I think we as people have been made very incomplete. The path to being complete will be a be a path of knowing God more and one knowing people more. God has in his plan decided that many will become one. Many people become the church. First local churches with distinct names and flavors, secondly as the universal church, which God is preparing to be his bride. Then the mystery of the ages will be that Christ and the church, his bride will become one in marriage. Our marriages to our spouses are just a shadow of what this will be like.
I think we really don't want to be as incomplete as we in fact are. We would like to be our own person, with our own accomplishments. We would like to have our own titles that define us such as I'm a lawyer, a doctor, or I'm a plumber. We also like to define ourselves as complete by other things we do that we feel are important. I have this role in my church, I volunteer at this organization, or sit on that board.
An yet, being incomplete, or in other words, made dependent on God and other people, we are still fearfully and wonderfully made. The influence of one man's will can be incredibly great. If we look no further than a comparison of one man with another man, then we may reach the conclusion that some do great things and some don't and that is all there is too it. But there is a scripture that I am drawn to in Genesis 11. It is the story we may have heard about the tower of Babel. In Genesis 11:6 I will quote, "And the Lord said, "Behold they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do wil now be impossible for them. God never showed similar concern for a great man, or an evil man.
My conclusion is that if a people are able to become one, they become more complete and thus are able to accomplish exponentially more. I used to coach soccer. I coached all three of my boys as 5th adn 6th graders. I loved to coach recreational soccer. Many dads of good soccer players did not like recreational soccer because some of the kids on the teams were not very coordinated. They felt the result was soccer at a lower level of skill. They were correct that the better competition you played against the better your team would get. But never the less, I loved taking the pot luck. Don't get me wrong, you had to have some skilled players, but I loved the mix. I found that I could get the kids to play together. I found we could celebrate when someone would step up and take risk. I was able to teach them a simple plan that they all knew. When everyone knew the plan, a boy that might be struggling to simply kick the ball, knew that if he kicked it towards the sideline and up the field, we would have another player who recognised where he was and what he was going to try to do and that player would be running up the sideline right where he was trying to kick the ball.
Because we knew the plan, the plan had everyone moving, the pass didn't even have to be very good and that running player could adjust his run to get behind the ball and keep advancing our attack. We beat a lot of teams with better personel because we played as if we were one.
It was one of the environments that I became aware of team dynamics. Of needing one another if we were really going to be successfull. In one year, the team we had was called the Rangers. When ever we would build a three point lead, which is a lot in soccer, we played Ranger ball, where everyone on our team would have to touch the ball before we could score again, including the goalie. My favorite memories on that team were when some of our less athletic kids would take a risk and succeed. I learned to work hard on creating environments of praising the efforts and risk taking.
The same dynamics are at work in a small office. If all the members of the office know the plan, they will work more efficiently together. They will hold one another accountable. If the office deals with mistakes well, it will encourage risk taking. They will as a group handle the grey with ease and deft. If on the other hand the office is built on individuals, then they will work hard to discover blame, they will hide mistakes and will punish the initiative that may have lead to a mistake.
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