By Ken Yates
Introduction
The 1995 Chicago Bulls were quite a team. They were a historically successful team. Not only did they win the NBA championship, but they did something no other team had done during the regular season. They won over seventy of their eighty-two games against the best competition in the world. They were practically unstoppable. What was their secret?
It was not what most fans thought.
The View from the Stands
If you ask a basketball fan what they think about the 1995 Chicago Bulls, they will almost always say that it was Michael Jordan’s team. Jordan is considered by most fans as the GOAT. He was the Most Valuable Player of the league that year. The popular view is that the Bulls succeeded in 1995 because of Jordan. He was the reason they won the championship in such a convincing way. That evaluation, however, is seriously flawed.
The Bulls were not a one-man team. Scottie Pippen was a member of that team. If Jordan was Batman, Pippen was Robin. If the opposing team concentrated too much on Jordan, Pippen would destroy the other team with his own talents.
But the Bulls also had Dennis Rodman on the team. Rodman did not score many points, as Jordan and Pippen did, but he kept the other team from scoring. He was considered the best defensive player and rebounder in the league. If somebody missed a shot, Rodman was usually the one who grabbed it for the Bulls. Many times during the season, he dove for balls when others were afraid to do so.
Ron Harper was the player who brought the ball up the court for the Bulls. He did not get the headlines that Jordan and Pippen did, but he was the one who passed the ball to them. He was great at what he did. If the other team prevented that from happening by concentrating on Batman and Robin, Ron would pass the ball to James Edwards. Edwards was old and slow, but he was seven feet tall and could easily score if the other team ignored him.
The Bulls even had Steve Kerr. He was short and slow. But he was a dead-on long distance shot. During one playoff game, when the Bulls were marching towards the championship, the other team was ahead by one point as time was running out. With great effort, they kept the ball away from Jordan, Pippen, and Edwards. Harper passed the ball to Kerr, who hit a last-second long shot to win the game. The other team was demoralized and never recovered.
A casual fan might conclude that Jordan won the 1995 NBA championship for the Bulls. But the knowledgeable fan, watching that team play, would know that the team won it. Jordan had been in the league for many years prior to that season. He had never done, as an individual, what the Bulls did as a team in 1995. Without Pippen, Kerr, Edwards, Rodman, and Harper, people would not be talking about the 1995 Bulls the way they do today. When they won it all, they all lifted the trophy up at midcourt. That was the way it should have been. They all contributed to the success of the team. They couldn’t have done it without each other.
Principles for the Church
I realize that Paul did not know about Michael Jordan, and even if Paul had been alive in 1995, he probably wouldn’t have had much interest in the NBA. However, the 1995 Chicago Bulls can serve as an example for a Christian church. In Rom 12:3-85, Paul told the believers in the church at Rome that they should be like that team. If they did, they would also be successful, but in a much more important way.
In these verses, Paul discusses spiritual gifts. God has given each believer a gift with which to serve the Body of Christ. Each Christian is not to “think of himself more highly than he ought to think” (v 3). One point Paul addresses is that a believer is not to be jealous of the gifts others in the Church have. It is easy for a Christian to want a more publicly recognized role in the Church. If he sees somebody who is a good preacher, he might want to do the same, even if he does not have that ability.
Imagine how destructive that attitude would have been for the Chicago Bulls. If the rest of team had resented the press clippings of Jordan’s publicity, they could have insisted that the team function in a different way. Rodman could decide not to play defense or rebound and instead demand that Harper pass him the ball so that he could take more shots. Pippen could demand to be Batman, when he was perfectly suited to be Robin. Harper might tell Jordan to bring the ball up the court and pass it to him, instead of the other way around. They would not have won the championship that year if they had acted in that way.
A church full of envy will not be successful either. A good teacher should teach. A good exhorter should exhort. A person with a particular gift of serving should concentrate on using his gift in that way. Each believer should be content to fulfill his role in the body.
Paul states this clearly. Each member of the body has a function (v 4). We do not have the same strengths. The whole body benefits when we use our strengths without insisting on doing what others can do better.
In case they missed his point, Paul reminded the believers in Rome that they were a part of a body (v 5). They were not to serve the Lord as individuals. We could say it in another way: Believers are members of a team. They serve the Lord as a team.
In fact, we could say that the Christian cannot be successful if he sees himself as an individual Lone Ranger. He needs the gifts and strengths of other believers. Jordan needed his teammates to succeed. They needed him. They wouldn’t have won the championship without each other.
Conclusion
Americans love superstars. When it comes to basketball, there is no greater superstar than Michael Jordan. But basketball is a team sport. Jordan could have accomplished nothing without the rest of his team.
Unfortunately, even Evangelicals apply this thinking to the Christian life. We can desire to be superstars. We can think we don’t need others.
But that is not how God operates. He has placed us in a body—on a team. He has designed things so that we need others to serve and please Him. If we want to be successful in His eyes, we must function that way.
One day, every person who has believed in Jesus for eternal life will be in His kingdom forever. Before that kingdom begins, we will stand before Him at the Judgment Seat of Christ. He will evaluate what we have done in order to determine our rewards in that kingdom. On that day, He will judge us on how we served in the Body of Christ, the Church.
Whatever our gifts were, the Judge will determine what kind of teammate we were. Were we humbly content with the role we played? Did we serve in such a way that the body might succeed, whatever personal acclaim we may have or may not have received?
I hope that on that Day, that the Lord will look at my life—and the lives of the believers with whom I worshipped—and say that we were a successful body. How great will it be if He says that we worked together to bring glory to Him? If that happens, no matter what role each of us played, we will be able to lift our crowns together, because we did it as a championship team.i
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Ken Yates is a retired Army chaplain (Lt. Col). He has many theological degrees, including a Ph.D. from D.T.S. in New Testament. He leads the GES international ministry, cohosts the daily podcast, and assists Bob in all aspects of the GES ministry. His new book, Elisabeth, is a powerful testimony to the power of God manifested in a Christ-centered family. He and his wife, Pam, live in Columbia, SC.
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i Editor’s note: Ken is not suggesting that everyone in a local church will get equal rewards at the Bema. Some will be overcomers. Some will not. Some will be wholehearted (Luke 19:17) and some halfhearted (Luke 19:19). Each one will be judged individually (2 Cor 5:9-10). We will not only be judged for how well we served on the team that is our local church, but also for our deeds as children, spouses, parents, employees, bosses, neighbors, friends, citizens, witnesses, and so on.
