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 
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?
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Yesterday, I offered for anyone from the team here to come and pray with me for the World Team Day of Prayer. It was kind of last minute, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who called and said they would have come if they had known sooner.
bring others with you.” I could have thought of a lot of other answers to those questions than prayer. If you had asked me: “Do you want to be part of God’s reclaiming the world for himself?” I might have answered: “Then join World Team!” The better answer is prayer!
essential.
