Okay, lets face it, there are lots of ‘i’s in team. If there weren’t there would be no team. I just hope to be better at being one of the ‘i’s that help other ‘i’s succeed. I think maybe that’s what Jesus would do.

-ICA

I’ve always assumed it was true because that’s what everyone says. Does everyone saying it make it true? This story is the only reference to the word carpenter I could find in the whole of the New Testament:

Matthew 13:55
“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?”

Mark 6:3
Isn’t he the carpenter, the son of Mary?

So what’s going on? I know during the time of Jesus it was common that a son would learn his father’s trade. So at some point in history maybe someone important decided to assume that Jesus must have also been a carpenter and today most everyone assumes it. Mark’s account does say “the carpenter”, so it may well be true that Jesus was a carpenter. However, even the fact that the people of his hometown refer to him that way proves very little about who He was. The people of Nazareth obviously missed a lot of other things about him and the fact that he grew up in “the carpenter’s” house may have led even them to that assumption. The Mark account is the same story as the Matthew account that says “carpenter’s son”. For some reason even Matthew and Mark chose different words on this point. So you decide how much weight to give the testimony of the people of Nazareth. Just remember these quotes are part of the arguments they used to dismiss his true identity. The funny thing about assumptions made on such a large scale is the fact that they are still just assumptions. We assume that because the people of Nazareth said it in the bible it must be true, even if it was an argument against who Jesus actually was.

Regardless of whether or not Jesus was a carpenter there is a point that this raises that is much more than an assumption. The word carpenter only appears in this story, and that is a fact. Very little of Jesus’ identity was tied to his career. How many Christians can say that? How many of us are “professionals”? So, in my case, if I were a carpenter, pretty much what I’ve been doing is fixing tables and chairs all day and night. If Jesus had been doing that the word carpenter would have certainly appeared more than once in scripture wouldn’t it?

I’m kinda persuaded that maybe if we wanna be like Jesus we’ll have to get passed this. Have you ever seen a tombstone that says: “I wish I spent more time at work”? What if your career is ministry? Is that how Jesus did it? Hmmm… Ecclesiastes does say a meaning of life is to enjoy our toil under the sun, but it also says everything is meaningless. Jesus says, we must take up our cross and follow Him.

-ICA

P.S. – After writing this I thought I’d see just how uncommon skepticism concerning Jesus’ trade is:

“It is highly unlikely that Jesus was a carpenter.” http://www.jesuspolice.com/common_error.php?id=6

“So it is very romantic to think of Jesus as a carpenter, but not very scriptural.” http://www.kencollins.com/jesus-35.htm

1 Corinthians 12:14-20
Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

I realized the other day that teamwork is possibly more rare than I ever thought. It’s so rare that when we get just a glimpse of its potential we think we’ve experienced it in full… maybe not. Several different instances drew this theme for me in the last several weeks.

Perhaps it started a few months ago, sitting at the British Embassy with some friends the BBT was running a program on corporate teamwork. It talked about several examples, both of failures and successes. Analyzing business meetings and pointing out the problems. One instance was Britain’s Dome project. The country pulled together some very prestigious people for what would basically be a big mall. However, putting all these prestigious people in a room together resulted in what can only be called a disaster. Commentators viewed meetings and pointed out the dynamics this created. A bunch of hotshots who basically wouldn’t shut up for two seconds to try to understand what others wanted to say but couldn’t. They even spotted people mentioning concerns that were blown off for a trivial topic only to become reality. It was a brilliant case study. The thing that really struck me was the project that was supposed to be an example of success. The team was dedicated but it was basically a dictatorship, led by the primary financier who had a Walmartesqu kind of charisma. It breeds success but is it really a team?

So what does this have to do with teams? Well are you ready for some football? Definitely not American football, I mean what the rest of the world calls football. That was the inspiration. Soccer is a very special sport because very much unlike American football, every player on the field can be a star. There are definitely people who stick out, but in a competitive game it takes a whole team to score a goal. I was watching some students play yesterday and you would see the “dynamic duos” in nearly every game. You know the two guys with kicks a bit stronger than the others, the ones that look first for the other and will pass to them if they are covered by 3 defenders before passing to the other guy even if he is open? Primary students playing football amounts to a group moving all over the field, wherever the ball is, the whole group is. That really isn’t much worse than relegating a team of 5 (it was 5v5 football) down to a team of 2 by choice. Even if the open guy is a little weaker. Passing to an open guy spreads out the defenders, creates more possibilities, maybe even puts that strong kicker in a 1 on 1 position instead of a 3 on 1 position. Maybe that’s exactly what we are teaching students to do?

In class we are reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey. Sure enough the day before watching the students try to practice some teamwork we read about a young lady who couldn’t understand why her friend stopped throwing the ball to her on her basketball team. It taught about how when she kept throwing the ball to her friend even instead of shooting her friend started throwing it back to her. They became an unstoppable team… all two of them. Last I checked 5 people play basketball and 2 does not make a team in that scenario. It’s just so incredibly common and the message still had merit, so the reality could happily live below the radar. Everyone expects it that way. Michael Jorden, Dennis Rodman… and who else was on the court with them? Who were the other 3 guys?

I remember very vividly one of my first high school soccer games, I had a fast break one on one with the goalie, but the “not so good” guy hustled his butt off and stayed my square the whole way making it actually a two on one. I was on the left side of the goal, “not so good” guy was on the right. I got to where the goalie was moving out to cut my angle and I crossed it right into “not so good” guy’s foot. Perfect pass, and for me a teamwork score! You can guess what happened I bet. The ball went almost straight up clearing the crossbar by several feet and this is from about 6 yards and an open goal. As soon as I came off the field the coach grabbed me and said, “You should have shot that!”… Nice coach eh? It’s just real life, teamwork is an ideal that very few live by and those that do will spend most of their lives frustrated and taken advantage of.

For more than 12 years I have worked in the IT field. I’ve seen clout outrank qualification 9 out of 10 times. I’ve presented thorough and exhaustive cost/benefit analyses only to have it dismissed as “you don’t have the full picture.” I could only ask, why is the “you don’t have the full picture” YDHTFP card so often played after several hours of sitting in a planning meeting which was supposed to include disclosing the “full picture”? Why did we sit in that meeting at all? The executive types had already decided what they wanted before we even met. It seemed more to create an illusion of due diligence than any sincere attempt at due diligence. In my career my highest profile dissent rang in before a loss of over $5 million. Of course my dissent came at about $1.5 million making it quite obvious to me, but I couldn’t make it obvious to anyone else. The ship flooded and finally sunk. Every person involved is somewhere else and probably hasn’t had another thought about that moment. I wonder if one other person ever even considered that on that day, in that meeting, perhaps if they had not used the YDHTFP card to trump the actual analysis, perhaps the company would have recovered? Who knows? At least in sports a stronger foot means they have more ability, in the corporate world an executive title usually only means they know the right people, or they are articulate, or they look good in a suit, or maybe once upon a time they made a very good move that got them noticed.

On a large scale if teamwork is fully practiced it will produce the best result the team is capable of. True, if a member of the team continues to fail to produce removing them from the team will improve the team. That’s not a choice to be made while in the middle of play. If I had it to do again I would cross the ball again. In fact, I did get to do it again. In college. This time lacrosse. In lacrosse I played defense and defenders don’t often get the opportunity to shoot in a game. The scenario was identical. Identical! An open goal and the poor guy choked. This time my very excellent coach said, “You did exactly what you should have.” He was a good coach.

-ICA