9346$$$$FM

CHAPTER SEVEN

Team Development

‘‘The body is a unit... and though its parts are many, they form one

body.’’

—1 C. 12:12

‘‘As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.’’

—P. 27:17

uick, can you identify who coined the phrase, ‘‘People are
our most important asset’’? By now, it’s irrelevant. Which-
ever company you work for, you’ve seen or heard that
phrase before. Regardless of who originated it, the quote has
become so common that it has become a cliche ́, as have references to
‘‘the team.’’ The extent to which different companies honor these con-
cepts in practice varies, but they all pay devout ‘‘lip service’’ to them.
But the leaders of the Bible, who rarely used the wordteam,were
masters of team practice. They had to be. Their technological infra-
structure was rudimentary at best and sometimes nonexistent. There
were no computer networks, and for the most part no ‘‘bricks and mor-
tar.’’ The people of the Bible lived in tents for much of their history,
without permanent dwellings. The only thing as permanent as ‘‘the
people’’ were the flocks of sheep, goats, and cattle, and the land itself,
which they did not always occupy.

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