Opportunity for improving relationships and functions is present all the time. Don’t wait to turn opportunity into action. Waiting is an excuse born of insecurity and is a poor substitute for solution provision. Don’t wait, do.
A ministry team repeatedly suffers disappointment when it merely hopes that with the passage of time “things will get better.” Positive change is not accidental. It’s planned and initiated. If you want improvement, work.
Great ministry teams build relationships proactively. Relationships are the decisions members make about each other’s success. Strong relationships don’t emerge through working together, sharing similar goals, finding meshing personalities, or even agreeing on an agenda. Relationships develop because they’re chosen. Teams that want them don’t wait and watch. They choose to grow them.
Great ministry teams build functions proactively, too. If a team waits for circumstances to change, for personnel to shift or financial conditions to improve, they’ll waste a lot of time and money. Great teams chart goals, turn dreams into desires, and desires into action. They live in a world of realistic expectation and full engagement. They refuse to conduct endless staff meetings where no one turns conversations into deeds. Rather, they take individual responsibility seriously, and change their behaviors. They don’t wait.
A lackadaisical team inhabits negativity when it tolerates broken lines of communication, action loops that don’t get closed, irritating and debilitating excuses that inhibit or halt movement, lethargic efforts, and lazy attitudes of “We’ve always done it the other way…”
Stop waiting to improve your ministry team’s relationships and functions. Change your behavior, first. Chart a course, set a time line, establish goals, do the deeds, evaluate results. Waiting will no longer be your team’s nemesis. Positive changes emerge from deeds, not mere wishes.
