As a leader, remember that one of the most significant strategies for building the qualities of solid relationships into the relational fabric of the team is for you, the team leader, to model them. Let team members see them in practice.

No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn't my fault.

The path to significance is bigger than the individual.

To live for yourself is to rob yourself of your own humanity. It is only in living for Christ that we actually begin to become what we were meant to be.

Sin causes us to want our own way, to want sovereignty over things we weren't designed to control, and to want to coerce others into the service of our agenda.

We simply weren't constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness. The desire resides in each of us, and it is called transcendence. To transcend is to be part of something greater. We were created to be part of something so big, so glorious, so far beyond the ordinary that it would totally change the way we approach every ordinary thing in our lives.

You were put here for the purpose of the glory of another. This is not a lifestyle option; it is in the very nature of your humanity. To live for yourself is to rob yourself of your own humanity. It is only in living for Christ that we actually begin to become what we were meant to be.

We would prefer to lob grenades of truth into people's lives rather than lay down our lives for them. But this is exactly what Christ did for us. Can we expect to be called to do anything less?

If Christ is the head of his body—and he is—then everything else is just body. The most influential pastor or ministry leader is a member of the body of Christ and therefore needs what the other members of the body need.

It really is true that when you're living for you, the call to love others is always a burden for you

It's pointless to blame someone for being themselves and looking to their own interests.

Rather than focusing on the badges that define our tribal identity (our church, denomination, subdenomination, doctrinal convictions, side of the aisle, whatever), a trust-centered faith will see the world with humble, open, and vulnerable eyes—and ourselves as members and participants rather than masters and conquerors. We will see our unfathomable cosmos and the people in our cosmic neighborhood as God's creation, not as objects for our own manipulation or unholy mischief.