What is Team-Leadership?

"A team is a small number of people joined together in relationship with complementary gifting who are committed to a common vision, with clearly defined goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."

The church at Antioch was a team of prophets and teachers. There were five in number and was international in its cultural background with a mission understanding that involved activity. It was therefore an apostolic (sent) community.

I received a book years ago called The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition. It's a book about Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 1909 polar expedition that reached farther south than anyone ever before him. The Endurance expedition (1914- 1917) brought a 22-foot open boat from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island. This was one of the greatest epics of survival in the annals of exploration.

However, what the book really demonstrates was Shacketon’s team-building ability. He was able to draw levels of ability and leadership out of His crew that were incredible. They moved forward in spite of impossible weather conditions, daily attempts to get sightings for knowing their positions, and the worst living conditions of any crew in history.

Shackleton had a single-minded determination to do what was best for his crew. What made the Shackleton team work was his insistence that getting a project done was more important than who does the project, controls the project, or gets credit for the project. His biographer writes, "The mystique that Shackleton acquired as a leader may partly be attributed to the fact that he elicited from his men strength and endurance they had never imagined they possessed; he ennobled them." (p.194).

Shackleton refused to discriminate between the weak and the strong, the sick and the well. They would all survive or none survive. So what’s the result of such an approach to being focused on a mission as a team? The Endurance crew is a testimony of such valiant commitment as a team: They all survived.

Remember our definition:

"A team is a small number of people joined together in relationship with complementary gifting who are committed to a common vision, with clearly defined goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."