The greatest challenge of any technical team leader serving in the local church is to lead the heart of the team. For me, I am not where I would like to be as a technical leader who shepherds a team toward Christ. I struggle. I often get caught up in projects, lose track of time, and forget that it's about the people God has brought to our team. I face challenges of volunteers' work schedules, differing ages, genders, life stages, life issues, etc. How can I help encourage them toward Christ?
We often develop unhealthy attitudes in our heart that stay hidden for long periods of time.
Technical people seem to be prone to silent heart conditions. What I mean is this: we often develop unhealthy attitudes in our heart that stay hidden for long periods of time. Examples might include “us vs. them,” being territorial, or perhaps arrogance in our technical abilities. I don't think anyone ever means to develop these attitudes. No one ever wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I'm going to work on creating division in my church. I think I'll start by getting really frustrated with that electric player who keeps turning his amp up. I'll also just be negative as soon as I arrive. Then, I'll go maintain a critical spirit for several hours.” I think those types of attitudes occur when we are walking apart from Jesus. Somewhere along the way we've deviated from living life according to the Gospel.
For each individual serving on the team, my hope is that we all are serving as a response to God. I hope that serving technically becomes one way to live out the directive in Scripture to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices” like we read in Romans 12 and, is therefore, considered a form of worship. Yes! Serving technically is worship as it is described in Scripture. It is motivated by our love for Jesus and if it truly is a response to Jesus, then everything else flows out. Our team then desires to function with unity with one another, love for one another and other teams, humility towards those we help support. It guards our hearts from developing the infamous “us vs. them” attitudes so prevalent among many of us technical geeks. In my experience, as individuals on a team are serving out of their love for Jesus, then that thing we call “excellence” doesn't need to be preached any longer. Sure, we do self-critiques and accept feedback from outside the team weekly, but the motivation to do our best already exists within each team member as they offer their time and talents as worship of God.
To hold the banner for the Gospel among our teams is tough. It sometimes requires hard conversations where we have to say the last 10% to one another. We all need to be reminded of the Gospel from time to time and to keep it out front as we serve. It protects us from our silent heart conditions.
