How do you spell team? For one group attending my Team Building deeper-learning track at Group’s children’s ministry conference, KidMin, it was with full body language. Yes, when given the challenge to demonstrate a strong ministry team, they decided to spell it out by shaping the letters. (Oh, my aching back.)

These people discovered that effective ministry teams are intentional about WHY they work together. They spent time as a team answering, defining, and agreeing on these three questions:
• Who are we?
• Why do we exist?
• Who do we serve?

What about your ministry teams? Have they worked through these questions?

I recall a recent experience when I was asked to be part of the church nominating committee. After attending three meetings I still didn’t know anything about the people on the team, which positions we were trying to fill, and how this work helped the church accomplish its mission.

Helping teams answer these three questions moves them into high-performance mode. They’ll experience a common sense of purpose, shared vision, and a direction and strategy to accomplish their work. It also usually means the team has created a measurable plan to accomplish their work.

To make this happen, leaders must understand the importance of casting and recasting the vision and purpose of the team. People lose sight of the macro vision when they get caught up on the micro details and tasks.

Nehemiah demonstrated the importance of recasting and reminding his team of the vision. As his team worked to rebuild the wall day after day they would begin to forget why they were doing what they were doing. So Nehemiah would continually remind them of the vision to keep them focused and energized.

You don’t have to have your team members get on the floor to spell out team success. Just have them work through these three questions for greater team impact.