Teamwork?

I love basketball.  Always have.  I was blessed to play a bit in high school and college and I still dabble in it in my old age 🙂  One of the ways I stay connected to the game is by helping coach varsity basketball at the high school where my son attends.  I really enjoy it.  I think sports teaches lessons in life that really not much else can.  One of the best lessons it teaches revolves around teamwork.  I tell you what…you take a team with a superstar or two and give me a team that works together, plays together, and truly cares about each other and I will beat you most, if not every time.  A true team is not about stats, it is not about accolades, a true team is about doing whatever it takes to win.  If that means I don’t score a point but play great defense…I will do what the team needs.  If that means I sit on the bench and cheer the whole game and never step foot on the floor, then that’s okay to.  True teamworks is about the goal…not praise.

The team I help coach is really close to that…we still have moments of selfishness but these guys truly love each other and for the most part are willing to do what it takes to win.  SIDE NOTE: we start our playoff run tonight…prayers appreciated.

Let me shift gears a second and talk about the church…one of the things I find absent in many churches is the idea of teamwork.  We know what Jesus and the apostle’s said…the greatest serve, humble yourself and God will lift you up, the last shall be first and the first, last.  But, is that a picture of most churches?  To be honest, I have seen less of humility and more of selfishness.

• My ministry is more important than yours and needs first place in the church.
• My ways are right, everyone else is wrong.
• My choice of music is the only choice of music.
• I will work as a team ONLY if we are working on what I want.
• I am leaving that church because they don’t meet my needs.
• Me, me me, I, I, I

Have we forgotten how to work together?  Are we so shortsighted that we cannot see what our selfishness does to a watching world?  In Philippians 2:3-8 Paul says some important things to a church…

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourself.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, bu taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Has the church become just like the world with a little God talk thrown in?  What would our churches look like if we truly looked like what Paul said in Philippians 2?  Romans 12 tell us to be devoted to one another and to OUTDO one another in showing honor to the other.  That is a great picture of TEAMWORK.  Look at our world and you don’t have to look long to see that teamwork is painfully absent from our culture and society.  Maybe this is the place where revival can start.  A change of heart, a renewed mind, that focuses on the things of God, and God’s people, rather than my own needs.

Is it a pipe dream to believe that it could be different…maybe…but then again, nothing is impossible with God.