Why Busy Teams Aren’t Always Fruitful Teams

Church teams stay busy with meetings to attend, programs to run, people to care for, emails to answer, services to plan, and problems to solve. We stay so busy that we can lose sight of the question that matters most: Are we actually accomplishing what God has called us to do?

• That brings us to the final characteristic of a healthy team in this series: a shared focus on results. In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni warns that teams become unhealthy when individual interests, departmental priorities, recognition, or personal agendas begin to matter more than the collective goals of the organization. Churches face the same danger.

Ministry results cannot be reduced to numbers. We cannot manufacture spiritual growth or control what God chooses to do. But neither should churches confuse activity with fruitfulness. Healthy teams know what they are trying to accomplish and keep bringing their attention back to what matters most, the mission.

Five Ways to Keep Your Team Focused on the results

1. Define what you are trying to accomplish

• A team cannot stay focused on results if nobody can clearly describe the goal. Too many church teams operate with vague goals like, “Have a good ministry year,” “Reach more people,” or “Make the program better.”
• Healthy teams get more specific. What are we trying to accomplish? What would progress look like? How will we know whether this ministry is helping people take the next step toward Jesus? Clarity gives a team something concrete to pursue together.

2. Keep the mission above your ministry

• One of the easiest traps in church leadership is to begin protecting our particular ministry, program, budget, idea, or area of responsibility. But the goal is not for my ministry to win. The goal is for the mission to move forward.
• Philippians 2 calls us to reject selfish ambition and look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others. On a healthy team, that means being willing to ask hard questions about something I lead if another use of time, money, volunteers, or energy would serve the church’s larger mission better.

3. Offer high grace and hold high expectations

• Hebrews 12:6 reminds us that “the Lord disciplines the one he loves.” Love and high expectations are not enemies. Just as Christians who are offered grace are expected to live fruitfully for God, so it is true within Christian teams as well.
• Grace is not a license for laziness. We forgive mistakes, but we also help people grow.

4. Celebrate team wins more than individual wins

• Teams lose their focus when personal recognition begins to matter more than the collective mission. Unhealthy teams focus on these questions: Who gets the credit? Whose idea gets chosen? Whose ministry gets the budget? Who gets recognized publicly?
• Healthy teams keep redirecting attention toward the shared win. When the church moves forward, we all win. That means leaders should celebrate people who contribute to the mission, especially when they do so quietly, collaboratively, or at some cost to their own preferences.

5. remember who produces the ultimate results

• There is a tension Christian leaders need to hold carefully. Results matter. But results are not ultimately ours to control. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:6, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”
• That keeps us from two opposite errors. We should not become passive and say, “Results are up to God, so it does not really matter whether our ministry is effective.” But neither should we act as though the future of Christ’s church depends entirely on our strategic brilliance. We plant. We water. We evaluate. We adjust. But we trust God to bring growth.

Healthy teams do not become distracted by ego, turf, activity, or recognition. They keep asking the same question together: Are we faithfully accomplishing the mission God has given us? That may be one of the most important questions your team can ask.

• What result is your team trying to produce right now? Does everyone know what it is? And what might you need to stop, start, or change in order to pursue it more faithfully?