P.S. I had my first date and fell in love with my wife at Colorado State in Fort Collins.
Part 2
For 11 years, I was part of a team of people who traveled to Fort Collins, CO to put on a 6 week program called The Institute of Biblical Studies (IBS) and Staff Training for Campus Crusade for Christ. Every year, a 1,000 plus students would descend on Fort Collins to hear some of the best seminary professors and teachers we could find for the first four weeks of IBS. Most of the students were Campus Crusade Staff continuing their training for a lifetime of ministry. After the academic program ended, between 2,000 and 2,500 more staff arrived for the annual staff training. It was the largest, sustained conference I have ever been a part of and it took a huge team to pull it off, about 120 people.
Every year the conference director, Cliff Mills, would give a motivational talk to all of the staff working the conference. He tried to get all of us to work together as a team. For 11 years, as either the assistant to the director or the director myself, of the Academic side of the conference, I heard Cliff give the following lines (as best I remember them):
“The ideal staff member to work as support staff for the conference at IBS is someone who has no experience at IBS and doesn’t bring an agenda about how things must be done or how they were done last year or three years ago. They don’t have that experience to color their participation with this year’s conference. They are a little bit nervous, eager to please, and very teachable.”
“Staff who have worked the conference before too often think they know all there is to know and aren’t teachable or flexible about how things need to be done this year because of what we learned last year.”
To put it another way, they lacked humility and in lacking humility, they don’t work well as a team. A team has to value one another, listen to one another, collaborate with one another, see opportunities for one another, work hard together not for personal success but for the teams success.
Years ago, (in a time almost forgotten) I played football. I loved the game, but the reality was that I was too small and too slow to be a star. But it was great to be a part of a team and to work for the success of the team. My freshman year of high school I was a wide receiver on a Junior Varsity team built to run the ball, hence, my job was to block more than catch. I remember one play we ran against an opponent around the left end. My job was to block the safety coming over to shut down the play. Early in the game, we ran the play for about 7 yards. But I saw something and came back to the huddle and told the running back, Freddy Lackman, “Freddy, next time we run the play, make a brief stab to the right and then cut up field, it will be a Touchdown. That one move will set me up to take the safety out.” Freddy nodded his head and scored a touchdown in the next quarter. We were a team, when everyone does their part, we win.
Freddy was humble to take a suggestion from a freshman (he was a sophomore) and result was a Touchdown for Freddy, a success for the offense, and a team win. That’s how humility works. Everybody wins when the team works together.
That goes for Church staff teams, and elder boards, and deacon boards.
Cultivate humility. You will make your whole team better.
- Listen to others. —James 1:19 “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to
hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;” - Value others. —Philippians 2:3 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility
of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;” - Affirm others. —1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build up one
another, just as you also are doing.” - Remain teachable. —Job 6:24 “Teach me, and I will be silent; And show me how I have erred.”
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