Individual talent without cooperation will not win championships.
The 2004 Los Angeles Lakers may have been the greatest collection of individual All-Stars that failed to win because they did not cooperate with one another. The team was loaded with individual talent, including Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone, and Gary Payton. Despite their star-studded talent, their failure to work together as a team led to their demise. The Lakers were no match for the Detroit Pistons, who were known for their teamwork and ultimately won the NBA championship.
Kobe had legal issues that created a media circus and distracted the team. Gary Payton struggled with the authority of coach Phil Jackson. Shaq and Kobe were constantly feuding against one another and had a long-standing rivalry although they were on the same team.
SCBaptists will win because of our cooperation, not our individual talent. Cooperative missions will become more difficult in the current “selfie” era. The mission of taking the gospel to every nation, tribe, and tongue will be increasingly harder to accomplish if individual talented leaders believe that they can do missions better and faster on their own.
Giving cooperatively toward larger mission endeavors where leaders work together strategically is slowly being replaced with direct giving to efforts of smaller individual missions. Percentage giving toward cooperative missions is on the decline, and direct giving is on the rise. This reallocation of resources increases the likelihood of duplicated efforts and short-term wins. Distractions of lawsuits at a national level and deteriorating trust of larger organizations tempt leaders to withdraw and do the mission on their own. We cannot allow distractions and rivalry to disrupt our unity for the advancement of the gospel.
The stakes are too high, the enemy is too tough, and time is too short for South Carolina Baptist churches to be satisfied with individual wins rather than team championships.
Try to name one of the starting line-up of the 2003-2004 Detroit Pistons. You may not know their names, but they were part of the championship team that beat Shaq and Kobe because they worked together. May we be a nameless people that worked together and took the message of Jesus to the last unreached people group and won the battle of the souls of mankind.