leadership

Why We Need to Be Mean About The Vision

May 24, 2016 By Daniel Im

A Personal Conversation with Shawn

I remember having a conversation with Shawn Lovejoy a year after starting my new position with LifeWay Christian Resources. I had moved my family down to Nashville, TN to figure out how LifeWay was going to resource church planters, multisite churches, and multiplying churches (we started NewChurches.com as a result).

So we were together at the Exponential conference, and Shawn asked me, “How’s everything going?”

I just responded the way I normally do with a big grin, “It’s going great!”

But then, he stopped, looked at me straight in the eyes and asked me one more time, “How’s everything going?”

I remember thinking to myself, Shawn’s a really nice guy, and I enjoy working with him, but why is he asking me this question again?? We’re in a public place at a conference…does he expect to “counsel” me here?

Sure, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, but who wasn’t anyway? After all, in the previous months, I was rewriting Planting Missional Churches with Ed Stetzer, developing and launching the strategy for NewChurches.com, leading a major software redevelopment initiative with the North American Mission Board to better assess, train, and coach their church planters, launching The State of Church Planting research project, and now speaking four times at the Exponential conference, but this season was eventually going to pass, right?

I was at a conference and had to put my “game face” on, so who was Shawn to be confronting me like this? Well, the reality was, Shawn was just being himself. He was acting as a wise mentor who had travelled this path many times, and was seeing someone else who was heading down the same path.

So he looked at me and said, “I’ve been where you are bro, I’ve burnt the candle at both ends, and it just wasn’t worth it.”

At that, I decided it was time to sit down and have a real conversation with him.

Tomorrow’s Church Planting

April 15, 2016 By Daniel Im

tomorrow

Church planting today is not what it used to be.

Before, church planters were the ones who couldn’t get a “real ministry position” at a church, so they started their own. Albeit, there were those entrepreneurial few who defied all odds and started churches on their own, by and large, being a church planter wasn’t what it was today.

Now, being a church planter is the thing to do.

Church planting is getting the attention of the masses. In fact, many church planting conferences are now larger than typical pastoral conferences. This is surprising when, decades ago, there was no such thing as a church planting conference. For example, the recent SEND North America church planting conference in 2015, hosted by the North American Mission Board (an SBC entity), had two to three times the attendance than the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting in 2015. That would not have happened 15 years ago. In addition, most seminaries now have certificates, tracks, and/or entire degree programs focusing on church planting. This too would not have been the case in yesteryear.

The evidence is clear. Church planting is exciting, it has momentum, and it is here to stay. But this article is not on today’s church planting, it’s on tomorrow’s church planting.

As I’ve been consulting with denominations, networks, and churches regarding their strategy to assess, train, coach, and fund church planters, there are a few trends that I’m beginning to notice. In fact, a few of these trends were the focus of Ed Stetzer’s and my writing in the newly updated edition of Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply. Not only did we overhaul every single chapter, but we also wrote several new ones. If you read the previous edition, it would be worth your time to take a look, since it’s practically a new book (over 50% new content). For this article though, I want to focus on three of the major trends that I’m beginning to notice for tomorrow’s church planting: Kingdom collaboration, bivocational ministry, and residencies and theological education.

Book Review and Best Quotes: BiVO by Hugh Halter

April 4, 2016 By Daniel Im

Hugh Halter, in his book BiVO: A Modern Day Guide For Bi-Vocational Saints paints a picture of bivocational ministry for Western church planters, pastors, and missionaries. Not only does he share examples from his real-life experience of doing this, but he also give us an inside picture of his church and how they operate as a ministry served and led by bivocational leaders.

For example, in one chapter, he actually outlines the bivocational lives of each of his leadership team members. Here are three out of the nine that he shares:

Hugh & Cheryl: As I did my first church plant in Portland, about one third of my income came from personal missionary support, while the other two-thirds came from house painting. Because of our son’s epilepsy, my wife Cheryl has never been able to work until about five years ago. Now, about nine years into the church life, I receive one third of my income from Adullam, one third from speaking and training other church leaders, and one third from Cheryl’s real-estate career. Over the nine years Adullam has been a church, I have averaged about twenty-five hours a week for the actual church leadership roles. The rest of my time has been spent on the road, training leaders or painting as it was in the early days.

Matt & Maren: Matt was my original partner with both the church and with our national ministry platform called Missio. Matt worked with FedEx one third of the time, worked at a golf course for five dollars an hour, and had another one third of his income come from missionary support. As the church grew, Matt replaced his FedEx job with a one-third time stipend from the church and pieced the rest of his income together between church, training, and coaching. Two years ago, Matt gave up his church stipend and set out to start a small but successful publishing company. He remains one of our “elders” and continues to give Adullam about fifteen hours a week as a volunteer. His wife Maren has decided to stay home and be a mom.

Greg & Becky: These two are book agents and writers but emerged as key lay leaders, pastoring almost one third of our congregation with marriage issues. They serve on our leadership council and continue to give about twenty hours a week to the pastoral needs of the congregation without any pay.

Halter’s main premise is to help church leaders understand that their two callings are to work to provide for themselves and their family, AND to see their “entire lives leveraged and in use for God’s kingdom purposes, to live intentionally as a missionary saint.” Living out these dual callings is what he terms as BiVO. After all, “if none of us got paid, God would still expect us to lead and serve the world.”

Book Review: Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders

February 23, 2016 By Daniel Im

Spiritual Leadership , with an emphasis on the word spiritual, is definitely an accurate description for J. Oswald Sanders’ book. He covers popular leadership principles, such as, time management and the importance of developing our talents, but the majority of his points and illustrations are all in reference to spiritual leadership.

Sanders introduces each chapter with a scriptural reference, by which he uses to ground his ideas within the chapter, but much of his explanation is rooted in his wealth of experience and/or the experience of other notable figures, such as Charles Spurgeon, A.B. Simpson, A.W. Tozer, and J. Hudson Taylor. Sanders believes that all Christians are leaders and that we should all develop our leadership potential.

Central to this book is the belief that God is the one who calls forth leaders in the church and then subsequently anoints them.

Spiritual leadership is a matter of being chosen, rather than choosing. Spiritual leadership is all about being last, rather than first. A spiritual leader is one that imitates Christ Jesus–the greatest spiritual leader of all. As important as it is for a leader to listen, lead, articulate, and inspire well, what takes precedence over any method or skill is one’s connection to the vine–Jesus Christ.

Multiplication is Impossible Without Intentionality

January 30, 2016 By Daniel Im

*My post here was originally published on Nov 10, 2015 in Christianity Today.

Wikipedia - Calvin Teo — Wikipedia – Calvin Teo

Growing up in Vancouver, there were a lot of 7-Elevens around. In fact, one of my favorite things to do as a child was to buy a Slurpee, nachos with cheese, and some chewy coke bottle candies. Ah, the memories. So when my Sunday school teacher offered to buy my friends and I nachos and cheese, in exchange for not making his life miserable, you could’ve probably guessed my response. I was like a child with a halo around his head. Who knew bribing a child could be so effective!

The funny thing about 7-Elevens, and other convenient stores like them, is that they have a strategy for multiplication. They don’t just haphazardly place stores wherever there’s cheap rent, nor do they wait for entrepreneurial leaders to show up at their door step. They are intentional. Incredibly intentional. They do their research on the best location for future stores. They develop leaders because they know that the success of their stores rises and falls on leadership. Intentionality is everything.

The same is true for church planting.

Intentionality Matters in Church Planting

When we conducted the largest and most thorough research project ever done on church planting, we discovered that intentionality was everything. You can download the U.S. and Canadian version of the report at www.newchurches.com.

We discovered that:

Church plants who were intentional with evangelism had more unchurched people in their congregation
Church plants who were intentional at having a highly public presence had a larger worship attendance
Church plants who were intentional at starting at least one daughter church within their first 3 and 5 years saw a consistent increase in attendance
Church plants who prioritized leadership development saw more people make a decision for Christ

And the list goes on and on. The fact is, intentionality matters.