Teaming 101

I’ve been reading an interesting book right now entitled, A Vision of the Possible: Pioneer Church Planting in Teams, by Daniel Sinclair. Chapter 4 of his book is devoted to teams. All of us are working on teams. Some of us are on a team with our spouse, while others are working on a multiple-unit team. Hopefully, we’ve already included many nationals on our teams as well. Teaming is biblical; the apostle Paul did it in several ways on his 4 terms, and yes while he was on STAS, he built teams and experienced team conflict. So there is much to be learned about teaming. Here are some questions from A Vision of the Possible to spur your thinking the next time you meet with your team(p. 53):

1. Would you say that your expectations for team life and ministry are overly optimistic (or “blue sky”), too pessimistic (or jaded), or pretty realistic?
2. Does the New Testament really only give examples of pioneer work in teams?
3. What is our model of team?
4. What are the gifts present in our team?
5. Is our team a good environment for biblical body life? Are we modeling this well for local believers (or will we be able to in the future)?
6. Does this team help you or hinder you in being on task and thriving spiritually?
7. Where are we on the “Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing” sequence?
8. What’s the right size for our team?
9. Does this team help me to have a healthy outward focus on ministry and majoring on the local people, or is there a danger of too much inwardness on our team?
10. How do we make team decisions? Does that process need any adjustment?

For further reading, I recommend an article entitled “Teamwork 101: 6 Steps to Becoming a Better Team Player” found here.

In Him,
Buck