How to develop key people

"You have to learn to share." Coaxing from my mom didn't convince me. Nor did seminary discussions on servant leadership.

Only when I decided to move our church to a team-based ministry did I begin to learn what shared ministry really meant. In the past I would have argued our church was team-friendly, but we weren't. Teams, I discovered, are mostly about sharing—sharing goals and sharing life. It takes the first to act like a team and the second to feel like a team.

Sharing goals
Team members, of course, need to accomplish something to feel productive. Like the players of any sports team, each needs to know that she or he has executed the play and seen some results. But drift and entropy are constant threats.

Each year every staff person develops a MAP—a Ministry Action Plan. These plans are distributed to the entire staff, and then each person discusses his MAP with his or her ministry team. When the tyranny of the urgent begins to crowd ...