We Work as a Team

I love sport.  It’s not just one particular sport that I follow, but I have a broad interest in nearly every sport there is.  From football (the English version!) to cricket, golf, tennis, snooker, F1, athletics, I love to watch all of them and see what separates the winners from those who are very good professionals but don’t quite make it to the top step on the podium.

Sport gives me enjoyment and the ability to switch off and admire the skills and talents different people have.  In the different sports, there are team games and individual pursuits but whichever one you look at there is always more than one person involved.  Even individual sportspeople have a group of people helping them to achieve the very best, from their coach, nutrition expert and fitness support to their wider families making sacrifices to help them achieve their goals.

In team sports it’s more obvious that everyone has to be working together to make it click.  In the recent Women’s World Cup, the England team lost a number of key players to injury before the tournament started and then lost star players to suspension in the tournament itself.  They still went far though because as a team they all worked together, had one overall mission and everybody knew the part they had to do to make the collective work well.

In this week’s readings we see a lot about how we are one body but how we all have different parts to play.  Ephesians 3 kicks it off when it says in verse 6 “…members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.”

You and I, together with everyone who is born again, make up the one body of Christ.  We are joined together and what we do impacts on each other.  I think this is probably why so many of the chapters this week talk about how we are to live and relate with one another.  What I do and what you do matters because it will have an impact on someone else.  When we live right it helps the whole body to grow up and achieve what God wants.  When we get it wrong, we need to make every effort to repair the relationships so that we protect each other.

This is not all though, because each part of the body has a useful, unique part to play.  We have all been given gifts and talents that when used for the Lord will enable the body to be built up.  Ephesians 4 verses 11-13 says:

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 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”

You and I have been given a calling and gifts and when we use them, the whole church is blessed.  In GoChurch we use the phrase: We work as a team.  This means that everyone works together, not just the leaders or those who serve on a Sunday but everyone, because we are all vital to making it work.  

Going back to my sporting comparison for a moment: the best teams are often not those full of the best individual players but they are the ones that come together the best and work for each other the best.  They are the ones who, whatever their individual skill level is, put their everything in for the team and work together for the best outcome.

Here at GoChurch, this is how we are to be: bringing our best for the good of everyone so that together we are stronger and better and can reach the world more effectively for Jesus.