ARE WE A PEOPLE AT HALF TIME? - Leadership Network

members of church ministry teams to work
together. I have heard some argue that
covenants, whether verbal or in writing, are
not needed. In my experience, however, and
that of many others, healthy, team-like conduct
is not readily practiced on church staffs
and other ministry groups. The intent to live
the Gospel in relationships can be present, but
the actual doing of it falters. In most cases,
teams have relational problems not because
of a single culprit acting intentionally but
because of the dysfunctional behavior that
goes unrecognized and unaddressed.
Covenants help solve this problem by giving
team members standards of good group
behavior and relationships.
THE VISIONARY TEAM
Scripture reveals the activity of God as Father,
Son and Holy Spirit moving and acting in our
midst with a clear purpose. Effective ministry
teams are those that cast a vision that unites
people around a God-given cause. Visionary
teams are motivated by a strong sense of mission
and purpose. They know where they are
going and work to align their energy and
effort toward fulfilling their divinely inspired
purpose. They sense that their work has ultimate
meaning. They sense that they are proceeding
to do something highly significant,
and they are clear about what each team
member’s role is in accomplishing the objective.
The vision is like a drawstring that pulls
the organization together and focuses it on its
particular mission. The energy, spiritual gifts,
resources and organizational structure of the
church are aligned with the vision.
www.leadnet.org
THE CULTURE-CREATING
TEAM
The community of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit is a culture of love. God calls the
Church of Jesus Christ to exhibit the Kingdom
of God to the world. We are to be culture creators.
It might even be more accurate to say
we are enabled by God to be counterculture
creators.
The postmodern world is full of culture creators.
Ministry teams endeavor to create the
culture of the perichoretic fellowship of God.
In doing so they, and thus their churches,
offer an alternative to the destructive and dysfunctional
cultures around us. The team-created
culture that is specific to the vision for
the church’s ministry becomes the basis for
the congregation’s culture as well. The leadership
team immerses itself in a culture it then
cultivates within the congregation. When we
build a strong team and church culture, we
will attract those who resonate with the mission
supported by that culture. Creating
Christian culture means developing the symbols,
themes, activities, values and structures
that reinforce the faith and purpose of a given
congregation. Ministry teams that make a difference
are inspired and equipped by God to
shape this culture.
THE COLLABORATIVE TEAM
There is no competition among the persons of
God. The idea that the Son would work
against the ministry of the Spirit is entirely
incongruous with the nature of God. That the
Father would be jealous of the Son is absurd.
There is, in the nature of God, what we might
call perfect collaboration.
Team ministry has a solid biblical and theological
foundation that, in most cases, sets it
above Lone Ranger heroics as the most meaningful
way to serve in the church. A team that
learns how to discern
the spiritual gifts of the
individual team members
and have members
work together,
pray hard, share information
and energy in
order to move toward a sharply defined mission,
vision, or cause is an extremely powerful
unit of ministry.
Collaboration is not uniformity. Collaboration
is coming to the table with spiritual gifts to be
used in ministry. When the gifts are freely
offered for ministry, God blesses and creates
the spiritual synergy resulting from the team
members’ collaboration. Collaboration works
against competition. Collaboration is the art
and skill of negotiating community, networking
gifts, and focusing individual contributions
to fit into the larger movement of the faithful
fellowship.
THE TRUSTING TEAM
God exudes trust. The perfect community of
the Trinity implies perfect trust. There is no
sense that the Son betrays the Father or the
Spirit lies and is deceitful. Scripture instead
reveals that God keeps His promises, creates
and holds to covenants, and establishes trust.
Church leadership teams must model trust.
They must work to keep it. When it is lost,
they must work to regain it. Churches, like
people, thrive and blossom in environments of
trust and become ugly and schismatic when
overwhelmed by distrust. The ways a church
leadership team builds and retains trust
among its members and exhibits trust to the
church at large will determine, in a large part,
how well trust becomes a part of the total
0
6
fabric of the congregation. When we discuss
trust, we deal with the greatest possibilities —
and the greatest threats—for leadership
teams and congregations.
THE EMPOWERING TEAM
Perichoretic leadership lifts up the responsibilities
of others rather than taking responsibility
away. Ministry team members take
appropriate risks to innovate and surrender
their responsibility in order to empower others.
Their task is to empower others so that
they may learn and grow and be all that God
calls them to be.
Effective ministry teams in the postmodern era
are empowering teams. They have put aside
the older, hierarchical models and spread out
the authority and responsibility of doing ministry.
Leadership no longer means taking control,
dictating or giving orders. Gone also are
the more subtle
forms of controlling,
such as using
theological degrees
to lift oneself above
others with the
implication that
“clergy know best.” Because of the strong
biblical support for the ministry of the people,
those theologically trained find it their responsibility
to emphasize the growth and development
of the people of the church into
ministers of the Gospel.
One of the marks of highly innovative and lifefilled
churches today is the giving away of
ministry to the people in ways that resemble
the ministry of the early church. Clerics in
these churches function as coaches, giving
advice to, equipping, training and encouraging
those in the front lines of ministry: the
people. These teams reinforce the concept
that there is no such thing as a passive
Christian; all of us are called to mission and
ministry. Empowering teams build strong,
enduring churches because the responsibility
for the mission of the church is widely shared.
Make team building more
than a technique—
make it a lifestyle.
THE LEARNING TEAM
Effective ministry teams are ever-growing and
open to new discoveries. They have an insatiable
appetite to learn. The learning team is
not satisfied with its present state but seeks to
grow spiritually and to know more about
doing ministry in more effective and meaningful
ways. From trial and error, learning teams
build a depository of learnings that help them
be more effective in ministry. They take risks
in innovation. They allow for failure because
they know that failure is a form of learning
and growing. ■