Being a Team Player // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Pt 4

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Other people can be such a pain in the neck sometimes. Well, it’s true, isn’t it? They can. So the temptation is to go it alone, do things ourselves. Pride sets in – you know what I’m talking about. And yet it’s that very attitude that nobbles people – that stops them from living an extraordinary life.

Hey, other people can be such a pain in the neck, have you noticed that? Now I don't mean you, I mean other people. It's always those other people isn't it? It's never you, it's never me, we always blame someone else. They're the one that's being difficult, they're the one who's getting it wrong.

We are so full of ourselves aren't we? We imagine, you and I, that we're indispensable, that no one can do it as well as us. If you want a job done you have to do it yourself right? Oh please.

And to some extent part of that's true, other people are a pain in the neck sometimes and deep down we'll even admit that sometimes, okay, okay, sometimes it's me, sometimes it is you, all the more reason to just do it yourself. It's so much easier without other people, sure you don't get quite as much done but there are far fewer headaches.

Now we don't all think like that all the time but working with other people, while it can be rewarding it can also be a challenge. We're looking this week at how to live an extraordinary life and we're doing that by following Jesus around, a bit like one of those twelve disciples and watching Him, listening to Him, learning from Him about how He lived His extraordinary life.

Yesterday on the program we saw that the very first thing He did in His public ministry was to submit to Gods authority through baptism. One of the next things He did was to build a team.

He was baptised, He suffered out there in the wilderness, He was tempted by the devil and then He began proclaiming the Good News and the Good News went like this:

Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.

Now that's all well and good but the reason that there were no telly evangelists back then is because there were no telly's. There were no newspapers, there were no radio's, no TV, no internet, no mass medium of any sort. In fact there weren't even sound systems or bull horns for speaking to large crowds. Nothing. Just Jesus, this carpenters son from Nazareth, self styled Messiah who had come to save the world.

I've just recently put in a new Twitter 'follow me' button on the blog site but the only way that Jesus was going to be able to tell people to follow Him was to meet them, to speak with them and to say, 'Follow me'.

I can sit in the relative comfort of my study at home and peck away at the keyboard and through a blog site and through Twitter and through Facebook, and through a web site reach hundreds of thousands of people in a key stroke.

I can sit here behind a microphone in the radio studio and tell millions of people at the same time the good news of Jesus. Jesus had none of that, follow me meant walking the dusty highways and byways of 1st century Israel and building a following. That was the reality and to do that He was going to need some help so here's what He did, Matthew chapter 4 beginning at verse 18:

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and he said to them, 'Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

Immediately they left their nets and they followed him. As he went from there he saw two other brothers, they were called James the son of Zebedee and his brother John in their boat with their father Zebedee mending their nets and he called them. Immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

Now this was totally extraordinary in two regards. Firstly the Rabbi went and called His followers. See generally it was completely the other way round. Some Rabbi's were a bit more prestigious than others, so young men, only men by the way, would try to social climb by following the highest pegged Rabbi in the social pecking order that they could possibly follow.

And Rabbis would sometimes reject people because they weren't the right sorts of people. So they would have to apply to follow a Rabbi, a bit like trying to get into Oxford or Harvard to study a PhD. They're far more prestigious establishments than where I studied, you have to apply, lots do, only a few get in.

That's how it was with the most recognised of Rabbis. Whole families would court them to try and leverage their social network to get their sons in as followers of this particular Rabbi as disciples, that's what they were called, of the most prestigious Rabbi because that would advance their prospects.

First extraordinary thing about Jesus' team building approach was that He called the disciples to follow Him instead of the other way around where the disciples applied for an apprenticeship with Him.

And secondly He went for fishermen to start with. Salt of the earth blokes to be sure but very working class, very down the social order, very … well you know, they were fishermen. Smelly, not educated, certainly not well regarded and they came not from Judea, not from Jerusalem but from Galilee. Like Jesus, well really? You can just see how the religious establishment in Jerusalem, the chaps, the chaps trust would look down their noses at these uneducated bumpkins.

I hopped on a bus the other day and ran into a man I had known years before. So I sat next to him. For the next twenty minutes he told me all the important people he'd been having dinner with. He was about the head off to the US to attend Harvard, he'd just had this well known politician staying at his house. He went on and on and on. He didn't ask about me once so I guess I didn't offer.

Sometimes I think we think that a team, if you can have one at all, have to be classy people. People who have their act together, people who are well known, people who are just a rung or three above us on the social ladder, a few rungs higher so that by associating with them we can climb up a bit further but not too far so that they're out of reach.

Sometimes I think that we think we have to go and chase after people and grovel to them to follow them. Surround ourselves with winners not losers.

Jesus turned that whole thing completely on it's head. He didn't have people grovel to Him, He went and chose His team. He surrounded Himself with real salt of the earth people, almost deliberately picking the anti-establishment team, tax collectors too, sinners the lot of them.

He didn't pick the A team, He built the A team and what makes the Jesus model of team selection and team building so amazing is that this rag tag team of uneducated bumpkins founded the Church to which a couple of billion people still belong today two thousand years on. Now that's extraordinary.

Did having those twelve disciples have its moments? Absolutely, remember once when the disciples failed to heal a boy Jesus exclaimed, 'How long must I be with this faithless and perverse generation'. Yeah sure it was frustrating, these twelve guys required Jesus to pour Himself into them and sure one of them even betrayed Him and sometimes they drive Him mad but Jesus life was made all the more extraordinary by His down to earth heart desire to be part of, to lead, to disciple a team no matter what it would cost Him.

His life still lives on today through His Church all because He was passionate about a team, passionate about community, passionate about sacrificing Himself for the people around Him. Does that sound like the makings of an extraordinary life? What do you think?