I played a lot of sports as a kid and one phrase that I constantly remember hearing my different coaches say was, “Take one for the team.”

I especially remember this phrase being thrown around during baseball season. My coaches constantly encouraged me and my fellow teammates to “take one for the the team!”

Sometimes it meant staying in front of a hard grounder on defense. Sometimes it meant bunting when you wanted to swing for the fence. Sometimes it meant getting hit by a pitch when you wanted to get out of the way. Regardless, when all my years of baseball were said and done, I understood the concept of taking one for the team. I understood that baseball is a team sport and when an individual puts his wants and desires ahead of the team’s, then that hurts the team.

But while I understood the concept then, and understand it even better now that I’m older, I’m surprised to see so many people in the world today who don’t seem able to grasp this concept.

Let me apply it as simply as I can and then I’ll be done. Those of us who are active in local churches have to make sure that we take one for the team. We have to make sure that our plans and our agendas and the programs we love and the Bible studies we want to do, don’t get in the way of what God wants to do in our churches. We may even have to do something we don’t want to do for the sake of the rest of the team. I never wanted to get hit by a pitch or take a grounder to the chin, but I did both on multiple occasions because I loved my team and I wanted to win.

Anyway, don’t talk about your coach. Don’t bad mouth your teammates. Just take one for the team.

This past Thursday I was able to attend an event called Catalyst One Day. It was a one day conference built specifically around leadership. Andy Stanley, the lead pastor of North Point Community Church, and Craig Groeschel, the lead pastor of Life Church, led the main sessions, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park every single time they spoke.

Anyway, I left with a couple of thoughts I couldn’t get out of my head. And I just thought it would be selfish of me to keep these thoughts to myself, so here are some of the best takeaways I received:

Andy Stanley- Part 1:

• “If you want to create momentum, chances are it will require something new.”
• “Established churches will always be tempted to tweak the old rather than launch the new.”
• “If you are not evaluating the areas where you are experiencing momentum, the clock on your success is ticking down.”

Andy Stanley- Part 2:

• “As culture changes, many of the questions remain the same, but the answers don’t.”
• “If we institutionalize an answer, the day will come when it is no longer an answer.”
• “What have we fallen in love with that’s really not as effective as it used to be?”

Craig Groeschel- Part 1:

• “What got you here, won’t get you there.”
• “We can reach more by doing less”
• “We can’t allow someone to hold back the mission of the church because we’re afraid we might hurt their feelings.”
• “Your church can grow when people leave. In fact, some people need to leave.”

Craig Groeschel- Part 2:

• “I will do today what I can do, to enable me to do tomorrow what I can’t do today.:
• “Create artificial deadlines” (I wish I could explain this more now, but it’s worthy of its own blog post)
• “Delegating responsibilities creates followers. Delegating authority creates leaders.”

Steven Furtick is the Senior Pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.He spoke a challenging message to us from Matthew 13. Here are some of the highlights of his teaching:

• Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and many people think that is why Peter denied him
• Jesus is not our homeboy. He is the ruling, reigning Son of God
• So many people have a Ricky Bobby theology when it comes to Jesus
• We need to restore a sense of honor to church leadership
• Don’t let anyone talk about your pastor.

Tommy Barnett is the Senior Pastor of Phoenix First in Phoenix, Arizona. He talked about how the church ought to make it a priority to make people feel like they belong.

• We should be setting the pace for culture and not having culture set the pace for us
• It is easier to be a member of a country club than a local church
• I believe that God has called us to make the church a place to belong first, and then they’ll start believing
• If you don’t have many cigarette butts around your church, you don’t have much of a church
• Sometimes it takes a little while to clean people up, so we don’t need to turn anyone away
• We’ve got to learn how to get empty vessels into the house of God
• We have made the methods sacred instead of the message

Although all the sessions have been great, I thought that this session was far and away the best one so far. Craig Groeschel, the Senior Pastor of Life Church (which has more locations than I can keep up with) spokeHere is what he shared with us:

• Becoming obsessed with what people think about you is the quickest way to forget what God thinks about you.
• People pleasers take most criticism personally
• People pleasers feel an extraordinary fear of rejection
• People pleasers find it hard to express their true feelings
• People pleasers have a hard time saying, “no”
• People pleasing is a form of idolatry
• The fear of God is best antidote for the fear of people.

There was so much more to this teaching than I could write down and communicate, but it was awesome!

Jentzen Franklin is the Senior Pastor at Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia. He led the fourth session and gave us some great takeaways. He talked about being addicted to ministry, and here are a few of the thoughts he shared:

• We need some people addicted to the ministry
• I was raised “Penta-hostile”…we didn’t believe in anything
• God is looking for people who will go to unusual measures and means to communicate the Gospel
• Are we addicted to what Jesus died for?
• Jesus said what, when, and who, but he never said how because it’s up to us to braille our culture
• Ministry is a four letter word…WORK!
• God blesses where His reputation is safe. Live right.
• I am afraid of preachers who don’t pray.