Preparing God s people for team building involves more than teaching, volunteer management, gifts assessment, or some program on equipping. Changing to this working definition of team ministry takes time and means developing a new way of looking at how to mobilize lay ministry. Additionally, you will want to develop a comprehensive picture of your church s structure. You need an organizational model to serve as a framework for purposeful ministry and operation. In practice, I have seen the move to team ministry play out in different ways.
Some churches move to team ministry rapidly with a church-wide overhaul.
Others add team ministry gradually on top of their existing structures. Others don t initially disturb the existing structures, but choose to begin new teams alongside or in addition to what is going on. Others do a combination of changes with a few teams inside and other teams outside the existing structures. The strength and frustration of team ministry is that it can t be defined by a single approach or program. It is a mindset.