What’s A Team?

 

 

 

 

Put Me In Coach – What’s a Team?
Sycamore Creek Church
November 9/10, 2014
Tom Arthur

 

Put me in coach!

When I was growing up I played little league baseball every summer.  At the end of the summer the league would pick the best players from the various teams in our local league to play other local leagues in the first round of the Little League State Championship.  Every year I got a call to be on this team, but we never made it out of the local round.  When I was fourteen I didn’t get the call.  I apparently had an abundance of confidence because I assumed that I had just missed the call from the coach.  So I called him and told him I had missed the call and wanted to know when the first practice was.  He somewhat sheepishly informed that I had not missed the call, I just was not asked to be on the team.  I hung up the phone a little stunned that I wasn’t on the team and that my last season of Little League was over.  Or was it?  Apparently my call impressed the coach and a couple of days later he called me back and invited me to join the team.  It was an amazing team.  It felt like nothing could keep us back.  It felt like there wasn’t any competition that was too difficult to beat.  It wasn’t easy, but that year we were the first team in our local league to win the local round and advance to the regional tournament.  We felt invincible.  Until we actually began playing at that level.  We lost our first two games and were out of the tournament.  But oh, what fun to be part of a team that worked so well together!

Today we’re continuing a series we began last week called Put Me In Coach! The key thought for this whole series is this:

There are too many fans of the game and not enough players in the game.

It’s like football.  In football there are 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest and 22,000 people in the stands in desperate need of exercise.  It’s time to get out of the stands and get into the game.  This is a series about serving, volunteering, and getting in the game.  Last week we looked at three fundamentals of the game.  In the coming weeks we’re going to look at what your position is and who your coach is.  Today we’re looking at your team.  This game we play isn’t an individual sport game.  It’s a team sport.  You play the game on a team.  Today I want to look at three fundamentals of teamwork.

1.     A Team is United in Purpose & Calling
Throughout this series we’ve been studying what Paul, the first missionary of the church, had to say to the church of Ephesus.  The letter he wrote is known to us as the book of Ephesians in the Bible.  Ephesians is six chapters long, and I recommend you take some time this week to read through the book.  Very specifically we’re focusing on chapter four in this series.  Paul begins chapter four saying:

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you [plural] to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.
~Ephesians 4:1 NLT

Something that gets lost in translation is the plural version of “you.”  If you’ve ever studied a foreign language you know that in English there’s only one version of “you” and we use it to refer to you (singular) and y’all (plural).  But in Greek, the language that Paul was writing to the Ephesians, there are clearly different forms of “you” and the “you” in this verse is the plural version of “you” or “y’all.”  So Paul says, “I beg y’all to lead a life worth of your calling, for you have been called by God.”

We are one, but one person is a lonely person.  On the other hand, “one team” is a team of people ready to dive into a mission.  Y’all on this team are called by God to play this game.  Paul is begging you to live your individual life united with the life of your team to accomplish God’s mission in the world.

Throughout this series we’ve been watching some clips from the great classic sports movies.  There’s a great moment in Hoosiers when the coach realizes not everyone who has showed up for the practice is united together in one purpose.

 

In the same way that basketball is a “voluntary activity”, church is a “voluntary activity” too.  No one is putting a gun to your head to be here.  We want to welcome everyone and show compassion to everyone, but if you’re going to play this game on this team, you’ve got to be united in the purpose, mission, and goals of what we’re all about here at SCC.  Paul makes this abundantly clear when he says:

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
~Ephesians 4:4-6

Did you catch that?  One team!  One purpose!  One mission!  One calling!  Last week we explored in detail what that one purpose was.  Here are the three fundamentals of the game:

Q: What’s the Game?
A: Igniting authentic life in Christ and fanning it into an all consuming flame.

Q: How do we score?
A: When we help someone connect with Jesus and grow deeper in the character of Christ

Q: How do we win?
A: When we are all unified together ALL THE TIME serving to create environments where someone can connect and grow.

Two tools we use here at SCC to play the game in this way are www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.  If you’ve already taken assessme.org or if you do it during the month of November, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win two MSU basketball tickets.  So get online this week if you haven’t done so already and join the team.

We also use a tool that we call the Serve Interest Inventory.  It has a list of all the areas in our church where you can serve.  You circle the ones you’re interested in and someone who leads in that area will be in touch with you.  You’re not saying you’ll do it, you’re just expressing interest.  Download one here.  So make sure you fill one of those out this week and get on the team.

The first fundamental of teamwork is that a team is united in purpose and calling.

2.     A Team Knows the Competition

A team is also crystal clear about the competition.  Let’s make sure we are clear too.  The competition isn’t the church down the street.  We are one church with Trinity.  We are one church with Pennway Church of God.  We are one church with Riverview.  We are one church with Mt. Hope UMC.  We are one church with Mt. Hope “church of the flags.”  We are one church with Journey Life.  We are one church with Pilgrim Rest Baptist.  Yes, sometimes our family members embarrass us, but other churches are not the competition.

Rather, the competition is all the other things that compete for complete devotion to Jesus.  Paul says:

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.
~Ephesians 4:14 NLT

Several years ago I was at a friend’s house and picked up a catalogue sitting next to his couch.  It was full of audio books and seminars that had a kind of New Age self-help approach.  There was some good stuff in the catalogue.  Some of it was by people I had studied under.  But what really got me was the title of the catalogue.  It was called “Sounds True.”  Sounds True?!  Paul says we need to be careful with things that sound like the truth.  Or as Stephen Colbert calls it, “truthiness.”  So what is the competition?  What sounds true but isn’t?

I think it’s important to point out that sometimes we are our own worst competition.  When the team isn’t unified with a single purpose and mission and goal, then the team itself is the competition.  Consider this scene from the classic hockey movie, Miracle:

 

 

These guys are their own worst nightmare.  The first challenge the coach has is to get them unified as a team.  It is important to note at this point that I’m not talking about the absence of conflict.  Patrick Lencioni wrote a book about teamwork called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  He lists the lack of conflict as one of those dysfunctions.  Great teams welcome conflict and passionate debate of ideas.  It’s important to have this kind of conflict because if you don’t passionately debate the ideas, then you don’t come out committed to the decision once it’s made.  Being united is not the absence of conflict.  But it is conflict in the purpose of the mission, not in the purpose of your own ego.  So the first competition any teams faces is itself.

The second competition the church faces is personal decisions about priorities that distract from God.  All of us, those here and those not yet here, live a life of disordered loves.  We love the wrong things in the wrong proportion.  Anything that gets in the way of connecting with God or growing deeper in the character of Christ is the competition.  This could be your job or the pursuit of money.  It could be how often you travel and the mobility in our current society.  Sleep or the lack of sleep could be the competition.  Your own family can get in the way of connecting with God and growing in Christ.  Entertainment can be the competition.  Sports can get in the way.  Both sports that you play and the sports that you watch.  Education can be the competition.  When I first went to Duke I studied so hard that I neglected all kinds of important things in my spiritual life.  None of these things are necessarily competition, it is only when we have too much of a good thing or love them disproportionately that they become the competition.

One last competitor worth mentioning is injustice and oppression.  Sometimes we aren’t able to make decisions about our lives.  Sometimes the system we’re in makes the decisions for us.  We find ourselves in a job market that requires people to work seven days a week and not have time off for worship.  Or we are stuck in bondage to a pace of life that doesn’t let us get a good night’s sleep.  It is not only the individual’s choices that are the competition but the system that contributes to those individual choices are also the competition.

So let’s be crystal clear about the competition.  The competition isn’t the church down the street.  The competition is anything that keeps someone from connecting with God or growing in Christ.  The second fundamental of teamwork is that a team is clear about the competition.

3.     A Team Makes Every Effort
Let’s go back to Paul.  He says:

Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.
~Ephesians 4:2-3 NLT

A team makes every effort.  They make every effort to stay united.  They make every effort to be humble.  They make every effort to be gentle.  They make every effort to be patient with one another.  They make every effort to allow for one another’s faults.  They make every effort be at peace with one another.  They make every effort to work toward their purpose, mission, goal, and calling.

There’s a great scene in The Blind Side where the coach responds to an injustice by the other team and the refs and in response gets an every-effort-response from his player:

 

 

What a great image of making “every effort” to STAY UNITED!  It results in scoring.  Let me emphasize again that this does not mean the absence of conflict.  Rather it means that we are humble in forgiveness.  If you’re wrong only 1% and your team member is wrong 99% then you confess your 1% (and don’t bring up percentages!).  It means that we give allowance for each others weakness, faults, and failures.  While we strive for excellence, perfection is not required.  We expect failure.  We cover one another’s backs when failure happens or when one of us is backed into a corner of our weakness.

We make every effort to be united by “being gentle” in correction with one another.  Let me give you some tips about how to be gentle in correction.  First, don’t do serious correction with one another on Sunday morning unless it is invited.  Set up some other time to talk to one another.  Second, make sure you know the difference between the “preaching voice” and the “pastoral voice.”  The voice and tone and approach I use in preaching is not the voice and tone and approach I seek to use when offering correction.  Third, a helpful tactic to gently correct is to lay out the facts and ask for input on what should be done about them from the person you’re correcting.  One time I had to fire a volunteer who was visiting a shut-in elderly woman.  The family of the shut-in didn’t want her visited anymore.  Instead of just coming out and “firing” her, I told her what the family had told me.  I then asked her what she thought should happen.  She said that she shouldn’t visit that shut-in anymore.  Right answer!  It was gentle and didn’t require me to be the bad cop.  Another time I caught a teenager under my care with alcohol.  Instead of calling his parents, I asked him what he thought needed to happen.  The teenager said that his parents should be told.  Right answer!  Then another time I had to talk to someone who was about to give a speech about a contentious issue.  I simply laid out the facts and asked what he thought should happen.  He expressed concern that the issue be brought up lightly.  Right answer!  We make every effort to remain united in purpose when we are gentle in correction.

Lastly, we make every effort to stay united in purpose and calling by “being patient” with the growth of others.  People don’t change overnight.  Look for the just noticeable improvements and celebrate them.  Extend your timeline for how long you think someone should change.  We all want justice with others and mercy for ourselves.  Extend mercy to others by being patient with the time it takes them to change.

Let’s review.  The fundamentals of teamwork are:

1. A team is united in purpose and calling.
2.  A team knows the competition.
3. A team makes every effort to stay united in purpose and calling by being humble, gentle, and patient with one another.

So here’s my question for you today.  Are you ready to be on the team?  If so, I invite you pray this prayer:

Prayer
Put me in God!  I don’t want to be watching the game at home.  I don’t want to be tailgating.  I don’t want to be in the stands.  I don’t want to be on the sidelines.  I don’t want to be on the bench.  I want to be in the game.  I want to be on the team.  Put me in coach!