Team Building

Some thoughts on building teams...

Let’s face it. Some people are naturally gifted at building teams. They make it look so easy. It’s evident they have the gifts and skills to effectively develop and train others. They are incredible coaches and can motivate others to accomplish amazing things. People enjoy being around them and consistently leave encouraged. The teams they coach usually go on to achieve great things. It’s obvious they are natural team builders.

Then there’s me, perhaps you too. Team building doesn’t come as easy to me. While I may have some skills to develop others, it doesn’t appear to be my natural leadership “skin”. I have to put it on like I do clothing. My team building is forced, and doesn’t automatically flow out of who I am. I try real hard to build others and am usually left exhausted. While I’d like to think people enjoy being around me, they probably don’t leave incredibly encouraged. The teams I lead could assuredly plan a great picnic, but achieve long lasting organizational change? I doubt it.

You might have asked the same question I ask myself all the time, “So what? What does it matter that I’m not the ‘Pat Summit’ (Head Coach of the Lady Volunteers of University of Tennessee) of team building?” I should live into my strengths and emphasize what I do best, right? Right, emphasizing your strengths is always the best way to lead. However, being a Christian leader requires that we not just do what’s right, but we do God’s will. When it all comes down to it, God has called you and me to develop people and lead teams.

In his book, Leading the Team-Based Church, George Cladis writes, “The most effective churches today are the ones that are developing team-based leadership. This pattern will likely continue into the twenty-first century, both because Scripture emphasizes Spirit-led, Spirit-gifted, collaborative team fellowship and because today’s culture is receptive to such leadership.”

You probably already feel the tension I do. I’m not a naturally gifted team builder, but my spiritual call is to develop and lead teams. Let me illustrate: Imagine you’ve got a rubber band and you’re pulling it apart. You pull each side of the rubber band exactly three inches in the opposite direction. What happens? You create tension in the band. Now suppose one end of the band represents the leadership imperative to develop teams, and the opposite end represents your team building skills. There’s tension between the two. You and I have a choice to make. We can either live with the tension or do something about it.

Listen up! I’ve tried living with the tension and it only frustrates me and the people I lead. When there’s a behavior gap between what we’ve been called to do and the reality of what we can do, there’s a big hole. It’s tense, difficult and very frustrating. Tension causes pressure, pressure causes stress, and stress does more harm than good. That’s no fun. Therefore, what would it look like to do something about the tension?

One option would be to lower our standards by not developing people. However, as a result we would experience exactly what we see now in most churches. There are overworked clergy and under-utilized people. The body of Christ doesn’t function effectively because people aren’t free to use the gifts God’s given them. Many of us are caught in the web of committee and task groups. We’re stuck in “analysis paralysis,” too busy to develop people and teams. Many are also bogged down in systems that are inefficient and unproductive, not to mention disempowering to our gifted servants. As the old saying goes, “if we keep on doing what we’re doing, we’ll keep getting the same results we’re getting!”

The excuses that we’ve all used won’t hold up anymore:
- “It’s easier just to do it myself.”
- “It takes more time than I have to build teams.”
- “People can’t be held accountable.”
- “People won’t do it the way I want it done.”
As leaders, developing people isn’t something we can choose to do or not. It’s our responsibility and not up for our approval. We have been called to “equip God’s people for the work of the ministry.” Therefore, forsaking a team-building approach can’t be one of our options.

The only other option we have in dealing with this tension is to increase our knowledge and skill levels in developing teams. This is something that’s under our control and within our grasp. Each of us can learn how to more effectively build and develop teams of people. While it may never become a natural flow of our leadership, it can become an automatic response as we lead others.

Having just read this, you may be thinking to yourself right now, “I’m not convinced. Has God really called me to develop teams?” I’m sure I could write convincing arguments all day long about…
- God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit as the first team in Genesis 1:1.
- Israel ordained as a nation of priest and prophets in Exodus 19
- How Jethro, Moses father-in-law, helped him create one of the first systemic team-based structures in Numbers 18.
- The call of Ephesians 4:11-16 to equip and develop God’s people.
- The model of body life in 1 Corinthians 12:18-21.
- The model of Jesus with His disciples in the Gospels.
- The life of believers in Acts 2:42-47.

However, after I’ve said all I had to say, and you’re utterly exhausted in reading my words, it all comes down to this question: “Do I believe him or not?” Therefore, I’m not going to try to convince you. Instead I’ll allow the natural rhythm of how God designed everything, us included, to speak for me. What I would encourage you to do is to look inwardly and discover for yourself the foundations of your biblical and spiritual call. We have to find out for ourselves what God has told and is telling us to do. If we don’t have an answer to this fundamental question, then when the going gets tough we’ll fall back on our old patterns of behavior. If we’ve answered honestly and are confident in our call, then we’ll be able to stand firmly on this knowledge, not wavering and knowing we can’t go back to our old ways.

I would encourage you to reflect on these questions:
- What has God called me to do?
- What has God called the body of Christ to do?
- What is my biblical philosophy of ministry?
- How does this knowledge impact the way I do ministry?
- How do I lead the body of Christ as a direct result of this knowledge?
Once you’ve answered these questions, then you can build upon this theological foundation as you naturally reach out in service to others.