Playing basketball and baseball growing up the idea of “team” was impressed upon me from an early age.  I was taught the old phrase, “There is no I in team”.  I would often mumble back under my breathe as most kids do, “There is an I in win” but what I didn’t realize, unless you’re a tennis player or a golfer, there isn’t much in life where that statement I made was true.  You see, I played basketball games where I put up great numbers and baseball games where I hit well and had no errors in the field, but my teams still lost.  You know, I think that’s true for all of life.  I don’t think that we were made to go through life solo.  Now, some of you may think I’m talking about being married or being single and I’m not, I’m talking about going through life by yourself or with a community of people.  There’s another saying, “It takes a village…” and that true.  Without my parents, grandparents, brother, sister, cousins, uncles, aunts, teachers, pastors, mentors, friends, I would not be who I am today or where I am today.  As I’ve grown older I’ve realized that I now have the ability to choose who those people are in my life.  I’ve chosen my wife (I’m glad she chose me too!), I’ve chosen where I live and where I work, I choose who I spend time with and I choose who the people are that I let in and that I allow to matter to me.

Currently someone I’m spending a lot of time with is my friend and co-worker, Richard Landon.  Together we are working hard to do something that has never been done in the 140 year history of our church.  It is exciting and frustrating all at the same time!  One cool thing has been watching the evolution of or working relationship into a friendship and into a team.  We’ve been adding others to our team that are also now working very hard to make this new venture successful.  You see, everyone on the team brings great assets to the table but none of us could do all of this on our own.

When I think of how our team has come together, I think about the people that have been attending our new worship venture that we call VENUE.  I realize just as none of us on the team can make VENUE happen on our own, no individual attending VENUE can live out the Christian life on their own.  So what do we do?  Well, for those already attending VENUE the good news is that they are already connecting to a group of believers on the large scale that we call the church.  The bad news is, the church only meets together once a week and there are seven days in the week.  So now as leaders we have to do what leaders do and come up with a solution to the other 6 days of the week.

In the book of Acts the early church was often referred to as a “community of believers” that lived out life together.  That wasn’t a one day a week thing.  They would gather together in homes for meals, they would participate in activities together and became a second family to each other.  That is the next step for VENUE.  We worship together, we serve together we do missions together, it’s now time to move past being people that are together at the church and step into our lives, into our community and be the church.

For some of you reading this you’re thinking well, “duh”, your church has been doing this for a long time.  Some of you may be thinking, “crap, you want me to see church people OUTSIDE of church?!?”  The bottom line is, WE WIN TOGETHER.  I know it’s easy for me to feel like I’m doing ok, or everything is going alright when I’m isolated away from a community of believers during the week but when I’m surrounded by great friends that love me, support me and care for me and my well-being, my life flourishes.  My spiritual life flourishes.  That is the goal.  When you flourish in your spiritual life you can’t hide it.  It’s contagious.  It gets all over you and you can’t help but spreading it all over others.  Ask the 0-16 Lions from a few years ago if losing was contagious?  I imagine it was. You know, winning is also contagious.  I’ll be honest, I’m not a Tim Tebow fan (cue the hate mail) BUT he’s a winner.  He brought a winning attitude to a losing team and it was CONTAGIOUS!  His attitude made the Bronco’s winners this year.  Was it him by himself?  No, it was a team, winning together.

That’s the challenge.  Join a team.  Find a community to meet with.  Flourish.  Be contagious.