“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).
We often ignore the concept of team when thinking 
about the Christian life. After all, our decision to follow Christ is an individual one; no one can make it for us. Our growth is up to us as well, no one can make us grow. No one can force us to pray, read the Word, or memorize scripture. Ultimately, those actions are up to us. Others can suggest them, even demand them, but no one can make us do them. So everything about the Christian life is individual, right? Wrong. The Christian life needs teamwork, just like almost every other activity in life. As the poem states, “No man is an island,” and that is especially true in the Christian walk.
I found out in coaching a long time ago that having good players is only part of the ingredients for a good team. Getting them to play together was just as much of a key. The body of Christ is, in essence, a team. We have members who should have individual goals that will help us reach our team goals. One of our main team goals is to further the kingdom of God. Anything that takes us away from our main goal should be unacceptable to every individual of the team.
How then do we cooperate with others in the body so we 
can reach our goal? Christianity is a team sport. It is not like wrestling or boxing where we are taking on someone by ourselves, but more like football and softball where participants are dependent on each other. A while back we had a surprise house-warming for a couple in the church. Mom sent out an email to the entire church describing the plan. Of course, the honored couple was left out of the loop. Amazingly, no one let the plan slip, even though everyone saw the couple at church earlier in the day. The key to the surprise was everyone working together!
We all know what kinds of things can hinder a good team. Pride and selfishness both stand in the way of good teamwork. The Apostle Paul understood the value team, that is why we wrote to the
Philippians about the need to put others before themselves. One time I gave a talk to my football team about teamwork. I told that to win we needed teamwork and their was no “I” in team. Later in the week I brought the idea up again and wanted to check to see if they understood it. I asked one of the players to summarize what I told them earlier in the week. He proudly stood and said, “Teamwork is important, Coach, because as everyone knows, there is no “I” in Win!” We obviously had more to worry about than winning.
Paul pointed out in our verses for today that selfishness is destructive. If we focus on ourselves, our work as a team will be ineffective. Selfish ambition asks, “What is in this for me?” That attitude will derail anything positive that any team, including the body of Christ, will try to achieve. Each of us has a special set of gifts
that will help the body function better. If we use those gifts for ourselves, the body will not function better.
At an annual picnic between two rival companies they got access to two boats from the local college that were used for intercollegiate rowing contests. The companies arranged to have the picnic end with a big race. One company fell behind quickly and lost by 11 lengths. It was such a sad effort that they put together a committee to study the problem so that the following year would not be an embarrassment. After two months the task force determined that “the other team had eight people rowing and one coxswain steering and shouting out the beat. We had one person rowing and eight coxswains.” The task force then came up with a recommendation for the rematch. “Our guy has to row faster.”
Sadly this humorous story has more truth than fiction. In the church today there are a lot more coxswains than rowers and our solution to growing the kingdom is to have the rowers work harder. This is not what we are called to do; we are all called to do our part and if we don’t that, the kingdom of God will not grow.
Christ was the perfect model of unselfishness and that is what He calls us to be. Back in my middle school years during the 1964 Olympics a story of unselfishness emerged in the two-man bobsled competition. The British team 
had just completed its first run and was in second place. Tony Nash, the team’s driver, made a disheartening discovery. They had broken a bolt on the rear axle of their sled, which would put them out of the competition. The great Italian bobsled driver Eugenio Monti, who was in first place, heard of their plight. He removed the bolt from the rear axle of his own sled and sent it to them. The British team placed it on their sled and then raced down the mountain, winning the gold medal. Monti’s Italian team took the bronze medal for finishing in third place.
When asked about his unselfish act of sportsmanship, Eugenio Monti modestly replied, “Tony Nash did not win because I gave him a bolt. Tony Nash won because he was the best driver.” Because of his unselfishness, Monti was given the first De Coubertin Medal for sportsmanship. The award, named after the founder of the modern Olympics, is one of the highest honors an Olympian can receive.
God too honors unselfishness. Although the coxswain may receive more accolades, the team will not win without the rowers. God is 
calling us to “Pull, pull, pull,” our weight in the body of Christ. No one else can sit in our seat. It is for us to occupy. If we do not do our part for the team, it will not get done because other rowers can only row so hard. When we put others first on the team, we are really putting God first and there is no greater act than that.