FENTON, MI – Happy New Year! I would like to give you an overflowing bucket of “new-starts” for 2019. I want this year to be “God-sized” and unlike any other year for you!
If you know me, you know I do not enjoy ordinary routines. I do not watch car races circling on tracks hundreds of times. I watch movies one time. I do not watch TV reruns. I do not repeatedly return to the same vacation spots. I do not eat habitually at the same restaurant. Instead, I love to explore new territories. I want to meet new people. I want to have new conversations on new subjects with old friends. I enjoy new adventures.
When it comes to a new year, if we are not careful, we will end up running around the same track and filling the calendar with the same past events with no anticipation of God-sized outcomes while looking to the same team members and leaders. The teams with whom we work might be community groups, civic clubs, or church teams. By placing the “correct” people on teams, you can come to expect bolder outcomes. When we are looking for new teammates, let’s examine the following areas:
Character – Is this person trustworthy in all that they do in life? Would I trust them to care for my spouse and my savings? Does this person display the same type of self-control in challenging times that he or she does during the good times?
Calling – Does this person understand the intense focus of a team, and what the team is specifically trying to achieve? Are they willing to invest physically and emotionally into the task?
Competency – Is this person knowledgeable on the necessary subjects or hungry to learn all that is needed to become a valued team member? Will they read, study, and train in order to acquire all they can on the matter at hand?
Commitment – Is there a proven track record in other areas of life that this teammate does not give-up when striving to achieve new results in his or her own life? Will he or she be able to dream-up new initiatives and implement the important steps to achieve bolder outcomes?
Chemistry – Does this person play well with others? When you see them at gatherings, are they surrounded by other people? Do others feel valued by this person? Do not be fooled by those who use people, enlist those who love people.
Confirmation – Ask other people their opinion as to whether or not an individual would make a valued teammate. Sometimes in our circles, out of mercy, we enlist the broken and put them onto teams before they are ready, before they are healed. Spiritually, emotionally, and morally unfit team members slow and derail a team’s effectiveness.
In closing consider three final questions. If you were to measure yourself by these six areas, how would you measure up? Are there any changes that need to take place in your life? Will you make those changes before redesigning the teams with whom you work?
I hope these brief suggestions will encourage you and help to create vibrant teams around you for the glory of the Lord. Each year, I see many talented and devoted people working hard and often alone, who would be strengthened by working alongside the “right” people. God says it best in Ecclesiastes 4:9 (NLT), “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.” May we all live by that text during 2019. Happy New Year!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tony Lynn is the State Director of Missions for the Baptist State Convention of Michigan. Before coming on staff at the BSCM, Tony served as lead pastor for more than six years at Crosspoint Church in Monroe, Michigan. He and his wife, Jamie, also served with the International Mission Board in Africa and in Europe.