Teammates or Opponents?

Last week I was on vacation with my family, doing the "Family Reunion" thing on LeAnn's side. We go every other summer, and always enjoy ourselves immensely.

Even though the weather was cold, we still got in some skiing and tubing. On the last day, I managed to allow my eldest daughter to convince me to go one more time, even though I really didn't want to go (the air temp was 71 degrees and the water temp was 75). One of the other cousins wanted to tube with me as well, so since I was already wet, I said "yes," and he and I hopped on our tubes for one more spin around the lake.

As we waited for the boat to make it's attempt at propelling us to temporary watery graves, I look at Cody and asked, "So are we doing this as teammates or opponents?" His nonchalant response made me think I was going to only have to battle the boat and waves, but with the rev of the engine, Cody's behavior revealed he was hoping to help dump me as well. (By the way, I stayed dry that round - Cody was the one drinking the lake!).

Company Teammates and Opponents

In the past two weeks, I've had to deal with customer service at two different companies. One behaved like they were my teammate, doing everything in their power to help me. The other company was more like Cody, immediately behaving like I was their opponent who they simply wanted to dump.

The first company was Apple. My original 4GB iPhone isn't working like it should, and since I purchased the extended warranty, I called for a repair or replacement before my warranty runs out next month. Since they no longer have original 4GB iPhones laying around, they are sending me a free iPhone 3G (should arrive today!) with a full year warranty on it. I worked with 3 different people on the phone, and each treated me like a valued client with whom they would do everything in their power to help. The treatment was amazing.

The second company was Zoom. This past week while on vacation, I helped my brother-in-law set-up a new iMac at their home. Because of where they live, his family is still on dial-up, which meant we needed to purchase a USB modem. Since the place we bought the iMac from was out of USB modem's, we headed to Best Buy. The only USB modem in stock was one from Zoom, and it said on the box that it worked with Macs, so we picked it up and headed home.

After properly setting up the modem and copying the settings from the old iMac that they were replacing (by the way, their old iMac was 9 years old and still going strong! Yeah Macs!), we ran into some issues. The phone call was not going through. Because we knew we had all of our settings correct, we feared it could be the modem. So I thought a quick call to Zoom would solve the problem.

In all fairness to Zoom, the call did solve our problem. We learned we did not need to include *70 before the phone number to turn off call-waiting. But to get that information was rather difficult. The gentleman I was talking with acted as if I was interrupting more important things, that I was stupid for even calling, and that I was opposed to him and Zoom's product, so therefore he needed to be opposed to me and my questions. It was rather frustrating. All I needed to know was why the call wouldn't go through and was there something that I needed to do to get their modem to work. But I was treated immediately like I was an opponent to Zoom when I was looking for a teammate to help me.

Applying these thoughts

As I am growing older, living life, and interacting with people, I am realizing that most people prefer to meet and work with "teammates" rather than "opponents". As I pastor people, I want to find ways I can work with them, even when I may have to be opposed to their ideologies or behavior. I look at the Scriptures and see many of the Jewish leaders of the first century acting as Jesus' opponents, which caused them to miss out on experiencing life as his teammate. Yet Jesus could look at people who were living life opposite of God's design, and yet he loved them like teammates, helping them change so they could experience the goodness of God's grace.

How about you? When you meet people, are you viewing them first as opponents? Or do you treat them as teammates? Are you looking to help them succeed? Or do you act like they are an imposition upon you and your time? I think this can be applied to that difficult co-worker, the neighbor next door, your kids (if you are a parent), the people in your small group, your parents, and even your spouse (if you are married).

So let me rephrase the question I asked Cody, "Are you doing life as other's teammate or as their opponent?"

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Update: After typing all of this, but before I actually got it posted, I read the following article by James Emery White with some of the same sentiments I posted above. So follow the link if you want more food for thought on this topic of being an opponent who is quick to argue.