Helping people form effective teams for ministry

Once you have created methods for people to discover their spiritual gifts, their passions, and their calling, the next step is helping people come together with others to live out their faith. This often looks like building ministry teams. None of us, no matter what our gifts or callings, are designed to be completely alone. Even gifts such as intercessory prayer can be done well together or in conjunction with others who have different but complementary gifts. The Body of Christ is designed to work together with all of its interconnected parts playing their roles:

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. Ephesians 4:15-16.

The parts need each other, and unless each part does its work, the body as a whole does not function as it should.

The key to gathering effective teams

The key to good teams is finding people who complement each other’s strengths and fill in each other’s weaknesses. When I served as a senior pastor, I needed certain essential people on my team. Although I learned to be adequate in pastoral care, I needed Sandy to lead the way, modeling and developing individuals who could met specialized needs. Rob kept an outward focus, equipping others to build redemptive relationships. My administrative assistants kept me organized and moving forward on important projects. If you look at these roles—the people I surround myself with—you can quite easily identify some areas where my own gifts need shoring up by people with passion and ability in those areas.

As a leader, help each person you develop identify not only where they are strong, but where they need help or where they need some parallel track to keep running. Someone who is a natural networker and a visionary will need someone to ask the real-life questions to ground the ministry and make it work in practical ways… and vice versa.

Who does what?

Teams will always outperform an individual over the long run—and each individual will be more effective and fulfilled in team ministry. For any task you sense God calling you toward, try breaking it up into team roles. Develop different job descriptions. Who else do you need to really put wings and feet to this idea?

One of the big leadership skills that is essential here is delegation. One of the reasons leaders fail in delegation is they misinterpret it as shirking responsibility or not working hard enough. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s actually the intentional sharing and spreading of responsibility so everyone’s individual work is as effective as possible. Delegating well is a biblical concept that is essential to the health of the Body. (See Exodus 18 and Acts 6 for two great examples.)

Delegation is the process of identifying your work responsibilities and assigning portions of your work to others so that the workers are fulfilled and the work is accomplished. As a leader, you can and should delegate most of your routine tasks such as sorting mail, typing letters, paying bills, and ordering supplies so that you can focus on the important things that only you can do. We certainly need to delegate work to others so that they can do what we ourselves are not well-equipped to do. But we also need delegation in our areas of strength. Who can help you do better what you already do and save you time? What kind of teams do you need to be more effective?

Are you doing what only you can do?

Here’s a quick little delegation self-check you can use whenever you notice yourself feeling busy:

• List your current activities.
• Ask yourself:
  • Do I need to do this?
  • Does it need to be done at all?
  • Can anyone else do it?