Video Transcript: Team

all right. Task four of being an effective manager team building, Paul wrote a  letter to the Christians at Ephesus, and in chapter four, it's one of my favorite he  says So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the  pastors and teachers, for what purpose to equip his people for works of service.  I want you to notice that Paul says that leaders, like apostles, prophets,  evangelists, pastors, teachers, these are the leaders. These are the people that  are doing the teaching. These are the people that are leading in some way.  Their purpose is not to do the works of service, but to equip the people for works of service. That is a perfect definition of what a manager is supposed to do. As a manager, you're not to do all the work. You're to equip people to do the work  again. Just to reiterate, you're just one person. If you put in 40 hours, all it is is  40 hours. And it may be 40 hours of really great things, but usually our  organization needs 100 hours, and so somehow you need to multiply your  hours. So instead of doing stuff, if you could equip 10 people, they could do  twice, or maybe three times what you could do. So Paul says, equip people for  works of service. Why? So that the body of Christ may be built up so the  organization is going to be built up if you spend your time building other people  and getting them to do the work. I remember when I was hired as a pastor, I  thought that the church hired me to do work. They hired me to do all the things  that they didn't want to do. People didn't want to preach, so they hired me to do  the preaching they want. Didn't want to do the pastoral care, so they hired me to do the pastoral care. They didn't want to lead the meetings, so they hired me to  lead the meetings. And so my first four years in ministry, I was running around,  doing stuff. It wasn't until I planted a church that I realized that that my time  could be multiplied if I would simply equip others. And I discovered, for example, this verse, I realized that it's the biblical thing to do is to not to do all the work,  but to equip others to do it. And in the process, the body of Christ gets built up,  and until we all reach unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, just as a parent, if you as a parent, do all the work, take care of your kids, do everything that's necessary, and you never pass on the work to  them. They stay like children. They never grow up. They don't become mature.  So until we reach the unity and the faith and knowledge of the Son of God and  become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, then  we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here  and there by every wind of teaching, by the cunning and craftiness of men in  their deceitful scheming. So instead of being pulled in every direction by, you  know, people coming and saying, let's do this, or let's do that. If you teach your  people, if you equip them, if they end up doing the work, then, then they will own it, and they won't be swayed to other people's way of thinking. Verse 15, instead speaking the truth in love. By the way, that doesn't mean lot of Christians  misinterpret this. It doesn't mean that you can say whatever you want to  someone as long as you love them. It's actually talking about how you say it, 

that that when you speak something, when you speak the truth, it has to be in a  loving manner, and a loving manner is I am going to speak to you the truth if  you're able to hear it. In other words, I have spent time building our relationship,  and now I can tell you the truth because you know that I love you. It doesn't  mean you can just say whatever you want, as long as you love them instead  speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect, the mature  body of Him who is the head that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as  each part does its work. That's what a team is. A team is not individual effort. A  team is the effort of every single part. You can't be a baseball team all on your  own. You can't be a soccer team all on your own. You can't win the World Cup  all on your own. You need your teammates. And whenever you see a team win  the National Championship or the world title, no matter what it is, when they get  interviewed, they always talk about the team, because they know that there's no  way in the world they would have ever gotten to this final match, let alone win it  without the team. It's teamwork, not the individual talent. Keys to team building,  number one, you need to equip the team players. So if you're leading a church,  it's not just about getting your work done, making sure your sermon is good,  making sure you're prepared for the next meeting, making sure you do what  pastoral care you need to do, whatever counseling you know comes your way,  and you're doing all these things. It's equipping the team, instead of you doing  all the pastoral care. Form a pastoral care team instead of you leading the  meeting. Elect some other people to lead the meetings and put the agendas  together. Instead of you planning the service, get a committee, get a group of  people to lead that instead of you leading the music, get someone that's into  music, let them music. In fact, if you can give it away, if you can form a team to  do something, do it. And if the only thing you do is manage the teams and you  don't do anything else you will, you will become a successful leader. Create  unity. I mentioned before in another talk, when I came to my present church. The church had grown, but had it had grown in in separate, separate committees, or  separate silos. I like to say a silo just goes straight up in the air, and it doesn't  have anything to do with its surroundings. And that's what happened. In fact, I  took out the old minutes of this church. I took over to find out what happened,  you know, in its early days. And I found some of the minutes from the earliest  meetings when the group was just meeting. And I discovered that they had  seven families that wanted to plant a new church, and that in the first meeting,  these seven families, this this leadership team got together and they formed  eight committees. So they had seven families, and they already had eight  different committees, and each committee was ruled by somebody, and they just did their own thing. There was no overall unity. And so the first thing that I did is I came in and I said, we need to get unified around something. And so I  suggested that we memorize Scripture together and that we get on the same 

reading track. I said, if you all agree to read, you know, a chapter every single  day, Monday through Sunday, I will preach out of what you read. So that's how  we got literally on the same page. We're reading the same Bible scripture every  day, and then on Sunday, I'm preaching out of it. And in over the next couple of  years, instead of all these separate groups in each one doing their own thing  and then resenting one another, we got together on one page. It's the most  critical, absolute, most critical thing, if you're forming an organization, if you're  trying to lead a church, if you're trying to plant a church, if you're trying to start a  business, business, I don't care what it is. The absolute number one thing that  you have to have in order to grow is unity, where people are agreed. If you have  eight people and they're all in a boat and they're trying to row somewhere, and  you have seven rowing one way, and you just have one going the opposite  direction. The boat doesn't go anywhere. So you really have to create unity  number three, do not treat team players like children. What do I mean by that?  You know, sometimes it's not good to treat children like children. We as parents,  sometimes our kids, you know, when they're little, you know, and they're going  to take a bath, we have to tell them, Look, we're going to take a bath. And once  you get in the bathtub, and you got to take your shoes off, your socks, your shirt, your pants, you know, you got to mention all those things, because if you don't  mention one, they're going to jump in with. That on. But when a kid's 10 years  old and you say, hey, it's time to take a bath, don't forget to take off your shoes,  your socks, your shirt, if you go through that whole list now you're treating a 10  year old like a two year old. And guess what? A 10 year old resents being  treated that way. And adults do too. If you if you only farm out jobs that anyone  can do, and you never challenge someone, you're treating them like children. I  know you won't do this. I know you can't do this, so I'm going to give you the  easiest thing that you could possibly want. Treat team players not like children,  but treat them like you want them to be. If you want them to become mature,  then treat them like they're mature. Give them responsibility. Give them tasks  that that they may or may not be able to do, because it's such a challenge. Be  the keel of the ship, you know, a ship, especially a sail ship, a sailboat, a  sailboat can actually sail against the wind. And the only reason it can do that is  because underneath the sailboat is a keel. It's a real heavy little fin that's under  the water, and it holds the ship in the direction that you want to go. So if you  want to go this way, you can hold the ship the wind wants to blow it that way, but the keel will hold it in the direction you want to go. And you need to be a keel as  the team. You know, teams come together. A lot of people have a different, lot of  different ideas. One wants to do this. One wants to do that in our building  renovation, somebody wants to paint the walls one color, someone who wants to paint the other, the colors the other way. And you end up all these differences.  And you could go in all these different directions. Somebody wants to spend a  lot of money, and you don't have the money, so then you know, you need to be 

the keel that says, We can't do this. This is our budget. We need to stick with our plan. We can't venture into all these different possibilities. Number five, create a  sense of team identity. I loved what David called his men King David in the  Bible, called the men that he had around him his mighty men. They were known  as David's mighty men. And I used that in my church. In my church that I planted in Vancouver, I started calling the men that were leaders mighty men, that you  are the Lord's mighty men. And they all laughed and they joked around, but I  could tell that they felt good about who they were. So try to create some kind of  identity. Maybe you saw the documentary, or I think it's kind of a movie  documentary, The Band of Brothers. It's this group of guys that that that formed  a bond in World War II, and they had that sense that they were brothers. They  had this identity. I care about you. You care about me, if you can give a label. I  remember one of my churches, we had a bunch of men that that volunteered to  do the coffee after church, not usually the man's thing, but this group of men  decided they were going going to be the coffee crew, and they made T shirts for  themselves, and they had all kinds of different kinds of coffee. And they they  made it a whole masculine thing. They had signs, and they really took ownership of it, not because of coffee, not because of serving coffee, but because it was a  bunch of guys who sort of banded together and they and they felt that sense of  being on a team. That's why a lot of guys are into sports. They love that sense  of being on on a team. Keys to team building number six foster a love for and  between each member of the team. Teammates need to look out for one  another. It's not so much about winning so much as the team. When I was 15  years old. I was at a small school. I had only 20 kids in my class, and we had a  softball team. It's like a little baseball team, and it was a ragtag group. It's a  small school. We only had 10 boys in my class, and so we formed this little  softball team that has nine people. So we had, you know, some good players,  but we had some players that weren't that good. We didn't have much choice,  but that was our team, and we stuck together for the next five years, and we had a really good coach, and we joined a summer league, and at first we were  getting killed by other teams and blown away, but we stuck together, and even  our players that weren't that good were developing. Some of them never  became really great players, but we compensated for it, and this was our team.  And you know, our second baseman wasn't that good, but that was our second  baseman, and we lived with it, and we worked with it, and four years later, we  won the championship with our little team from our little school, because we  didn't make winning the number one thing, but we made being on the team the  number one thing that the relationship is about the team, and as I reflect back  on it now, you know things like baseball or soccer, it's the point of those things.  Is not the game. It the point of playing soccer. When you're, you know, in high  school or in a community league or something, the point is not soccer or  baseball. You think it when you're a kid. You think the purpose here is to play 

this game and to be as good as we can be, and to win, maybe we'll get a trophy. You think at the time that the purpose of the game is the game, but many years  later, looking back, the purpose of the game was not the game. The purpose of  

the game was to connect people. What lasts is the relationships. I don't know  what happened to the trophies and a game I thought was so important that, you  know, the whole world depends on this game. I don't even remember what game that was. I don't remember the circumstances that's all long gone, but the  teammates that I made while we're trying to accomplish something together that  remains, these games that we play and the work that we do, often, it's not about  what we're accomplishing. It's not about the work. It's not about making this or  that happen. It's about the relationships that are formed along the way. Those  are the things that last. Really, there's only two things that are going to last in  this world, God and people, and so it's our relationship to God and it's our  relationship to the people around us. That's what it's really all about. Number  seven, use each of the team members, use each of the team members so that  each uses his or her gifts. Not everyone has the same gift, but trying to find a  place for everyone on the team. Again, it's not so much about winning, it's not so much about being the best church you can be in the world. It's about using the  people that God has given you. There's a reason why God has given you the  team that he's given. And so to find the scripture says in I Corinthians 12 and  Romans 12, that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to every single person. So the Holy  Spirit has specifically chosen to give a certain gift to every single member of  your church, every single member on your team. And there's a reason why he  gives whatever gifts he gives. So to spend time and try to figure out, well, what  is it? You know, instead of concentrating on just getting the job done, and the  best way to do that, it's like, okay, maybe the bigger job is, how do we use each  gift of each member. Make clear the need for the team. Okay, what game are we playing here, the church game. What is it? Is it membership? Is it how many  people we have coming every Sunday morning? Is it how many people are  reading their Bibles every day in their homes? Is it how many guitar players that  we taught this year? Or is it how good our music is on Sunday morning? What's  the game that we're playing if you're in a non profit organization, is it the number of people you feed or the number of people's lives that you equip so that they  can feed themselves? What's the game? What's the end product, what's the  goal of what our team is all about? Who are we competing against? Are we? Are we, you know, in the church, are we competing against the devil? The devil's  trying to gain people to his side so that ultimately they go to hell forever. Or, you  know, if that's true, then, then what are we trying to do? We're trying to get them  on God's team. So who are we competing against? Are we competing against  other churches. So we got all these people that want to go to church, and our  church, well, their church has a gym, and they're getting all these people coming to their church because they want a gym. So we have to build a gym to compete

with other churches. Is that why we exist to compete with other churches? Or  are we trying to reach people that don't go to church at all, and how are we  going to do that? So, you know, what game are we playing? Who are we  competing against? What is practice and what is the game? What am I getting  at teams? It's very interesting. You know, if you went out for a sport team, and  you make the team. Most of the competition is not another team. Most of the  competition that you experience on a day to day basis is on your own team.  Maybe you're competing for a starting position, so you're you're practicing  against one another, and you're trying to win a spot, and you're trying to beat  someone else on your own team, and then ultimately, you have a good team,  and then your team goes and plays, you know, on Friday, you play against some other team. So in a church, sometimes we forget, okay, what is practice where  we kind of compete with one another. So let's say we have a new program that  we're starting, and we're trying to find a leader for that program. Maybe it's a  women's Bible study program or a men's Bible Study Program, and you're trying to find a leader, and then you have all these people that want to maybe take that spot, and they're competing with one another, and then you finally choose  somebody, and then everyone gets angry at you because you chose them, and  not, you know, not this other person. And sometimes the fighting within an  organization or the fighting inside of a church is more fierce, and we forget about why we're a team in the first place. We need to be able to compete with one  another, because that, you know, that makes us better. We end up doing better  because, you know, iron sharpens iron. And if you're trying hard and I'm trying  hard and we're competing for the same position, we both improve. But we have  to remember, ultimately, that isn't the game we're practicing. We're competing  with one another, but ultimately we're trying to become a better organization so  that we can reach people that don't have what we have. Number four, make  clear the need for the team and how we keep score. What does it mean? You  know, in a sporting thing, you have to make clear look, when you kick the ball  into the net, you get a point. If you throw the ball down the aisle and it hits these  pins and you knock them down, you get as many points as the pins go down. In  football, you throw the ball, if you catch it, you get six points. I mean, we have all these elaborate schemes to keep score. If we took away the net, if we took  away in basketball, we just got rid of the hoop, people would just be bouncing  balls and throwing balls around, and soon everyone would leave lose interest.  So there has to be some kind of keeping score. So now in your organization,  well, what is it? What is it if you're a for profit organization, and you make a  product, is it sales? So many sales? Is that? Is that the score? Or if you're a  church, is it how many new members you get in a year? Or is it how many  people read through their Bible this year? Or how many people dedicated their  life to Christ, or how many people went on a mission trip? Or what is it, what is it that you're trying to keep score on? Or is it, is it how well the team gets a 

learner? How many teams you start? So you have to figure out what is scoring.  A lot of times in nonprofits and especially in churches, people don't know what  winning is. They don't know what it means to score. So young people growing  up in the church, they don't know when they put the ball into the net and when  they haven't it's unclear. It's just attendance, if I just come to church, is that  scoring? Is it? Is it giving money to church? How do we keep score? Keep  teammates sharp, new, challenging projects. I mentioned this before, people get bored. On the one hand, people like things the same. They like routine, which is  nice. It's very comforting, but it's also boring, and people lose interest. So in an  organization, you always have to challenge, and people don't necessarily want  to be challenged, or they won't tell you they want to be challenged, but they do.  And so as a leader, you have to challenge with new projects, new things that are coming. Play team building games, just our church, getting together, playing a  little kickball game, you know, as a camp out thing, and everyone had to figure it out. It was something new. It was some made up game, and everyone had a  great time, and and people were encouraging one another and people were  challenging one another. We had old and young playing, and so the young ones  want to be like the older ones, and and that whole exercise, we spent an hour  playing together. And my guess is it probably did more to build our sense of hey,  we're a body. We're together. We're a team, than the sermon that Sunday,  managing multiple teams within an organization, Joshua 4. When the whole  nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, choose 12  men from among the people, one from each tribe. So remember there were 12  tribes, and tell them to take up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan. So the  people are about to go into the Promised Land, and a representative from each  tribe goes into the middle of the river and picks up 12 stones from the middle of  the Jordan from right where the priests were standing, and carry them over with  you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight. So on the other  side, so Joshua called together 12 men he had appointed from the Israelites,  one from each tribe, and said to them, go over before the ark of the Lord, your  God, into the middle of the Jordan each of you is to take up a stone on his  shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a  sign among you in the future, when your children ask, ask you, what did these  stones mean? So there's a pile of stones, 12 stones. Tell them that the flow of  the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord when it  crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to  be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. So Joshua had to organize not just one team, but the whole nation of Israel was divided into 12 teams. There were  12 tribes, and God just didn't have them all mixed together. He left them as  separate tribes. But it's interesting that he now recognizes each one. So  managing multiple teams within an organization, there's some healthy  competition. And certainly, if you read the history of the Israelites, there was a 

little bit of competition between the different tribes. Different tribes had different  roles and different lands they were they inherited. And there was some, you  know, sometimes there was jealousy and hard feelings. And certainly within an  organization, you have a lot of different teams, and it's good to have a little  healthy competition. In our church, we have multiple small groups. In fact, we  call any group that meets together a small group. And so some of them are  growing and some of them are growing stagnant. And so sometimes we  recognize the growing ones and we lift them up, and then, you know, the ones  that are not growing, sometimes they feel bad about that, or they don't like it,  because, you know, it's competition. Sometimes we I know when we had Bible  reading, we had a Bible reading plan, and people are supposed to read, you  know, a chapter of the Bible every day. And we had with stickers that we would  that when you completed a Bible, a whole book of the Bible, then your family  would put a sticker over that, you know, that square of that book of the Bible,  and we put it publicly on the back of church, and some people didn't like that,  because then, you know, people that are doing it look good, and the people that  are not doing it don't look good. So there's this competition thing. And you know, for the most part, we learn most everything by competition. I mean we,  competition is really just comparing a person learns how to walk by competition.  I see what you're doing and I'm trying to do the same thing. I want to be like you. We learn how to talk by comparing our speech with others. You say it a little  differently than I. Keep working at it, and all of a sudden I can speak like you.  Can speak sports. We follow other people to figure out and learn anything. So  there is competition. Now it gets unhealthy when I want to beat you and all I  care about is winning, and I don't care what happens to you, then competition  goes awry, but we need a little competition among the different teams in church.  But number two, we need unity in a common cause. Ultimately, the whatever  competition we have within our teams is just for our own betterment, so that we  can we can say no to the. Level, so that we can reach people with the love of  Christ. If you're if you're in a secular for profit organization, you have competition within the organization. But the ultimate goal is so that we can serve our  customers better, so multiple teams little competition. But ultimately, it comes  back to that same thing that we've been saying over and over again, Unity  without unity, teams don't accomplish anything.