Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

systems

God is NOT Anti-System

By

In 1995, astronomers thought there were were only 3000 galaxies.

Close to 10 years later, they realized there were 10,000. And now, through the Hubble telescope, they are estimating 100 billion!

Consider the vastness of our solar system, and how intricately connected it is to each other and to other systems in the universe. If the sun were to die out, it would blow away half of its mass, inflate itself, and swallow the earth. After that, this would push Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune way out and off their orbit. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Don’t you find it fascinating that one of the first things God created was in fact, a system? The solar system? The system of the universe?

This goes to show us that He is not anti-systems in anyway.

One of the first things God created was a system—the solar system.

Click To Tweet

I recently came across another system that you might not have heard about…

I learnt about it from a TED talk on how trees talk to each other—the system is called a mycorrhizal network.

[Read more…] about God is NOT Anti-System

Discipling Stay-at-Home Moms

By

Are you discipling the stay-at-home moms in your church?

We often assume that a women’s ministry or a vibrant small group culture is sufficient, but is that enough? Are we missing an opportunity and a need? Is there something unique about the stay-at-home mom experience that requires or necessitates some careful thought? And ministry planning?

Having your first child (or second, third, fourth, etc.), is not only a gift from God and one of the most exciting privileges on this side of eternity, but it is also an occasion for change.

Nothing stays the same.

Date nights, sleeping in (or getting any sleep at all), car choices, impromptu road-trips, seeing family, holidays, meals, friends, and work are just some of the things that change when you have children.

Here’s the thing, when you have children, everything changes…but for stay-at-home moms, the change is greater than most of us might realize.

Here are a few ideas to help you disciple stay-at-home moms:

1. Before the baby comes

For expecting moms and dads, consider hosting or putting on a prep class or workshop at your church entitled something like, “What To Do When You’re Expecting,” “How Everything Will Change,” or “How Nothing Stays the Same.”

Don’t just focus on your church members; instead, use this as an opportunity to engage and minister broadly to your community. After all, every expecting parent is trying to prep as much as they can, so the unchurched and dechurched will likely be open to visiting your church and hanging out with Christians over a timely and helpful topic like this—especially if they are coming on the arm of a friend.

At the workshop, have a seasoned married couple from your church share out of their wisdom and experience. They don’t need to cover breathing exercises, since there are classes designed for that. Instead, use this as an opportunity to talk about keeping the romance alive, what to expect in the coming months, and anything else that would be helpful for new parents. Be sure to invite them to your Sunday service, into a group, or back for parenting classes to get them plugged into the life of the church.

2. After the baby comes

[Read more…] about Discipling Stay-at-Home Moms

Echo Chambers in Discipleship

By

What do you think would happen if a black man became an undercover spy in the alt-right?

Could it work? What would that even look like? How would a black man have to dress to “fit in” as a white supremacist?

In a recent TEDxTalk, Theo E.J. Wilson shared how he did just that…via Facebook.

In this talk, he shared how he was not only a survivor of police brutality during the height of Black Lives Matter, but also how he woke up one day to more racial slurs, internet trolls, and white supremacists than he had ever experienced before. These people treated him like he wasn’t even human. To the alt-right, he was “an idea, an object, a caricature.”

After reflecting upon this experience, Wilson shared on the TED stage,

I also began to notice that a few of my trolls actually had brains, which made me even more curious and what to understand them even further. And although these supposed morons engaged in what appeared to be original thought, I said to myself, “Um, these guys are highly misinformed, at least according to my knowledge.” Where are these guys getting these arguments from? Like, was there some kind of alternative universe with alternative facts?

Was history and gravity optional over there? I don’t know. But I needed to know. Like, I wanted to know. And as it turns out, I had no idea about digital echo chambers. That same target marketing algorithm that feeds you more of the products you like to buy also feeds you more of the news that you like to hear. I had been living in an online universe that just reflected my worldview back to me. So my timeline was pretty liberal. I had no Breitbart or Infowars or Fox News. No, no, I was all MSNBC and The Daily Show, CNN and theGrio, right? Well, these trolls were hopping the dimensional doorway and I needed to figure out how.

After this realization, Wilson decided to setup a profile on Facebook as a white supremacist in the alt-right, in order to personally experience the echo chamber that these trolls lived in. In the online world, he switched identities and became Lucius25—the white supremacist lurker. He friended white supremacists, he liked American Renaissance and the National Vanguard Alliance, and he began talking bad about Black Lives Matter and Al Sharpton.

Guess what happened? He entered into another reality—the echo chamber of the alt-right where all he began to see was other viewpoints, ads, and comments that perpetuated this worldview.

Isn’t that scary?

Just think about the recent American election. Why was the media so surprised that Trump won? Especially when they were convinced that Clinton had it in the bag?

Two words: Echo Chambers.

Marketing, media, and technology are conditioning us for highly specified, focused, and personalized messages that we’re more likely to comment on, like, and share.

As a result, we’ve learnt that the more general something is, the less likely it is going to relate to me. So we just skip over it and let it go in one ear and out the other. In other words, if it’s for all, it’s not necessarily for y’all.

The more general something is, the less likely it is going to relate to me.

Click To Tweet

So what does it look like to leverage these cultural shifts in your church? And for the way that you disciple?

[Read more…] about Echo Chambers in Discipleship

Systemic Issues in Discipleship

By

Is discipleship directional or about getting to a destination?

Do you ever “arrive” on this side of eternity? Or is it “a long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene Peterson so aptly put it?

These are the types of questions and tension that I pose in my newly released book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry. As I’ve continued to think through, speak on, and coach/consult churches on this direction/destination spectrum as it relates to discipleship, I’ve begun to notice something…

It’s actually quite frightening.

While most pastors and church leaders would agree that discipleship is directional by quoting passages like Hebrews 12:1-2 or Philippians 3:13-14; unfortunately, when you take a look at how discipleship happens in a typical church, we’re not practicing what we preach.

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (‭Hebrews 12:1-2, CSB)‬‬

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14, CSB‬)‬

Our messaging and our methods do not align.

Since culture and normative behavior is highly shaped by what’s communicated, emphasized, and celebrated, have you ever considered what your bulletin and announcements are saying to your church?

[Read more…] about Systemic Issues in Discipleship

Systems and an Encyclopedia

By

As a child, I remember flipping through the human anatomy section in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

As a curious child with an insatiable love for learning—I remember times when I would just open up the encyclopedia and read. My favorite section was the human anatomy, since I wanted to be a doctor. In fact, I vividly remember looking through and being amazed by the layers of complexity that the human body presented.

This section was always several pages long.

In fact, it always stuck out from the other pages in the encyclopedia, since each system in the human body was printed on its own plastic, transparent page.

If you had one of these old-school encyclopedias in front of you, the first system you’d see would be the integumentary system—the body’s outer covering. In other words, you’d see a naked human body with skin, hair, and nails. If you flipped that transparent page over to the next—I apologize for the graphic nature of this next phrase—it would almost be like you were peeling the skin off of a human. You’d be left with the muscular system. If you flipped that page over again, you would see the circulatory system.

With every progressive page turn, you would uncover another system that makes up the human body. The nervous system, the lymphatic system, the skeletal system, and so on.

Just like there are different layers of systems in the human body, so it is with the church.

The systems in your church are designed to work together, like they do in the human body, to help your church function as God intends it to. After all, “God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted” (1 Cor. 12:18).

So what exactly are those systems for your church?

While there are many more than just these two, your discipleship pathway and leadership pipeline are what makes up the two core systems that drive everything in your church.

Your discipleship pathway & leadership pipeline are the two core systems that drive everything.

Click To Tweet

[Read more…] about Systems and an Encyclopedia