Strengths

A Missional Christian Approach: Perspectives on Death – Part 6/6

July 23, 2012 By Daniel Im

This is my last post of this series and summarizes a missional Christian response to death and tragedy.

As I was searching for articles on tragic death, I discovered that there was not a short supply. However, what overwhelmed me was the fact that tragic deaths take place every moment of the day and all over the world, but not every tragic death gets recorded in a news medium. This is a personally painful topic for my family and I, but it is also as painful for millions of others who are dealing through a tragic death.

Christians are notorious for offering “packaged” and over simplistic phrases of comfort to others grieving through a loss – many reflect on the trite phrases that Job’s friends offered to him, in the Book of Job, as he grieved the loss of his family. Since death is something that shakes our entire reality, what ought the Christian response to death be? After all, regardless of one’s faith journey, we are all seeking to find meaning, comfort, and healing in light of these senseless tragic deaths.

So what ought the church’s missional response be to tragic deaths? For it’s congregants and the wider community?

Book Review: The Missional Leader

May 28, 2012 By Daniel Im

The following is an analytical book review of The Missional Leader.

Roxburgh is one of the foremost leading thinkers in everything missional, yet he is a pastor at heart with over thirty years of experience in church leadership, consulting, and seminary education. He is also leads The Missional Network, which is an organization that is committed to resourcing missional leaders. On the other hand, Romanuk is an experienced psychologist with years of organizational consulting experience. He brings expertise in assessing and developing the potential of people in leadership roles.

The thesis of this book is that every church needs to move from a consumeristic model to a missional model, since the very nature of the church is to be God’s missionary people. Roxburgh and Romanuk explain how leaders need to make this transition first personally before being able to lead his/her church through this transition.

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.

Book Review: Renovation of the Heart – Dallas Willard

April 27, 2011 By Daniel Im

The following is an analytical book review of Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart.

Dallas Willard is a Professor in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. Although he is a philosophy professor who has published in his main area of study and teaching, it seems that Willard has found greater success in the area of publishing Christian books. He has published more Christian books than he has philosophical books, while having received more book awards for his Christian books. Furthermore, Willard’s background in academics and philosophy heavily influences his writing; for example, he refuses to assert his “how-to” points without first providing the background information and then carefully and systematically supporting his points in a well rounded manner. This method may seem logical, but it is not necessarily the norm in the array of books that come out these days.

The thesis of this book is that the spirit, mind, body, social context, and soul of an individual needs to be spiritually transformed into Christlikeness, by relying on the grace of God, and having and implementing the appropriate vision, intention, and means to Christlikeness.

Willard’s book is essentially divided into two major sections. The first section begins by defining authentic spiritual formation. Willard emphasizes how true spiritual formation is not just about the external, but it is more about inward obedience and conformity to Christ (Chapter 1, Location 215). In setting up the second half of the book, Willard states that the major obstacle to spiritual formation is self-worship, whereas self-denial is the foundation of its renovation (Chapter 5, Location 983). For spiritual formation to be effective, this self-denial needs to happen in one’s whole self – namely, these six areas: spirit, mind, body, social context, and soul (Chapter 2, Location 330). As a result, a strategy to transform each of these essential dimensions to Christlikeness composes the second section of his book.

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