{"id":822,"date":"2009-04-05T23:38:53","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T03:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=822"},"modified":"2009-04-05T23:38:53","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T03:38:53","slug":"book-review-the-power-of-team-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=822","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Power of Team Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ABSTRACT<\/strong><\/p>\n

God did not create us to do life alone.\u00a0 In his book, The Power of Team Leadership<\/a>, George Barna lays out many of the benefits of working as a part of a team.\u00a0 All throughout the Bible, there are many stories of God moving in a community or a fellowship of believers.\u00a0 Pastors and leaders can avoid the pitfalls that are lurking for those that adopt a lone ranger leadership style.<\/p>\n

George Barna is well known for surveys and statistics.\u00a0 He spent the first part of the book identifying the problem that many churches face when the staff and the pastor attempt to go it alone.\u00a0 The middle section of the book talks about all of the benefits of working as a team.\u00a0 The final section of The Power of Team Leadership focuses on implementation of teams and shares some land mines to avoid in the process.<\/p>\n

Many great ministry leaders burn out because they are hired based on their strengths, but often required to serve as leaders in areas that they are weak.\u00a0 Barna asks if we are setting up pastors for failure by sticking to this solo leadership model rather than recognizing the talents and abilities sitting right there in the pew in front of the pastor week after week.\u00a0 Even the most dynamic leaders have areas that they are weak in.\u00a0 Our society is known for encouraging people to just suck it up and figure it out.<\/p>\n

Barna points out, \u201cA major advantage of being led by a team is that the results almost always transcend what any individual from that team could have produced without the assistance of the other leaders involved in that team. \u201d\u00a0 No matter how charismatic or skilled your leader is, there will always be areas of their ministry that could be stronger.\u00a0 That is where a leader must be willing to ask for help.<\/p>\n

Many leaders feel like it is admitting defeat to ask someone to serve alongside them in order to carry out the vision of the church.\u00a0 Barna was quick to point out the teams that allowed Moses, Nehemiah, Joshua, and others to be remembered as great leaders.<\/p>\n

The middle of the book focuses on vision and the importance of focusing on the task at hand.\u00a0 There are also some specifics about how teams should be made up and the different aptitudes of a leader.\u00a0 It is important to realize that a poorly organized team can often be worse than no team at all.\u00a0\u00a0 It takes a good combination of talents and abilities in order to execute the vision of the organization.\u00a0 Simply getting along is not a good enough standard for team building.<\/p>\n

Barna points out three qualifications he looks for in building a team.\u00a0 He said that you must look for people \u201cwho have been called by God to lead, who have godly character, and who possess the competencies to help people fulfill God\u2019s vision for the group.\u00a0 \u201c\u00a0 If any of those areas are missing, that person will not be able to help the team accomplish their goals.<\/p>\n

The rest of the book is spent explaining the benefits of team leadership and things to consider when implementing teams in your ministry.\u00a0 Barna doesn\u2019t claim that the transformation to team leadership is an easy one, but he does prove that it is a necessary change to fulfill the vision of the ministry.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

CONCRETE RESPONSE<\/strong><\/p>\n

This book did a great job unpacking all of the benefits of working as a part of a team.\u00a0 I have grown up playing a variety of sports and have always enjoyed being a part of a team atmosphere.\u00a0 I have all of the t-shirts that say, \u201cThere is no \u2018I\u2019 in Team\u201d and \u201cTEAM means Together Everyone Achieves More\u201d.\u00a0 Barna did a great job detailing all of the benefits of teamwork, but I am not sure that I heard anything new or revolutionary.<\/p>\n

In my work as a Christian school administrator, it has been exciting to see how we have been able to integrate teams into our planning over the last few years.\u00a0 Our school is accredited by a variety of associations and we have certain things that we must do to renew our accreditation each year.\u00a0 One of these governing bodies puts out a list of standards and rubrics that schools will be graded on.\u00a0 In order to be fully accredited, you must be compliant in every standard that applies to your particular school.<\/p>\n

At our school, we have decided that rather than just being compliant, we would rather exceed compliance in each area.\u00a0 We have a nine-member board of directors and a twelve-member administrative council.\u00a0 We could take these groups and charge them with the task of assessing each area and putting a plan together to help our school reach excellence in each area.<\/p>\n

However, we would be pretty foolish to think that those twenty-one people could express all the great ideas in the school.\u00a0 Instead, we have decided to tap into the one hundred and twenty-five staff members we have and organize them into teams to accomplish this task. We have sixteen teams that will be focusing on areas such as governance, philosophy, crisis management, spiritual development, safety and school health, and personnel.<\/p>\n

Administrative council members lead some of the school improvement teams and other staff members lead some.\u00a0 There is a nice mix of people on each team.\u00a0 Some of them are heavily involved in that particular area and some of them are completely new to the area they are working in.\u00a0 We are only about seven weeks into our school improvement teams, but so far the process has been very interesting.\u00a0 We have grown a lot more already than we every would have if we had just relied on those twenty-one people we started with.<\/p>\n

REFLECTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

As an athlete, a coach, a youth minister, and now an administrator, I have been to tons of conferences and seminars on team building.\u00a0 It seems that each month someone comes out with a new way of doing teams or a revolutionary way to achieve your desired results.\u00a0 One of the major pitfalls I see for most organizations is a failure to follow through with the team approach.<\/p>\n

Barna talked about the fact that many churches will head towards building teams only to get frustrated and revert back to the old style of solo leadership.\u00a0 That does more damage than anything because you have convinced people that their input matters and then shut the door on them just when the team starts to gel.<\/p>\n

I think the biggest pitfall for team-based ministry is the amount of noise out there right now focusing on teams.\u00a0 Is it better to listen to George Barna, John Maxwell, Patrick Lencioni, or Seth Godin?\u00a0 Should your team leader be equal to the rest of the team in the organizational chart or should they be in a higher authority role?<\/p>\n

I appreciate the fact that Barna did address one of the largest landmines in team-based ministry.\u00a0 A lot of organizations tend to find that one charismatic leader that everyone loves and run them into the group.\u00a0 They are asked to be on multiple teams because people feel that they have so much to offer.\u00a0 Barna encourages the church to only let people serve on one team at a time.\u00a0 Otherwise, their passion will be divided and they won\u2019t be very effective for any team.<\/p>\n

Barna discussed the process of disbanding a team once their mission had been accomplished.\u00a0 I would have like to have seem him spend some time talking about what to do in the case that a team just never worked.\u00a0 Occasionally a team is not able to come together to carry out the vision it has been charged with.\u00a0 One of the major downfalls in a lot of organizations is not knowing when to pull the plug on an ineffective team.<\/p>\n

ACTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Power of Team Leadership was a great reminder for me of the benefits of working as a part of a team.\u00a0 I was also reminded of some areas that I currently lead that would be better served by developing a team approach.<\/p>\n

I am responsible for Student Life at our school. The Student Life Program is designed to connect students and to create environments for them to build relationships and grow in Christ. Our desire is to give our students an opportunity to develop a Biblical worldview. We do that through a variety of academic, athletic, arts programs. Our Student Life program comes alongside our students to encourage and equip them in their walk with Christ.<\/p>\n

One of the major ministries that falls in this area is chapel.\u00a0 We have chapel each week on Wednesday mornings for our middle and upper school students.\u00a0 They chapels meet separately for about an hour each.\u00a0 Throughout the year a variety of people participate in our chapel by leading worship, speaking, and otherwise helping communicate God\u2019s truth to our students.\u00a0 I get informal input throughout the year from our teachers, students, and families.\u00a0 Occasionally a group of us will sit down to develop a particular chapel series or event.<\/p>\n

I realize that it would be more effective to have a chapel team that met regularly throughout the year.\u00a0 This group should be made up of six to eight people including both teachers and students.\u00a0 If the group met once a month, we could spend half of our meeting fine-tuning the chapels that are coming in the next couple of weeks and the other half doing some long-range planning and dreaming.\u00a0 This strategy would afford us the best opportunity to reach those that are far from God for His glory so that they could experience new life in Christ.\u00a0 It would also allow us to have a more effective discipleship strategy for those students that are already Christ-followers.<\/p>\n

In response to reading The Power of Team Leadership, I will take time to pray about who God would lead me to invite to participate in this chapel leadership team.\u00a0 When we return from spring break in two weeks, I will organize a meeting of this team so that we can work together to make sure our last five chapels of this school year are the best that they can possibly be!<\/p>\n

It is exciting to see how God is working in the lives of people around us.\u00a0 I believe that God desires for us to harness the power of community and use our combined efforts to reach people for His glory.\u00a0 God created us to live in community and to serve others in such a way that they too would be attracted to having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ABSTRACT God did not create us to do life alone.\u00a0 In his book, The Power of Team Leadership, George Barna lays out many of the benefits of working as a part of a team.\u00a0 All throughout the Bible, there are many stories of God moving in a community or a fellowship of believers.\u00a0 Pastors and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-leadership","category-seminary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}