Daniel Im's Blog, page 18

Broken Vessels

Brokenness and pain.

Unfortunately, both are universal in our experiences as human beings. We may have been hurt by a love that ended prematurely, by abandonment and isolation, by chronic illness or death, or by circumstances we bring on ourselves through our sin and failure—but we all know what pain feels like. It feels like something has been broken inside us. It feels like we are broken.

Like clay jars, we’re fragile. We can be easily broken—but we don’t have to remain “broken vessels.” We’re never beyond the healing and redeeming power of God. In the face of failure, God responds with restoration. In spite of our shortcomings, God will work in and through us. In the midst of our circumstances, God will help us endure.

You’re never beyond the healing and redeeming power of God.
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Yet God doesn’t stop there!

He uses us to speak into the lives of other “broken vessels.” He uses our experiences with His grace and power to comfort others. He desires to use us to help our neighbors and loved ones encounter the God who brings hope and restoration.

Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us (2 Cor. 4:7).

We are broken vessels, but this great treasure—the good news of Jesus Christ—shines through our brokenness. And that’s a truth worth celebrating.

Want to Learn More?

This is the introduction to a 6-session Bible study that I wrote for the Summer 2017 edition of Bible Studies for Life.

Session 1 – A Fresh Start (John 18:15-18, 25-27; 21:15-19)
Session 2 – Objections Overruled (Exodus 3:11-12; 4:10-17)
Session 3 – The Gift of Grace (2 Corinthians 12:2-10)
Session 4 – A Channel of Comfort (2 Corinthians 1:2-7)
Session 5 – A Passion to Share the Gospel (2 Corinthians 5:11, 14-21)
Session 6 – Right Here, Right Now (Mark 5:1-2, 8-15, 18-20)

Pick up your copy here.

5 Ways to Find Your Way Back to God

What happens when you search for God with all your heart?

According to Scripture and personal experience, you find God.

You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13 CSB)

Is there a pattern for this journey back to God? Or is everyone’s journey unique?

The answer is a resounding, yes. Yes there is a pattern, but everyone’s journey is also unique.

In Finding Your Way Back to God, Dave and Jon Ferguson have uncovered five universal awakenings that humans journey though as they find their way back to God. And as you’ll see through the stories that I’ll share from the book here, everyone’s journey is truly unique. So buckle up and get ready. These stories will help you see that as much as we need to find our way back to God, “God wants to be found even more than you want to find him.” [1]

God wants to be found even more than you want to find him.
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1. Awakening to Longing: “There’s got to be more.”

Each of the five awakenings are summarized with a prayer. Here’s the prayer for this first awakening,

“God, if you are real, make yourself real to me. Awaken in me the ability to see that you are what’s missing from my life.” [2]

Let me share with you one of the stories from the book that perfectly illustrate the way that we can find our way back to God through this awakening to longing.

Several years ago I had dinner with my friend and mentor Bob Buford. For much of his life, Bob ran a successful cable television company. After his son, Ross, tragically died, Bob came to a point in his life he called “Halftime.” He wrote a book by that title that tells how he moved from focusing on success to focusing on significance. What Bob said at dinner has stayed with me ever since: “One of people’s great fears is running out of money, but that’s not their greatest fear. Another significant fear people have is the fear of dying, but that’s not people’s greatest fear either.” He paused and said, “Deep down, our single greatest fear is to live a life of insignificance, to come to the end of our life and feel like we never really did anything that mattered. That is our greatest fear.”

Are you feeling like you are stuck in the same old, same old? Do you have a gut feeling that there’s got to be more? Author and theologian Frederick Buechner points us in the right direction when he says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” [3]

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
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2. Awakening to Regret: “I wish I could start over.”
“God if you are real, make yourself real to me. Awaken in me the possibility that with you I could start over again.” [4]

In this second section of the book, there is a compelling story about Scott and Kirsten, and the changes they chose to make after awakening to regret.

Scott and Kirsten were overachievers. They both had graduate degrees, were making the kind of money that put them in the top 1 percent, and lived with their two sons in a community that was deemed “the best community in the United States to raise a family.” They thought they had figured out what life was all about. But they were living a bios kind of life, just one day after another that offered no purpose or cause bigger than themselves or their suburban home. The disillusionment became disappointment, and the disappointment grew into a deep depression and regret. Something had to change.

In a moment of prayer, these words came into Kirsten’s mind: “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” The words were from a story Jesus told. It spurred Kirsten and her husband to start talking about what a change in priority might look like in their lives.

Over the next five years, they sold their home, changed jobs, and moved into an under-resourced neighborhood to live alongside people who are marginalized and forgotten. Scott became a schoolteacher in a poorly performing elementary school. Kirsten launched a thriving compassion and justice non-profit that mobilizes thousands of volunteers. One of the most significant risks they took was moving their two elementary-age boys into a school district with a bare-bones budget, few extracurricular activities, and a growing gang problem. Scott and Kirsten will tell you that their boys have thrived. In Kirsten’s words, “We thought we were making sacrifices, but the truth is, we are living a better life not than ever before!”

In his book The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne says that the question of life after death is still significant, but what people are wondering most about is “whether there is life before death.” [5]

What people are wondering about most is whether there is life before death.
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3. Awakening to Help: “I can’t do this on my own.”
“God if you are real, make yourself real to me. Awaken in me the willingness to turn toward you for help.” [6]

This third awakening is best illustrated through the story of Christa.

Her name was Christa, and she grew up on a small cherry farm in Traverse City, Michigan. She was a wild child who dismissed her parents as old-fashioned because of how they responded to her piercings and tattoos. One night Christa and her parents had a huge fight. At the end of it, she slammed the door and said, “I hate you,” then acted on a plan she had been rehearsing for months in her mind. She ran away to the big city of Detroit.

Within a few hours of arriving in Detroit, she met a man who seemed warm and nice. He drove the most expensive car she’d ever seen, and he was willing to take her in. This nice man taught her a few things that would make her valuable on the streets, and because Christa was young, she brought in top dollar for her services. As time went on, and as she got a little older, she wasn’t bringing in top dollar anymore, and so she was thrown out on the street, with no money and a drug habit to support.

One night she thought back to those sunny spring days when she would be lying beneath the cherry trees. Realizing that renting her body on the streets of Detroit was no way to live, she decided she would head north, and maybe move to Canada and start over. On her way north, she figured she’d try something that she thought had no chance of actually working. She mustered up enough courage to give her parents a call. No one answered, but she left a message telling them she was going to be passing through Traverse City on her way to Canada. If they wanted to see her, she would be at the bus station around midnight. After hanging up, she thought leaving the message was a stupid thing to do because odds were they were happier now that she was gone.

As the bus headed north, she could see the signs saying the bus was getting closer to Traverse City…Finally the bus arrived in Traverse City, and she heard the bus driver say, “Fifteen minutes at this stop, fifteen minutes.”

All her mental rehearsing didn’t prepare her for what she should when she stepped off the bus. At midnight in this small-town bus depot, she found dozens of familiar faces belonging to aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents…and a huge banner hanging from the walls saying, “WELCOME HOME, CHRISTA!!!” Her dad broke through the crowd and ran up to her, and as she tried to explain herself, he wrapped his arms around her, making it clear that all he really cared about was that his daughter was home. [7]

God if you are real, make yourself real to me.
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4. Awakening to Love: “God loves me deeply after all.”
“God, if you are real, make yourself real to me. Awaken in me the awareness that I am your unconditionally loved child.” [8]

Leslie’s story demonstrates that while you can’t change your past, God can change your future.

Shame held Leslie captive most of her life. She was ashamed of her dad, who was a compulsive gambler. She was ashamed of her mother, who had a string of affairs with married men during Leslie’s growing-up years. She felt shame because of her own two divorces. She felt guilty when an ex-husband killed himself. Shame haunted her after the abortion she had when she was forty. Leslie said, “Shame was my prison, and it kept me hiding from the only One who could forgive me and set me free.”

When Leslie courageously told her story for the first time, the light of grace began to filter into her darkness. As her friend listened closely to everything she had done and everything that had been done to her–those two sources of shame I identified earlier–she said, “Leslie, you can’t change your past, but God can change your future.” Those words were like a key unlocking her from a prison of shame and opening the door to a brand-new life.

Over the next several years, Leslie found her way back to God. She came to understand that her identity was not in what she had done or in what had been done to her. She says, “I am God’s dearly loved child. Period.”

At times she still thinks, I don’t deserve this. But she also hears God’s voice saying, “Whatever you’ve done, you are forgiven and you are loved.” Today Leslie is helping other woman who struggle with pain in their past to find their way back to God.

Do not let your past mistakes and failures define you. That is the voice of shame. You aren’t what you’ve done or not done. You are not what’s been done to you.You are who God says you are. His child. [9]

Do not let your past mistakes and failures define you. That is the voice of shame.
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5. Your Awakening to Life: “Now this is living!”
“God if you are real, make yourself real to me. Awaken in me the confidence that I can live a brand-new life.” [10]

This last awakening illustrates the kind of life that God desires all of us to live…right now.

Eight years ago I sat in Lane’s living room where hospice workers had placed a bed to make him comfortable for his last days on this earth. He asked me to come over because it was time to plan his funeral. As he told me what he wanted to have said, sung, and celebrated at his memorial, I couldn’t help but think back to just a few years earlier when Lane found his way back to God.

Lane was a type-A, driven personality who would start his workday at 5 a.m. and not finish till late in the evening. His obsessive hard work paid off as his company went from being a $100-million business when he started to being worth more than $9 billion when he stepped down because of a terminal illness. The illness brought this ambitious workaholic to a complete stop. When Lane paused long enough to reflect on his life and success, he realized there was something very important missing.

As a kid, his parents took him to church and he had a genuine faith in God, but Lane realized that in his unbridled pursuit of success, God had gradually become a faint and forgotten memory. That was when we met.

Lane was sick. The kind of sick that would slowly kill him. But until it did kill him, it would torture his body with constant pain sixteen hours a day. The illness was his wake-up call that something was missing and he needed God. Lane told me, “Dave, the best thing that ever happened to me was getting sick. From the time I got sick, it refocused me. It caused me to find my way back to God and feel so close to God. I would give up everything for what I have now.”

I still have the notes for Lane’s funeral. They have gone unused. It has been nearly a decade since hospice was called, and Lane hasn’t died yet. But neither has Lane been cured. He is in pain every day of his life and only has energy to go out for a meal and spend a little time online exchanging e-mails. Since his spiritual rebirth, Lane has also found a new identity. He’s not a workaholic creating his own kingdom. Instead he is a messenger sharing his story and helping others find their way back to God. [11]

Is God real to you?

I want to encourage you to seek God by praying these five prayers. Open your heart and mind to God. He wants to be found and he wants to have a relationship with you.

At the end of Finding Your Way Back to God, there is a 30-day journal and prayer guide that will help you process these five awakenings so that you can find your way back to God.

Pick up a copy today here. Your life will never be the same.

 

Endnotes:

[1] Dave and Jon Ferguson, Finding Your Way Back to God: Five Awakenings to Your New Life (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2015), 2.

[2] Ibid., 29.

[3] Ibid., 44-45.

[4] Ibid., 61.

[5] Ibid., 67-68.

[6] Ibid., 92.

[7] Ibid., 90-91.

[8] Ibid., 118.

[9] Ibid., 120-121.

[10] Ibid., 137.

[11] Ibid., 161-162.

Are You a Life-Giving Christian?

After having lived and pastored in six major cities in three countries around the world, I’m often asked the question, “Which is your favorite?”

When I was younger, I’d reminisce about the mountains in Vancouver, the frozen river canal in Ottawa, the International Jazz Festival in Montreal, or the skyscrapers in Seoul. However, after packing and moving for the thousandth time—or so it feels—I finally feel like I have an adequate answer to that question.

It depends. That’s it—it depends.

It depends on whether or not I approached the city with the posture to give or take. It depends on whether or not I came with the desire to bless or an attitude of entitlement. Did I go to harvest or to plant? Did the city exist for my benefit, or did I exist for its benefit?

—— Enter the giveaway at the bottom of this article for a chance to win one of four copies of Todd Korpi’s book, The Life-Giving Spirit: The Victory of Christ in Missional Perspective. ——

Every week, Christians in your city are wrestling with a similar tension.

Should I go to church or to the lake? Should I participate in a small group or watch the game on TV. Should I open up the Bible app or Facebook?

Every week, when people enter the doors of your church, they are either coming with the posture to give or take. They are either coming to serve or be served. They are coming to bless the Lord or be blessed by the Lord. They are coming to give worship or take information and inspiration from the sermon. It’s a subtle difference, but your posture changes everything.

This reminds me of this one particular phrase that Todd repeats in his book, The Life-Giving Spirit: The Victory of Christ in Missional Perspective, “If every breath we inhale is from God, then every breath we exhale should be for God.”

“If every breath is from God, then every breath should be for God.” – @ToddKorpi
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Oh how one-sided we are at times!

We take, take, and take, thinking that if we don’t fend for ourselves, no one will. When in reality, if we approached life with the posture of giving and a heart of generosity, not only would others leave filled and satisfied, but so would we. After all, didn’t Jesus Himself say that He came to serve and not be served, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Matt 20:28)?

A few years ago, when my eldest daughter, Victoria, was a toddler, I remember this one time that we were driving together to gymnastics class.

We were listening to this one song where the chorus went like this, “It’s your breath, in our lungs, so we pour out our praise, we pour out our praise.”[1] As we were belting out the lyrics to this song, my voice began to eclipse hers as she slowly stopped singing. After singing by myself for another minute or so, I asked her why she had stopped the karaoke duo.

She responded with, “Daddy, can I ask you a question?”

I replied, “Of course.”

She then proceeded to take a deep breath in and then exhale it out. She repeated this a few times and then said, “That’s it, right? Isn’t that what the song is about?”

Not knowing quite what she was doing, I asked her to clarify, “What do you mean?”

“Well, if I breathe in and out, isn’t that singing praises to God? Because he put the breath in our lungs?”

Wow. I was floored.

I wish I could take credit for teaching her this, but I can’t. She got it. She understood that “if every breath we inhale is from God, then every breath we exhale should be for God.”

What would it look like for you to create a culture in your church where you are not only modeling this, but teaching your church how to live this out?

Where everyone understands that God is not only their creator, but their active sustainer? Where everyone learns how to live every breath and moment of their lives for God?

This is what I like to call “normalizing mission.”

In my book, No Silver Bullets: 5 Small Shifts that will Transform your Ministry, I write about this,

Every plumber, poet, and police officer in your church has the same vocation—to go and make disciples. This is our missionary mandate as the church! We are all sent and on mission with God wherever we are and in whatever we do for a living (John 20:21). And this precisely is our primary vocation. It’s our secondary vocation—the thing that we do to get food on the table—that differs for everyone.[2]

Every plumber and police officer in your church has the same vocation—to go and make disciples.
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What would it look like for you to develop disciples in your church who have a missionary mindset?

Where everyone understands that “mission is not just something that the church does; it is something that is done by the Spirit, who is himself the witness, who changes both the world and the church, who always goes before the church in its missionary journey.”[3] Where everyone understands that “if every breath we inhale is from God, then every breath we exhale should be for God?”

Get ready to be encouraged, challenged, and equipped by Todd to be a life-giving Christian wherever you live, wherever you go, and in everything that you do.

This is the Foreword that I wrote for Todd Korpi’s book, The Life-Giving Spirit: The Victory of Christ in Missional Perspective.

Enter to Win

Next Steps:

Enter the giveaway to win one of four copies of  The Life-Giving Spirit: The Victory of Christ in Missional Perspective.
Follow Todd Korpi on Twitter.
Read more from ToddKorpi.com

____________

[1] “Great Are You, Lord.” (2012) Jason Ingram, Leslie Jordan and David Leonard. Integrity’s Alleluia! Music | Integrity’s Praise! Music | Open Hands Music | Sony/ATV Timber Publishing.

[2] Daniel Im, No Silver Bullets: 5 Small Shifts that will Transform your Ministry (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2017).

[3] Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 56.

Music and Your Brain, Worship and Your Heart

My children love to sing and dance. So oftentimes after dinner, we’ll goof around, turn up the tunes, and sing songs with one another.

No, not like the von Trapp family—albeit, we have sung, “Doe, a deer, a female deer” more than once…

One particular evening, I began singing “A Whole New World” from Disney’s Aladdin. I always loved the melody as a child, but while I was teaching it to my children, I quickly realized something about the lyrics—I didn’t agree with them! And I definitely did not want my children being influenced by those horrible lyrics.

“No one to tell us no? Or where to go?”

I didn’t want my children saying that to me! And I definitely did not want them to leave me…at least not yet.

The thing about music is that it deeply shapes us—often without us recognizing the full extent of its influence.

In one study, three professors from Harvard and Boston College discovered that children who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than those who didn’t learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills. They also tested better on vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning skills, which involve understanding and analyzing visual information.

What’s interesting about this study is that you would naturally expect someone who is learning an instrument to develop in their fine motor skills, which they did. However, you wouldn’t necessarily expect someone who’s learning an instrument to grow in their vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning skills! It’s amazing how the brain is wired and how music shapes your brain.

Similarly, have you ever considered the way worship shapes your heart?

In Psalm 40, we come across a song that would have been sung publicly in worship. It was a song that not only—probably had a catchy melody—but it was one that God used to shape the hearts of His people and remind them of their identity and their calling in this world. The Psalm was, and is, a heartfelt cry of thankfulness for who God is and what He has done, is doing, and will continue to do.

This Psalm is powerful because it helps us understand the role of gratitude in worship.

Worship begins when we realize that everything is ultimately from God. In other words, it starts with gratitude. In fact, this Psalm begins and ends with the declaration that we are in need of God’s work and His salvation. So when we worship, let’s not only thank Him for His past saving work, but also for His present and future ongoing work in our lives.

Worship begins when we realize that everything is ultimately from God.
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This Psalm also teaches us that worship is about openly, blatantly, bluntly, conspicuously, consciously, and boldly speaking to the Lord and about Him to others.

It’s about never ceasing to declare His righteousness, faithfulness, constant love, and truth.

Most importantly though, this Psalm shows us just how normal worship must be. It’s not something reserved for Sundays or beautifully designed sanctuaries. It’s an everyday thing. Yes, it’s important that we gather with one another on a regular basis to worship as the Church, but that’s not where worship begins, nor is it where it ends.

Worship is an everyday thing…it’s not just something reserved for Sundays.
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We are called to worship when we’re at home putting our children to bed. When we’re driving to work. When we’re on the treadmill. When we’re taking a walk. When we’re eating smoked ribs. When we’re in between meetings. And when we’re studying the Bible.

May we be a worshipful people and allow the Lord our God—the creator and sustainer of all things—to shape and mold our heart.

How to Improve Your Leadership…Immediately!

I have three young children, so our house is well stocked with Band-Aids.

Not adhesive bandages, but Band-Aids…you know, the name brand kind that have Disney-Pixar characters on them. Now before you go and think I’m raising entitled children, let me explain the backstory.

When my children were younger, Christina and I refused to buy the over-priced character Band-Aids. We bought the generic kind with no designs. I then would take a pen and draw a smiley face, panda, or bunny on it.

My children loved it. They didn’t think it was cheap, by any means! After all, I was giving them a custom, handcrafted, one-of-a-kind bandage to cover up their cut, scrape, or wound. Unfortunately, that only worked when they were toddlers. Now, the only thing that is acceptable, in their opinion, is a Band-Aid with a character on it.

Oh how things change…

Alright, design aside, I’ve found that Band-Aids do actually work better than the generic kind. They last longer and do a better job keeping the water out, which is actually part of the problem. Since the cheap ones often come off within the day, my children will remind me that they need a new one. However, with Band-Aids, if I’m not paying attention, days might pass before I remember to change it.

This is fine if I remembered to clean the wound and treat it with an antibiotic before covering it with a Band-Aid. But what if I didn’t? What if I just put the Band-Aid on immediately after, and didn’t take time to clean or treat it? And then I left it on for a few days without checking it?

My children would likely get an infection at best. At worst, they’d need surgical debridement and antibiotics.

This is because Band-Aids are just that…they’re an aid to the healing process. They can’t do it alone.

Have you ever been given a “stretch” assignment?

Something that you’ve never done before? Something that you had to go get help to complete? Something that you had to research and develop new skills for, in order to get it done?

Leaders use “stretch” assignments to challenge individuals on their team. They know that it’s extra work and that the team member might not be ready for it, but it’s a way to discover potential and build capacity. Essentially, it’s a real life test of an individual’s competency, character, tenacity, and grit.

Stretch assignments are a real life test of an individual’s competency, character, and grit.
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However, it’s important to note that completion of the assignment, in and of itself, is not the only goal. The way the team member reacts to the assignment, prioritizes it, and works through it is just as important:

How did they react when given the assignment?
Did they ask clarifying questions immediately? Or later?
How did they prioritize the assignment in light of their existing workload?
How did it affect performance in their other work?
Did they recruit others to help?
Did they delegate it, dump it, or do it?

“Stretch” assignments, when used appropriately, will move your team members out of boredom and comfort, to a new level of effectiveness and productivity. When overused, however, they have the potential to lead to burnout.

So use them…with caution.

Are “Stretch” Assignments Band-Aid Solutions?

When used by themselves, yes they are.

“Stretch” assignments aid the development of leaders, but they’re not the way to develop leaders. They’re not a silver bullet solution.

If you’re serious about “stretching” the individuals on your team and in your church, you need to think about competencies and culture. More specifically, I’m referring to the people development competency and a developmental culture.

After all, which would you rather have? Hirelings or owners?

When your team members are engaged in their work, they’re more likely to own what they do, go the extra mile, and do one more thing.

If your team is engaged in their work, they’re more likely to go the extra mile.
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In fact, in Gallup’s extensive research on engagement, they discovered that there’s a correlation between being developed at work and an individual’s level of engagement. In their Q12 survey, there are several statements focused on measuring an employee’s development, such as,

There is someone at work who encourages my development
In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress
This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

How would you answer these questions for those on your team? How would people on your team answer those questions?

In order to “stretch” individuals to greater levels of performance, productivity, and potential, yes, you can leverage “stretch” assignments, but first, you need to clean and treat the wound, so that it doesn’t become a Band-Aid solution.

In other words, you need to create a culture of development and identify what proficiency looks like in the people development competency.

When you do this, “stretch” assignments cease to be one-offs or Band-Aid solutions to problems. Instead, they become a part of a larger framework devoted to developing every team member to their fullest potential for kingdom impact.

Share the Good Stuff

In conclusion, use “stretch” assignments. They’re good and they work well in light of the caveats above. But when you do hand out “stretch” assignments, resist the urge to delegate what you don’t like doing. Share the good stuff. Share something that you love doing.

Who knows? They might discover a way to do it better. And the whole team would be better for it.

Stretch assignments can move you out of boredom and comfort, to a new level of effectiveness.
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Are “Stretch” Assignments Band-Aid Solutions?

I have three young children, so our house is well stocked with Band-Aids.

Not adhesive bandages, but Band-Aids…you know, the name brand kind that have Disney-Pixar characters on them. Now before you go and think I’m raising entitled children, let me explain the backstory.

When my children were younger, Christina and I refused to buy the over-priced character Band-Aids. We bought the generic kind with no designs. I then would take a pen and draw a smiley face, panda, or bunny on it.

My children loved it. They didn’t think it was cheap, by any means! After all, I was giving them a custom, handcrafted, one-of-a-kind bandage to cover up their cut, scrape, or wound. Unfortunately, that only worked when they were toddlers. Now, the only thing that is acceptable, in their opinion, is a Band-Aid with a character on it.

Oh how things change…

Alright, design aside, I’ve found that Band-Aids do actually work better than the generic kind. They last longer and do a better job keeping the water out, which is actually part of the problem. Since the cheap ones often come off within the day, my children will remind me that they need a new one. However, with Band-Aids, if I’m not paying attention, days might pass before I remember to change it.

This is fine if I remembered to clean the wound and treat it with an antibiotic before covering it with a Band-Aid. But what if I didn’t? What if I just put the Band-Aid on immediately after, and didn’t take time to clean or treat it? And then I left it on for a few days without checking it?

My children would likely get an infection at best. At worst, they’d need surgical debridement and antibiotics.

This is because Band-Aids are just that…they’re an aid to the healing process. They can’t do it alone.

Have you ever been given a “stretch” assignment?

Something that you’ve never done before? Something that you had to go get help to complete? Something that you had to research and develop new skills for, in order to get it done?

Leaders use “stretch” assignments to challenge individuals on their team. They know that it’s extra work and that the team member might not be ready for it, but it’s a way to discover potential and build capacity. Essentially, it’s a real life test of an individual’s competency, character, tenacity, and grit.

Stretch assignments are a real life test of an individual’s competency, character, and grit.
Click To Tweet

However, it’s important to note that completion of the assignment, in and of itself, is not the only goal. The way the team member reacts to the assignment, prioritizes it, and works through it is just as important:

How did they react when given the assignment?
Did they ask clarifying questions immediately? Or later?
How did they prioritize the assignment in light of their existing workload?
How did it affect performance in their other work?
Did they recruit others to help?
Did they delegate it, dump it, or do it?

“Stretch” assignments, when used appropriately, will move your team members out of boredom and comfort, to a new level of effectiveness and productivity. When overused, however, they have the potential to lead to burnout.

So use them…with caution.

Are “Stretch” Assignments Band-Aid Solutions?

When used by themselves, yes they are.

“Stretch” assignments aid the development of leaders, but they’re not the way to develop leaders. They’re not a silver bullet solution.

If you’re serious about “stretching” the individuals on your team and in your church, you need to think about competencies and culture. More specifically, I’m referring to the people development competency and a developmental culture.

After all, which would you rather have? Hirelings or owners?

When your team members are engaged in their work, they’re more likely to own what they do, go the extra mile, and do one more thing.

If your team is engaged in their work, they’re more likely to go the extra mile.
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In fact, in Gallup’s extensive research on engagement, they discovered that there’s a correlation between being developed at work and an individual’s level of engagement. In their Q12 survey, there are several statements focused on measuring an employee’s development, such as,

There is someone at work who encourages my development
In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress
This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

How would you answer these questions for those on your team? How would people on your team answer those questions?

In order to “stretch” individuals to greater levels of performance, productivity, and potential, yes, you can leverage “stretch” assignments, but first, you need to clean and treat the wound, so that it doesn’t become a Band-Aid solution.

In other words, you need to create a culture of development and identify what proficiency looks like in the people development competency.

When you do this, “stretch” assignments cease to be one-offs or Band-Aid solutions to problems. Instead, they become a part of a larger framework devoted to developing every team member to their fullest potential for kingdom impact.

Share the Good Stuff

In conclusion, use “stretch” assignments. They’re good and they work well in light of the caveats above. But when you do hand out “stretch” assignments, resist the urge to delegate what you don’t like doing. Share the good stuff. Share something that you love doing.

Who knows? They might discover a way to do it better. And the whole team would be better for it.

Stretch assignments can move you out of boredom and comfort, to a new level of effectiveness.
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Mass Gatherings and Movements

The year 2011 was the year of social media, mass gatherings, and movements, or as we now know it, The Arab Spring.

It’s believed to have all started in Tunisia when a 26-year-old man, who was trying to sell fruits and vegetables in order to support his widowed mother and six siblings, had his cart confiscated and was slapped by a policewoman. Humiliated and full of rage, he set himself on fire in front of a government building. This wasn’t the first time an instance like this had happened, but when it was captured by cellphone cameras and shared on the Internet, everything changed. This act of injustice, which led to the President of Tunisia fleeing the country a month later, awakened a sleeping giant across the Middle East. Just consider what else happened that year:

January 14, 2011: Government overthrown in Tunisia
February 11, 2011: Government overthrown in Egypt; President Mubarak resigns facing charges of killing unarmed protestors
February 15, 2011: Anti-government protests begin in Libya, and on October 20, Gaddafi is killed.

And the list goes on and on with Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Oman.

Mass gatherings, riots, and movements are nothing new.

Just consider when over 200,000 people gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech in 1963. Or what about the L.A. Race Riots of 1992 and the Ferguson, Missouri, riots of 2014? Then there are the riots that I am personally most embarrassed of—not because I was there, but because this was my home city—when, in 2011, the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup 4-0 against the Boston Bruins.

Fans went insane. Police cars were set on fire, shops were looted, glass was broken, and cars were overturned. It was chaos.

And at the end of 2016, let’s not forget the massive movement where millions came out protesting and calling for the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, then President of South Korea.

We remember moments like these because people gathered. And when they gathered, they did something together they wouldn’t have been able to do by themselves. They saw both the dificulties and possibilities so clearly that they were able to visualize a different reality. This vision for a golden tomorrow has fueled movements in the past and is what will spark a church multiplication movement today.

Vision has fueled movements in the past and is what will spark a movement today.
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A Golden Tomorrow: Planting 1,000 Churches

Subtract your age from the number 80. Now take that number, and add it to this year’s number. What year do you get? 2050? 2070? 2090?

What if I told you that it’s possible to plant 1,000 churches before you get to that year? 1,000 churches in your lifetime? Would you believe me?

In fact, before you move any further, take a moment and try reverse engineering what you would need to do in order to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime.

It’s happened before, and it can happen again.

We live in exciting times where we have the capability of reaching multitudes of people—more than any other generation before us. The world has grown smaller, and our capacity for knowledge transfer and multiplication has dramatically expanded.

Historically speaking, 1,000 churches have been planted in the average lifespan of an individual in China and Korea, as well as in the West with the Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, and Hope Chapel movements. Although this figure seems overwhelming, recent history has proven that when God is in the mix and the church is stirred to action, anything is possible!

It is our prayer that this concise book, 1,000 Churches: How Past Movements Did It—And How Your Church Can, Too, will increase your optimism and vision for church planting possibilities in a way that becomes catalytic and contagious for the kingdom’s sake.

When God is in the mix and the church is stirred to action, anything is possible.
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In chapter one of this book that Ed Stetzer and I wrote for NewChurches.com, we will take a closer look at each of these examples given as we explore movements and what’s taken place in recent history. This chapter’s aim is to inform so that reform and movement may be catalyzed. In chapter two, we’ll explore why there are no church planting movements currently in the West. Chapter three is where we’ll examine the characteristics of movements and their barriers with a view to greater impact and missional impetus. We’ll then conclude with an outline of the systems and principles required to plant 1,000 churches in your lifetime.

Let’s stop longing for the past, when things were better and when churches grew and expanded en masse in the West.

Instead, let’s look forward and pray that God would do it again in a fresh way. Let’s lift our eyes above what we see and allow our vision of the glory of God to shape our present realities and direct our future paths.

Download this book for free here, or purchase hard copies here.

Mars, Contextualization, and Church Leadership

Image: NASA
What time is it on Mars?

I was obsessed with space as a child. In fact, I still have my old books about space, and now my children are reading them! I can assure you that it was their decision, not mine. Going along the theme of loving space, I was naturally into Star Wars, but it was Star Trek that won the day for me. Now I’m definitely revealing my inner nerd, but I even had a manual that talked about all the intricate systems on the USS Enterprise.

I recently watched a TED Talk from Nagin Cox, a Spacecraft Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In it, she explained what life on Mars was like—she even referred to herself as a Martian! Now before you ask Google, Siri, or Alexa when humans first landed on Mars, let me clarify. She’s a Martian because she works on the team that controls the four rovers that the U.S. has placed on Mars since the mid-90s.

When the rovers are “sleeping” at night—in order to recharge their batteries—Cox and her team are hard at work creating the rover’s program for the next day. So essentially, Cox works the night shift.

Now unlike individuals who work the graveyard shift from 11 pm – 7 am here on Earth, things are a bit different on Mars. This is because a day on Mars is 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth. In other words, it takes 24 hours and 40 minutes for Mars to rotate once.

Not only that, but a year on Mars is almost twice as long as a year on Earth.

While this might sound like a minute detail (pun intended), this has actually created quite a couple of issues for Cox and her Martian colleagues, such as:

When you say the words yesterday, today, and tomorrow, how do you know if someone is referring to yesterday, today, and tomorrow on Earth time or Martian time?
Do you work the 11 pm – 7 am shift according to Earth time or Martian time?

Now what does this all have to do with church planting and leadership in the church?

Well, in order to solve those problems, Cox and her team had to contextualize.

This is a core competency for church planters that we’ve talked about at length on NewChurches.com, the resource for church planters and multipliers that Ed Stetzer and I lead together. You can scroll to the bottom of this article for further reading on the subject.

Let’s take a look at three ways that Cox and her team learned to contextualize, so that they could better adjust to life on Mars.

1. Speak the Local Language

In order to differentiate between the days on Mars and the days on Earth, Cox and her team had to first realize that their current vocabulary wasn’t sufficient. They had to learn the language of Mars. No, I’m not talking about learning some foreign alien language like Klingon, I’m talking about being able to verbally differentiate between a day on Mars and a day on Earth.

Since astronomers refer to a Martian day as a sol, Cox and her team decided to learn how to speak the local language when referring to time on Mars. So they created the following rubric:

Today on Earth = Tosol on Mars
Yesterday on Earth = Yestersol on Mars
Tomorrow on Earth = Nextersol or Solorrow on Mars

So that means, if they were talking about today on Mars, they said tosol. Yesterday became yestersol, and tomorrow because nextersol or solorrrow.

When moving into a new neighborhood to plant a church/campus or revitalize an established one, learn how to speak the local language.

You can definitely share stories from your previous context and the church you came from, but watch that you’re not doing this too often. In the first year, it’s fine, since it’s context and it often gives you a sense of legitimacy that you’re not wet behind the ears. But if you do this too often and too long, people will begin to wonder why you even moved to their neighborhood.

It’s fine to share stories from your previous church, but don’t do it too often.
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2. Live the Local Rhythms

Instead of coming to work everyday from 11 pm – 7 am Earth time, Cox and her team came to work everyday 11 pm – 7 am Martian time. They immersed themselves fully into local life on Mars. Since a day on Mars is 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth, the team had to come to work 40 minutes later every single day.

Now this might seem manageable for a couple days, but what do you think would happen after a couple of months? How would you even keep track? Especially when it would eventually be 4 pm Martian time, but 6 am on Earth. This sure puts the inconvenience of Daylight Saving Time to rest.

In order to adjust and live like a local on Mars, Cox and her team wore two watches—one for Mars and one for Earth. They adjusted the weights on one of their watches so that it would run slower and be calibrated to Martian time, instead of Earth time.

When moving into a new neighborhood to plant a church/campus or revitalize an established one, start living the local rhythms.

For example, when do the lights come on in your town?

Friday night, Saturday night, or Sunday night? Since moving to the U.S., I’ve begun to live like a local, in order to better pastor those in my church and reach those in my community. While my town might not be a Friday-night-lights-high-school-football type of town, everyone around here sure loves college football! So nothing at the church ever gets scheduled on a Saturday night.

Learn how to live the local rhythms in your neighborhood for missional engagement.
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Sure, I’d rather watch hockey on Saturday night like I did growing up (Hockey Night in Canada on CBC), but since God has called me here, I need to live into the local rhythms of my town.

3. Involve Your Family

What happens when you’re working in the middle of a Martian night, but there’s daylight streaming in through the windows, since it’s 11 am on Earth? You draw the blinds and you keep them shut until time aligns again, right? While this might be easy to do at work, since everyone’s on Martian time, what about your family?

In order to be successful at her mission on Mars, Cox understood the importance of involving her family.

So this also works for the house, for at home. I’ve been on Mars time three times, and my husband is like, OK, we’re getting ready for Mars time. And so he’ll put foil all over the windows and dark curtains and shades because it also affects your families. And so here I was living in kind of this darkened environment, but so was he. And he’d gotten used to it. But then I would get these plaintive emails from him when he was at work. Should I come home? Are you awake? What time is it on Mars? And I decided, OK, so he needs a Mars watch.

When moving into a new neighborhood to plant a church/campus or revitalize an established one, be sure to involve your family.

Experience new restaurants and parts of the city together as a family. Don’t just take your family to places you’ve been to before. Explore together and involve your family fully into the mission that God has called you into. For God has not just called you to your church, but He has also called your family to it as well. So serve them, shepherd them, and involve them in your ministry.

God has not just called you to your church, but He has called your family to it as well.
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Further Reading on Contextualization:

Contextualizing “Personal Jerusalems”
Are We On the Same Page?
Understanding Before Being Understood

*My article here was originally published on April 11, 2017 in Christianity Today.

Missional Living and the Scriptures

Mission is not something that your church does. Nor is it something that your church can opt out of. And it’s not a strategy, preference, or style of ministry either.

Mission needs to be core to the identity of any and every local church. After all, a church without a clear understanding of its mission is a church without power. As scholar Martin Kähler said a century ago, “Mission is the mother of theology.”

—— Enter the giveaway at the bottom of this article for a chance to win one of four Goatskin Leather copies of the new Christian Standard Bible ——

What It Means to Be Missional

I’m not talking about having a mission statement. I’m talking about the great and grand mission that God has invited us all into: the mission of God, the missio Dei. The concept of missio Dei is recognition that God is a sending God and that the church is sent.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. (John 20:21 CSB)

In describing the mission of the church, Tim Keller notes: “God does not merely send the church in mission. God already is in mission, and the church must join him. This also means, then, that the church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.”1

The church does not simply have a missions department; it should wholly exist to be a mission.
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The church has been sent to join the most important mission in the Scriptures.2 Jesus Christ embodied that mission; the Holy Spirit empowers for that mission; the church is the instrument of that mission; and the culture is the context in which that mission occurs.3

As missiologist Wilbert Shenk points out: “The Great Commission institutionalizes mission as the raison d’être, the controlling norm, of the church. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a member of his body is to live a missionary experience in the world. There is no doubt that this was how the earliest Christians understood their calling.”
4

And this is how we need to understand the word mission or its adjective, missional, today. A missional church is a church that’s adopting the posture of a missionary, joining God on His mission, and learning and adapting to
 the culture around them while remaining biblically sound.
 Think of it this way: missional means living and acting like 
a missionary, even if you never leave your city.

Missional means living and acting like a missionary, even if you never leave your city.
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A Missional Translation

In addition to preaching out of the CSB as a Teaching Pastor at The Fellowship, a multisite church in Nashville, TN, I’m also reading through it, cover to cover, for my personal devotions.

What I love about the translation is the readability of it. It just flows. The sentences are written in a way that makes sense and are easy to memorize. It’s like I’m reading a modern day play, rather than a play written by Shakespeare or Chaucer.

However, at the same time, after examining the translation methodology of the CSB, I can trust that what I’m reading is what the original manuscripts said. I’ve found the CSB to be both readable and trustworthy.

Missional Living

In order to lead the members of your church to live and act like missionaries, you need to equip them with the one thing that matters above all else—the Scriptures. Ephesians 6:17 equates the Scriptures to the sword that every soldier needs in order to walk onto the battlefield.

…the sword of the Spirit​—   ​which is the word of God. (Eph 6:17b CSB)

We’re in a battlefield—a spiritual one.

And that means we need to give our congregations a sword that they can actually lift and that is strong and reliable. We need to give them a translation they can understand and one that adheres closely to the original meaning.

To live and act like missionaries, you need the one thing that matters—the Scriptures.
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If you want to equip your church members to live and act like missionaries, they need to be so familiar with their swords that they can easily wield them against the lies and temptations of the evil one.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens. 13 For this reason take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand. 14 Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest, 15 and your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel of peace. 16 In every situation take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit ​— ​which is the word of God. (Eph 6:12-17)

Enter to Win

Next Steps:

Enter the giveaway to win one of four Goatskin Leather copies of the new Christian Standard Bible
See the different versions available for the Christian Standard Bible
See what pastors and leaders are saying about the Christian Standard Bible here
Read the CSB for yourself

____________

1 Tim Keller, Center Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 251.

2 Köstenberger and O’Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, 269.

3 Wilbert R. Shenk, “Mission Theology,” in Phillips and Coote, Toward the Twenty-First Century in Christian Mission, 221–23.

4 Wilbert R. Shenk, Write the Vision: The Church Renewed (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), 90.

Sanctifying Your Ambition and Faith

If you missed my last two posts on ambition, you might want to start there:

The Paradox of Ambition and Faith
Ambition, Faith, and Timing

Oftentimes God has to bring you through the desert before he can use you.

In other words, he has to sanctify your ambition and faith in order to use you for his purposes.

If you haven’t yet gone through a desert experience where your world has been turned upside down, then expect to. God uses these desert experiences to accomplish things through you that you would never be able to accomplish apart from them.

Oftentimes God has to bring you through the desert before he can use you.
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In fact, spiritual leaders find their greatest insights and contributions in these desert experiences.

Moving back to Canada from from Korea was definitely a desert experience for me. I felt like my world was turned upside down.

I knew that God had called us to Korea, but if that was really true, then why did he allow us to leave Korea the way we did? The ministry was multiplying, people were being transformed, and we had just signed a lease for a new place and bought all new furniture, only then to turn around and leave it all?

My wife, Christina, and I didn’t understand why God was allowing us to go through this, but by his unbelievable grace we did sense his presence along the way.

When we moved back to Canada, we were jobless, hopeless, and our savings were running out fast.

I was disillusioned with ministry and knew I needed a break, but I also knew my family needed to be fed.

Thank God for my parents who let us stay with them. Since food, coffee, and ministry were all I knew, I decided to apply anywhere and everywhere to just start getting a paycheck.

No one contacted me back—Costco and Starbucks were silent, as well as every single church position I secretly knew I was “overqualified for”. I finally got the hint and realized that perhaps God wanted to do something in my heart before he was willing to use me elsewhere.

While worshipping, praying, fasting, and studying the Scriptures, I began to process what had happened in Korea.

At that point my friend Josh, called me up and asked whether I would be willing to be a guest speaker at their young adults retreat in Calgary, Alberta. As I was preparing for that retreat, God did the greatest work in my heart.

I decided to preach through the life of David and began to sit under Eugene Peterson’s teaching on it.

I soon discovered that David went through two major desert experiences in his life—first when he was being chased by Saul and later on when he was being chased by his son Absalom. As I began to study what happened to David during those two desert experiences, God began to reveal to me that he was doing the same in my life.

For David these desert experiences were the most formative years of his life.

Through these desert experiences his ambition was being sanctified, and his faith was being refined. For example, when he was being chased by Saul, he knew he was going to be king one day, yet he had to wait on God’s timing.

In the desert, God will sanctify your ambition and refine your faith.
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Imagine how hard that would’ve been when he had the chance to kill Saul in the cave (1 Sam 24:1–22). The future was in his grasp, the promise could’ve been fulfilled that day, but God was using this experience to test and teach David: “Are you going to have faith in yourself to bring this to pass? Or are you going to have faith in the God who can bring this to pass?”

The reason you go through desert experiences is because God wants to do a work in your life; he wants to refine your ambition and faith.

After all, “the Lord disciplines the one He loves” (Heb 12:6).

When facing a desert experience, you have an important choice to make.

If you respond positively by waiting on God and engaging in spiritual disciplines like praying, fasting, meditating on the Scriptures, being in community, and worshipping, then you are allowing God the opportunity to refine and sanctify you.

However, if you respond negatively by ignoring the situation, isolating yourself, or even turning away from God, then you’ll never get out. Or the same situation will keep on coming up, over and over again.

So welcome desert experiences when they come. Not if they come, but when they come. Instead of fighting them, invite God to shape and mold you through these experiences…regardless of how painful they might be.

Welcome desert experiences when they come. Not if they come, but when they come.
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If you would like to learn more about desert experiences, you can read my series here:

Your Desert Experience in Ministry – Part 1/4
Your Desert Experience in Ministry – Part 2/4
Your Desert Experience in Ministry – Part 3/4
3 Ways to Avoid Losing Your Job (Part 4/4)

*This was a modified excerpt from my book, Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply (2nd ed).