Teamwork, the Great commission and the great command- task and people, ask and tell: changing the world

Teamwork, the Great commission and the great command- task and people, ask and tell: changing the world June 22, 2005

I am in the middle of a blogging series at the moment about teamwork that will change the world. I want you to see that both the categories of people I have spoken of and the two dimensions they are based on are reflected in some way in the bible. I showed in the last post that the four categories are reflected in the four gospels.

Now, I will show you how “ask”, “tell”, “task” and “people” are all dimensions that are familiar to the bible. The great commission sets us a task- to GO into all the world. Like Paul, there should be a missionary drive about the church. Whilst we should all play our part in this, there will be some who feel that push more as he did.

But as we see in Acts 20, Paul also was committed to people. The great commission tells us to make disciples which is a personal relationship focussed thing for us to do. We cannot make disciples without being people-focussed. We also, cannot baptise someone without getting to know them and actually asking them some questions to be sure that they are really saved.

We are told to “teach people to obey” which is very much what is meant by the idea of “tell” in the social styles model.

Thus we see “ask”, “task”, “tell” and “people” are all critical to our success as church. We are told to love God AND people. There are some Christians who find one or the other of these easier than others. We have to learn to do all these, but the beauty of the church is that the church as a whole should be able to cover one another’s weaknesses so that as a TEAM we perfectly reflect each of these aspects.

Corporations should not be wiser than churches but many of them are recognising this need for teams to reflect each of these aspects- we as churches need to learn to value ALL of them, and not just the pastor-teacher who may well be a “task” focussed “teller”. Churches need to be lead by teams of people who are strong between them in ALL of these areas.


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