• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

Dig deeper

Posted on July 8, 2016 by wtdavid

A couple of months ago, in a conversation with a leader coach, we discussed several ways to understand how different members on a team function. This coach shared with me the following diagram.

Decision process

The diagram captures how people on a team can process and make decisions. For example, there are people who are rapid in processing the elements of the decision, but are slow to ultimately make the decision. It’s not that one column or way of processing and deciding is better than all the others.  The ultimate purpose of the grid is to help a person on a team learn from others and know how best to manage or navigate the  decision making process with others.

This is where the insight came for me. Rapid processors and rapid decision makers can digdeeperlearn a lot from ‘digging deeper’ into an issue through the help of those who process more slowly and take more time to make decisions.  However slow processors and slow decision makers can learn a lot from being ‘moved along’ in the journey towards a decision by those who process more rapidly so that a ‘divine opportunity’ is not missed because the team took too long to come to a decision.

Obviously, there is a lot of give and take needed in such a discussion. If we add in the other cultural elements in play from various members of a multicultural team, then the discussion can look extremely complex. However, that should not keep us from moving towards each other to learn from one another. A lot of times it begins by simply asking good questions to learn how others are processing a decision, and then seeing how that could impact our journey in the decision makingi process.

Filed under: Community, Decision making, Teams | 8 Comments »

Why three good players are better than one star player

Posted on July 5, 2016 by wtdavid

Those of us located in this part of the world have been taken up with the various matches of the Euro 2016 football championship over the past few weeks. European ‘football’ is what we call ‘soccer’ in some other parts of the world.  From the various groups or ‘pools’, sixteen teams emerge to play single elimination games leading to the final this coming Sunday.

People have been surprised by the rise of several lesser known teams who have gone ‘deep’ into the tournament. One of those lesser known teams actually played one powerhouse of the European football world to a tie, and beat another one to advance to the next round.

At that point, everyone began asking: “How could this team beat such a highly favored one?”  In part, the Dimitri-Payet-answer lay in team-work.  A solid group of good players, with no star, drew on the resources of everyone on the team to be able to defeat a powerhouse whose lineup contained a number of star players.

One of the reasons for including ‘teams’ as one of our guiding principles (see the World Team Ministry Framework) is to emphasize how God calls us to work and minister. When God calls us to Himself, He calls us into a body or community of believers. God does not look at us as individual ‘stars’, but as members and workers of a larger community that acknowledge their need for one another.  As a community, we pool our gifts together to create a greater dynamic than we could accomplish by ourselves as individuals.  All for the glory of God’s kingdom.

The apostle Paul put it is this way: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  (1 Corinthians 12)

How might you demonstrate this week the team principle that ‘three are better than one’? What can you ‘bring’ to your next team meeting that will empower and strengthen the other members of your team?

Filed under: Community, Teams | Leave a comment »

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