Lone Ranger or A-Team?

This post is more for pastors, but Lay leaders still might want to read it. Pastor, are you a Lone Ranger or part of an A-Team is the question we are looking at. If you aren’t in the right age bracket for those references to make sense, The Lone Ranger fought crime by himself (though he did have a sidekick) and the A-Team was a group of guys who fought as a team, each one adding his level of expertise. I am not talking about how many people you have on staff. Some of you have a small church, and you are the staff. What I am talking about is running your church and sermon preparation. Are you trying to do it all by yourself? I want to suggest, if you aren’t already doing it that you try having a creativity team/big picture team/ideas team or whatever you want to call it. That doesn’t mean that God isn’t still your source of inspiration for your sermons. But it does mean that once you have the direction for your sermon that there will be people to help you in the planning. If you use video clips, they can help you get or create good ones to go with your sermon. They can help you pick out music for the song service that ties into the sermon topic. If you decorate your platform for a sermon or series, they can help you come up with ways to do it, and help carry out that decoration. These people don’t have to be paid staff, just find creative people in your church that love the Lord and would be willing to meet with you at some time during the week. As people see how things come together in your church they will be more supportive of you as a pastor as well. This works in a church of 20 or a church of 20,000. Granted in the church of 20, if your creativity team is very large, there won’t be very many people who haven’t already hashed out your sermon with you before Sunday morning comes, but so what? They are involved, and they will remember the sermon better than if they just came Sunday morning and listened to it. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” This doesn’t have to only apply to the Sunday morning worship service.
If you disagree with me on this, please comment! If you are using a creativity team in your church, please comment too! And if you aren’t, but want to start one, try it out, then come back and comment later once you have! I would love to hear feedback on this one….I don’t want to be a Lone Ranger blogger!