March 13, 2012
“All hands on deck!” You’ve heard this term before. It comes for the shipping world. It’s one of the terms sailors use that we can speak and write about without getting in trouble. This is an important one, though. I’m no marine expert and I certainly don’t know much about the mechanics of ships. But we all know that it takes many hands and efficient teamwork to operate one. Operating most ships is often too big of a job for one person.
Part of the team strategy on a ship is to recognize when each role and task must become secondary to the most important need at hand. It’s not that the other roles are less important. It just that effective teams know that a concentrated and saturated effort in one location, towards one task, is often needed. On a ship, the difference can mean life or death. In a church, the difference can mean succeeding or failing on a Sunday morning.
Last Sunday was a sight for sore eyes. You see, after the second service I saw some 25 people or more respond to our worship leader’s request for help to tear down the stage. Lets face it, set up and tear down in portable environment is a hard and tiresome effort each week. When there’s a shortage of help guys can’t leave until late into the afternoon. Driving the trailers back to the offices takes another 2-3 hours on top of that each Sunday.
But when the “all hands on deck” call was asked for by Alan last Sunday, you guys responded. You responded not as individuals doing their own thing, but as fellow shipmates, on the same boat, who needed to bring focused attention and effort to the here and now need. Tear down was done within 45 minutes or less that morning.
According to the Bible, the church is to operate like a team sport. Listen to this insight from the team playbook:
Under the control of Christ, each part of the body does its work. It supports the other parts. In that way, the body is joined and held together. (Ephesians 4:16)
You lived that out last Sunday -way to go BridgePointe! Like operating most ships, BridgePointe is too big for one person. This is not my church; it is our church. Thank you for being astute to the needs of the ship we are all on as mates. Contact the church office if you can be in the rotation for the driving of our trailers, either to or from the school campus on Sunday. No special license needed. (wendy.synder@bridgepointe.org)
We are most likely to succeed as a church when “all hands are on deck” when needed.
