Becoming A Healthy Team: 5 Traits of Vital Leadership Reviewed by Michael Luster (Abridged)

This post is an abridged version of Luster, M. (2006). Book Review: Becoming A Healthy Team: 5 Traits of Vital Leadership. 

Full review is available at  https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=jascg

In the opening chapters, Macchia develops his operational definition of a ministry team forming the basic structure of his thought: “A Christian ministry team is a manageable group of diversely gifted people who hold one another accountable to serve joyfully together for the glory of God by sharing a common mission, embodying the loving message of Christ, accomplishing meaningful ministry, and anticipating transformative results” (41). 

the underlying premise of his book is that believers “should build ministry teams that foster community and cooperation instead of embracing a corporate mindset that leads to competition among members and with other churches, ministries, or teams” (25). 

Macchia’s thesis involves the view that healthy ministry teams are teams that trust, empower, assimilate, manage, and serve. 

1.     Trust- a healthy team builds trust through the practice of effective communication, arranging times of celebration with members and learning how to manage conflict in a manner that promotes the edification of everyone involved… 

2.     Empower- a healthy team is a team whose members are empowered through diverse giftings from the Holy Spirit. He offers his paraphrase of 1 Cor 12: “For we were all baptized into one Spirit into one team” (76). 

3.     Assimilate- as followers of Christ, we are called by God to be “interdependently interwoven into a spirit of unity and collaboration with one another” (94).

4.     Manage- a healthy team must learn to manage well. He claims that effective management skills are fostered through such efforts as strategic planning, systematic administration, and proper goal setting.

5.     Serve- the final trait Macchia includes as necessary to form a healthy team is that of service. Here Macchia follows Paul’s teaching about the body of Christ in 1 Cor 12 in its description of a believer’s rightful motivation for service. He emphasizes the biblical teaching of love as the sole source of motivation for a believer’s service.

Macchia has taken the business end of things, the administrative duties, staff meetings, budget reports, things so often compartmentalized in a “non-spiritual” category and brought them into an integrated whole of ministry within the body of Christ. Macchia describes the way he concretely practices this on one particular team: 

The first priority of our team is to maintain the discipline of sharing our spiritual lives with one another. When we meet as a team, our first order of business is to hear about our spiritual journeys...We tend to spend between 30 to 50 percent of our meeting time caring for the health of each other’s soul...Without parallel, this single decision has become the glue that helps our team experience unprecedented unity...We have recognized that everything of value will come out of these shared experiences (60, 61). 

Macchia claims that since teams are an extension of the body of Christ, spiritual formation can penetrate every aspect of ministry work. With this in mind, he offers a clear structure for staff meetings that includes group devotional readings as well as plans for staff re- treats. While maintaining this emphasis however, Macchia recognizes that in order to provide for both the care of souls and an efficient discharge of the shared ministry work, at some point during the meeting there must be a shift toward procedural guidelines such as Robert’s Rules of Order that enable excellence in organization (62). 

Macchia underscores his points regarding healthy team practice by providing several practical tools. For help in discern- ing each team member’s most effective role in ministry Macchia offers the DESIGN tool from New Hope Christian Fellowship that helps to identify each team member’s giftings. In the closing chapters, he gives a detailed description of a team covenant he implemented at Gordon-Conwell that includes the responsibili- ties of the team member to the team as well as what the individ- ual team member can expect from the entire team and leader- ship. 

In a discussion of ways church leadership must respond to address recent cultural shifts, professor of church growth, Eddie Gibbs echoes Macchia’s sentiments: 

Leadership is about connecting, not controlling. It’s about bringing people together for the purpose of crea- tive synergy. Because the information age is fast paced and knowledge and experience are highly diversified, leaders of the emerging church recognize their need to operate in a team context. Team based ministry allows them to draw strength from each other and to contribute to the common good from their God-endowed gifts and life experience. Discipling doesn’t occur in isolation but in communities where there is encouragement and mu- tual accountability. The same is true in ministry; it flows from authentic community.[1]

Macchia claims that those living in this present culture de- sire community, “authentic, holistic, loving, we-need-each-other community” (97). He explains that the team grows healthier as it becomes a community of people assimilated by love and not just a group brought together to perform a duty” (98). 

“Our priority mission is intimacy with God, and our secondary mission is intimacy and authentic- ity in community with the family of God. When each team member keeps intimacy with God in the forefront, the end result will be a spiritually healthy team” (24). 

In the introduction of his book, Macchia poses the question, “What is the glue that holds the team together?” answering with the statement: “It is the calling of teams to a particular missional purpose” (19). Yet he never specifically articulates the Church’s well-defined missional purpose that takes precedence over and informs all other objectives. The same biblical witness recording the words, “This is eternal life that they may know you and Je- sus Christ whom you have sent,” also states, “This is love for God: obey his commands” (Joh 17:3, I Joh 5:3). Macchia’s context is one of ministry work and ministry mission. Scripture is clear that the mission of the church and thus of every ministry team is found in Christ’s mandate for the church to go into all the world and make disciples (Matt 28.18-20). Obedience to this mandate is one of the most fundamental ways we demonstrate our love for God and is inseparable from pursuit of intimacy with him.

 

Journal of the American Society for Church Growth, 17(2), 87-91. Retrieved from https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ jascg/vol17/iss2/11 

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of the American Society for Church Growth by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. 

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[1] Eddie Gibbs. LeadershipNext. Downers Grove, (Illinois: Intervar- sity Press, 2005), p. 106.

In addition to examples of teams demonstrated by the Trinity, Moses, Nehemiah, Jesus, and the early church, Macchia gives an illustration from 1 Corinthians 12, where the apostle Paul provides an excellent description of the body of Christ -as an ultimate team model for the ministry of the church.

T- a team is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form

one team. So it is with Christ (v. 12).

E- For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one team - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-and

we were all given the one Spirit to drink (v. 13).

A- Now the team is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say,

"Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the team," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the team. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the team," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the team (vv. 14-16).

M- If the whole team were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole team were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts of the team, every one of

them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the team be? (vv. 17-19).

S- As it is, there are many parts, but one team.