Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Change

Before Changing Things In Your Church, Read This First!

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Everything has changed.

Okay, maybe not everything, but doesn’t it sort of seem like everything’s different?

Sure, there are the in-your-face differences like masks, social distancing, online school, and the run-for-the-mountain reflex when someone sneezes, but more than all of that, I find it’s the subtle differences that scare me the most. Things like that subtle anxiety when someone gets too close or the crowd is too large, or that subtle knot in your stomach when you wonder whether your church auditorium will ever be full again. Subtle things like that…

Now at some point in the future, I’m quite certain the in-your-face differences will come to an end and life will return to some semblance of normal, but what about those subtle differences…?

We’re in the middle of some permanent changes to the way we feel, think, and live.

Culture post-COVID is not going to be the same as culture pre-COVID, so what can we do today, since we’re in the middle of it all?

What can we do today to better prepare ourselves to reach our neighbourhoods and cities tomorrow, once COVID is a thing of the past? Especially if you’re a church leader?

What can we do today to better prepare ourselves to reach our neighbourhoods and cities tomorrow, once COVID is a thing of the past? Especially if you’re a church leader?
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Isn’t the answer to introduce change?

Yes, it certainly is. But where to start?

In my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry, I talk about change this way:

Any change you try to implement in your church has one of three fates. 1) It’ll never get off the ground because it will be seen as a bacteria, virus, or foreign matter and subsequently be rejected. 2) The change will happen, but because it doesn’t fit into your vision, strategy, and values, you will inevitably end up changing things again. 3) The change will move you closer to the vision, strategy, and values that God has called you to embrace because you started with discernment by using the three steps for introducing change.


Here’s where most church leaders get things wrong.

We get so excited about the change—or some program that we’ve seen work elsewhere—that we completely forget that we’re introducing this change into a living, breathing, organism (the church) made up of living, breathing, organisms (people).

What I don’t want to do is tell you what you need to change, or even give you a few suggestions on things to change. Instead, I want to advise you to pause, take a step back, and assess what kind of culture your church currently has: Are you a Copy Cat Church, Silver Bullet Church, Hippie Church, or an Intentional Church?

Once you figure this out, your path forward will be abundantly clear.

Pause, take a step back, and assess what kind of culture your church currently has.
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In the first chapter of No Silver Bullets, I’ve included a full explanation of the Influences Matrix (above diagram), and also a few assessments that will help you discern where your church is at, so that you can figure out where you need to go.

Instead of trying to copy and paste all of that into this post, I thought it’d be better just to give you all of that for free. So if you click here, you can download the first chapter for free to discern where you’re at and what needs to change as we adjust to our new post-COVID reality of life.

Friends, don’t waste this pandemic.

Please see it as an opportunity to be a student of your church, so that you can prayerfully discern what needs to change moving forward, in order for your church to be a sign, instrument, and foretaste of the kingdom of God in your neighbourhood, town, or city.

Don’t change things until you first start here.

Don’t waste this pandemic. Please see it as an opportunity to be a student of your church.
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Creating New Habits and Rhythms

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When we left Nashville and moved back to Canada, I was resolved to fix this one thing that had eluded me my entire life.

No matter how hard I tried, I could never figure it out.

Was it that I didn’t care? Or was it just that the pain of changing was greater than the pain of staying the same?

All I knew was that if I didn’t address this one thing, it could potentially lead to the downfall of my marriage, my family, and my ministry.

Before I share this one thing that I’m referring to, I’m curious whether you have something like this in your life? Is there something that—if left unattended—could eventually undermine your life and ministry? Some part of your life that isn’t necessarily an example for others in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity? (1 Timothy 4:12)

Is there something that—if left unattended—could eventually undermine your life and ministry?
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[Read more…] about Creating New Habits and Rhythms

Cauliflower, Podcasting, and Amazon Prime

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(The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of my newest book, You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love)

If there’s anything constant in life, it’s change.

Just consider how commonplace cauliflower, podcasting, and Amazon Prime have become—and how quickly it’s happened.

If there’s anything constant in life, it’s change.
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Growing up, no one ever talked about cauliflower, let alone wanted to eat the tasteless and smelly thing.

Yet recently, you’ve probably tried (or heard of) cauliflower rice, cauliflower pizza crust, cauliflower buffalo wings, or cauliflower tots. And if you haven’t, your friends have. Now just to give you a sense of its meteoric rise, in a short span of three years, Green Giant has gone from harvesting five to thirty acres of cauliflower each week. That’s 100,000 heads of cauliflower every single day! And they are just one of the many companies that have hopped on the cauliflower bandwagon.

A similar thing has happened with podcasting.

When I started listening to podcasts in 2008, it was a multistep process that required a computer. Today, however, with the ubiquity of smartphones, listening to podcasts has become so commonplace and normal that the question has shifted from “Have you heard of podcasts?” to “Which podcasts do you listen to?” In fact, in the last five years, close to half of all Americans and Canadians tuned into their first podcast episode.

And let’s not forget the explosive growth of Amazon Prime.

Now that more than half of all American households are subscribing members, isn’t it odd to meet someone who doesn’t have it? It’s definitely become the exception, rather than the norm.

[Read more…] about Cauliflower, Podcasting, and Amazon Prime

Adaptive Decision Making, Change, and Leadership – Part 2

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Let’s pick up from where we left on in Part 1 of this series of articles on adaptive decision making, change, and leadership. Be sure to start by reading Part 1 if you haven’t yet done so.

Over the last century, here’s the reason most churches and organizations have been able to scale and support the growth that they’ve experienced.

It’s because of the modern day “scientific management model,” which rests primarily upon two elements:

  1. “Absolutely rigid and inflexible standards throughout your establishment.”
  2. “That each employee of your establishment should receive every day clear-cut, definite instructions as to just what he is to do and how he is to do it, and these instructions should be exactly carried out, whether they are right or wrong.”[1]

I’m not saying that these two elements run the shop in every church and organization today. I’m just saying that they are the foundation that modern day management theory—both inside and outside the church—has been built upon, and it doesn’t work anymore because…

  • You can’t just set it and forget it
  • You can’t just keep your head down, do your work, and expect to succeed and hit your goals
  • Your success isn’t wholly dependent on you
  • If the only time you talk about development is the annual performance review, you won’t grow
  • If the only time you connect with your volunteers and leaders are on Sunday or in formal training environments, they won’t feel connected
  • If the only things you do are the things on your job description, your team won’t win
  • In fact, if you’re not revisiting your job description multiple times a year, it will become outdated quick
  • And if the only time you talk with your team members is during official team meetings, your team will move too slow
  • And if you’re not changing your website every 2-3 years, watch out…irrelevancy is just around the corner
You can’t just set it and forget it anymore.

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[Read more…] about Adaptive Decision Making, Change, and Leadership – Part 2

Adaptive Decision Making, Change, and Leadership – Part 1

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Watch this clip of a traffic intersection.

As you were watching it, what did you think was going to happen?

When I first saw this clip, it reminded me of the T-bone accident I was in as a child. I don’t really remember much around the way it happened, or what I was doing when it happened, but as a child, I flew right into the windshield of our car.

It happened when we were on our way home from the airport after picking up my mom. She had just returned after visiting family in Korea. Someone ran a stop sign and boom. Just like that, my hopes of ever becoming a doctor or rocket scientist flew right out the window…or should I stay straight into the window?

Alright, so back to the traffic intersection.

This is a video from a computer simulation that the Autonomous Intersection Management project at the University of Texas at Austin was conducting. When Peter Stone, the professor heading up this project, discovered that “25 percent of accidents and 33 percent of the thirty-three thousand auto deaths each year in America occur at intersections, and 95 percent are attributable to ‘human error,’” he and his team wanted to do something about it.

But how is this chaos better? Doesn’t this seem like a T-Bone accident just waiting to happen, rather than a way to prevent it from happening?

The interesting thing about this simulation is that every car you see here is being driven autonomously. In other words, they’re all self-driving cars.

This being the case, you can actually plot the trajectories of each car long before they arrive at the intersection, which means there’s no need for the typical breaking, stopping, and accelerating that normally characterizes four way intersections. This also means that you can get rid of traffic lights and stop signs, since every self-driving car would be communicating, sensing, and noticing the other.

To self-driving cars full of sensors and cameras, this simulation makes complete sense. To us, it doesn’t—it seems like utter chaos.

And here’s the reason.

It’s because of a thing called, “mental models.”

[Read more…] about Adaptive Decision Making, Change, and Leadership – Part 1