Team Building w/ Cara Garrity

Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience.

Cara Garrity: In this episode, I (your host, Cara Garrity) will lead us through some team building experiences and exercises.

Now today’s exercises are best experienced with your ministry team. So, consider dedicating an upcoming team meeting, or at least scheduling 20 minutes or so to team building in your next meeting agenda.

[00:40] We know that an important piece of GCI’s healthy church vision is Team Based —Pastor Led ministry. But there are a lot of diverse ways to lead a ministry. What is so great about team-based ministry?

When we minister alongside one another on teams, we reflect the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. Let us consider 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26 together. And it says:

¹² For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

¹⁴ Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵ If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹ If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many members yet one body. ²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²² On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³ and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, ²⁴ whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, ²⁵ that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶ If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

Amen.

[03:18] I want to encourage us to see our ministry teams as a reflection of the body of Christ — many parts, but one body.

And if we do this, how might this shape the way that we approach team-based ministry? And I want you to pause and, for a couple minutes, discuss this question with your team. How might this shape the way that we approach team-based ministry if we were to see our teams as a reflection of the body of Christ — many parts, but one body?

Now think about, practically speaking, how this might shape the way that we approach the practical aspects of

• how we run our teams?
• how we recruit people into our teams?
• how we run our meetings and communicate?
• how we assign different responsibilities?

How might this image of the body of Christ inform how we conduct our teams in that sense?

Take a couple minutes with your team to brainstorm and discuss this.

[04:45] Now your team, I want to suggest to you, is a unique expression of the body of Christ. I want us to take some time now to discern and celebrate who God has brought together on your team to serve for this season.

So let’s start with this — and I would encourage you, especially for those visual folks on your team, if you haven’t gotten these supplies already, get a big piece of poster board paper, one of those post-it papers, some markers, some pens, or even if you just have a blank piece of paper on the table that everyone can see and something to write with. Grab some of those, and we’re going to use that for this exercise.

And then the first thing that I want us to start with is a reminder of the purpose of your team. What brings your team together? What is your purpose? For what do you exist?

Now, this may come, for the purpose of this exercise, for your team in the form of your local congregation’s mission and vision statement. This will come in the form of GCI’s vision of Healthy Church or mission statement of “Living and sharing the gospel.”

Whatever that looks like for you, what brings your team together? What is your purpose?

And now what I want you to do is take some time and go around your team. Each member, I want you to answer the question: how do you uniquely contribute to the purpose of this team? And take two minutes to quietly reflect on this before you start answering this question.

[06:44] You are going to go ahead and pause this podcast while you go through and take those two minutes of silent reflection and then share as a team.

The question is: how do you uniquely contribute to the purpose of this team?

And now as you are sharing, I want you on that poster board, paper, whatever it is, draw an outline of a body. And as each member shares, label the various parts of the body with the keywords, the unique gifts or skills or passions that they contribute to the purpose of the team. And just label the various parts of the body with those keywords or gifts, whatever that is, that comes up in your discussion.

How does each member of the team uniquely contribute to the purpose of the team? What gifts, talents, skills, passions?

Now look at this image that you have created. It is a visual representation of your team as the body of Christ. And I want you to look at it and to praise God for who he has brought together to your team. And to see that he has brought together different giftings, different talents, different passions, different skill sets.

And I want you all to look at that and talk about the specific ways or the specific, I guess combinations or expressions of that, that you see on your team. What sticks out with you?

What do you appreciate and celebrate the expression of the body of Christ that God has brought together? What do you notice? And then I want you to take a few minutes and just praise God for bringing you all together. And I want you to affirm one another that you all need one another, that you all belong as members of the body of Christ and an expression of the body of Christ on this team.

[09:06] So go ahead and pause this podcast and take a few minutes to do that and celebrate your unique expression that is represented visually by this drawing.

Now, the next exercise that I want us to do, to consider is if we are considering or engaging with our ministry teams as a reflection and expression of the body of Christ, then we are going to embody this belief that we belong one to another, that we are connected, that we are made one in Christ. What would it look like to commit to belonging to one another as team members?

[09:59] Go ahead and pause the podcast and discuss that as a team for a few minutes. What would it look like to commit to belonging to one another as team members, to be united in Christ?

Here are some simple suggestions that you can start out with. You could rotate prayer partners after each meeting. Whether you have weekly meetings or monthly meetings, whatever that looks like, you just get a prayer partner on that team. And you share your prayer requests, and you follow up and you pray with that person once a week or during that month.

You add prayer for one another to each meeting agenda, every single time you meet. You take turns starting each meeting with a liturgical prayer or spiritual formation exercise that is meaningful to each one of you. You are bringing that expression of who God has made you to be, that gifting, that uniqueness to one another.

And you are growing together and forming in Christlikeness together, with one another. Maybe consider some practices and committing to some practices like this together as a team.

[00:11:25] And for right now, what I want to ask you to do is to take about maybe five to 10 minutes — depending on the size of your team or however this flows for you all —and I want for each person to pray for the person on your right. I want you to thank God for what they bring to this team. And you can use the visual representation from the previous exercise, as a reminder, as something to come back to. I want you to thank God for what they bring to this team, affirm their belonging to the body, their belonging on this team, that their participation on the team is important, and that we celebrate with one another.

Take five to ten minutes for each member on the team to pray for one another, the person on your right. Go ahead and pause this podcast and do that with one another now.

So, I want to encourage us to remember that the teams we serve are more than just production lines, groups of people that we complete checklists alongside to get things done in the church or gears in the machine to make sure things happen and get done. We serve on teens because in Christ, we are many who are made one, each uniquely, fearfully, and wonderfully made, brought together to form the one body of Christ and in him. We belong not only to him, but to one another. We come together in cooperation to be his hands and feet, to participate in his present ministry, in our midst.

And what a beautiful thing that these teams that we get to serve on, that we get to build out in our local congregations, to be a local expression of this body. So let me pray for us.

Lord God, I thank you so much. Father, Son, and Spirit, you yourself are, in your very being, unity. In diversity and unity, Father, Son, and Spirit, three in one.

I thank you that you, Jesus, have brought us, your people, many into one in your body. We thank you for being so good to us. We thank you for giving us according to your will for your good, good purposes. And we thank you for the immense privilege it is to participate in your ministry. And that we do not do it alone, but that we do it primarily with you, that we participate in what you’re doing, but that we get to do it alongside one another too.

We thank you for your relationship and community. And we thank you that it reflects who you are. I pray for a blessing for all our teams. That you would continue to grow them with one another, that they would continue to mature and expand as expressions of your body. That people would be able to operate in the gifts and the skills and the talents that you’ve given them to serve those in their neighborhoods, to join in what you are doing in their midst.

I thank you for being so faithful to guide us, and I praise you in your holy name. Amen.

[15:19] So together as a team, I want to offer a few reflection questions as we have completed these two exercises together as a team.

1. The first is, what difference does it make when we view our teams as reflections of the body of Christ? And how does this challenge us? How does it inspire us? So, take a few minutes to discuss this.
2. Next, what practices or actions does your team want to commit to continue growing in maturity and unity as an expression of the body of Christ together?
3. And finally, what would it look like to continue creating space for people to use their giftings to be active participants in the body of Christ and the life of your local congregation?

So, I want to leave you all with the encouragement of Ephesians 4: 1-16. And it draws us back to the purpose of coming together, diverse, and united, as ministry servants alongside one another in his church. So, Ephesians 4 says:

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. ² Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

⁷ But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. ⁸ This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,
he took many captives
and gave gifts to his people.”

⁹ (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? ¹⁰ He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) ¹¹ So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

¹⁴ Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. ¹⁶ From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

May it be so in our teams, in our congregations, throughout our denomination. Until next time, friends, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at info@gci.org with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.