We Are a Team

Quite simply, what the church expects from you is that we are all on a team right now.

In America’s sports-obsessed culture, we’re all familiar with the concept of teams. If we don’t watch or participate in sports ourselves, we all know people who always wear their Bills jersey, or never miss a Sabers game, or have children playing soccer, basketball, baseball, or are part of the track team.  We intuitively get the concept of teams and teamwork.

We can’t forget the hockey parents. If you’re a hockey parent, you’re spending more money on kids sports than any of the rest of us.

In our context -- in the church context -- that rah-rah, we all cheer for the same thing, it’s all about winning, when we win, others lose, mentality, is not exactly what we mean by team.

In an early edition of Webster’s dictionary, "team" is defined as two or more horses harnessed to the same plow. So, a team is when two or more people or animals come together to pull in the same direction.

When we break it down, a Belgian plow horse can pull 8,000 lbs. If you need to move 8,000 pounds and you've got one Belgian plow horse, you're in good shape.

I would think logically, if we put two of them together, they would pull 16,000 pounds. But that’s not actually the case. Two Belgian plow horses together pull 24,000 lb. If you train them and they become comfortable working as a team, two can pull 32,000 pounds. Two of them trained together can pull four times what one can pull on their own.

In a way, a church is like a sports team. We have many team members. If you're a regular attender of Northgate, you are a part of the team now. If you're just checking out Northgate, you might not be a part of the team yet. I hope you know we'd love to see you make that decision to be a part of it.

All too often, in churches today, we’ve lost focus on what it means to pull together, that we each have a role to play — a football coach might exhort his players to do their 1/11th — in caring for our community, both within the church walls and without.

The Apostle Paul uses many sports analogies in his epistles, but when he talks about each church member doing his or her part, he compares the church to a body, the body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.”

The foot has its role to play, Paul tells the Church, so does the eye, so does the ear. With each part doing its part, there are no divisions, and all the parts have equal concern for each other.

“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

Too often, we come to church and expect people to serve us, feed us, care for us, and care for our kids, doing all these things for us. But God did not give us churches to become a country club where we attend, or where being a member is about "what I can get from the church?" He placed us in churches to serve others, to care for others, to pray for leaders, to learn, to teach, and to give.

If we aren’t careful and understand what it means to be part of a church, being part of a church can be turned upside down. We go from being contributors to being consumers.

Most of us remember, either because we saw the speech or because it is such an iconic part of American history, but in 1961, when John F. Kennedy took office, he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

The church finds itself in a similar place. We need to give similar encouragement because the main point we all need to hear is that for a church to truly reach its potential, everyone must be a fully committed contributor. That's what ultimately determines whether or not a team reaches its full potential. What determines if a church reaches its full potential is whether everyone is a fully committed contributor. Is everyone coming in every week saying, 'What can I do for my church?' and not just 'What can my church do for me?'

You can build a pretty good church with just 15 to 20% of the people being fully committed. I know it because I think we've done that here, but if any church is ever going to reach its full potential, that number needs to be much, much higher. It needs to have all of the people all in.

What does it look like?

Here is our expectation: It starts with a commitment to follow Jesus daily. If you're a fully committed contributor, you will begin by committing to follow Jesus daily. This is what we want from every single person. This is our goal. We’re not going to be subtle about it. To be clear, you are still welcome at Northgate even if you aren't there yet. This is a great place to explore what following Jesus is all about, even before you make that commitment. This is not a place where you have to believe to be part of the journey.

Now, don't wait forever because coming to Northgate will not change where you spend eternity. It is only a relationship with Jesus, only a commitment to follow Jesus daily, that will change your destination.

We talk a lot about what it is to be a follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus. In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

That is where it starts for each of us. That is what following Jesus requires — denying ourselves, making other people our focus.

When we have a bigger focus in our lives than just what we want to do and what we feel like doing at the moment, taking up our cross daily, picking up that cross, dying to ourselves, dying to our own desires, and then once we have put those selfish, self-centered parts in check, replacing them with the love and the grace and the nature of Jesus, and when we do those things, we follow him.

Don't miss in that verse, it's "daily." This is every day. This is not a one-time decision. This is not a one-time commitment. It is the commitments that we need to make to be a fully committed contributor.

At Northgate, we are a team that pulls together, each doing our part to serve, putting others ahead of ourselves, both within the walls of our church building and outside throughout out lives, at home, at work, with our friends, at the supermarket, or at the Bills game, or volunteering to help others, we follow Christ.