Spirituality

Your Desert Experience in Ministry – Part 2/4

November 28, 2011 By Daniel Im

In part one, I described the rationale behind desert or isolation experiences in ministry. Click here to read about it. Essentially, God uses desert experiences to accomplish things through us that we would never be able to accomplish apart from these desert experiences.

Today I would like to go a bit more in depth and define the different types of desert experiences one might experience in ministry. There are two broad categories of desert experiences. Shelly Trebesch calls them involuntary and voluntary isolation experiences in her book, Isolation: A Place of Transformation in the Life of a Leader.

Another way of looking at them is: unplanned and planned desert experiences.

Your Desert Experience in Ministry – Part 1/4

November 19, 2011 By Daniel Im

Although leading, serving, and being with people is a central component to ministry, every leader will go through desert experiences, or isolation experiences, where one is forced out of one’s context, or where one will voluntarily leave one’s context.

If you haven’t yet gone through one, then expect to. If you have, then you probably know that these experiences are the most formative experiences in our lives: personally, spiritually, and ministerially.

This is part one of a four part series where I will explore these desert experiences in ministry. Today I will explain the rationale behind these isolation experiences.

God uses desert experiences to accomplish things through us that we would never be able to accomplish apart from these desert experiences. In fact, some of our ultimate leadership insights and contributions may come from these desert experiences.

Faith and Kids – the Parent’s role

October 27, 2011 By Daniel Im

Deut. 6:1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.

Deut. 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

We can’t pass something onto our kids that we don’t have ourselves. After all, the above passage says that we need to love the lord our God with all OUR heart, OUR soul, and with all OUR strength…this is before he even mentions impressing it on your child. So what’s first? What should our priority be?

If we want to be great parents and see our children grow up to know, love, and serve Jesus, then we need to be doing that first.

Attending a weekend service, participating in a group, and meeting with others in your group on a casual basis are all designed to be reinforcements for the way we raise our children and draw closer to God…they aren’t intended to be replacements for us raising our kids up in the faith and us taking personal responsibility for our spiritual lives.

Grab a pencil.

Book Review: The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission – Lesslie Newbigin

August 14, 2011 By Daniel Im

The following is an analytical review on Lesslie Newbigin’s The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission Revised Edition.

Leslie Newbigin (1909-1998) was a theological missiologist/missionary and a missiological theologian. There are over six decades worth of his writings on mission theology and practice. Thus, he is considered to have had one of the greatest influences on the theology of mission in the twentieth century. Furthermore, Newbigin was a scholar practitioner since his works were always rooted in his living relationship with Jesus Christ; after all, he modeled what he wrote. He was also a Western missionary to India from 1936-1974, and upon returning to Great Britain, his missionary focus turned to the West (Shenk 1998).

The thesis of this book is that Christian mission is an open secret. It is open in the sense that the gospel is proclaimed to all without any boundaries, but it is a secret in that “it is manifest only to the eyes of faith” (Location 2556). As a result, mission cannot be relegated as a side task of the church, but it is the central calling and purpose of the church, yet the church does not own the mission, the mission is God’s (Location 256). Newbigin’s prophetic call to the church is for it to reemphasize its missionary character “to bring all things to their true end in the glory of the triune God” (Location 2556).

Making Idols

August 3, 2011 By Daniel Im

We all tend to make idols. So to prevent ourselves from doing so, it’s important to understand from what we are manufacturing our idols from.

Things that entice us
Things we fear
Things that we trust
Things we need

Whenever we make idols from these things, we are basically rejecting God.

“The only antidote to such idolatries, and therefore the task of biblical mission, is to lead people back to acknowledge the only true and living God in all of these domains.”

– Christopher Wright, The Mission of God

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