The Church Revitalization Podcast – Episode 283

Effective ministry thrives on teamwork. Indeed, the health and effectiveness of your church’s mission are deeply connected to how well your team functions. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith originally identified five types of teams in their seminal work, The Wisdom of Teams, which has sold over 350,000 copies since its publication. Although originally intended for the corporate sector, their insights hold profound relevance for church leadership. Let’s explore these five team types in greater depth, offering practical, ministry-oriented guidance to help you move your church staff or elder board closer to the kind of teamwork God desires.

1. The Working Group: Independent but Coordinated

Working groups are common and essential in most churches. They’re efficient, task-oriented, and functional. Imagine your staff meeting on Monday morning: the worship pastor reports the setlist, the youth director recaps recent events, and the finance administrator gives budget updates. Each individual fulfills their responsibilities independently, without heavily relying on each other.

These groups are characterized by:

• Individual contributors coordinating around a common endpoint
• Little need for deep collaboration or mutual accountability
• Clear tasks but minimal interdependence
• Moderate effectiveness for routine operations

A good example would be an implementation team that meets monthly to review progress on specific initiatives. Each member brings their deliverable to the meeting, reports on it, and gets their assignment for the next month. At the end of the cycle, the group often disbands, and their work is reassigned to more permanent teams.

While beneficial for routine tasks, this independence can lead to missed opportunities for deeper collaboration. Scripture, in 1 Corinthians 12, emphasizes our call to operate as one interconnected body, highlighting the importance of unity and mutual dependence.

Key Tip: Use working groups for administrative efficiency, but deliberately foster deeper collaboration for spiritual and strategic objectives. Don’t feel obligated to call every group a “team” if that isn’t the expectation or need.

2. The Pseudo-Team: Looks Like a Team, Isn’t Really One

Pseudo-teams can be deceptive—they give the appearance of collaboration without genuine unity or clear direction. Meetings occur regularly, discussions happen, but there’s no unified vision or clear commitment. You might notice this when staff meetings become repetitive status updates without progressing toward collective goals, or elder boards that shy away from tough conversations due to underlying tensions.

These teams are characterized by:

• Lack of clear roles and responsibilities
• No real collaboration (leading to ministry silos)
• Absence of common goals
• No mutual accountability
• Lower effectiveness than even working groups

Sadly, many church teams—whether staff, elders, deacons, or volunteers—fall into this category. Team members often don’t know their exact role or purpose. Many deacon boards struggle with the fundamental question, “What does it mean to be a deacon here?” Staff members may be operating from outdated job descriptions that haven’t been revised in years.

Pseudo-teams drain energy and morale, producing frustration and stalled progress. They erode trust and effectiveness, ultimately hindering ministry growth and impact.

Key Tip: Address this openly by naming it directly. Engage the team in candid discussions to identify barriers and build genuine trust, moving intentionally toward authentic teamwork. Consider revisiting job descriptions, clarifying roles, and establishing mutual accountability.

3. The Potential Team: Growing into Collaboration

A potential team emerges during periods of new opportunities or challenges—perhaps launching a new ministry initiative, hiring new staff, or navigating significant strategic decisions. Excitement runs high, but roles and responsibilities aren’t yet clear, and collaboration may feel uneasy or unstructured.

These teams are characterized by:

• A temporary state of transition
• Presence of elements needed for success (vision, resources, purpose)
• Undefined roles that need clarification
• Effectiveness similar to working groups, but with growth potential

This stage often occurs when something new has launched or when team composition changes (like adding new elders or staff members). During this transition, performance may temporarily dip as new dynamics form, but with proper leadership, teams can quickly advance to the next level.

For example, your church might be initiating a discipleship program. Enthusiasm is abundant, but uncertainty about individual responsibilities, accountability, and decision-making processes still exists. Potential teams require intentional investment in clarifying roles, setting expectations, and cultivating trust.

James 1:4 reminds us of the value of perseverance, which matures and prepares us for greater impact. Embracing the discomfort of this stage can yield powerful growth.

Key Tip: Spend unstructured time together outside of regular meetings. Retreats, shared meals, or other informal gatherings create opportunities for relationships to develop naturally. If your team never has unstructured time together and every interaction revolves around an agenda, you significantly reduce your chances of moving from a potential team to a real team. Also, clearly define roles, set clear expectations, and invest time in team-building to transform potential into real collaboration.

4. The Real Team: Authentic Unity in Purpose

Real teams represent genuine collaboration and unity, utilizing complementary strengths and committed accountability to achieve shared goals. Consider your church’s Christmas service: musicians, tech staff, pastors, and volunteers seamlessly work together, each fully invested in the unified purpose of glorifying God and serving the congregation.

These teams are characterized by:

• Clear responsibilities for all members
• Good communication and unified purpose
• Mutual accountability for team results
• Understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses
• Complementary roles that fit each person’s abilities
• High effectiveness and strong results

In real teams, all the key elements of teamwork are present, and everyone participates with genuine effort and good faith. Members are finding their “lane” within the team, knowing where they excel and how their contribution fits with others’. As discussed in the podcast, worship teams often exemplify this level, with different musicians playing different parts to create a unified whole.

Real teams embody Ephesians 4:16, demonstrating harmonious cooperation that fosters mutual growth, strengthens bonds, and enhances ministry effectiveness.

Key Tip: Foster real teams by clearly articulating roles, nurturing trust, and consistently reminding everyone of the shared mission of gospel advancement. Allow team members to operate in their areas of strength while acknowledging and supporting others in their areas of weakness.

5. The High-Performance Team: Kingdom Excellence in Action

High-performance teams represent exceptional unity, characterized by deep spiritual maturity, trust, and remarkable results. These teams consistently surpass expectations through sacrificial collaboration and Christ-centered humility. Imagine an elder board navigating a challenging crisis, emerging stronger and leading the congregation into renewal and revitalization.

These teams are characterized by:

• Genuine affection and care among team members
• Willingness to sacrifice for one another
• Going beyond assigned responsibilities to help others
• High trust and spiritual maturity
• Exceptional results that exceed normal expectations
• Profound impact on ministry effectiveness

The key difference between real teams and high-performance teams is the depth of relationship and genuine love team members have for one another. Research consistently shows that high-performance teams are marked by members who go far beyond what would be expected because they genuinely care about each other’s success.

This isn’t merely about liking each other, though that matters. It’s about the kind of sacrificial love Jesus spoke about repeatedly—the willingness to put others before yourself even when it’s inconvenient or costly. When you find a high-performance team, you find a team that is doing far beyond what would be expected of them to do for one another because they genuinely love one another.

High-performance teams reflect Philippians 2:3-4, consistently placing others above themselves, demonstrating humility, and maintaining unwavering focus on Christ’s mission. These teams rarely form spontaneously—they result from deliberate, prayerful efforts to foster spiritual growth, mutual accountability, and servant leadership.

Key Tip: Cultivate high-performance teams through intentional spiritual formation, focused prayer, servant leadership training, and ongoing relational investments. Foster curiosity about one another—the more team members know about each other, the more likely they are to develop genuine affection and care.

Practical Applications for Your Church

Not every church task requires the intensity and depth of a high-performance team. Discernment is key in determining which team type suits your current ministry context:

Routine Operations: Regular tasks such as weekly meetings or administrative duties thrive with structured working groups.

Important Initiatives: Strategic initiatives or new ministry launches require the coordinated collaboration of a real team.

Critical Moments: Crisis management, major transitions, or significant strategic decisions demand the intentional pursuit of high-performance team dynamics.

Next Steps for Your Leadership

1. Evaluate honestly: Consider where your various teams (staff, elders, deacons, volunteers) currently fall on this spectrum.

2. Observe dynamics: Take time over the next month to observe how your teams function without immediately sharing these concepts.

3. Address deficiencies: If you identify pseudo-teams, have the courage to name the issue and begin addressing the underlying problems.

4. Invest in relationships: Create opportunities for unstructured time together to build the relationships that form the foundation of high-performance teams.

5. Clarify roles and vision: Ensure everyone understands their specific contribution and how it connects to the overall mission.

Take an honest moment to evaluate your current team situation. Are you unknowingly settling for pseudo-team dynamics, or is God calling you toward deeper unity and greater effectiveness?

As church leaders, we steward not only God’s people but His mission as well. Embrace the rewarding challenge of cultivating teams that reflect biblical unity, collaboration, humility, and love. By doing so, you’ll experience the fullness of effective ministry that God has in store for your church.

Watch this episode on YouTube!

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Episode Transcript:

A.J. Mathieu [00:00:00]:
Five types of teams today on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs group team, where each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now here’s your hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu.

Scott Ball [00:00:23]:
Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I’m joined by my friend and cohost, A.J. Mathieu.

A.J. Mathieu [00:00:30]:
Good day.

Scott Ball [00:00:30]:
Alright. Today, we’re talking about teamwork teamwork. And, so cards on the table. Are you are you a a kind of guy that likes books, A.J.?

A.J. Mathieu [00:00:42]:
Well, I

Scott Ball [00:00:44]:
know that you should.

A.J. Mathieu [00:00:44]:
From the book. That depends on the book. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:00:46]:
Yeah. I like this one. This one is called The Wisdom of Teams. I’m holding it up if you’re watching the the video version by Katzenbach and Smith. It is a business book. It is about creating a high performance organization. This version that I have, it’s like a third edition, I think, and it first came out in ’93. The current the version I’m holding up here is from 02/2003.

Scott Ball [00:01:12]:
And as of 02/2003, A.J., it had sold 350,000 copies. So, it’s a good one. So if you, if you’re interested in team building books, might I commend you to read this one? And one of the the things that he they talk about in this book that I found really helpful and in fact, when I do trainings with elder teams, I I share a chart from the from the book that I’ll we’ll try our best to include it in the article today as well if we can. There are these you said five types of teams, and that’s true. But if you wanna think of it, it’s almost like five levels of team. You know, like, five, five levels. There there are different kinds of teams. Levels.

Scott Ball [00:01:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so, if you this is this is very helpful concepts. If you have a volunteer team that you’re leading, if you have a board that you’re leading, if you have a staff that you’re leading, these concepts translate in all of those environments. And what I’d love for you to do as you listen to this episode is try to figure out which of these five, types of team is your team right now. It doesn’t have to stay that way. It’s often not static.

Scott Ball [00:02:29]:
You can kinda move between this, these levels of effectiveness. But what are you right now, and what would it take for you to become just to cheat and look ahead, you know, to become a high performance team, which is sort of the pinnacle of excellence? What do you what needs to change about your team in order to to get to that fifth type that we’ll talk about today. So that’s the scope of today’s episode. We’re gonna we’re gonna run you through these five different types of teams. Be thinking about where is your team right now, and be thinking about various teams. You could your staff team might be in one setting. Your elder team might be somewhere else. The volunteer teams might be somewhere else entirely as well.

Scott Ball [00:03:08]:
So you can think about all of those contexts.

A.J. Mathieu [00:03:10]:
Yep. I think the I think the real value here is the granularity of five types. Because a lot of our default thought is, like, okay. There’s a group of people supposed to be working together to do something. Are they effective or not? It’s almost it’s kinda like we have two types of teams. So we’ve got those that end up producing what they need to and those that don’t. And so I I do like I like these five, and I think our viewers, listeners will, be able to dig in more to this because they’re gonna be thinking then, like, oh. And there’s there there’s kind of there’s some unique elements happening between the perhaps not high performing team and those that are ours.

Scott Ball [00:03:49]:
Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:03:49]:
This is gonna be a great episode.

Scott Ball [00:03:51]:
Hey. Before we dive into the first type of team, just wanna, briefly remind those of you listening and watching, to go to healthychurchesToolkit.com and sign up. There’s there are great resources in there to help you become a higher performing team. So, there’s elder training in there. There’s leadership pipeline design training in there, and as well as, a lot of resources in the resource library that are geared towards helping teams get better at being a healthy team. So, go to healthychurchesToolkit.com. Sign up for a seven day free trial. Check out the resources in there, and, it’s a good supplement to what we’re talking about today in the podcast.

Scott Ball [00:04:30]:
Let me I’m going to put I’m going to, like, literally show the page of the book. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll get the benefit of seeing this, but I’ll describe it for those of you who are not watching on YouTube and you’re listening in the car. So there are these five types of teams, and we’ll we’ll talk through each of them. It starts with a a working group, the working group, and, and that has a low to moderate effectiveness level. The second type of team actually goes down in effectiveness, and this is a pseudo team, which we’ll talk about what what are the markers of that? The third type of team is a potential team, and it is it is rated as about the same level of effectiveness as a working group, as the kind of people who don’t even call themselves a team. Then you have a real team, which is a a, relatively speaking, pretty high performing group of folks, and then the high performance team. And we’ll talk about what differentiates the two. How do you go from being a real team to a high performance team? And so it’s it’s this interesting sort of chart that shows that when you when you move from a working group to a team, it is actually possible for you to be less effective than if you weren’t to call yourself a team at all.

Scott Ball [00:05:46]:
So we’re gonna dive into those dynamics and, how does that happen and why does that happen? So, with that, do we wanna maybe just hop into the first one there with the

A.J. Mathieu [00:05:55]:
working first one. So, I guess if you’re if you’re didn’t have the benefit of seeing that, it’s basically the letter j. Has kind of another curve at the top.

Scott Ball [00:06:04]:
Yeah. I guess.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:05]:
So we’re starting on the, you know, like, the point of the of the j before it curves down. And that’s a working group. So as Scott just pointed out, people have they’re not even really described as a team. Though using the word team has become much more popular the last twenty years. So they might they might actually, you might end up thinking about something in your church. Like, you know what? We call everybody a team, but they’re not really. And it would be Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:06:32]:
This has become very popular, actually. Like, oh, we don’t we don’t have committees. We have teams. Well Like, alright.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:37]:
We’ve been proponents of that language.

Scott Ball [00:06:39]:
Totally. Totally.

A.J. Mathieu [00:06:41]:
To promote, really, what we’re describing today, better working relationships between the members and working towards common goals in a more organized fashion. And better work fair

Scott Ball [00:06:54]:
And to be self critical a little bit, if if the particular group of people you’re talking about doesn’t need to be a team, we maybe don’t even need to call it a team. It doesn’t we don’t need to call it a team.

A.J. Mathieu [00:07:04]:
We’re doing the term team a disservice.

Scott Ball [00:07:06]:
We’re doing the term team a disservice. We’re doing the group a disservice by calling them a team if that isn’t even the expectation. So, you know, working group is has a particular function. It’s usually sort of an ad hoc group. You know, we’ve got this event that we’re we’re running, and we need a group of people to come together to execute and plan this event. Well, I mean, they they don’t need to be a team. There’s no reason for that. They can just be a working group.

Scott Ball [00:07:34]:
They they’re individual contributors. They coordinate around a common end point, but they’re not a team. Like, there’s no, like, need for them to do life together or there’d be mutual accountability or any of these other things that make a team a team. They they just need to be an individual contributor to the particular project.

A.J. Mathieu [00:07:54]:
Yeah. So, but the thing about this is it it might have potential. It might have potential to move beyond that. I suppose it would depend on what their common tasks and goals are, together and what the longevity is gonna be of working together. But, yeah, I guess sometimes there might be a case in which we just need to call it a group where where we work together. We’re not necessarily a team.

Scott Ball [00:08:19]:
I mean, what we call an implementation team many times is more like a working group.

A.J. Mathieu [00:08:25]:
You know,

Scott Ball [00:08:25]:
they get together once a month. Mhmm. They do their monthly implementation review. They’re expected to bring their task, their deliverable, what they were supposed to work on to the to that group, report on it and, you you know, kinda get their marching orders for the next month. But then at the end of that twelve month cycle, most of the time, that group disbands, and the work of that group is reassigned to more permanent teams that own own those areas and are iterating on those projects over a longer period of time. So, I mean, I think it’s okay. It’s just semantics to call it an implementation team isn’t the end of the world. But just recognizing that in function, it’s more like a working group than it is an actual team.

A.J. Mathieu [00:09:08]:
Yeah. And we do promote accountability in the implementation teams and the overall strategic leadership team in our context. And so that’s good. We also promote, of course, we’re talking about church context. We promote prayer, within the teams, and, celebration of wins. So I think when you bring these concepts into the church, we add some elements, especially in the way we teach, we add some elements that perhaps could be more team promotion than working group. But, you know, I think the the leader of these teams and, and the players can can make the difference in how they relate to one another. But anyway, yeah, there we go.

A.J. Mathieu [00:09:55]:
Alright, let’s move on to the next one, Scott, which is the low point on that J curve down at the bottom of the pseudo team. Looks like a team but isn’t really one. I think this is an interesting thing and maybe a bit of a punch in the gut for for some groups that might be working together that it has the appearance of collaboration without real unity or clear direction. So this could have even been a working group was assembled maybe by a manager, a leader, but not really given good tools or direction. And, you know, so perhaps that person that organized this for a function, they’re like, alright. I’ve put together a working group maybe, or what they thought was gonna be a working group or a or a team, but not given the tools or the instructions or the vision. They might start working together, but they’re at the low point of of this description because they don’t really have what they need to begin functioning together as a team. So, you know, it could be the fault of, again, somebody that’s not on the team but assembled it incorrectly or without, you know, good foresight, or it could be, you know, the results of the team leader or the even the people together.

A.J. Mathieu [00:11:09]:
Like, what exactly are we doing here?

Scott Ball [00:11:11]:
So I’m gonna make a bold statement, and, and a, maybe a, a gross generalization and suggest that, at least a plurality, if not an outright majority of teams in churches are pseudo teams.

A.J. Mathieu [00:11:29]:
I would agree. I think there’s a lot

Scott Ball [00:11:31]:
for, for, for the following reasons. And I’m talking about, and I’m talking about staff teams. I’m talking about elder teams. I’m talking about deacon boards. I’m talking I mean, volunteer teams. The things that it takes to re to make a real team, which we’ll talk about, I guess, in a minute, but, I mean, they don’t have cleared roles. What what is my job? What is it that I do? The number of deacon boards that I encounter that go, like, we I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what it means to be a deacon here.

Scott Ball [00:11:59]:
I’m not sure what my job is. Elders too. I feel that way. Staff too. Staff going like I mean, I got the job description for when they hired me, but I haven’t had an updated job description in ten years. I don’t know what my job is. How can you hold people accountable to a standard that you haven’t defined? People do their individual work, but this is why you have silos in ministry, because people go, well, I’m just doing my thing. There’s no real collaboration.

Scott Ball [00:12:26]:
There aren’t clear common goals. They aren’t setting plans together. They aren’t holding one another accountable. In a mutual accountability. It doesn’t mean other people hold me individually accountable for my responsibility. Mutual accountability is when we all hold one another together accountable for the group’s performance. There’s a team element or a group component to it. When we rise, we rise together.

Scott Ball [00:12:54]:
When we fail, we fail together. That’s what mutual accountability is, not just individual accountability. And I would contend to that when you’re talking about an elder team or a deacon team or a staff team, in most churches, you don’t see any of that. And so you don’t have collaboration. You don’t have clearly defined roles. You don’t have clear vision. You don’t have mutual accountability. All of those things are recipes for what defines a pseudo team, and they are actually less effective than if you were to just say, we’re not even a team.

Scott Ball [00:13:23]:
Everybody just show up, do your part, and leave, which is more like a working group. So I guess my contention or maybe the heart behind why you’d wanna do this episode in the first place, A.J., is my heart breaks for the fact that it isn’t just that, wow, we need to help most churches just get to that last level from the real team to the high performance team. It’s that they’re actually all the way down at the bottom of their effectiveness. They could there are there are degrees of greatness that they are missing out on, because they’re just so far away from all of the things that it takes to be successful.

A.J. Mathieu [00:13:58]:
Yeah. And there’s so many reasons for it. I mean, just lack of mission, clarity and mission, lack of clarity and vision, lack of resources, lack of just basic direction, lack of accountability. I mean, there’s just so many things that cause it to be there, and we just see them over and over and over where we get burned out volunteers. So yeah.

Scott Ball [00:14:22]:
Burned out staff. Yep. Who wants to become a deacon? I don’t even know what that means. I mean, it’s it just it breaks my heart. It’s it’s one of the things that motivates why I do, why I wanna be part of this team at the Melfors Group because I really think we we help teams turn around. And, so yeah. So a pseudo team, I’m gonna make the case. It’s a generalization, and I don’t wanna offend anybody, but that the majority or at least a plurality of church teams are actually pseudo teams and not real teams.

A.J. Mathieu [00:14:53]:
Yeah. I think that’s something that needed to be said. The third one, the third team that we’re talking about is a potential team that could be growing into co into collaboration together. This is kind of a temporary state, and you’re not gonna permanently be a potential team. You’re either going to move up into a real team, or you’re gonna fall back into one of the we’ve already talked about. But a potential team, you know, I mean, it it’s that upon launch. You don’t become a potential team, you know, three years into working together. It’s this is something new, most likely, most scenarios.

A.J. Mathieu [00:15:25]:
Something new has been launched, and it at least has been fed the elements that could allow it to become a real team, such as some of the the deficiencies I just mentioned. You know? It’s been given, perhaps, the vision for the future. They already they do know what their what the overall mission is, and perhaps they’ve even been resourced with what they need. And and then it it kind of it gets kicked off, you know. And where is it going to go? Well, it’s gonna go up if if they really solidify in unity around what we’re doing together, and maybe everybody finds their, you know, more niche y piece in it, or it’s gonna fall back down into something else or lesser, because they just they never really come together and, identify how they’re gonna work together.

Scott Ball [00:16:14]:
Yeah. That that all of that is right. I I think, you know, when you when you’re starting something new or or when the team changes, you know, you have two new elders joining your board. You may, for a season, kind of dip down to to potential team because there’s just not enough we haven’t had a chance to onboard people, and the dynamics change when you when you add new people. Same thing with the staff. If you, you know, increase the size of the staff or you add a new staff person, it it does create an environment where the team maybe dips slightly in performance for for a short period of time, but you can bounce back from that very quickly if you do all the things that you need to do. You know? They have a clear job description. They know what their role is.

Scott Ball [00:16:55]:
We’re holding everyone’s holding one another accountable. The team itself is being held accountable for results, etcetera. You can you can jump right back up into real team or or flounder down into that pseudo team, very quickly. That being said, you know, one of the things that is so important, especially if you wanna make that ultimate jump to high performance team, is that when you’re in that potential team phase, be sure that you spend unstructured time together. So you’ll hear talk about team building exercises and this kind of thing, which for the most part, I think is bogus.

A.J. Mathieu [00:17:31]:
Most people hate.

Scott Ball [00:17:33]:
Yeah. Most people hate it. The own maybe the most valuable thing about a team building exercise is the unity and the relational interaction that comes from people hating the team activity. The bonding that comes over resenting the fact that you’re doing trust falls or whatever. But there is real value in unstructured time together. This is especially true when you’re talking about an elder team or a staff team. That’s why retreats are good. You don’t always meet in the boardroom.

Scott Ball [00:18:07]:
You know? Go get in a van and have to drive two and a half hours down the road to Gatlinburg, you know, and and do your meeting in a in a cabin for for a weekend, or something like that. Because you you’re creating these opportunities for these relationships to grow where we start to to build care for one another and understanding of understanding people’s personalities, understanding their strengths. If we’re gonna hold one another accountable, we have to know one another in order to do that. So, if you if your team never has unstructured time together, every time that you’re interacting, it’s around an agenda, then you are increasing the likelihood that you don’t move from potential team to real team, that you that you fall down into that pseudo team state.

A.J. Mathieu [00:18:52]:
Yeah. Yep. That’s an important piece. Alright. So let’s let’s move on up. We’re we’re we’ve launched a team. It has potential. It’s got the the kind of the the seeds that it needs to grow, and we move up into our fourth team, and that’s a real team.

A.J. Mathieu [00:19:07]:
And I kind of like the sub name for this, authentic unity in purpose. And so, this potential team with understanding of, you know, what their goals are going to be have begun to develop, a level of relationship and trust with each other, and have really solidified and unified around this common purpose and goal. Another characteristic of this, I think, is the understanding of each other’s strengths. And and, I guess, you have to say weaknesses is the other side of that coin. Not that anybody probably is severely deficient anywhere, but that we’re finding, complimentary, strength weakness synergy sort of, where people can kinda fit into their their role or their lane on the team

Scott Ball [00:19:57]:
Mhmm.

A.J. Mathieu [00:19:57]:
Knowing I this is an area I’m really good at, and I’m allowed to operate in it. It’s useful for the team. I enjoy that. And I know having that maybe kind of that emotional intelligence of knowing what I’m this part that I’m playing also is helpful because somebody’s not quite there. And that’s okay because I recognize where their strength is. So these are some of the some of the elements of of getting into real team situation.

Scott Ball [00:20:23]:
Yeah. I mean, just think all the things that we’ve talked about so far that you would want in a team, those key elements that you’ve got. Clear responsibility, good communication, mutual accountability, unified purpose and and goals. All of those kind of key elements that make a team a team are all present, and nobody’s perfect. So you you you have bad days and good days and whatnot, but everybody’s there. Everybody’s doing it. Everybody’s, has a good faith intention of of fulfilling their role on the team. And and that’s what makes a real team a real team is is that genuine effort, that authentic unity and purpose.

Scott Ball [00:21:09]:
You know, as the subtitle says, that we there’s there’s a the elements are there, and everyone is participating is is the difference. So that that might make you think, well, then what is that not a high it sounds like a high performance team. Like, what all of the elements for teamwork are there, and everybody is, you know, enthusiastically collaborating and there’s unity, what what then is the difference between a real team and a high performance team? So maybe let’s explore that.

A.J. Mathieu [00:21:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. And maybe, you know, Scott, you and I kinda had an example, before we hit record, and, maybe a real team in the church, you might consider your worship band your team. A lot of times, you find that coming together, a real team coming together. I think music is just a really it’s a really good analogy for a team anyway. You know? I mean, the different the different players, the different parts to come up and produce this common thing, this piece of music, and, you know, that it can’t it can’t be done by one person. I guess it can by a guy on a synth.

Scott Ball [00:22:11]:
Yeah. Someone is doing it. Someone sitting at a computer desk, I guess.

A.J. Mathieu [00:22:14]:
Yeah. The old school guy with the harmonica and the bass drum on his back, and he’s playing the guitar. So, yeah. I guess you could be a a solo team. But, I mean, you know, seriously, a band is a great example, of of teamwork together, achieving a common goal together, and then this nuanced piece that elevates up to this high performance team. We I think the key element here begins to be real relationship. And in the church context, spiritual maturity with one another, and across the team, most likely. In the, in the example of of a band, we see this a lot in churches that, you know, the worship team really ends up kinda becoming if the church has, like, life groups, home groups, that kind of thing, small group ministry.

A.J. Mathieu [00:23:03]:
The worship team kinda ends up forming into their own life group together. And they’re spending time, you know, outside of rehearsals and and, worship services. They’re spending time together. They’re caring about one another, praying for one another, knowing each other’s struggles in, quote, unquote, real life. And so this is this is kind of the differentiator then. When you reach a high performance team level, you are focused on goals together, you understand each other well, and you care about each other enough to want each other to succeed in your place on the team. So I don’t know if that’s if that’s have we given yet, Scott, you can jump in here and probably add greater detail, the differentiation up to high performance team from real team.

Scott Ball [00:23:50]:
Yeah. It almost I think it almost sounds like, like it’s fake. Like, oh, it’s cute. Oh, the the real difference is if you like each other. Just love one another. But it’s it’s born out in research. I have multiple books on a shelf that’s that say the same thing, that the biggest difference between, an effective team and a high performance team is the degree to which the people on that team like each other, and are willing to sacrifice for one another. I mean, you can have a perfectly effective team where everybody is coming in and doing their job, doing it effectively, collaborating, communicating well, you know, but there isn’t an a brotherly affection, you know, for for one another where you where you would step outside and go above and beyond whatever your your responsibility is to the team in order to save someone else’s bacon.

Scott Ball [00:24:46]:
You know? And that is the difference. And I can’t tell you the number of of elder teams I’ve worked with, staff teams I’ve worked with, and you walk in the room and you can just feel it. That even though there’s results, the church is growing, you know, there were we’ve got nickels and noses. Those stats are all good. More participation in volunteers, more participation when at life group level. All of that. But you walk into the room and you can feel it. This is a competent team, but this is not a group that loves each other.

Scott Ball [00:25:17]:
And that’s the difference. And it it’s not rocket science. I mean, on the one hand, it does feel a little bit like it’s sort of Pollyanna and like, oh, if you just loved each other, it would be it would be better. But think this one through. If if I only care about or if the the limits of my participation in the team are my responsibility, that has a cap on it versus if I go, well, no. I also have a duty and an obligation to A.J. when he’s struggling. I I need to take care of my own things, but also how can I help A.J.? How can I go beyond my own responsibility to to help him when he’s in a crunch or for us to spend extra time together? Time’s up. You know? But, you know, we’re in a crisis.

Scott Ball [00:26:00]:
There’s a crisis. And the degree to which the team is willing to sacrifice for one another is the is that extra increase in performance and truly high performance. So every study that’s ever been done on this topic consistently shows that when you find a high performance team, you find a team that is doing far beyond what would be expected of them to do for one another because they love one another, because they trust it’s a high trust environment, and and they’re they there’s genuine affection and care, which I think is maybe it’s you know, the Bible is not a business book, but Jesus talks about this incessantly. And and you see it all throughout the New Testament, this call for that agape love, that brotherly love, that mutual affection. You know, I guess philios is the brotherly love. But, that that sacrificial love for one another, they the Lord talks about it so much, and the New Testament authors talk about it so much, because they saw how important it is to actually being able to build the kingdom. Real kingdom impact comes from not just doing your job, but truly caring for one another. Now you had made a point before we hit record, A.J., I wanted you to chat about this for a second.

Scott Ball [00:27:16]:
You had asked, well, what if there is good camaraderie and brotherly affection? Are they automatically a high performance team? And I think the answer to that is no because you also have to have good communication and mutual accountability and clear clear, lines of responsibility. You you need all the other teamwork things too. But when you layer on top of that that love for one another, it that’s the key difference. Sorry.

A.J. Mathieu [00:27:40]:
You were

Scott Ball [00:27:40]:
gonna say something.

A.J. Mathieu [00:27:41]:
No. That yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no. I was just thinking more, you know, about kind of, like, leadership lessons from Jesus. You know, sending out the 12 and and the 72, you know, were at least in pairs, when, you know, peep you can be a solo operator. But, you know, there’s Actually,

Scott Ball [00:27:59]:
that doesn’t say when he sends out the 12 that he sent them out in pairs.

A.J. Mathieu [00:28:02]:
Oh, does it not?

Scott Ball [00:28:03]:
Yeah. Ain’t that interesting? I have always assumed that, but it’s not explicitly Oh, yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:28:07]:
Okay. Well, maybe that’s a wrong assumption.

Scott Ball [00:28:08]:
It is in the 72, though. So one, I think it’s a reasonable assumption. I’m not trying to

A.J. Mathieu [00:28:13]:
Maybe a reasonable assumption.

Scott Ball [00:28:15]:
Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:28:15]:
And of course and there’s practical there was practical reasons too. I mean, there’s safety aspects. There’s all kinds of reasons to not just go by yourself, but that was gonna be an environment in which there’s a lot of walking. There’s a lot, you know, in between doing miracles in towns, you know, there was a lot of relationship building, likely. And so, yeah, I think there’s something to that. And, of course, you know, Paul Paul had people that he was doing ministry.

Scott Ball [00:28:41]:
Upper room discourse. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Where Jesus is like, hey. Love one another. I sorry. Not to I don’t I don’t wanna go down this rabbit trail. But I do think it’s interesting that in the culture, no one disagrees that Christians should be defined by love.

Scott Ball [00:28:56]:
I’m not disagreeing with that at all. But what’s interesting is all of those these these instructions about love in the new testament are primarily aimed at love for one another inside the body. That’s the instruction. Jesus’s prayer is that they would love one another. I I don’t mean to say that Jesus doesn’t want us to love of course he does. But his prayer is explicitly for the the fact that they would love one another. And you see this all throughout the New Testament. It’s love for one another that is that is then intended to be so contagious to the outside world that they would see how much that Christians care for one another that they would want to be a part of that.

Scott Ball [00:29:43]:
And Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:29:43]:
I mean, that’s I mean, that’s the essence of John 17. So at the end of chapter 17 is unity. I mean, he’s not he’s using the word unity there, not necessarily love, but, but I think, yeah, this unified church has a has a visual reflection to the world outside, and that reflection is supposed to be Christ.

Scott Ball [00:30:05]:
Yeah. No. He says he says in that same discourse that this he commands them to love one another, and that that same whole prayer about unity flows from that same instruction that there would be that they would love one another. So I guess the point I’m making is I I see a lot of teams that don’t in churches that don’t they don’t really love one another, if I’m being honest. They certainly don’t like each other. They might they might, on some level, love love one another. They feel some duty, but it’s not genuine affection.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:35]:
They got, like, the Christian obligated love.

Scott Ball [00:30:38]:
Yeah. I’m gonna love you.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:40]:
Fake it till you make it.

Scott Ball [00:30:41]:
Yeah. There’s some value to faking it till you make it.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:43]:
Sometimes there is. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:30:45]:
When it comes to love. Right? Like, I’m going to do the loving thing.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:48]:
Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:30:48]:
Whether I feel it or not.

A.J. Mathieu [00:30:50]:
Well, it’s intentionality. I mean, I suppose there’s an element of maturity there. I know what I’m supposed to. I know I’m supposed to care for that person. I don’t right now, but I really wanna try.

Scott Ball [00:30:59]:
Yeah. I I think that lots of times, now we’re really digressing and I we need to land this airplane. But a lot of times, there’s just a failure of curiosity about one another, which leads to why they don’t like each other. I mean, you’re if you see someone that you don’t like, you’re you might just not be curious enough about them.

A.J. Mathieu [00:31:16]:
That’s a good point. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:31:18]:
Like, tell me more about you. The the more you get to know somebody, the the odds of you liking them increase dramatically. You make all kinds of assumptions about what someone is like. Not every person has to be your favorite person. I’m I’m not I’m not suggesting that. Even on even on a high performance team, you’re not gonna be equally close to everybody. That’s fine. But if you don’t like someone, that is a problem.

A.J. Mathieu [00:31:36]:
Yeah. There’s always that guy that is constantly telling you about himself, and you’re like, I definitely don’t like you now because you only tell me about yourself, and I know way too much. So Are you

Scott Ball [00:31:48]:
talking about me again, A.J.?

A.J. Mathieu [00:31:54]:
Alright. Well, I think we

Scott Ball [00:31:55]:
have You didn’t deny that. Okay.

A.J. Mathieu [00:31:59]:
You you didn’t try courtesy laughed at that. Okay. What’s your thoughts? Yeah. Well, there you go. I mean, we’ve got we’ve got these these, five different types of teams that may be functioning in in your church. And so, yeah, I think this is worth examining. I think so. You, you know, whatever level of leadership you may be in in your church, I think, it would be a good exercise to consider consider these things.

A.J. Mathieu [00:32:26]:
If you don’t even have, like, a list, like, who are all of our teams even? That that needs to be looked at. And, yeah. So especially if you’re leading, you know, a staff team, and it could be a mixture of maybe paid and volunteer people, Have maybe take some observation time in the next few weeks or month or so, and just consider this. This doesn’t need to be something that you bring to staff meeting, you know, next week. Like, I listen to this podcast. Let’s talk this talk about this. And this might be one take a take a minute and observe the people, that that you’re working with, the people that are working, you know, underneath you or above you, and around you. And look at the dynamics of these, and then consider where do these maybe fit, and then begin to maybe pull together some others around you to, have some some plans on how can we improve the overall performance and love within our teams to, to move up up that j curve into that high performance level.

Scott Ball [00:33:26]:
Yeah. Really good. Really well said. Just so we’ll close by reminding you to check out the Healthy Churches Toolkit. There are there are resources in there that will give you excuses to have conversations that maybe need to be had. That is a real benefit. Go go through a training, and we have discussion questions in the in those workshop, videos and etcetera. So, take advantage of that.

Scott Ball [00:33:51]:
So So go to healthychurchesToolkit.com. Sign up for free for seven days and see all the good stuff that’s in there. Also wanna remind you that today’s article is in the description below. So whether you are watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite favorite podcast platform, that link is down there. So please be sure you click that link and check out that article.

A.J. Mathieu [00:34:12]:
Yeah. If you’re on soon. Yeah. If you’re on YouTube, there’s an 84% chance you have not subscribed to this channel. So do that. Go click subscribe.

Scott Ball [00:34:21]:
Yeah.

A.J. Mathieu [00:34:21]:
And and the bell because, we love having you. Love to love to bring you into the team, Scott.

Scott Ball [00:34:27]:
Yeah. You know, I yeah. We may mention this a few times. I hate it when people say on YouTube videos, hey. Subscribe and hit that notification bell. It helps us. In what way? And I you know, because people don’t ever really explain that. So I I’m not gonna take ten minutes and do that.

Scott Ball [00:34:43]:
But I just wanna briefly say, it really does make a difference, and YouTube kinda makes a big deal about it. So we’re we’re new to this. We’ve we’ve hit new levels. We’re we’re hardly, like, blowing up on YouTube. But the the more success you have, they start telling you more things like, hey. You might wanna consider this. And one of the things that YouTube has prompted us has said, hey. Only a certain percentage of your subscribers are have hit that notification bell.

Scott Ball [00:35:08]:
Yep. And only a certain number of your viewers are subscribers. And and so they they reward that when people take those actions. So that’s why we’re asking you to do it because YouTube is telling us to ask you to do it. Yeah. And by reward,

A.J. Mathieu [00:35:21]:
we mean they’re actually we’ll show our content

Scott Ball [00:35:23]:
to more to more

A.J. Mathieu [00:35:24]:
to more pastors. Yeah.

Scott Ball [00:35:25]:
So so if you like what you’re seeing, help us out.

A.J. Mathieu [00:35:28]:
Alright. Thank you. There we go. Well, hey. Thanks for joining us this week on the Church Revitalization Podcast. If you’re subscribed, you’ll know we’ll be back again next week. See you then.