Building Powerful Ministry Teams

After being exposed to the principles of effective teamwork (seen above) taken from Pat Macmillan's book, The Performance Factor at our School of Servant Leadership, Benji Galvez, the local director Ágape+ (pronounced Áh ga pay mahs) in Barcelona, invited me to facilitate a team building workshop for his team of 8 staff. 

From the beginning, it became clear that the Ágape+ team is a family. They like being together and they share a common passion to to minister to people at-risk of social exclusion such as homeless men and women, refugees and people in exile.

Their particular challenge is that, as the minsitry has grown, they have added more and more services for their users, but have not had the time to develop the internal processes necessary for the interdependent work of a highly effective team.

The objective of the workshop was to learn the 6 principles of highly effective teams and identify one or two practical steps that they could begin to talk about and then develop together once the workshop was over. 

(Diagram on principle #3: Accepted Leadership)

After presenting a summary of each of the 6 elements of a powerful ministry team, there was space and time for each team member to share perspective and opinions about how they are working together. It proved to be a helpful time of discovery and increased understanding of their strengths and weaknesses as a team. In addition, there were discussion exercises or object lessons to help solidify the learning process.

For a first time workshop, the comments were very positive. One team member left this comment: 

"I liked: the mental maps, the method of passing the information from mere concepts to useful information that was easy to work through, facilitated dialogue maintaing the focus on the workshop topic."

Another team member shared this observation:

"I like the fact that the workshop was laid-back and informal in the sense that we were comfortable physically (from sitting in sofas and snacking when we got hungry) and comfortable emotionally with the freedom to debate openly." I think Jill facilitated well, allowing us to discuss certain aspects as a team, but at the same time knowing when to interrupt our debate to continue advancing with the workshop material. It went by quickly. It was neither wearisome nor tedious."

I will meet again with the team in mid-December for a follow-up time to see how they are doing with their goals to streamline their weekly team meeting to make it more effective. 

Please pray for the amazing team of Ágape+ Barcelona...that God would continue to help them grow in their interdependence so as to reach the synergy that can be found among powerful ministry teams.