Daniel Im's Blog, page 19

My Seminars for Exponential East 2017

I’m excited to be speaking this week at Exponential East 2017!

If you are at the conference, I’d love for you to join me at one of my seminars.

Pre-Conference: Developing Better Disciple Makers – Hosted by Discipleship.org

Join Jim Putman, Ralph Moore, Bobby Harrington, Bill Hull, Ariyana Rimson and Daniel Im to learn how to get better at personally living out Jesus’ final command. The sessions will be practical and led by some of the nations leading authorities and, more importantly, practitioners of disciple making.
Time: Monday 1:00pm – 5:00pm
Location: Henry Chapel

Pre-Conference: Embracing Disruption – Repurpose Your Church to Redeem Your Community – Hosted by Mosaix

An increasingly diverse and cynical society will no longer find credible the mere explanation of theological truth apart from effective community engagement. Advancing the common good, then, and thus the very Gospel, itself, must involve more than mere words, and the building of large congregations filled with people of a similar race, class, or cultural background. In this present future, our common confession must be validated by concrete action and accompanying measurable results along spiritual, social and economic fronts. Indeed this is the expectation of Christ in Matthew 5:16 and of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10. Whether you’re the pastor of an existing church or soon-to-be church planter, don’t miss this first ever presentation designed to help you advance disruption innovation, effective community engagement, and maximize your church’s influence in the community.
Time: Tuesday 8:00am – 11:30am
Location: Faith Hall – Room 350

Workshop Session 1: Pathways: The Shift from Level 3 to Becoming a Level 4 Leader and Church

Join Daniel Im, Mac Lake and Chris Lagerlof as we discuss the process and steps to successfully shifting from being a Level 3 (growth by addition) church to becoming a Level 4 (reproduction) church. We will look at barriers to making this shift as well the necessary steps you must make in your own personal leadership and ministry to successfully navigate this shift. Our conversation will focus on helping you and your church, network or tribe build a culture of reproduction and a level 4 mindset. We will also discuss the pathway and process to successfully be a Level 4 leader and church.
Time: Tuesday, 2:30-3:30pm
Location: Henry Chapel

Workshop Session 2: A Discipleship Strategy for Multiplication

In order to multiply, you need to have a discipleship strategy in place. After all, the multiplication of your church always begins with the multiplication of disciples. In this workshop, learn how to create a strategic discipleship pathway that will help you develop multipliers, rather than consumers.
Time: Wednesday, 8:45-9:45am
Location: AP Buildings – AP 7

Workshop Session 4: Values for Multiplication

What distinguishes your church from the one down the road? Learn how the values for your church affect your strategies for multiplication. Discover the four types of values and leave with an audit that will help you discover your unique multiplication identity.
Time: Wednesday, 2:30-3:30pm
Location: AP Buildings – AP 7

Workshop Session 5: 5 Shifts for Multiplication

What if someone told you that you were only a few shifts away from unlocking and unleashing a new season of fruitfulness and multiplication in your church? Discover the five micro-shifts that will set your church in motion towards macro-change. There is no silver bullet. There is no one solution. But there are a series of small changes that you can make today that will change the course of your church for tomorrow.
Time: Thursday, 8:45 – 9:45am
Location: AP Buildings – AP 7

Click here  to access the audits, tools, handouts, resources, and powerpoint presentations that I referenced during one of these talks.

Ambition, Faith, and Timing

Last week I covered the paradox of ambition and faith. Today, I want to add a third variable to the mix: timing.

What relationship does ambition and faith have with timing?

Although spiritual leaders can have ambition and God-placed faith, there’s still one major area they can mess up in—timing.

It’s easy for spiritual leaders to mess up in this one area–timing.
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Abraham had a significant calling on his life, and it was to be the father of a great nation, one that was intended to be a blessing to the entire world and one from which the Savior of the world would come. To even believe that this could be true, for him took a great measure of faith, and only a truly ambitious person would’ve even accepted this grand assignment.

The only problem was that Abraham was impatient.

I don’t blame the guy, though. After all, he was childless and seventy-five years old at the time God commissioned him (Gen 12:2–4). In the ensuing years Abraham moved, experienced a famine, lost his wife, then received her back, moved again, got into a fight with his nephew Lot, experienced war, experienced the destruction of a city, and moved again (did I already say that?), among many other things.

In and through these experiences, God reminded him multiple times about this calling that he had placed on his life.

God will often use your current circumstances to remind you about your calling.
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Eleven years later Abraham and his wife Sarah (their names were Abram and Sarai at that time) got fed up about continually hearing this calling and not seeing it come to pass, so they ambitiously took their faith into their own hands.

“Sarai said to Abram, ‘Since the LORD has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.’ And Abram agreed to what Sarai said” (Gen 16:2).

Spiritual leaders understand that there are two different ways to understand time in the Scriptures.

There’s chronos time, on the one hand, which is linear time. Linear time tells us that today is Monday and tomorrow will be Tuesday, or that it’s 3:01 PM now and it will be 3:02 PM in one minute. This Greek word is used in passages like, “Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth” (Luke 1:57), or “they spent considerable time with the disciples” (Acts 14:28).

There’s a difference between chronos time and karios time.
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On the other hand, karios time refers to an occasion, season, or a set time that only God knows. Karios is used in passages like, “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15–16), or “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). It’s also used in other passages like, “Watch! Be alert! For you don’t know when the time is coming” (Mark 13:33), and “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time” (1 Pet 5:6).

Abraham and Sarah were tired of waiting, so they decided to take time (chronos) into their own hands and attempt to force the promise to come to pass.

Unfortunately, if they had only followed God’s timing (kairos), they would’ve only had to wait another thirteen years and God would’ve brought his promise to pass, without all of the heartache and pain that resulted and continues to result from their chronos decision. I say that as if waiting thirteen years is an easy thing to do.

For me, it’s hard enough to wait overnight to get something shipped, let alone wait one year!

For Abraham and Sarah, it took twenty-four years to see just a seedling of that God vision come to pass with the birth of Isaac!

So let me ask you a question, what has God placed on your heart?

Is it church planting? Is it revitalizing an established church? Is it to wait? Is it to mend broken fences? Is it to go back to school?

Whatever it might be, don’t give up. Persevere and push forward. Bring it before God and before the church. Trust in him.

Persevere and push forward. Bring it before God and before the church. Trust in him.
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Since this is an excerpt from Planting Missional Churches, let’s talk specifically about church planting.

If God has placed church planting on your heart, you need to seriously pray through the what and the when! This is because we all need to be about church planting, but we are not all called to church plant.

It may be the case that he laid this burden on your heart so you can pray for the other church plants around you.
It may be that he wants you to plant churches from your existing church.
It may be that he is calling you to fund church planting or join a church planting team.
Or it may be that he wants you to go and plant a church in six months, or maybe it’s six years from now.

Receiving a calling for church planting is not synonymous with a green light to do it right now.

It’s okay to be ambitious; just make sure your faith is not in your own ability to get it done but in our God who can get it done.

Make sure your faith is not in your own ability to get it done but in our God who can get it done.
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Next week, I’ll continue this series by addressing one of the most powerful ways God sanctifies our ambition and faith.

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

The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

A 7-Eleven Vision for Church Planting

“What’s your vision for the orphanage and for Thailand?” I asked the pastor of the orphanage.

“You know, whenever I think about you Koreans and South Korea, I get mixed feelings.”

I was starting to think that I shouldn’t have asked this question in the first place.

The pastor continued, “On the one hand, I’m astounded as to the spiritual transformation God can accomplish in a single country over a short period of time. But on the other hand, I’m upset because 100 years ago, Korea and Thailand were basically the same country—rural, economically challenged, and spiritually lost.”

After giving a sigh of relief, I paused, wondering whether I should interject, but then the pastor continued.

“Have you noticed that there are 7-Elevens pretty much on every street corner in Thailand?” asked the pastor.

I nodded.

“I have this dream that God would do such a transformational work in Thailand that, instead of 7-Elevens on every street corner, we had churches. And I want that work to start here in the orphanage with these children,” explained the pastor.

As I walked away from that conversation, I thought to myself, now that’s ambitious.

The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

What does an entrepreneur dreaming up a new solution for the next greatest app have in common with that pastor in Thailand dreaming about planting churches on every street corner?

In both situations we are talking about highly ambitious individuals whose vision of the future is driven by an image of faith.

Is your vision for the future driven by an image of faith?
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Herein lies a paradox for most Christians—ambition and faith.

A paradox is “something that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is actually true or possible.” When examining the Scriptures, ambition and faith seem to be two opposite things, but as we will see here, they’re actually two sides of the same coin.

Ambition has “a particular goal or aim”; it is commonly used to refer to the future hope that drives individuals to obtain more, achieve more, and get things accomplished.

When we look at the New Testament, ambition (Greek = erithiah) is used in connection with the word “selfish” in Galatians 5:20 and, as a result, is categorized as one of the works of the flesh: “For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want” (Gal 5:17).

In this passage ambition stands in direct contrast to the fruit of the Spirit.

So spiritual leaders who call themselves Christian have an obligation to crucify “the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Other instances of ambition are used in a similar manner:

In Romans 2:8, ambition is used as a qualifier for the type of people who are going to receive “wrath and indignation” in God’s judgment.
In James 3:14–16, ambition results in boasting and lying and serves as a precursor to disorder and evil.
In Philippians 1:15–17, ambition is used in the context of proclaiming the gospel (Paul is saying that there are those who preach and proclaim Christ out of rivalry (same Greek word as ambition), which is not a sincere form of preaching Christ since the proper way to preach and proclaim Christ is out of love).

Another way ambition is used in the New Testament is with the Greek word orego.

In 1 Timothy 3:1, orego is translated as “aspire” and is positively used in conjunction with the noble desire to be a leader in the church: “This saying is trustworthy: ‘If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work.’”
In 1 Timothy 6:10, this word is translated as “craving” and is used in a negative light to crave after the love of money, which is the root of all kinds of evil.
In the New Testament chapter of faith, Hebrews 11, orego is translated as “desire.” “But they now desire a better place—a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16). In this verse ambition and faith get tied together, become two sides of the same coin, and the paradox gets solved.

Ambition and faith are really two sides of the same coin.
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Let’s now take a moment to define faith.

Faith (Greek = pistis) is a more commonly used word in the New Testament with more than 233 instances of it. There are even more if you look at the root word of faith.

It’s used to refer to the faith that is required for the forgiveness of sins (Matt 9:2).
For the sanctification of an individual (Acts 26:18).
As the individual’s faith that Jesus uses to heal (Mark 5:34).
As the faith that is required to move mountains (Luke 17:6).
A life of faith is also used as a prerequisite for church leadership (Acts 6:5).
And it is something that needs constant re-strengthening (Acts 14:22).

Ultimately, a life built on faith stands in contrast to a life built on the law, and this is demonstrated through the life of Abraham.

Abraham “did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform” (Rom 4:20–21).

As much as faith is defined as a “strong belief or trust in someone or something,” spiritual leaders define faith differently as “a strong belief and confidence in the God who can do something.” For spiritual leaders faith is less about the what, and it’s more about the who.

This is seen when you read through the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11.

For every one of those spiritual leaders in Hebrews 11, they had such a great and grand understanding of God that they did not have to see the future to believe in it: “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and went out to a place he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he was going” (Heb 11:8). They believed in the God who could bring those promises to pass, so they acted on that faith. That’s why you’ll see the phrase “by faith” repeated over and over again in Hebrews 11.

For spiritual leaders faith is less about the what, and it’s more about the who.
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Faith results in action.

On the one hand, spiritual leaders have figured out that faith is not genuine unless you act on it. On the other hand, for nonspiritual leaders, ambition drives them to achieve their own goal according to a strong belief, or faith, in themselves and their own ability to pull it off.

Essentially, strong spiritual leaders have figured out that holy ambition can actually drive them toward a God-honoring and God-glorifying goal.

As a result, for the businessman or woman who is a spiritual leader, ambition might be to run a successful company in order to fund new church plants. For the church planter who is a spiritual leader, ambition might be to reach the lost in their neighborhood.

In either case the only difference is that the spiritual leaders’ faith is not in their own ability to get it done, while they do exhibit confidence; their faith is in the God who can get it done according to His ability.

Spiritual leaders have faith in the God who can get it done.
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Join me next week as I add a third variable to this discussion: timing. What relationship does ambition and faith have with timing?

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

 

The End of the Sermon?

“Online news isn’t journalism; it’s copy-and-paste from the newspaper.”

Guess what year that was written? …in the year 2000…

Faith Like Broccoli

“What are we going to do? There’s not enough food to feed the children. How did we end up here? How are the children going to react?”

These were the questions the orphanage leaders were asking one another on a hot summer day in Chiang Rai, Thailand. When I was pastoring in South Korea, I had led a team to serve the orphans at this particular orphanage in Thailand. The orphanage had close to 100 children. Some came from poverty-stricken homes where their parents couldn’t afford to feed and house them, and others lost their parents due to one circumstance or another.

These were children who, in the world’s standards, didn’t have much, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Constant laughter, joy, and childish pranks filled this orphanage, whether the children were in school, eating a bowl of rice, or playing games with sticks and vegetables.

…that is, until they ran out of food…

When the orphanage leaders realized they had no way to feed the children, they decided to break the news to the children before they prayed over their last supper.

“Children, we need to pray,” said the orphanage director, “we’ve run out of food, money, and all means to go and buy groceries at the market.”

The childish atmosphere immediately turned into nervous silence.

The director continued, “There’s really only one thing we can do; it’s to pray that God provides, as he said he would, and enjoy this last meal.”

So that’s exactly what the children and leaders did—they prayed and ate.

The next morning the director woke up to the sound of the telephone. When she picked up the phone, it was a local farmer telling the director to bring her truck out to the dirt road to get this order of broccoli.

“Broccoli?” asked the surprised director.

“I don’t know what happened, but when I woke up this morning, I had this urgent sense to bring this broccoli to you guys,” said the farmer.

“Now you need to understand two things. I don’t believe in this Jesus that you say you believe in, but I do know you are doing important work with those orphans. Second, this isn’t just any broccoli; this is export-grade broccoli.”

When the director drove out to the dirt road, she was stunned. This wasn’t just one trip’s worth of broccoli; she had to drive her truck back and forth three times to gather it all.

Needless to say, the childish aroma filled the air of the orphanage once again, and for the first time in history, no one complained about eating broccoli.

Doesn’t this make you want to get down on your knees and pray?

To ask God to change hearts, your city, and this world? To ask Him to break through the silence, destroy the chains of bondage, and set the captives free? Both in your life and those around you?

It should! Because the God that provided these children with broccoli is the same God that created and is sustaining this world, you, and I. He’s the one that is actively giving breath to our lungs!

So yes, we do need to pray. We need to pray and have the same kind of faith that these children did! Not faith in our ability to pray, but faith in the One that we’re praying to. Faith that He knows the right way to respond to the prayers that are welling up out of our hearts. The kind of faith that trusts in His timing over ours because “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day” (2 Pet 3:8 CSB).

We need to have the kind of faith that has so much confidence in God that we can rest in Him and wait on His timing.

After all, what’s the use of praying if, while praying, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own answer to our prayer?

If you’re busy planning your own answer to prayer, why even pray?
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Why You Shouldn’t Be Worried About “Job Security”

“It’s all about job security, right?”

Over the course of my adult life, I’ve heard this phrase multiple times. And it’s always irked me the wrong way.

Now I understand where someone might be coming from—they want to be irreplaceable so that they’re never faced with a pink slip and are without a job. As a result, they never write down their process or train others to do what they can do. They hold onto “industry secrets” and proudly declare that they were certified or educated to do these certain tasks. If they get hit by a bus, then the organization will suffer, since no one else can do their job.

I guess that’s job security…but it sounds pretty selfish to me.

In today’s open-share economy, do “industry secrets” even exist anymore? Sure, education and certification are proof that you’ve gone through the steps, but they don’t prove whether or not you’re competent in an area. After all, there are plenty of courses that I’ve received an “A” in, but I’ll be the first one to tell you that I’m incompetent in Calculus and Organic Chemistry.

No one wants to lose their job. I get it. I’m in the same boat.

But what if I were to tell you that there was another way to guarantee your job security?

It’s about having a posture of generosity, rather than scarcity

Scarcity is a closed fist approach to work and life.
Generosity is an open palm approach to work and life.
Scarcity says, “Cutbacks are inevitable, so I need to make myself irreplaceable.”
Generosity says, “Those who develop others will never be without a job.”
Scarcity says, “I need to add more tasks onto my list of responsibilities so that I become more valuable to the organization.”
Generosity says, “When I develop others to do what I can do, I’ll be entrusted with greater responsibility.”

One of the most selfish things a leader can do is to refuse to reproduce themselves.

Gone are the days where job security was about making yourself indispensable by not sharing knowledge, skills, or expertise with others. In today’s day and age, things change so rapidly that learners and developers are the only ones who are truly indispensable.

Learners and developers are the only ones who are truly indispensable in today’s economy.
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So as long as you are constantly learning, developing, and reproducing yourself, you will never be without a job. Reproducers are always in high demand. But squatters aren’t. So don’t be a squatter. There should be a meme for that.

So start today.

One of the first steps to reproduce yourself is to write down how you do what you do.

Make it into a checklist.

Make it into a system so that you can get faster at it. This will not only benefit you in your work and in your productivity, but it will also help you train others to do what you do.

Reproducers are always in high demand. But squatters aren’t. Don’t be a squatter.
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For further reading on how to create an effective checklist, read Checklist Manifesto and Getting Things Done.

 

Unity vs Uniformity: A Key Issue for Urban Ministry

Is your mission to fulfill God’s purpose? Or is it your fame within God’s purposes?

This is a valid question for every Christian leader, but as Dhati Lewis states in his book, Among Wolves: Disciple-Making in the City, it’s especially important for leaders in the urban context. At the bottom of this post, be sure to enter the giveaway for a chance to win one of four copies of Dhati’s new book, Among Wolves.

What is Urban?

As sociologists Gottdiener and Hutchinson explain,

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, more than 3 billion persons—about half of the world’s population—lived in urban areas. By 2030, this number is expected to increase from 3 to more than 5 billion persons—some 60 percent of the total world population. This will be the first urban century in human history.

In the face of this emerging reality, Dhati and his team—through the church he’s planted, and the ministry he leads—have developed a strategy for indigenous disciple-making in the urban context. They’ve done this by embracing both density and diversity in the city context, and by creating a culture of effective disciple-making.

By 2030, 60 percent of the world is expected to live in urban areas.
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Urban ministry is not the same thing as inner city ministry to the homeless.

Ministry to the homeless that happens in the inner city is definitely urban, but there are other dimensions that must be taken into account. For example, when a neighborhood is undergoing gentrification, you’ll have a ton of socioeconomic diversity.

Extreme poverty can be right beside extreme wealth.

For example, a family who has owned their house for generations may be forced out of their gentrifying neighborhood because they can’t pay the rising property taxes. Sure they might make a lot on the sale of their home, but where will they move? Their life and community are right there…and it has been there for decades. Is that fair just because some developer wants to build condos and make a quick buck?

Complex issues like gentrification and the mixing of socioeconomic classes are one of the many reasons Dhati defines urban as a combination of two words: density and diversity.

His goal is simple—to be the last generation forced to leave the urban context in the search of solid discipleship—and this is the focus of Among Wolves: Disciple-Making in the City.

Unity versus Uniformity

One church cannot do it all. One ministry cannot either. In the dense and diverse urban context, many churches and ministries are required to accomplish the breadth of needs that exist in any particular neighborhood or city. But there’s a big difference between unity and uniformity.

I love the way Dhati distinguishes the two:

Uniformity is a group of people pursuing a common purpose with only one strategy. This is when a person thinks that unity is assimilation, where the goal is to make look-a-likes of whomever the strongest or most prominent person in the room is. Uniformity kills true diversity in the body because it reinforces parroting, inauthenticity, and outward conformity.

Uniformity kills diversity because it reinforces inauthenticity & outward conformity.
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Unity, on the other hand, is a group of people banding together for a common purpose, in their own unique strategies. Unity looks like a football team. You have a group of people with different positions and different responsibilities, but they are all trying to achieve the same goal. And that goal is what drives them. In unity, there is dignity, empowerment, and trust.

In unity, there is dignity, empowerment, and trust.
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The key difference between the two is that uniformity shrinks the beauty of our complexities, and shrinks it to simple outward conformity. Unity reinforces mutual solidarity—rallying us around a common vision and goal.

Let’s be co-laborers in Christ because Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Let’s band together and take up the charge to be the last generation forced to leave the urban context in the search of solid discipleship.

Enter to Win

Next Steps: 

Click the button above to enter the draw to win one of four copies of  Among Wolves: Disciple-Making in the City   by Dhati Lewis
Pick up a copy of Among Wolves
Watch or read the behind-the-scenes interview I had with Dhati on Urban ministry.
Learn about BLVD, the urban church planter training that Dhati leads.

 

Dealing with Conflict and Criticism

When collaborating with others, conflict is to be expected.

Conflict is inevitable when you’re actually doing the hard work of collaborating. After all, if there’s anything that’s a guarantee in leadership, it’s conflict and criticism. So how do you respond? Do you embrace it? Or avoid it?

If there’s anything that’s a guarantee in leadership, it’s conflict and criticism.
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Conflict is not the problem, avoiding conflict resolution is.

So have conflict, and then wrestle to resolution. But whatever you do, don’t avoid conflict; it’s necessary for a healthy team. If you never have conflict on your team, then this might be symptomatic of a deeper issue.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your team:

Do people feel the freedom to say what they really think?
Are you, as a leader or manager giving enough ownership to those that you lead that mistakes are inevitable?
Or is the rope so short because you have control issues and you want everything to be “just right”? And by “just right,” I mean it’s your way or the highway?

Whatever you do, don’t avoid conflict; it’s necessary for a healthy team.
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Allow people to disagree with you, but create environments for this.

In other words, when it’s planning and strategizing time, have a cone of safety where anyone can say anything. This is where differing points of view can come up and be wrestled with. But once you agree on a way forward, make sure everyone is on board. 

Now what if people on your team have conflict with one another?

Instead of diving right in, start by asking whether or not they approached the other team member about this issue. Seek to understand what’s going on, but encourage them to figure out a way to solve the conflict before you get involved. If they do this and can’t come to an agreement, then you can come in as the third person to help resolve what’s going on.

Look for ways that you can adjust the circumstances that led to the conflict, rather than siding one way or the other.

Criticism Isn’t Healthy

While it’s a healthy thing to have conflict, and while I would even go so far to encourage you to cultivate conflict if there’s an absence of it on your team, criticism is another animal. Criticism is not healthy at all.

While a good dose of conflict is healthy for a team, criticism isn’t. You need to root it out.
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So how do you deal with overt and subtle criticism when you notice it?

First of all, figure out who’s the one doing the criticism. If the individual loves playing the devil’s advocate, has a negative outlook on life, and has a critical nature, then my suggestion would be to let the specific criticism roll off your back, and instead address their critical nature instead.

But what if the criticism is coming from a few individuals?

Then my suggestion would be to take a good look in the mirror and take responsibility for anything that you’ve done to bring this about. After all, nothing is ever 100% someone’s fault, so own your part and apologize, if necessary. Then work towards a solution.

You’d be surprised at how the power of criticism is destroyed when it’s brought to the light—so have a frank, open, and honest conversation about it.

The power of criticism is destroyed when it’s brought to light.
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In summary, when it comes to collaboration (click here for an article that I wrote on this important leadership competency), a good does of conflict is healthy for a team, but not criticism. You need to root that out.

 

Collaboration is a Leadership Competency

There’s a children’s book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It starts off like this,

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Have you ever had one of those days? In 2004, the US Basketball team sure did.

1992 was the first year that professional basketball players were allowed to compete in the Summer Olympic games. This was the birth of the “Dream Team.” I remember watching Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Magic Johnson, and Charles Barkley dominate. I had their basketball cards. I played them in video games. Man, this was the year for basketball.

From that year on, just like Canadians were always expected to dominate hockey, the Americans were expected to do the same with Basketball. After all, who could ever challenge them? Who could beat them? The Americans had not only won gold every time since the Dream Team had competed, but they had also never lost a game—they were undefeated.

But in 2004 it happened in Athens, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics.

And although the US team had superstars like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwayne Wade, they lost their opening game in the tournament against Puerto Rico—a team that they should’ve crushed. Instead, they got crushed and were beat 92-73. This was the biggest loss in Olympic history for the US; in fact, it was their first loss ever. Their performance was a far cry from the original Dream Team who typically beat their opponents by 44 points.

Was this the end of the Dream Team?

Well, as much as they scrapped their way to the semifinals, they were eventually defeated by Argentina. Since NBA players were allowed to compete in the Olympics, 2004 was the only year that the USA men’s team did not win gold. In fact, 2004 was the only year they ever lost a game too. In 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, and 2016, not only did the US men’s basketball team win gold, but they went undefeated.

So what went wrong?

I only have one thing to say—just one thing. You know that phrase, “Teamwork makes the dream work?” Yeah…I know, pretty amazing, right? Well, apparently they didn’t know that…

Collaboration is the ability to work with others

In this previous article, I outlined the two-year process that I was a part of to identify the universal core competencies of church leaders. Collaboration was one of them. This was a competency that just kept on coming up.

In order to collaborate well, you need to start by working with others
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While collaboration is simply defined as the ability to work with others, it goes far beyond that. To collaborate well, yes, you do need to display proficiency in your ability to work with others.

But as you grow in this competency, as a leader, you need to learn how to:

Work through others
Work through leaders
Work through teams
And ultimately, work through team leaders

Collaboration is far from being a one-dimensional skill.

In our ever-connected, always accessible age, collaboration is not only being intentionally taught from childhood onwards—where children are now sitting in tables instead of rows—but success in ministry is becoming near impossible without it.

Success is near impossible unless you know how to collaborate.
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The 2004 men’s team did not lose for lack of talent. Nor did they lose for lack of effort, since it was their reputation on the line. They lost because they didn’t know how to work as a team. They were a team of superstars, not a superstar team. And the same is true for churches that are failing to collaborate.

This is the foundation to working with others: it’s being able to work effectively and get things done when no one else is looking and when you don’t have any deadlines.

Basically, it’s the ability to take responsibility for yourself. Collaboration is all about learning how to lead yourself. This is where it begins. It’s about being faithful in the little.

Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much (Luke 16:10, CSB)

Collaboration is all about learning how to lead yourself. This is where it begins.
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Before you can lead others, you need to know how to lead yourself.

I often return to what Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War wrote. Let me paraphrase him,

If you know your enemy, you’ll win half of the battles. But when you know yourself, you’ll win the other half.

So how are you doing at the task and responsibility of leading yourself?

Do you know your strengths?
Are you managing your weaknesses?

Join me next time as I outline how to deal with the absolute inevitable when collaborating with others: conflict and criticism.

 

Should You Love Those You Lead?

The only people who can hurt you deeply are the ones you allow to get deep inside your soul. This is what makes love so dangerous. – Erwin McManus

In order to be an effective leader, do you need to love those you’re leading? Is love a competency that a leader needs to display proficiency in?

When it comes to the task or the domain of your work, love will go a long way. After all, when you love what you’re doing, time flies. Can’t you remember doing something for hours upon end, only to realize that it’s past midnight? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this flow. This is what it means to work in your area of greatest talent or strength.

But what about the people you’re working with? Do you need to love them in order to be an effective leader?

The straightforward answer is no. There are a lot of people that I’ve worked with that I definitely did not love. Now obviously, I’m not talking about the romantic sense of love. I’m talking about the sort of brotherly love that causes you to care for, think about, and want to hang out with others outside of work hours.

For some, this sounds like crossing boundaries. “Shouldn’t work be work and personal life be personal life?” While there are many that still hold to this view, there are an increasing number of leaders–millennials especially–that want to see that line done away with.

Just think about it. If you had the choice, wouldn’t you want to love what you’re doing and love who you’re doing it with?

Expertise in skill and knowledge are important to do your work well, but passion just brings it to another level. When this happens, time flies and your team produces its best work. This is because everyone’s heart is in it. It’s not just a job to get a paycheck, or a task to be checked off.

Skill and knowledge are important, but passion brings your work to another level
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Here’s the catch though, and Erwin McManus puts it well, “The only people who can hurt you deeply are the ones you allow to get deep inside your soul. This is what makes love so dangerous.”

When you love those you work with, get ready to be hurt.

This is because the people closest to you have the greatest power to hurt you. So when you allow your heart to get into your work, and you allow yourself to start caring for and loving those you’re leading and working with, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of hurt.

The people closest to you have the greatest power to hurt you
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It’s worth it though. The risk is worth it.

I’ve come out on both sides and survived to tell the tale. On the one hand, I’ve been a part of a team who genuinely loved each other and wanted to live life and do work together. We were always together. Even when we weren’t working, we’d want to hang out with one another. On the other hand, I’ve been a part of a team that clocked in and clocked out–that was it. We didn’t talk outside of work hours. Work and personal life were completely separate.

And although the years I spent with that one team–who I loved and allowed to get into “my soul”–ended in heartbreak, I’d do it again. I’d do it again because the flip side is far too redundant and “professional.”

So back to our original question, in order to be an effective leader, do you need to love those you’re leading? Is love a competency that a leader needs to display proficiency in?

To make a lasting impact, and one that you’re proud to say that you were a part of, the answer is a resounding yes.