A Great Team-A Great Work

I am taking my last class at Dallas Theological Seminary. It is on the Dynamics of Leadership. I love it…mainly because I agree with everything I am being taught! But one of the points from this week’s lesson has really spoken to me. The point was this: “Few great things are accomplished by one person.” Now just think about that for a minute. I know you will immediately come up with great artists like Michelangelo. He probably worked alone. And yes there was Hemmingway but those guys are few and far between. Let’s think a bit grander. How about space travel? And then there are automobiles and complex computer systems and great hospitals and football teams. Actually my list is way too long for a blog but you get the idea. Great things DO happen when a team of people who are bent on a goal work together in harmony to achieve a singular purpose.

Last Monday our “team” sat at my dining room table for about the hundredth time and poured over every detail of yet another teaching lesson for the Be Amazing Study. It is SO tedious. You can tell who the detail folks are: Eleanor and Traci. Ok that is only two but that is all we need. Then there are those who fade out after about three hours: Michele and Linda. And then there are the rest of us: Robin, and me who can easily support Linda’s and Michele’s plea to wrap it up! But we have pressed on to MANY hours on enough occasions that our heads were spinning and we walked away exhausted and went home to do the cooking and laundry and grocery shopping, etc that is part of our life! This May marks two years we have worked on this project and it will be many more months until it is complete.

We have “perfected” twenty-four lessons and have one (an introduction) go. And then we will begin working on our final talks for filming the end of March. So for the next two weeks the schedule will be tight and much will be demanded of us. God has answered so many of our requests! Wonderful Anita Renfroe graciously filmed 24 -2 minute segments for us. Today we have much of the funding we need, all through prayer. And He has kept us focused and united.

BUT as I look back over our time spent working as a team I marvel at how much we have accomplished. We have six minds pooling thoughts and ideas together. We have six set of eyes looking at the grammar and format of each page in the workbook. We have sensitive ones who can pick up an innuendo from the page that does not inspire the soul. We have those who can encourage the rest of us to press on and together we have a vision.

The Bible says “Where there is no vision the people perish”, but I know we have pushed the walls out on this vision. We are dreaming big. No, we are dreaming so big it can only be a heavenly work if it is accomplished. I hope you are sitting down and I pray you will not laugh. We are asking God to “turn the hearts of women back to their home and to an attitude of righteousness to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord”. (Luke 1:17) That’s it. And so every week we lay that before the Throne of Grace and ask the Lord to hear and answer our prayer.

Won’t you join us?

…the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body

for the building up of itself in love.

Ephesians 4:16