EMQ » October–December 2019 » Volume 55 Issue 4
By Dr. A. Matthews
Do we really need another theology of something? These days we are developing or advocating for theologies of all sorts. A quick Google search will reveal proposed theologies of biblical counseling to theologies of communication, from theologies of sex to theologies of LGBTQ integrity. The amount of theologies being bandied about raises questions about whether we really understand what we are talking about when it comes to a developing any sort of theology. This article proposes that especially when it comes to cross-cultural missions, we do, in fact, need another theology: a theology of teams.
Why do we need a theology of teams? Because too many times, we are failing in our church planting; not because of some fault in the church planting strategy or methodology. It’s not merely a fault of training or education or spirituality. Too many times, church planting endeavors fail because of people not getting along with each other and, more often than not, that dynamic plays itself out most acutely on church planting teams. In his book, Global Church Planting, Craig Ott writes, “Our observation is that planters are just as likely to fall short because of personal inadequacies or an inability to work on a team as they are because of a flawed strategy.”1
Not only do we need a theology of teams because we can do teams better, but also because the mindset we adopt going into a teaming situation has the potential to set us up for failure or success. Everyone joins a team with some preconceived notions of what that experience will look like. I remember when I first went to the field. I came out of a secular work environment and eagerly looked forward to working with and partnering with fellow believers to see the kingdom of God advance in dark places. I should have known better—I grew up on the mission field. But still, I had a preconceived notion that working with believers would be such an exciting and positive experience. It came as quite a shock, then, when in one of our first planning meetings, tempers flared, harsh words were said, and lines were drawn in the sand. All of a sudden, I found out that even believing followers of Christ can get quite ugly in such situations.
Developing a sound theology of teams could enable people to join teams with a healthy mindset. The Scripture often talks about our minds and mindset. As the Apostle Paul implores the Philippians: “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5, NIV). Our mindset has a powerful ability to influence how we act. This is why Paul exhorts us to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5) and to be renewed by the transforming of our minds (Romans 12:2). Our mindset can set us up for success.
A strong and constructive theology of teams would allow us to see more teams interact healthily and as a result, potentially more churches planted. If we accept the notion that church planting is a key component of what the church is called to do in this world, it is too important a topic to get wrong. We owe it to ourselves and ultimately to Christ, the head of the church, as good stewards, to evaluate how we do our church planting and to see if there are things we can do better. It is my contention that developing a healthy, biblical theology of teams, could be just one step in helping us do church planting more effectively, both at home and abroad.
What, then, would comprise our theology of teams? What biblical and theological concepts would help us better handle our intra-team relationships and would help us more readily succeed at a team-based approach to church planting? I would like to suggest that three pillars must lie at the foundation of our theology of teams.
Pillar 1: Not Allowing the Means to Justify the End
The first pillar is the understanding that the way we do mission matters. It can be easy to lose sight of this fact when we become focused on the task before us. When the vision is grand and God is moving and we’re driven to fulfill what we believe is God’s calling for us, the ends can justify the means. We can become vision-obsessed and driven. But Christopher Wright reminds us of the importance of not allowing the means to justify the end; of not allowing the mission to become all-consuming.
Unfortunately, there is a danger that the expression “the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world” turns the church into nothing more than a delivery mechanism for the message. All that matters is “getting the job done”—preferably as soon as possible. And sadly there are some forms of missionary strategy and rhetoric that strongly give that impression. The Bible, in stark contrast, is passionately concerned about what kind of people they are who claim to be the people of God.2
It’s not enough to just get the job done. The way we go about it is vitally important. We must fulfill the mission in such a way that reflects the kingdom we serve in and the king we serve.
This means that we must seriously consider how we treat the people we serve alongside of, the people on our team, and even how teams are formed and supported by their organizations. Allowing people to suffer on poorly constructed teams or to languish on teams with poor leadership or allowing unrestrained conflict to consume team members is not to reflect the truth that the way we do mission matters. We cannot accept a viewpoint that burns through people, essentially accepting the notion that people will leave and more people will replace them.
This means that the talented, gifted, but hard to get along with person is not worth putting up with on a team. This dynamic is often seen in ministry. I frequently hear people say that so-and-so is prickly or that person is known to be proud or known to be unpleasant to work with, but this is overlooked because they are a great communicator or a great leader. If the way we do mission matters, then team skills and interpersonal skills and emotional maturity matter as does getting along with other people and treating them as Jesus calls us to treat them.
I well remember visiting a team that was having internal issues. Their people were not getting along, but the ministry was apparently moving ahead. People were being served and the gospel was being preached. They knew they had internal issues, but figured those things were kept just between themselves. It came as a great surprise then when I overheard two of the people group they were serving talking to each other saying, “Oh, we know these people don’t get along. They can’t stand each other.” The people we serve are not blind to the way we treat others on our teams and the way we treat others on our teams reflects on our King and on our mission. The way we do mission matters!
Pillar 2: A Team is Not an End in Itself
The second pillar that must comprise our theology of teams is the reality that teams are not an end to themselves. Anytime we reflect on teams or the way we do teams, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that the team we serve on has a greater purpose. Realizing this greater purpose for which we join a team is crucial to properly shaping expectations.
When I have asked people what metaphors come to mind when they think about their cross-cultural church planting teams, metaphors like family and church are some of the first ones that emerge. While all metaphors have their limits, these predominant mental images powerfully shape the expectations of team members when they join teams. Team members who expect their teams to serve as families have perceptions —some positive and some negative—of what that looks like and how the team will interact with each other. When team members talk about their teammates being a church, that shapes the expectations of what team meetings will look like. It’s not so much that these metaphors are wrong (in fact, as we will see below, some elements of these metaphors are important for us), but that they are incomplete. Metaphors like families and churches tend to create an inward-focused mentality where we care deeply for each other and the temptation becomes that we begin to exist for each other.
The cross-cultural church planting team, however, does not exist for this purpose. To use Ralph Winter’s terms, the cross-cultural church planting team is a sodality, not a modality.3 As such, the sodality has an outward focus and that focus is the aim of seeing people encounter Christ and be joined to his kingdom. Cross-cultural church planting teams cannot lose sight of the purpose to which they are called.
The good news is that having a purpose, especially a challenging purpose—like the establishment of churches in a specific region or among a particular people group—can serve to unify a team. In their book, The Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach and Smith call this a “demanding performance challenge” and point out that this challenge is what catalyzes the team to become a team.4 In fact, Katzenbach and Smith see this performance challenge as being part of what makes for a real team as opposed to a “pseudo-team.” It serves to unify the team as they all share this burden to accomplish the objective.5
While the way we do mission matters, we cannot be focused only on our teams and creating strong team relationships. The way we do the mission and the purpose for which our team exists must be held in constant dynamic tension. The mission does matter and we cannot lose sight of our ultimate goal in mission.
Pillar 3: God Uses Our Team to Shape Us
The third pillar that ought to comprise our theology of teams is the reality that God wants to use our team to shape us. From Scripture, we know that, if we let him, God can use anything to shape us. Romans 8:28, while often being a verse we quote in hard times, is really about this very principle. God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. To what end? What is the “good” of those who love him? Verse 29 tells us so that we might be conformed to the likeness of his Son. As C.S. Lewis writes, “the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs.”6 This is God’s purpose and aim in our lives. He is the potter; we are the clay. He wants to shape us to be more like him.
What if we truly believed this? What if we not only believed this but then translated it into how we do teams? What if we began to see our team as the instrument God wants to use to shape us into being “little christs?”
On an intellectual level, we comprehend this and we may even accept it but on a practical level, it is much more difficult to actually live this out. One of the challenges of serving on a cross-cultural church planting team is that often church planters serving in these contexts have little or no local church involvement. As the kingdom continues to spread to harder and harder places among more resistant peoples, the presence of a local church, at least when the team launches, will be even less likely. This will mean that one of the primary shaping forces God uses on people, our church community, does not exist for many serving in pioneer missionary contexts.
While the metaphor of a team being a church is not wholly accurate, a team can play a church-like role in our spiritual formation. Whether a team meets together as a church or not, how would it change our perspective to think that perhaps God has put us on this team, not because of some grand design he has for this team to accomplish a mission, but because he wants to use this community to shape us to be the people God has called us to be?
What if instead of popping off at John because he’s always late for team meetings, you wrestled with what God is trying to teach you through John? What if instead of shooting daggers at Kim in team meetings because she goes on and on and on and never seems to shut up, what if, instead, you asked the Lord to show you what he needs to change in you because of how much Kim annoys you? What if, instead of passively-aggressively making subtle digs at Tim because he’s not a very hard worker, you spent time with the Lord asking him to show you what is going on in your heart and how he wants to use this to shape you? I am convinced that God is far less concerned with what he has sent us to do than with what we are becoming.
I am convinced that if this were genuinely applied, it would change our teams completely. As we embraced the activity of God through our teams to transform us and to change us, we would become increasingly like Jesus, and the mission to which we are called would advance all the more because of our submission to the work of God in our lives.
Conclusion
I recently completed my dissertation studying cross-cultural church planting teams across our organization. There have been many articles in this periodical about teams and how we do teams. Some have been positive and some have been negative. As Sedlacek points out, there is a need for continued studies on the topic.7 While we will never create perfect teams because teams are comprised of fallible people, we can create better teams and it is worth our effort and attention to make our church planting teams better.
While it is true that there are skills that can be developed and resources that can be made available and trainings that can be done to help improve our teams, I propose that helping team members reflect on a theology of teams could also have a powerful impact on our approach to teaming and working together to see the Great Commission fulfilled. These three pillars form only an initial foray into developing a sound theology. There are surely more pillars that can be added. The mission is so great and so important that it merits further reflection.
Dr. A. Matthews (pseudonym) is a missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance living in the Middle East since 2004. He directs a community center that provides free medical care and refugee assistance programs with the aim to plant churches. He also leads a church planting team that aims to initiate a movement of reproducing house churches. He holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Asbury Theological Seminary.
1. Ott, Craig. Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication. Baker Academic, 2011. Kindle file. Kindle Location 5848.
2. Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Zondervan, 2010. Kindle file. Kindle Location 269.
3. Winter, Ralph D. and Steven C. Hawthorne, eds. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader. Third Edition. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1999.
4. Katzenbach, Jon, and Douglas K. Smith. The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. Harvard Business School Press, 1993. Kindle file. Kindle location 122.
5. Ibid, Kindle Location 764.
6. Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1996. page 171.
7. Sedlacek, David. Teams in Mission: Are They Worth It? Part I. Accessed on August 16, 2018, via Christianity Today online. https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2017/april/teams-in-mission-are-they-worth-it-part-one.html.
