There Is No I In Team

Mike Hosey, Elder

Her refusal to be part of our team shocked me that evening. I was genuinely taken aback. At 19, I prided myself on hard work and mission accomplishment, and I thought everyone else should share those values, too.  In all of the places I had worked before, everyone had always cooperated with one another.

But not this night.  

I was the crew leader for the deli of a large grocery store outside of Houston, TX. My job was to manage the nightshift. On this night, the floor of the deli had become littered. Since it needed to be presentable to our customers, I asked one of the women in my charge to clean up her floor space while I tended to other duties. She replied, "I was hired to slice meat, not pick up trash."

Of course, she was hired to do more than slice meat. But even if her statement had been true, it reflected a severe flaw in her ethics. She was concerned only for herself, and not for the mission of the store or her busy coworkers.  She possessed no team ethic, and apparently could not see how mission accomplishment for the store also meant eventual benefit to her.

That mindset can creep into the church as well.  We can become so focused on our own personal ministries, that we unconsciously belittle the ministries of others. Or we only participate in church when we are getting some personal benefit out of it. Or we won't be a part of some endeavor because we don't like the music, or the graphics, or the methods being used. And we don't see the bigger picture.

Paul warned the Philippians about this. He urged them to be a team -- to be of a single mind (Philippians 1:27 and Philippians 2:2). He told them not to do anything out of selfish ambition, and to look out not for their own interests, but rather, the interests of others (Philippians 2:3-5).

But perhaps his most telling statement comes in his praise for Timothy. In describing all the leaders under his influence, he said of Timothy, "I have no one else like him. He looks after the interests of Jesus, but everyone else looks after their own interests." (Philippians 2:20-22)

Timothy was a good team player who kept the mission in mind, and probably would have picked trash up off the floor!