister that becomes President of the United States after a catastrophic attack destroys the capitol building and the government’s leadership infrastructure.

In a recent episode, there’s this scene where a news reporter asks the President’s son what he thinks about the fact that his dad might not actually be his real dad. Now just imagine how you would feel if someone dropped a bomb like that on you.

In one of the following scenes, while the son is watching TV trying to soak in what he’s going to do, Mike, the secret service agent assigned to him says,

You know, my dad’s called me everyday since I joined the secret service, just to make sure I’m staying safe.

The son responds,

Mike I…I know what you’re doing…You’re trying to tell me, no matter what, my dad cares.

Mike then says,

No I’m telling you about my dad. He taught me how to hoop and how to talk to girls. He pretty much made me who I am today. The funny thing is, I didn’t know him till I was three. That’s when my mom married him. I never met my biological father. Those tests—they tell you biology…but they don’t tell you who your dad is.

So yes, while Jesus is the Savior of the world, our messiah, the prophesied one, and the one who destroyed sin and death—Jesus, while being fully God, was also fully man. And because he was fully man—and had a mom, dad, and siblings—we can’t neglect the crucial role that his family had on him.

Your family played a critical role in shaping you to be the leader you are today.

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In other words, Jesus was shaped by his earthly dad.

When Joseph stuck with Mary and cared for his “adopted” son, this shaped Jesus. When Joseph brought Mary to Bethlehem, this shaped Jesus. And when Joseph listened to the angel that told him to get up and flee to Egypt since Herod was planning on destroying him, this shaped Jesus.

It wasn’t going to automatically happen. They weren’t going to be teleported to Egypt. Joseph had to get up, pack the caravan (the one with wood paneling on the side), chart the course, and bring his wife and his newborn son to Egypt.

Let alone the fact that they got up THAT NIGHT! Just imagine packing and moving within a moment’s notice?

So what does this have to do with being a reluctant leader?

While there are some areas in your life where you might have the title “leader,” there are many more where you are seen as a leader. These are the areas in our lives where, unfortunately, many of us are most reluctant to grab hold of our leadership responsibilities.

I’m primarily talking about the home. And in this article specifically, to parents. In other words, if you’re a parent, you’re a leader. So don’t neglect your children.

If you’re a parent, you’re a leader. So don’t neglect your children.

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Your children are watching you:

  • They’re watching the way you get home from work
  • They’re watching the way you sometimes choose to be on your phone over interacting with them
  • They’re watching the way you connect or don’t connect with your neighbors
  • They’re watching whether or not you’re choosing to join together with the family of God and worship on a weekly basis, regardless of whether or not you want to
  • They’re watching whether or not you’re in biblical community with others
  • They’re watching whether or not you’re serving on a regular basis
  • They’re watching if you’re making reading the Scriptures a priority in your life or not

I know this may sound harsh, but trust me, I’ve had to preach this to myself first. So this is more of a confession than it is anything else.

Since parenting is often caught more than taught, let’s stop leading passively and reluctantly towards an end that we don’t even want. Let’s together stop being reluctant leaders.

After all, just like Joseph’s actions shaped Jesus, the same is true for you. Your actions are shaping your children.

How To Predict the Future?

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Flickr - Jeff Seeger

Remember those Magic 8-Balls? I never owned one, but I had a few friends who did.

We never thought much of it, nor really gave it much credence. After all, how could an inanimate object predict the future anyway? If we only knew that there were 20 standard answers inside of the ball…

Nevertheless for fun, we would, one at a time, ask the Magic 8-Ball questions about our future.

As a pre-teen, our questions were usually about becoming professional hockey players or whether or not certain girls liked us. Once again, we never really gave it much credence—unless it gave us the answer we wanted it to.

“Signs point to yes,” “Outlook good,” and “Without a doubt,” were among my favorite answers. I think I remember throwing the ball against the wall when, “Concentrate and ask again,” “My sources say no,” or “Better not tell you now,” would come up too frequently.

Toys like these were so popular because they fed into our craving to have some semblance of direction for the future.

It was our longing to uncover the future, our desire to know our next steps, and our curiosity as to what’s around the corner that toys like this took advantage of. In a sense, this toy helped us predict the future—well, not really, but it at least gave us the illusion of doing so.

What if the way to predict the future was to simply look into the past? What if the best predictor of the future was the past?

This past weekend, I preached through Matthew 2 at my church (you can listen to the message here by clicking on the sermon from Dec 11, 2016). We’re in an Advent Series entitled, Jesus: The Story. So as I prepared this message, I decided to preach it from three different angles or lenses. Just like a movie director has several cameras he or she can look through, I noticed that this chapter could be viewed three different ways: from Herod’s camera, the Wise Men’s lens, and Joseph’s point of view.

What if the way to predict the future is to simply look into the past?

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Herod’s Camera

Now, I knew Herod was pretty messed up, since “he gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under” (Matt 2:16), but I didn’t realize the extent to his “messedupness.”

So I began looking into the history books to uncover Herod’s story. This was my driving question:

What if the cause for Herod’s manic behavior had to do with his past?

Herod, at the young age of 25, started his political career as the governor of Galilee in 47 BC, and everybody loved him at first. The Jews and the Romans admired his leadership, so he quickly became powerful and popular among the people.

He was so loved that other politicians, filled with jealousy, went behind his back and ousted him from governorship. Well, they were only partially successful, since he ended up becoming the governor of Coele-Syria instead—only serving to further his experience.

Over the next few years, Herod’s life was complicated, to say the least, as he had to deal with revolts, black mail, treason, and more. Eventually, he went to Rome and was promised Kingship, as long as he “took matters into his own hands,” and gained back control of the region.

So what did he do?

Pay close attention to this next part of the story because, as Henry Cloud so powerfully noted in his book, Necessary Endings, “the best predictor of the future is the past,” unless there has been some big change—and for Herod, there wasn’t.

The best predictor of the future is the past…unless there has been some big change.

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Herod was the same man as a governor as he was when he became king, when Jesus was born, and when his kingship was threatened. So when Herod was promised Kingship of Judea as long as he took “matters into his own hands” and gained back control of the region, he went in like a bull in a china shop.

When he returned to Palestine from Rome, he recaptured Galilee, and then he captured Jerusalem. He then married the niece of the king, so that he would have a claim to the throne. Once that was settled, he went ahead and beheaded the king, and took his position as king of the Jews.

This guy doesn’t joke around.

And once he grew in power and became king, he basically “took care” of anyone who opposed him.

It’s like in the movie Godfather when Sonny said,

I want you to take care of that **** right away. Paulie sold out the old man, that stronz. I don’t want to see him no more. I want you to make that first thing on your list, understand?

I mean this guy, Herod, executed 45 of the wealthiest aristocrats because they sided with the man he beheaded, the previous king. And then he went ahead and confiscated all their property, adding it to his own kingdom.

He even went up against Cleopatra. And in spite of an earthquake killing 30,000 people in Herod’s land, he still ended up beating her forces.

Then over the next few decades, after accusing his first wife of committing adultery and sentencing her to death, he married over 10 women and had many sons. The only problem is, now he had all of these sons who began fighting over the throne to the point where one son, trying to poison Herod, accidentally poisoned one of his other brother’s who drank the poison by mistake.

Herod’s entire political career consisted of one person after another trying to gain control over his throne—including his family.

Since the best predictor of the future is the past, there’s no wonder why Herod acted the same way when his throne was threatened again—but this time, by a baby who was “born King of the Jews.”

Do you see this in your life?

While the best predictor of the future is the past, that’s not justification to stay the same, remain in sin, in weakness, and in bondage. That statement is only true, unless you experience big change. Unless you learn something new, consciously act differently, and develop new patterns of behavior, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the past will be the best predictor for the future.

The source of lasting change, true change, and deep inner change is the Holy Spirit. Don’t forget this. But also, don’t neglect that you also need new patterns of behavior to accompany it.

The source of lasting change, true change, and deep inner change is the Holy Spirit.

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If this resonates with you, let me encourage you to pick up any one of these resources. They will help you take your next step into change, freedom, and a future that’s different than the past:

Questions to Find Your Calling

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“If time and money were no object, what would you do with your life?”

I forget who first asked me that question, but when they did, it was a defining moment for me. Well, it eventually became a defining moment for me. In the moment, it was just plain annoying.

I didn’t want to do the hard work of thinking. I wanted someone just to tell me what my plot in life was. I wanted someone to tell me what I was good at, so that I could just do that, and be done with it. I wanted to copy what made others successful, hoping that following their paths would do the same for me.

Boy, am I ever glad someone asked me that question. It’s what has partially catapulted me down the road to where I am today and the deep honor and privilege I have to serve pastors and church leaders.

I often return to what Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War wrote. Let me paraphrase him,

If you know your enemy, you’ll win half of the battles. But when you know yourself, you’ll win the other half. [1]

Just imagine the implications if we spent as much time discovering the unique ways that God has wired, gifted, talented, and called us, as we do reading biographies, copying the “successful,” and mimicking models? Investing in yourself is time never wasted.

Investing in yourself is time never wasted.

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The Power of the Right Questions

I love what Peter Drucker wrote about the importance of questions,

Answers are important; you need answers before you need action. But the most important thing is to ask…questions.

In order to find your calling in life, take a moment and prayerfully answer the following questions from my friend Todd Wilson’s new book, More: Find Your Personal Calling and Live Life to the Fullest Measure:

  1. Am I willing to move and go wherever God wants me to go?
  2. Am I willing to work with whomever God wants me to work?
  3. Am I willing to go whenever God asks me to go?
  4. Am I willing to do whatever God asks me to do, regardless of consequences?
  5. How can I expect God to send me and use me if I’m not really willing to go? [2]

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The Musical Art of Leadership

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You may not be aware of this, but I’m actually a classically trained violinist.

No, this is not what I do for a living, but it’s what I did for over a decade growing up. In fact, the capstone to my “musical” career was to play Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1 in G minor with a full orchestra accompanying me (that’s a picture of me during that concert). You can listen to it here (no, this is not me performing it, it’s Itzhak Perlman, one of my violin heroes.)

In fact, I never thought I’d get the chance to actually hear him live, but it happened! He came to Nashville and it was worth every penny. He’s a living legend.

Have you ever considered the relationship between music and leadership?

In a TED Talk from 2008, Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, discusses the relationship that music has with effective leadership.

You can watch it here, but let me share a few of my thoughts and reactions on the musical art of leadership, based on his talk:

  • While you might learn the stuff of leadership in a book, seminar, or classroom, the art of leadership can only be learned overtime through sweat, tears, and practice.
  • Rather than trying to rationally convince people they need what you’re offering, figure out a way to awaken, within them, a desire for it,
  • The best leaders focus on making other people powerful, rather than themselves.
  • When people aren’t following, you need to ask yourself, “Who am I being that others aren’t being inspired?”
  • Leaders awaken possibility in others, rather than use others to awaken their own possibility.

The art of leadership can only be learned overtime through sweat, tears, and practice.

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The best leaders focus on making other people powerful, rather than themselves.

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Leaders awaken possibility in others, rather than use others to awaken their own possibility.

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