Have you ever had to pick a team for anything? Project Team members at work or school, Ministry Team at Church, or sports teams? Back when I used to play basketball about 4 days a week, we would always play pick up games. What that basically meant was that we would choice or pick up our teammates of those around us. We picked who we thought would be the best players to win the most games. If you won, the game you stayed on the court. If you lost, the next team would come on play. Now the way it worked was someone claimed a spot in line by first asking, “who got next?” If nobody did then you claimed it. If someone did and you wanted to play with them then you would ask, “can I run with you?” If they wanted you and they didn’t have a full team already, they would pick you up. If they didn’t want you or had a full team, then you would say “I got next after…”. Then you would begin to put your team together. Weed out all the bad players and trying to get the best group. Sometimes, some of the best players would be on a team that is already playing but you held a spot open for them if they lost and you would tell them that “I got you if you lose.” Sometimes they would put in a half effort because they knew the team, they were on wasn’t a winning team and they wanted to get on your team. So now we are on the court and we are playing and doing pretty good, but we still ended up losing. So, what’s the next step. Rebuild. You keep the players that worked for the team and replace the others. You keep doing this until you have the team that is unbeatable, and you run the court. On one of the courts I played on we had such a team and every Sunday after church, we would meet up at Glendale Park to defend our court. We unofficially called ourselves the Glendale Hoyas and we would have teams come from all over the place to play us. Most of the other players we knew but we would have players that we didn’t know come through. It was a great time. No, we didn’t win all the time, most of the time, but we had a winning team, and we knew what each other’s skills were, and we trusted each other.
With all that being said, what type of team do you have around you? Not sports teams, but life team. Do you have a team that will push you to be your best even when you may not be at the top of your game? They have your back. Do you have a team that will Pray for you when you are going through your storm? Do you have a team that you can just hang out with? All of these can be a single team if you are lucky but most of the time there will be different teams but may have some crossover players. It is just like pick up basketball. I played on about 3 or 4 different courts and each court had it’s own regular players for that court and every now and then you would have someone that you ran with on another court on that court and you would team up again. Just like life it is ok to have different teams for different areas of your life.
Now, my main focus for this was the make up of your team. When I first got to the court and pick my team, it wasn’t the best team for me and I had to drop some players and pick up some others. It is that way in life too. You will start with a specific team but realize that that group of people doesn’t really meet your needs. You will need to add and remove as needed. If you are creating a team that is positive minded and are looking for growth and there is someone that ends up not having the growth mindset, they have to go. If you are trying to grow spiritually but someone keeps bringing in the negativity, they have to go. What I want to emphasize is that the team you need may not be the team you have now. You may be tolerating the team but in doing that you are stopping your growth. If you are on a team where everyone is depending on you to help them grow, who to you look to? Now in that instance, I wouldn’t tell you to leave that team because they need you, but you need to find another team that you can learn from. So don’t be afraid to change things up. No team was ever the perfect team when they first started. They had to add and remove people to get the right mixture. Your turn.