Daniel Im's Blog, page 12

A Letter from Eugene Peterson on Christian Celebrities, Transition, and the Megachurch

Eugene Peterson has deeply shaped my outlook on life, spirituality, ministry, and pastoring—probably more than anyone else. He will be deeply missed.

I’m not here to give you a synopsis of his last days, if you want that, you can read it here. If you want to hear ministry lessons on the life of Eugene from a wide range of church leaders, you can click here. And if you want to read about the one sermon Eugene preached, you can be inspired here.

What I want to share with you today is a letter that Eugene wrote to one of his friends after his friend had told him that he wanted to change churches because he felt that his gifts were being wasted where he was. His friend wanted more of a challenge and an opportunity to multiply his effectiveness. He wanted an opportunity that was more promising, so he was going to leave his small church for a larger one—one that was three times larger than his current pastorate.

Letters like this are precisely why I love Eugene Peterson.

When I came back from Korea—bruised, hurt, devastated and in the desert, thinking that I wasn’t called to ministry anymore—God used Eugene to pick up the pieces in my life (you can read about it here). Not personally, but through his lectures at Regent College and his book on the life of David, Leap Over a Wall.

It’s sad that I never got the chance to personally thank him for just how much God used him in my life, but I guess now that he’s in glory, it doesn’t really matter.

I came across this letter from Eugene as I was preparing a talk for an upcoming conference.

I’ll be speaking at Exponential—a conference for church planters, pastors, and ministry leaders. So while I was writing about the shift that needs to take place so that we can move from being the hero to becoming hero-makers, I immediately thought of this letter that he had written to a friend in his Memoir.

Although it had been several years since I read the book, for some reason, this letter had been seared into my soul as a warning. And am I ever glad that it was—and is—because I don’t want my story to go the way of the recent implosions of pastors that you might’ve come across in the news.

Here it is, it’s from page 156 of his Memoir:

Dear Phillip,

I’ve been thinking about our conversation last week and want to respond to what you anticipate in your new congregation. You mentioned its prominence in the town, a center, a kind of cathedral church that would be able to provide influence for the Christian message far beyond its walls. Did I hear you right?

I certainly understand the appeal and feel it myself frequently. But I am also suspicious of the appeal and believe that gratifying it is destructive both to the gospel and the pastoral vocation. It is the kind of thing America specializes in, and one of the consequences is that American religion and the pastoral vocation are in a shabby state.

It is also the kind of thing for which we have abundant documentation through twenty centuries now, of debilitating both congregation and pastor. In general terms it is the devil’s temptation to Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple. Every time the church’s leaders depersonalize, even a little, the worshipping/loving community, the gospel is weakened. And size is the great depersonalizer. Kierkegaard’s criticism is still cogent: “the more people, the less truth.”

The only way the Christian life is brought to maturity is through intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening. And the pastor is in a key position to nurture such maturity. It is true that these things can take place in the context of large congregations, but only by strenuously going against the grain. Largeness is an impediment, not a help.

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence—religious meaning, God meaning—apart from God as revealed in the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but, at least in America, almost never against the crowds. Probably because they get so much ego benefit from the crowds.

But a crowd destroys the spirit as thoroughly as excessive drink and depersonalized sex. It takes us out of ourselves, but not to God, only away from him. The religious hunger is rooted in the unsatisfactory nature of the self. We hunger to escape the dullness, the boredom, the tiresomeness of me. We can escape upward or downward. Drugs and depersonalized sex are a false transcendence downward. A crowd is an exercise in false transcendence upward, which is why all crowds are spiritually pretty much the same, whether at football games, political rallies, or church.

So why are we pastors so unsuspicious of crowds, so naive about the false transcendence that they engender? Why are we so knowledgeable in the false transcendence of drink and sex and so unlearned in the false transcendence of crowds? There are many spiritual masters in our tradition who diagnose and warn, but they are little read today. I myself have never written what I really feel on this subject, maybe because I am not entirely sure of myself, there being so few pastors alive today who agree. Or maybe it is because I don’t want to risk wholesale repudiation by friends whom I genuinely like and respect. But I really do feel that crowds are a worse danger, far worse, than drink or sex, and pastors may be the only people on the planet who are in a position to encourage an imagination that conceives of congregation strategically not in terms of its size but as a congenial setting for becoming mature in Christ in a community, not a crowd.

Your present congregation is close to ideal in size to employ your pastoral vocation for forming Christian maturity. You talked about “multiplying your influence.” My apprehension is that your anticipated move will diminish your vocation, not enhance it. Can we talk more about this? I would welcome a continuing conversation.

The peace of Christ,

Eugene.

Christian life is brought to maturity is through intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening. -…
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We warn against the drugs and the sex, but almost never against the crowds. – Eugene Peterson
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Why are we so unsuspicious of crowds, so naive about the false transcendence that they engender? -…
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Just so that we’re clear, I’m not anti megachurch.

In fact, I’ve pastored at two.

The reason Eugene’s words here are so poignant and applicable to us today is precisely because church size is such a temptation for pastors to place their identity in.

But pastor, your self-worth is not tied to how many people are at your church.

The size of your church is a not a reflection of God’s favor on your life.

And opportunities to pastor at bigger and better churches, while they might seem like opportunities from God, could actually be invitations from the devil.

Remember that phrase “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God” by William Carey?

Yeah, that’s not about you being the hero. It’s a call for you to rise up and become a hero maker.

The reason we know about William Carey today is not because he was a great evangelist. In fact, over the course of 41 years in India, he only saw 700 people make a commitment to Christ in a nation of millions.

The reason we know of him today is because he was a hero maker—missionaries like Lottie Moon, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone, among many others, were inspired and influenced by his dedication and commitment to the harvest.

And the reason generations of Christians will know about Eugene Peterson, for centuries to come, is because he was a hero maker.

Thank you Eugene.

How to Develop Servant Leaders

Have you ever tried to change something in your church, only to be met with skepticism? Or with responses like these?

We’ve tried that before!

What makes you think that this will work better than the last idea?

Why can’t we just do things the way we’ve always done them?

Believe it or not, situations like these shape us more than we know. Resistance after resistance, shut down after shut down—they just stock pile on top of each other until we wake up one morning being the one that is now resisting change.

After all, isn’t it easier just to keep the status quo? To let things roll? To continue as is?

Change is difficult to implement in our churches because the immune system of our church body knows when we try to transplant foreign ideas. And not only does it detect the new idea, it sees it as bad bacteria, a virus, or foreign material—thus resulting in its rejection.

In your church, is change usually detected as bad bacteria, a virus, or foreign material?
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But as a leader, you know that change is not only inevitable; it’s necessary to reach a new generation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Although the Gospel is timeless, methods aren’t. After all, when’s the last time you saw teenagers or young adults in your church using a pay phone or hand writing a letter?

If you want to raise up the next generation of leaders in your church, you can’t just do what you’ve always done. Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean that it will continue to work. The rate of change in our culture has sped up to the point where we are now measuring cultural shifts, not by the century or decade, and not even by the year anymore. But now by the month, the weeks, and in some cases, minutes.

Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean that it will continue to work.
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Rather than feeling overwhelmed or suffering from a paralysis of analysis, I want to suggest three shifts that will change the trajectory of your church so that you can raise up a new generation of servant leaders, or harvest workers as Jesus mentions in Matthew 9:35-38.

Shift #1: From Destination to Direction

Are leaders developed (or produced) when they arrive at a destination? When they complete a class? When they receive a certification? Or, are leaders developed (or formed) over time when their trajectory is set in the right direction?

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your church has a distinct posture on this. For example, your bulletin, announcements, programs, studies, sermon illustrations, and events are either influencing your church to be destination focused or direction focused.

When’s the last time you assessed your posture on this? And your church’s posture on this? In my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts That Will Transform Your Ministry, I unpack this shift and the following ones with stories, principles, assessments, and audits.

Are leaders developed (or produced) when they arrive at a destination?
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Shift #2: From Output to Input

What are the qualities or attributes of a leader, or of a mature disciple? With the pace of life and ministry, it’s so easy to focus on the results, or the outputs of our efforts in discipleship and development, that we often forget what inputs led to the outputs we so desired.

Leaders aren’t born. They’re nurtured and developed. So take time to assess whether or not the things you’re doing to shape leaders (the inputs) are actually producing the type of leaders (the outputs) that God would be pleased with.

Leaders aren’t born. They’re nurtured and developed.
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Shift #3: From Sage to Guide

We teach the way that we’ve been taught, we lead the way that we’ve been led, we parent the way that we’ve been parented, and we disciple the way that we’ve been discipled (if we were even discipled)—unless we make a conscious effort to change. As a result, the methods we are using to develop leaders are often unengaging and ineffective for the times that we are now living in.

Thus, in order to engage the next generation, we must move from being the sage on the stage to being a guide on the side. One way that we can do this is by adopting new ways to train, like flipping the classroom. Just imagine if every one of your leaders was not only trained immediately, but also in an ongoing and personalized way in the areas they needed the most help in? Either in a specific skill or in a broader leadership competency? I want to encourage you to check out a tool like MinistryGrid.com, which was designed to do just that.

We teach the way that we’ve been taught, we lead the way that we’ve been led.
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Conclusion

Thank God that he cares more about the long-term health of your church, than you or I ever could.

Remember, the Church is His bride, not yours. So may we be good and faithful stewards by raising up a new generation of servant leaders.

 

My article here was originally published in the Fall 2018 edition of Deacon Magazine.

3 Wrong and Right Ways to Change and Grow Spiritually

There are wrong ways to do things, and then there’s my way to do things—so make the right choice.

Have you ever said that to your children or to those you’re discipling? Or perhaps you’ve thought about saying it to your spouse, but quickly made the wise decision to keep your mouth shut?

When it comes to change, we often forget to take our own advice.

We end up telling others to do as we say, not as we do. The reason we’re hypocrites is because of the habits that are already ingrained in our hearts and lives.

When it comes to change, we often forget to take our own advice.
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In Darryl Dash’s book, How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to all of your life, he describes this dilemma aptly: “Growth is possible, and God promises He will change us. But we’re often frustrated because we’re not changing as quickly or as much as we’d like. Is it possible we’ve been going about it in the wrong way?”

In his book, he lists a few wrong ways that we go about change:

“New information—We read books, watch videos, listen to sermons, and attend Bible studies. We think that new information will change us. When this doesn’t work, we go looking for even more information. We become knowledgable, but we often don’t change. We become educated beyond the level of our obedience.”
“Big goals—We also set big goals to start or stop behaviors. We want to read the Bible every year, but then get stuck in Leviticus. We want to stop surfing social media, but find ourselves scrolling through once again in a moment of boredom, avoidance, or procrastination.”
“Willpower—We think we need more willpower, but find it doesn’t last as long as we’d like. Some argue that willpower is quickly depleted. Others argue that we can learn to increase our willpower, and boost it when it’s weak. Either way, willpower can help us, but it can’t create the consistent, sustainable change we want in our lives.”

———Be sure to enter the giveaway at the bottom of this article for a chance to win one of three copies of How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to all of your life by Darryl Dash———

So how do we grow?

Darryl suggests three core gospel habits, which are consistent with the input goals and research on growth and discipleship as outlined in my book, No Silver Bullets.

Core Habit One: Reading or Listening to the Bible

To build a habit of reading the Scriptures, Darryl suggests to find the why, start small, pick a format, use tools, and read or listen with others. After all, without spending time with the Lord daily in His Word, how can we ever expect to change?

Without spending time with the Lord daily in His Word, how can we ever expect to change?
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Didn’t the Apostle Paul put it aptly? “For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.” (Romans 7:18-19 CSB).

When we spend time with the Lord in his Word, the Holy Spirit will change us from the inside out.

Core Habit Two: Prayer

I love the way Darryl puts it,

I’m learning that prayer is about coming to God with our helplessness and the mess of our lives. It means telling God exactly what’s on our minds and asking for His help. I want to come to God all put together; God wants me to come to Him as I am. Jesus died for the real you, so come to God with the real you. Come with your temptations, struggles, doubts, and anxieties. Come confessing that you don’t want to pray. Come as you are….Our mistake is that we tend to see prayer as duty rather than a delight. We should approach God not because we have to, but because we get to. He loves us. He cares for us. He invites us into relationship with Him. God actually wants to hear what’s on our minds.

We should approach God not because we have to, but because we get to.
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Core Habit Three: Pursue Worship and Fellowship Within a Church Community

This last habit is so important, especially in our day and age where church attendance is being increasingly seen as an optional matter—coming second place to vacation, sports, and time on the lake. If it’s true that a healthy church is the hermeneutic of the gospel, as Lesslie Newbigin put it, how can this lost world ever taste and see the gospel without the people of God gathering regularly and living out the one anothers as the Church?

A healthy church is the hermeneutic of the gospel.
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I love how Darryl sums up these three core gospel habits by talking about the core:

It’s not enough to read or listen to the Bible, pray, and pursue worship and fellowship within a church community. If we miss the point, these practices can be dangerous, not helpful. If we read Scripture just to check off the box, pray without pursuing relationship with God, or attend a great church out of routine or obligation rather than intentional engagement, we won’t grow, and we’ll conclude that these practices don’t work.

Of course we should still read our Bible and go to church even when we don’t feel like it, but we should be aiming for genuine, heartfelt, and earnest (internal) engagement with these core habits that goes far beyond going-through-the-motions (external) engagement.

Don’t just practice these habits by going through the motions. Engage your core. Seek God, not just the habits themselves.

If you feel stuck or stagnant in your spiritual life, or you have others around you who are, then be sure to enter this month’s draw to win one of three copies of How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to all of your life by Darryl Dash.

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Next Steps:

Enter the giveaway to win one of three copies of  How to Grow: Applying the Gospel to all of your life by Darryl Dash.
Read more from Darryl here.
Follow Darryl on Twitter or Instagram.

The Experience Economy and the Church

When was the last time you bought a mattress?

Did you walk around a showroom and awkwardly lie down on several of them? Did you close your eyes, try to get comfortable, and imagine what it would be like to sleep on it day after day? Did you then pay too much, and wait too long for it to be delivered to your house?

No wonder the mattress industry was ripe for disruption. In the same way that Amazon disrupted brick and mortar retail, Uber disrupted the Taxi industry, and smart phones disrupted camera, calculator, and flashlight sales, Casper has done the same for mattresses.

Casper, an online mattress retailer, has been so effective at upending a $29 Billion industry, that other companies have quickly followed suit. And just last month, they took things to the next level by building their first brick and mortar store—except, at this one, you can’t buy a mattress.

You buy a nap instead.

Instead of designing their store like other mattress retailers, such as Mattress Firm, The Brick, or Ikea, they decided to create an experience, where the mattress was secondary. It’s called the Dreamery in New York City. Here’s how they describe it on their website,

At Casper, we want everyone to sleep better and live better. So we created The Dreamery, a magical place in NYC where you can rest and recharge whenever you want. Because when you snooze, you win.

Here’s how it works:

Book a nap session: Choose a 45-minute time slot whenever you could use a boost. Walk-ins are welcome, too.
Get some rest: Wind down in the lounge, change into pj’s, and lie down in your own Casper Nook—a perfectly private, quiet pod with an outrageously comfortable bed.
Feel recharged: Embrace your post-nap pep. Freshen up and enjoy a coffee before taking on the rest of your day (or night).

Do you see how the mattress is peripheral to the whole experience? The point is the nap, not the mattress. But what’s genius about this strategy is that they’re actually creating the ideal conditions for customers to fall in love with their mattresses, without having to box it up and ship it back to them if they’re not satisfied.

Welcome to the Experience Economy

Joe Pine and James H. Gilmore have a term for this newfound cultural emphasis on experiences, they call it the Experience Economy.

Here’s the progression that has occurred over the ages: We’ve moved from commodities, to goods, to services, and now to experiences. They use an example of a birthday cake to describe the shifts. Here’s my take on it.

We’ve moved from commodities, to goods, to services, and now to experiences.
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Once upon a time, when we all lived on farms, if someone had a birthday, you’d eat a cake that was made from scratch with locally sourced and farm fresh ingredients. It sounds hipster, but that was actually the only way you could get cake. You had to harvest your own grain and grind it into flour. Raise your own chickens to get eggs. Milk your own cows to get milk and make butter. And grow your own sugarcanes for the sugar. In other words, you had to work with your hands and the commodities to get a cake.

Eventually, Betty Crocker came around. Her cakes tasted better, were more consistent, and she had access to more ingredients. Let’s face it—buying her cake mix for your next birthday was a lot faster and simpler than farming all of the ingredients on your own. Sure, it was more expensive, but paying for this good, as in the cake mix, was better than working with commodities.

Grocery stores eventually tuned in and figured out how profitable it would be to bake birthday cakes and sell it themselves as a service. Of course, anyone could now buy the ingredients themselves without having to farm them. And sure, you could also buy the pre-made Betty Crocker cake mixes as well. But why do that when you could buy a birthday cake pre-made, pre-iced, and pre-packaged?

This leads us to present day. When my children were young, for their birthday parties, we sometimes bought pre-made cakes, and other-times my wife, Christina, made them herself. Heck, even I’ve baked a gluten-free cake before. But generally, we hosted our children’s parties at our house, at the park, and a few times at our church.

Not anymore. As our children are getting older, and life is getting busier, we’ve now resulted to outsourcing the party. Our girls had a joint-party at a local jumpy house franchise that took care of everything—even writing the names down of who gave what for a present! Our son had his at Chuck E. Cheese, and the funny thing about this experience was just how ancillary the “thing” became—I’m referring to the birthday cake. 

Experiences have become the new currency. In other words, amassing stuff and getting things aren’t as valuable as experiences anymore. And even when we buy those new things, we’re often buying it for the experiences that they will help create.

Experiences have become the new currency.
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What does this have to do with me?

The rise of the experience economy has caused us to over identify with our experiences and fall into the trap of believing the myth that we are what we experience. This is the second myth that I explore in my upcoming book.

Here’s an example that I’m not particularly proud of.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to “One Sweet Day,” a classic duet from Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey—I know the song is from 1995, but it’s amazing. When I heard my wife, Christina, coming downstairs, I called out to her from my office, turned up the music, and then invited her to dance.

I don’t know what it is, but anytime I hug, kiss, or dance with my wife, our children always seem to appear out of nowhere and attempt to join in. This time, it was our son, Makarios. He came into the office and started dancing beside us. Initially, it looked like he was dancing to some punk rock song, so when I told him to slow it down, he closed his eyes, started bending his knees, and began moving with the rhythm of the beat. It was adorable

I wish I could’ve told you that I just smiled and continued to dance, but I didn’t. I grabbed my smartphone and hit record. I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to share this private experience publicly with others. Unfortunately and unintentionally, I exchanged a potentially romantic moment with my wife, for hundreds of views and likes on Instagram and Facebook.

It’s a cycle, isn’t it?

Go on an experience, snap a picture of it, and share it online. The more likes and followers you get from that picture, the more you want to go on another experience, so that you can get even more likes and followers. And on and on it goes.

Now here’s my question to you, “Is snapping, sharing, liking, and repeating appropriate behaviors during worship?”

When someone has come to the altar and is confessing their everything to the Lord, is it okay for you to take a picture of them and share it online? When people’s eyes are closed and hands are raised during worship, is it kosher to Instagram it? Or are we prostituting our church members for the sake of likes and follows?

When people’s eyes are closed and hands are raised during worship, is it kosher to Instagram it?
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Sure, we’d never put it this way. We often sanctify our photos by saying that we’re trying to help others learn about our church—and don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a ban on photography and social media during worship—I’m just asking the question because this behavior carries unintended consequences.

Are we perhaps cheapening the worship experience for newcomers when we only take and post photos of people crying, kneeling at the front of the stage, and lifting up their hands in worship? And if those are the only photos we have on our social media accounts and website, what if someone worships at your church for the first time, and doesn’t have those same experiences? Is it their fault?

Are we perhaps cheapening the worship experience for newcomers?
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Friends, the Experience Economy is all around us, so how shall we respond as the Church?

If you’re interested in learning more about this myth and the six other ones that I’m writing about in my upcoming book, click here.

 

*My article here was originally published on August 11, 2018 in Christianity Today.

https://dreamerybycasper.com/

To learn more, you can read their book, The Experience Economy, or check out an article they wrote on the subject https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-th....

To Develop or Not To Develop?

As the calendar year comes to an end, you’re either looking for ways to spend the rest of your development budget, or you’re planning on how to use it next year.

If you don’t have a budget set aside for development, then make sure you get one next year! If it’ll help, consider sharing this article with your boss. After all, leaders are learners, aren’t they?

But what if you’re the one approving proposals for development?

What if you’re the one who sets the budget? Have you ever considered that the types of proposals coming in, the amount given to each team member, and how your team looks at development reveals a lot about your culture?

If you’re leading a team, here’s the tension that you face as it relates to development:

On the one hand, if you develop your people, they might outgrow their job, realize the weaknesses on your team, and/or now have a new set of skills that’ll set them up for another role somewhere else.

On the other hand, if you don’t develop your people, their performance can stagnate, they might not innovate, and you’ll essentially be cultivating a culture of mediocrity, maintenance, or at best, incremental growth.

So what are you to do? To develop or not to develop?

Ken Robinson, in his book Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative, puts it well.

Many organizations are finding it difficult to find the people they need. When they do find them, they often have trouble keeping them. Executives say there is an increasing shortage of the people needed to run divisions and manage critical functions, let alone lead companies. This problem has been building for some time. One of the consequences is that organizations are fighting a war for talent.

The corporate consultancy company, McKinsey, worked with the human resources departments of 77 large US companies in a variety of industries to understand their talent-building philosophies, practices and challenges. Their original study included nearly 400 corporate offices and 6,000 executives in the “top 200” ranks in these companies. It also drew on case studies of 20 companies widely regarded as being rich in talent. Three-quarters of companies had said they had insufficient talent sometimes, and all were chronically short of talent across the board. The study concluded that executive talent has long been an under-managed corporate asset. Companies that manage their physical and financial assets with rigor and sophistication have not made their people a priority in the same way. Few employees trust employers to provide useful opportunities for professional development. Most take a short-term view of training needs. Only a third of employers provide training beyond the job. In a rapidly changing environment, they worry that their best talent will be poached by other companies. They are wary of investing in developing their own talent since they fear it will primarily benefit their competitors. Staff turnover is often high and vacant posts are filled with outside talent. According to search professionals, the average executive will work in five companies; in another ten years it may be seven.

Most companies choose to develop powerful recruitment and retention processes to get the “right people” on board. The problem with the short-term model is that “it does nothing to prevent the exodus of the rest—those whose talents are undeveloped. It assumes a world with an unlimited supply of talent…that does not mind working in businesses where development is not deemed a priority.” Even so, according to McKinsey, companies are engaged in a war for senior executive talent that will remain a defining characteristic of the competitive landscape for decades to come. Yet most are ill prepared, and even the best are vulnerable.

Organizations are fighting a war for talent. – Ken Robinson
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Few employees trust employers to provide useful opportunities for professional development.
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What culture of development have you cultivated on your team?

Are you the one that suggests development opportunities, or does your team initiate themselves? When you suggest opportunities, is it met with surprise? Skepticism? Or a sense of gratitude?

If the 70:20:10 principle is true (if you haven’t heard about it, click here), then what are you doing to provide the best of the best learning opportunities for the 20% and 10%, so that the 70% of on the job development is maximized?

And here’s the thing about the tension as it relates to development:

If you cultivate an engaging culture of development, you don’t need to worry about other teams or organizations poaching your people. They won’t want to leave! And if they do leave, they’ll want to come back because they’ll quickly realize that teams and organizations that emphasize ongoing learning and development are few and far between.

So back to the original question, to develop or not to develop?

5 Things I’ve Learned About Writing

As much I enjoy writing, I never thought I’d be a published author in my thirties.

So to see my name on two published books, four eBooks, and another published book on the way is humbling. This is not a humble brag—I’m just seriously floored and surprised by the way that God has led my wife and I to this point. All glory be to God!

In my twenties I had a wonderful plan for my life.

I literally wrote out a plan until my wife and I were in our eighties. Several years later, am I ever glad that this wonderful plan didn’t come to pass because God’s ways are always higher, deeper, and better than ours. We unfortunately had to learn that the hard way post-Korea, which is another story for another time. You can read more about it here.

God’s ways are always higher, deeper, and better than ours.
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So to celebrate the one year anniversary of my book, No Silver Bullets, being on the bookshelves, I wanted to share 5 things I’ve learned about writing.

If God has placed a dream on your heart to write, I hope that this will be an encouragement to you. And by the way, I’m also going to be giving away 5 signed copies of No Silver Bullets at the end of this article, so be sure to enter!

1. Don’t write to go viral. Just write.

There’s no formula for going viral—even the best marketers haven’t cracked the nut. Sure, your article or book needs to be timely, it needs to hit a felt need, and it needs to be written well, but there’s that intangible “share-ability” nature to everything that goes viral that’s hard to figure out. In fact, a pursuit for the next viral article can cause you to chase rabbits and trends, rather than write on topics that you’re personally passionate about and have something to say on.

A pursuit for the next viral article can cause you to chase rabbits and trends.
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So stop obsessing over SEO hacks and keywords for your title, and instead focus on honing your writing skills. I’m not telling you to ignore SEO and keywords, since they do help the “share-ability” of your content. I’m just saying that it may not be the best way to spend your time as a writer. What’s most important is practice, since the only way to get better at writing is by writing.

What’s most important is practice, since the only way to get better at writing is by writing.
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2. Knowing God was J.I. Packer’s 9th book.

We love overnight success stories. When we see people pop, or their book go on the New York Times bestseller list, we get jealous—especially if we’ve never heard of them before. But when you dig deeper, most of these overnight success stories aren’t overnight success stories. J.K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter pitch was rejected twelve times, Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was self-published, Madeleine L’Engles’ A Wrinkle in Time was rejected 26 times, and on and on it goes.

Don’t get caught up in hacks to get famous or to make your book pop. Like Dory in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

Don’t get caught up in hacks to get famous or to make your book pop.
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The theologian and professor J.I. Packer is probably best known for his book Knowing God. It’s been a classic for over 40 years, one of the top 50 books that have shaped evangelicals, received a platinum book award from the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association, and has sold over one million copies. When Knowing God popped, I’m sure most people thought that Packer was an overnight success—unbeknownst to them, this was his ninth book!

Don’t give up. Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing.

3. Know your “why.”

Why are you writing? Who are you writing to? And ultimately, who are you trying to serve through your writing? While the kosher thing is to say that you’re serving others, there are many writers who are basically serving themselves by standing on the backs of others. The reason they want a platform is so that they can stand on others, rather than serve others.

So never forget your “why.”

Do you want a platform to stand on others? Or serve others?
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4. You’re going to want to give up. Don’t!

Ups and downs are a natural part of the writing process. There are going to be days where everything clicks and your ideas flow, and then there will be every other day. More often than not, you will get writer’s block. You will want to give up. And you will question the effectiveness of it all. However, if God has given you a dream to write, don’t give up.

Keep putting your hours in, writing for the right reasons, and seek to serve rather than be served.

5. Your idea has probably been written on, but your version is going to be different.

If there’s a book idea that you feel ready to work on, one of the steps in putting a proposal together is to compare it with other similar books out there.

If you can’t find other books like yours, you haven’t looked hard enough.

There’s no way your idea is going to be completely original. Now, the way that you package it, write on it, and present it will be unique because only you’ve lived your own story. However, there are going to be other similar books out there. So instead of ignoring them, read them! Study them, learn from them, and write your version rooted in your story.

There’s no way your idea is going to be completely original.
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If by chance you honestly can’t find anyone who’s written on a remotely similar topic as you, then you’re either a genius or you’re trying to write on something that no one cares about.

Conclusion

Above all else, cultivate your own voice. No one has lived the same life as you, so while it’s important to learn from others, you need to write in a way that’s unique to you. And honestly, the only way to learn how to do that is by writing.

Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing.

Giveaway instructions:

As I mentioned earlier, my book, No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry has been out for over a year now! To celebrate the impact that it’s had and is continuing to have in churches and ministries globally, I wanted to give away 5 signed copies of my book. You can enter the giveaway by clicking the button below.

Enter the giveaway

Don’t Be Dead Weight

Your church or organization is like a train.

There are things you’re doing that are causing the train to move (the coal).

There are things outside of your control that are either speeding up the train or slowing it down (hills and air resistance).

And there are things within your control that are slowing the train down (baggage and needless weight).

The next time you gather your team together:

Try identifying what’s core to your team and what needs to happen to keep things running, like casting vision, celebrating, or having the right metrics.

Then, identify the things outside of your control that are moving your team forward or slowing you guys down, like neighborhood growth/decline, market growth/decline, change in leisure activities, or time of year.

And then identify what’s within your control that could be slowing your team down, like toxic team members, a weak culture, or a lack of planning.

And for you personally, reflect on whether or not you want to be on the train that you’re on.

Is it time for a career change? Are you feeling a push away from your current team? Or a pull toward another one?

If you’re feeling like it’s time for a move, check your motives:

Are you feeling the way you’re feeling just because others are leaving?
Because of a conflict with your boss or someone on your team?
Because you’re bored or not being challenged?

You’re either helping the train move forward or slowing it down. So don’t be dead weight. Find your place and give it your all—either on the train or off of it.

You’re either helping the train move forward or slowing it down.
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Don’t be dead weight.
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Find your place and give it your all—either on the train or off of it.
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Don’t be dead weight

Your church or organization is like a train.

There are things you’re doing that are causing the train to move (the coal).

There are things outside of your control that are either speeding up the train or slowing it down (hills and air resistance).

And there are things within your control that are slowing the train down (baggage and needless weight).

The next time you gather your team together:

Try identifying what’s core to your team and what needs to happen to keep things running, like casting vision, celebrating, or having the right metrics.

Then, identify the things outside of your control that are moving your team forward or slowing you guys down, like neighborhood growth/decline, market growth/decline, change in leisure activities, or time of year.

And then identify what’s within your control that could be slowing your team down, like toxic team members, a weak culture, or a lack of planning.

And for you personally, reflect on whether or not you want to be on the train that you’re on.

Is it time for a career change? Are you feeling a push away from your current team? Or a pull toward another one?

If you’re feeling like it’s time for a move, check your motives:

Are you feeling the way you’re feeling just because others are leaving?
Because of a conflict with your boss or someone on your team?
Because you’re bored or not being challenged?

You’re either helping the train move forward or slowing it down. So don’t be dead weight. Find your place and give it your all—either on the train or off of it.

You’re either helping the train move forward or slowing it down.
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Don’t be dead weight.
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Find your place and give it your all—either on the train or off of it.
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The One Thing Husbands Need to Know About Their Wives

The following is a guest post written by my wife, Christina Im, on the one thing that she wants every husband to know. I pray that it encourages you as much as it has encouraged me.

Marriage is hard.

Marriage takes work.

Marriage isn’t always what we thought it would be.

Marriage takes sacrifice.

Daniel and I have recently entered our 12th year of marriage. During our engagement, if someone were to have had told me any of the above statements, I would have scoffed at them. “Actually, marriage is going to be amazing because I can finally have sex,” is what I would have wanted to say. But honestly, I would have NEVER had the audacity to be that abrupt.

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Don’t miss the giveaway valued at $200 at the bottom of this post for your wife!

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On a perfectly sunny August day, I married my best friend. And, we lived happily ever after, right?

Well, like you always hear from those who have gone before us, the first year of marriage was difficult—we had A LOT of “iron sharpening iron” moments. However, nothing could have prepared me for the agony and the deep soul searching that awaited me.

I can recount two times where I cried out to God, “Hey…I think you’ve forgotten me.” The first time was when Daniel felt a strong calling to leave everyone and everything behind and move to South Korea. I was just entering my second year at a job that had GREAT potential and I was toying with the idea of going back to school to get my Masters of Social Work. Moving to Korea was not on my radar, and while I begged God to change my husband’s heart…God changed mine instead.

Have you ever felt put on the sidelines…by God?
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The second time I felt that God had put me on the sidelines was the moment I saw the blue double lines appear on the pregnancy test. “Oh God, we are living in Korea with no family around. We are BOTH just about to start our second semester of school. We don’t have time to be pregnant.” In the end, Daniel and I chose to put my schooling and career on hold while I became a full-time stay-at-home mom.

I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

I wanted to wear heels during the day and slippers at night while I rocked my precious children to sleep. However, with Daniel working full-time, writing part-time, and the cost of having three kids under five in daycare, it didn’t financially make sense for me to go back to work. So, life tumbled on.

A year ago, a theme began to appear in my life.

Whether it was the latest Bible study I was doing, or the new hit song that would play on the radio—the theme was “SEEN.” Slowly, God’s past whispers of “I have not forgotten you,” turned into billboards screaming, “THE UNSEEN IS SEEN.” Suddenly, through one event catapulting to another, my dormant dreams, passions, and aspirations emerged from their cocooned state.

What is unseen to you is SEEN by God.
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Husbands, I share my story with you because we have something in common.

We all have dreams, passions, aspirations, and a God-given calling that we need to step into.

What we don’t have in common is that 9 times out of 10, the woman takes the hit for the whole team.

Even if your wife is working outside of the home, studies show that women earn 20% less than their male counterparts. Not to mention, the societal stress put on women to excel both outside and inside of the home, is enough to cause your wife to throw in the towel. The world screams, “YOU ARE UNSEEN.” And, sadly, sometimes the church whispers, “Your husband is more important than you are. Help him succeed, and you will too.”

I honestly don’t know of any loving husband that wishes for his wife to feel forgotten, unseen, and not as important.

Life just has a way of tumbling along; you both desperately hold on until the next season and sometimes the end result is that your wife’s dreams get left behind.

Until now.

Perhaps it’s time to take a purposeful pause in the tumbling of your every day lives.

Perhaps it’s time to take a purposeful pause in the tumbling of your every day lives.
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Husbands, I want to encourage you to ask your wife about her current dreams, aspirations, and desires.

I want to urge you to pray WITH your wife about what her God-given callings are.
I want to compel you to CALL OUT the “unseen” in her life to the surface.
Remind your wife that God SEES her by taking the time, energy, and finances to invest into her next step.
And just maybe, the next step for her is to learn, grow, and rediscover her strengths, gifts, and talents.

So this week, how can you serve her in that way?

For me, I am entering into a job that has nothing to do with my undergrad. I feel excited, yet apprehensive. While talking to Daniel about my fear of failing, he recommended I attend the Business Boutique conference happening in Nashville on Nov 1-3, 2018. It sounded like EXACTLY what I was looking for! Business Boutique empowers women to step into their God-given gifts and overcome fear while learning to take their business to the next level.

But, who will take care of the kids?! Who will pack their lunches and drive them to school? Who will make sure their agendas are signed and their homework done?

My gracious husband rearranged his work schedule to ensure that the kids’ schedule will not be disrupted AND that I am able to go to this conference.

If you think this conference would be beneficial for your wife, Daniel and I are giving away two free tickets valued at $200.

Perhaps this might be just the right experience and next step for your wife?

Enter the giveaway

What’s Wrong With This Statement? “I want to do great things for God”

“I want to make my life count. I want to do big things for the kingdom. I only want to do things that have an eternal significance.”

Have you ever prayed such prayers? I know I definitely have.

In fact, when I was getting serious about my relationship with Christ, this is what I regularly prayed for because I wanted my life to count. I wanted to make a difference in this world. I didn’t want to live for what was temporal—my fame and my glory—but for what was eternal.

I wanted to be like the great missionary, William Carey, who famously said, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

If I wanted to see great things from God, I figured that there was only one way to get there—by doing “great” things for God. Not small and insignificant things, but rather, big, significant, and influential things.

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” – William Carey
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My intentions were right; the only problem was my heart—my prideful and self-centered heart.

I judged doing “great” things for God and kingdom significance according to size. Here’s what I thought:

Pastoring at a small church = Small impact
Speaking at a small conference = Not significant
Having a small platform = Lack of the right gifting

So to do “great” things for God, I had to do. I had to be the pastor. I had to be the speaker. I had to be the preacher. I had to be the hero.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I knew earlier that God wanted me to be a hero-maker, rather than the hero? I wonder if I would’ve gone through as much heart break and sorrow?

Years later…

After God broke me and stripped away everything I had, I realized my ambitions weren’t as pure as I made them out to be.

Sure, I said that I wanted to make a big impact for the kingdom, but that was contingent upon me making the big impact for God. Yes, I obviously wanted to do things that had an eternal significance, but only if I could share that eternal significance with God. I wanted to be the hero; not the hero-maker.

God doesn’t want you to be the hero, he wants you to be a #heromaker.
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Though I tried to sanctify my ambition with the right words; it was all a sham.

Now to be fair, I wasn’t doing it intentionally; it was just that my heart was deceived. I thought that if I said the right things and did the right things, I would eventually believe the right things, but boy, did I ever have it backwards.

Isn’t that why it says in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?”

Friends, you can’t accelerate maturity or spiritual growth.

We try to sanctify ourselves, when in fact, it’s God who does the sanctifying in us as we lay ourselves before him. So instead of focusing on doing “great” things for God, what do you think would happen if we instead focused on worshipping our great God? And then let him take care of our opportunities and legacy?

Don’t you think he’d take care of us like he said he would?

25 “Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? 27 Can any of you add one moment to his life-span[k] by worrying? 28 And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. 30 If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith? 31 So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God[l] and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. 34 Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matt 6:25-34, CSB)

Friends, you can’t accelerate maturity or spiritual growth.
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