Tag: pastoral leadership

2_03: Daniel Im – Should You Stay or Should You Go?

2_03: Daniel Im – Should You Stay or Should You Go?

Breakthrough ideas with Daniel: 

  • What does it look like to live your life with our hands wide open saying, “Lord, here we are?”
  • Every leader, every pastor, goes through those seasons where restlessness clouds every conversation. What do you do?
  • A lot of leaders that come to those seasons of the restlessness, but how do we know if it’s really time to take the next step?
  • Does unsettledness come as a result of prayer and scripture? Or should unsettledness drive you to deeper times of prayer and time in the Word?
  • It is less critical where your feet are and more important as to where your heart is.
  • It doesn’t matter if we stay, and it doesn’t matter if we go, because we know that we are in God’s hands and that He is a good Father.
  • What would it look like to submit to the Lord rather than trying to lead our lives on our own?
  • Bigger and better opportunities aren’t necessarily always from God.
  • Sometimes God calls us to minister in obscurity for however long He wants, and sometimes He brings us out of that obscurity
  • Regardless of the attendance barrier that you want to grow or breakthrough, you need to move from doing to equipping.
  • You need to move from being a learner to a leader to a multiplier regardless of what barrier you want to breakthrough
  • The tendency that we have in the West is to copy and to model our ministries off of others rather than looking in the mirror and saying, “Okay. Who do we have here?”
  • Every church is unique. So what does it look like to look at yourself in the mirror, to look at your church in the mirror?
  • Church culture is simply the result of consistent decision-making around shared convictions.
  • It’s one thing for the pastor to have values. It’s another thing for those values to be shared within the organization and for us to make consistent decisions around them.
  • Discipleship is not “Here’s another program,” or, “Here is another study.”
  • How are you moving your entire church toward making disciples that make disciples that make disciples?
  • There are a lot of books written that call churches to mimic “Here’s what we do at our church. Just do this.”
  • What are the micro-shifts that will lead to a macro-change?
  • Close to 40% of America is a part of the gig economy, changing the way that we look at work, life, and love.
  • “You are what you experience” is a lie that’s risen to the surface because of Instagram and because of our culture.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman

The Pastor by Eugene Peterson

No Silver Bullets by Daniel Im  

You Are What You Do by Daniel Im  

Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton

Daniel Im is the Senior Associate Pastor of Beulah Alliance Church. His latest book is You Are What You Do: And Six Other Lies about Work, Life, and Love. He is also the author of No Silver Bullets and co-author of Planting Missional Churches. He co-hosts the New Churches Q&A Podcast, as well as the IMbetween Podcast. Daniel and his wife, Christina, live in Edmonton, Alberta with their three children. For more information, visit danielim.com and follow him on social media @danielsangi.

Episode #8: Phil EuBank

Episode #8: Phil EuBank

Breakthrough ideas with Phil: 

  • Reaching the lost requires removing every possible barrier of understanding – even some things you love.
  • It’s time to let go of some of these weird practices of the church that have nothing to do with Jesus.
  • Are your worship services evangelistically understandable? If you are not sure, they probably are not.
  • “Thank you for making me not feel stupid.” How to be a church where people can seek God and walk back to him.
  • Inspiring people to trade church the way we want it to become a place where God is moving is a critical job of pastoral leadership.
  • Making it possible to follow Jesus with a few non-essential *(stylistic, personal preference-driven) barriers as possible.
  • Talk about where God is calling you to go and don’t get tired of talking about it. Don’t get bored or give up… persistence toward God’s better future is critical.
  • Find the common ground of a church on mission and filter needed changes through a better future that God has ahead.
  • A unifying direction must be more than a catchphrase or neat sentence but brings a thread of accountability and direction to every part of the organization.
  • Everybody says they want vision but what they don’t realize they mean is that they want their own vision. There is no way to satisfy every expectation only to go where God wants us to go.
  • It’s easy in ministry to get consumed by the activity and lose track of Gods productivity in the lives of people.
  • When there are no stories, either we are not paying attention or what we are doing is not actually working.
  • Without purpose and meaning toward life change – church becomes a hobby and a terrible one at that.
  • When team members are free to share good ideas and share new approaches, they are able to take greater and greater ownership.
  • Time rarely solves the problems on their own… next steps matter more than a statement.
  • Separate the urgent from the important. Not everything that is happing now is important and not everything that is important is happening now.
  • When everything seems urgent, your team cannot easily discern what is actually important.
  • Deciding when you use these essential communication tools can define a clear line between the urgent and the important.

Breakthrough resources from this episode:

God Dreams – Will Mancini

Deep & Wide – Andy Stanley

VOXER – staff communication tool

H3 Leadership – Brad Lomenick

The Problem of God – Mark Clark 

The Reason for God – Tim Keller

Phil EuBank moved to Colorado two and half years ago where he serves as the Lead Pastor of Eastern Hills Community Church. Phil makes sure everyone knows that He has a gorgeous and brilliant wife and 3 really cute kids. He loves seeing people who have given up on God or church unnecessarily coming to a life-changing relationship with Jesus.