TEAM Building

Sponsored by: Patriot Home Funding

Team. It is not just a word, it is also an acronym, with many meanings. Team. T-E-A-M. Together everybody achieves more. Together everybody accumulates more, and together everybody affects more. 

When team members buy in, unite, sacrifice for a common goal, don't care who gets the credit, and all pull on the same rope metaphorically speaking a synergistic energy emerges that allows the team to achieve, accumulate, and affect exponentially more than the simple sum of the efforts by each as individuals. 

When we unite around our culture, traditions, and faith, as a team, and turn our hearts outward as one, we as a nation and society are the richest, most just, and most successful in the history of the world. We are the nation every other nation is measured against, and every just nation aspires to be. And in a nation as rich and successful as ours, and in a culture rooted in Judeo-Christian faith, no man should go hungry and no man should be cold, especially our infirmed, our children, and our veterans. 

When we pass from this world and stand in judgment for the life we lived, and we will stand in judgment of ourselves before we stand in judgment from the almighty, we won't be judged by what we took, what we accumulated, or how famous we became. We will be remembered and judged by what we gave and how we loved. That is the true measure of a man, how much he gave to lift his fellow man, how he loved, and how he lived his life in a Godly fashion. The same traits and behaviors that make us great teammates make us great citizens, too.

We should live our lives like a garden, preparing our souls as we would plots of land, then planting the seeds of love and generosity, then nurturing them consistently over time to achieve the maximum yield and to feed and nourish ourselves and our fellow man. 

The Salvation Army, who we are here today to support, gives us a great avenue to unite as a team, and to positively affect our community specifically and society in general. Its mission is motivated by the love of God and to meet human needs in His name. Our gifts help our neighbors navigate hunger, unexpected job loss, homelessness, and devastating natural disasters. Our gifts help our fellow man, enrich both ourselves and those in need, and lift society. 

No man rises higher than when he stoops to help his fellow man, to paraphrase a quote by Abraham Lincoln. It is our highest calling.

The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, once said that faith and good works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, then works, then faith again, and then works again- until they can scarcely distinguish which is one and which is the other.  Our days at the most can't be very long, and we must use them to the best of our ability for the glory of God and the benefit of our generation.

So in the spirit of our faith and of the season, let's all unite as a team, and as a team together open our hearts and wallets to achieve a greater good and positively affect our fellow man. With our gifts together we, as a team, will positively affect our community and achieve more as a society. No gift is too small and every gift counts, because it is the love behind the gift that really matters, and as a team, together as a team, we will achieve more, accumulate more, and affect more.