Choosing a Winning Apostolic Team - Part IV
Self-Centeredness - The Enemy of Team Spirit
by Dr. John Tetsola

Last month we saw that it takes the release of the leader’s spirit for men to see beyond their own needs and connect with something bigger than themselves. It’s important to recruit people to bear the load of ministry with you, not just people who are more concerned about the attention and glamour. Now let’s look at the obstacle of a self-centered spirit - a tool used by the enemy to hinder the success of an apostolic team spirit. Knowing this helps us to avoid the enemy’s pitfall.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.

Ecclesiastes 4:9

The enemy fights to make sure that the concept of team spirit is not practiced. When a church tries to practice apostolic team spirit, the enemy threatens it with self-centered people who refuse to team up with others. As a leader, I see talented men with great potential who will not team up with others. But two are always better than one. You can’t be a self-centered team member. Red Auerbach coached the Boston Celtics basketball team to multiple world championships in the early 1960s. They all played as a great team. One of his players was Satch Sanders. While he wasn’t a huge scorer, he was one of the greatest playmakers on the team. He always set others up to score. One day Sanders decided he was going to take more shots in order to raise his average score percentage. That night he scored over twenty points, up from an average of eight points, but the Celtics lost the game. Later, Sanders said, “All it takes to upset the delicate balance of this beautiful team of ours is for one man to cross over into another man’s specialty. So I decided that night that it was a much bigger claim to say that I was a member of the world championship team, than it was to say I averaged 35 points a game.” In other words, he realized he would rather play on a championship team, than to score individual points on a losing team. Being in the championship will open more doors for you than being a solo act.

Then they took what Micah had made, and his priest, and went on to Laish, against a peaceful and unsuspecting people. They attacked them with the sword and burned down their city. There was no one to rescue them because they lived a long way from Sidon and had no relationship with anyone else…

Judges 18:27-28a NIV

Judges 18 describes the helplessness of a people brought to destruction as a result of a “loner spirit.” The house of Micah was blatantly plundered because they “…had no relationship with anyone else…” (Jud.18:28a, niv). There are enemies that cannot be destroyed apart from the benefit of outside relationships and team spirit. There must be a corporate strength of community apart from our own. The Western culture with its aggressive, independent spirit and attitude makes it more difficult to embrace the team concept. Instead, it prefers building something that brings self-recognition and acknowledgment. We’d rather be the owner of nothing, than a steward of something more fantastic. Don’t try to take what God hasn’t given you because it will eventually become the source of your demise. Never desire to be in first place in charge of a losing team. If the success of the team or the kingdom is not bigger than our own personal agenda, our own personal accomplishments, and place in the limelight then we will never see the power of apostolic team spirit at work in our lives. Some people sing great with a choir, but they’re not soloists. They can’t carry a song on their own. They need the assistance of others. But when a major player steps out on a platform to carry a song, everyone immediately knows that they’re truly a soloist.

Some people walk away from a winning team because they weren’t allowed to “sing solo.” Our ego and personal star roles must be suppressed in order to build a winning team that imparts a generation. In the church we have the same problem. We have people not called of God, yet they go and open a church. Their ego demands that they have a following, even though they’re not called of God to pastor. So they gather a few people, but they can’t impart anyone. They prefer having a private parking space and barely paying the utility bills, just to say they’re a pastor, instead of being third or fourth on a team that’s influencing the world. See the significance of being a team player even if you’re not number one, and guard against the self-centered spirit.