A Homeschool

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Yours

Whether or not you have officially established a school in your home, you are operating a homeschool for the next generation of people in your life if you are spending much time with any of them in your home. If they are there with you, they are learning a lot of basic lessons from the adults and others in your home from what you are doing together and saying to each other regardless of whether or not these factors are organized into a curriculum of lessons or even intentional in their teaching objective.

The basic lessons

Early in these children’s experiences in your home, they begin to learn how to express how they are feeling, what they want from their elders, and how to move around in their environment. These are basic communication and mobility skills. While they are learning these skills, they are also learning some basic lessons about how to relate to individuals who are different from themselves. The elders may seek to impose some rules upon the children in regard to how they respond to these lessons, but these children will always be seeking to utilize those skills of communication and behavior that they see as being most effective in communicating their messages and getting what they want. Learning in your homeschool is always done between everyone who participates in the process. These basic lessons of communication skills and behavior with others become so acceptable in their thoughts and habits that they will often influence their attitudes and behavior with others when they are outside of your home and with other individuals who are not usually a part of the social gathering of individuals in your home. These attitudes and behaviors may not be easily changed so they may have their influence upon these trained children throughout their lives. These factors of attitudes and behavior are commonly recognized as qualities of character in the young generation that they learned in the homeschools in which they were raised.

Good homeschools

But, adults who are concerned about the poor quality of personal virtues and relational skills that are being promoted and taught by the teaching authorities in their communities don’t have to just accept such standards for the quality of the homeschools that they want to provide for the next generation of residents in their homes! The Google search service provides an excellent list of resources from well experienced adults who have been able to publish detailed reports of their high quality homeschools in its list on “blog-homeschools”. Interested adults will be able to find much wise guidance for the establishment of such homeschools in these reports. I would also invite adults who are interested in this process to check out the guidance that is provided in this statement on the website that is attached to this Blog: https://www.christianityetc.org/a-good-marriage.php. A good marriage between a man and a women is God’s nest for the training of each generation of children that are brought into this world. God has not revised His standards for that nest!

Making your home into a homeschool that is going to provide the next generation of its residents with a good learning experience of personal virtues for the development of their characters and knowledge and behavioral skills for effectively living in this world of many personal dangerous influences is not easy. The inherited nature of all human beings to prefer their own selfish pleasures and comforts rather than learning how to cooperate with other individuals who will also be seeking to secure their own selfish pleasures and comforts rather than seeking those that would be practically good for everyone is a persistent barrier against learning how to live with others in a loving process of cooperation and maturation in the various schools that life provides in the various cultures for social living and training that large groups of people have accepted as having some authority over this process in their lives and that of subsequent generations of children.

Let’s talk about this

I am not interested in debating God’s marital standards in this Post, but there could be some practical benefits for interested adults to discuss this process here. What do you need to do to make your home into a high quality homeschool for its residents? Whom are you willing to trust for wise and loving guidance in the establishment and ongoing operation of such a homeschool? How are you going to handle and overcome the opposition to such a homeschool by some influential authorities in your community? I will be glad to publish your sincere personal comments regarding homeschools in this Post. This is a very important and timely matter in our world!

Being positive is always good

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Why

Being positive in your comments regarding personal concerns or projects that you are seeking to handle in your daily activities with your spouse or partners or neighbors or friends is always a good approach to effectively dealing with the matters, because it enables you all to avoid the problems that are created by having to deal with the effects of the negative comments in your relationships and work together. Everyone tends to take negative comments personally, which means that they apply them to themselves as criticisms of them and not just comments about their behavior. So the efforts of the individuals become those that are intended to defend themselves from the personal criticism rather than to find a way to effectively deal with the personal concerns or to fix the problem that is the focus of their joint work. This shift of focus from common concerns for good teamwork to deal with common problems in one’s daily situation to having to deal with personal negative criticisms regarding the nature and quality of the individuals themselves who are seeking to work together can be so judgemental and so bad that they can permanently destroy the relationships between the individuals who are so caught in such negative verbal exchanges.

The words that we use in our comments with others are very important expressions of how we regard them and how we want to relate to them in our daily lives. If they express the qualities of mutual personal respect and caring for each other and the sincere hope for some positive benefits from the joint work that is free from any efforts to manipulate or to control the behavior of others, then they will always produce good benefits in their teamwork otherwise they may damage the relationships. Perhaps some of you have experienced the destructive effects of negative comments from others with whom you were engaged in personal relationships that you treasured and enjoyed. It is never easy to forgive others for such abuse, and sometimes the broken relationship can never be repaired. That is why it is always good to focus the points of your comments to others with whom you are working on common concerns on what you intend to do with your resources and personal abilities to express your personal responsibilities in regard to the matter without seeking in any way to control or to manipulate what they choose to do as individuals in the common situation. Every individual in any relationship with another human being is always unique and his or her resources and insights and wants and emotions will always be somewhat personal in regard to how they are invested in expression of joint work in their daily life. That is why keeping your comments regarding matters of common concern and teamwork positive is always good.

Let’s talk about this

How have you seen the positive qualities of your comments with others in your teamwork with them on common matters of concern and work made a beneficial difference in your relationships and work together? How did the expression of negative comments affect your relationships and teamwork in your situation? What is the most beneficial comment that a person can make in his or her efforts to promote good relationships and teamwork with others?

Additional help

Here is a link to a statement on my website that may help interested viewers to select very positive words for the comments that they share with others in regard to their teamwork with them: https://www.christianityetc.org/meditate-to-feel-good.php . Do not brag about what you intend to personally invest in your teamwork. Stay humble, because you are only one individual in the team, and such words of boasting may be interpreted as your efforts to manipulate the behavior of others.

Good love

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Its nature

I am sure that everyone in their personal relationships wants to experience some good love. That would be love that is really sincere. Paul cites it this way in his teaching for Christians: “Let love be genuine” (Romans 12:9). The Greek word for “love” in that statement is “agape”. The apostle John uses that same word, “agape”, in this teaching statement about “love”: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8). This means that most of us human beings are wanting “genuine” “love” in our human relationships that matches the quality of “love” that is present in the basic character of God. Wow! That is a quality of “love” that is totally unconditional, non-manipulative, unselfish, and dependable. That is the quality of “love” that Jesus demonstrated for human sinners when He surrendered His body to be crucified and accepted the shame and pain of being crucified to justify God’s price for the bloody sacrifice of an “innocent” life to enable Him to redeem sinful rebel human beings from their personal rejection of God’s righteous and wise will for their personal lives in this world where they were subject to the “evil” influences of Satan and their own selfish desires.

Its absence from most human relationships

As children grow up in various situations of living, they have the opportunity to experience various qualities of love in their relationships with their parents, other relatives, neighbors, friends, and associates from different groups of daily contacts. They learn that all of the experiences of “love” that they have in these various relationships are not of the same quality and few of them, if any of them, are really totally unconditional and consistently unselfish. When they personally reach the stage in their lives when they can become personally independent in their choices, they often seek a personal mate with whom they hope to experience a personal bond of “love” that will fulfill all of their dreams for a loving relationship that will meet all of their desires for physical comfort and safety and emotional happiness in their lives. It may not take these independent adults very long, particularly when the “honeymoon” is over and some persistent personal and social problems appear in their marriages, that the unconditional and unselfish “love” that they sought and expected to be receiving from their mates was not being consistently expressed to them. One or each of the individuals involved in this “troubled” marriage of personal tension and pain may be aware that something is wrong in their relationship but they may not know exactly what needs to be done to fix it or have the caring humble will to seek its cure. The couple may go on in their “broken” marriage for the achievement of some greater social purpose with the children or themselves or they may end the brokenness with a divorce and take their uncured faults with them into another relationship or wait for death to end their misery.

Our story

The story of my marriage with Betty began in 1986 when I met her in the hall of our apartment building and she offered me a piece of home made pie. We didn’t immediately become real good friends, because I was busy with some other personal interests following my divorce from my third wife. I became attracted to an old friend, Esther, whom I knew from graduate school where my first wife and I lived across the hall in the apartment building from her and her husband. Esther was now also divorced, and we decided to meet in her home in a distant city. Our meeting immediately became a powerful emotional drawing experience, but she wasn’t ready for another marriage. I got a new good professional job in a distant city, and we continued to engage in a stimulating courtship, sometimes by long distance but sometimes by close fellowship in the town where I was working. I finally decided to quit my job and move to where Esther lived to see if I could convince her to marry me. When she made it clear to me that that wasn’t going to happen in 1990 after a couple of years of courtship, I decided to move back to the apartment building where Betty lived to see if she might be interested in getting married to me. She was, and so we started to make the appropriate arrangements after she accepted my proposal. One of these arrangements involved getting a divorce from an old friend that she had just married to avoid getting married to another uncaring man like her previous two husbands were. After she easily secured her third divorce, we were happily married on February 2, 1991 at the ripe old ages of 60 for me and 63 for Betty.

The honeymoon began right away and continued for the next twenty years as we both began to work together to rebuild our broken lives and to share some “genuine” love with each other. All of her anniversary cards during the first decade of our marriage were signed in these words of commitment “Your devoted wife, only forever, Betty”. In 1993 Betty began to encourage me to get back into the ministry that I had lost when I was divorced by my second wife in 1981. With the special help of a couple of former ministering associates in key positions, Betty was able to get me into a position as the interim pastor at the age of sixty-two of a local church to which we moved to live in an acquired apartment. I served this church for several months, baptized seven youth as new converts in one service, and enabled the church to get a young couple as their new pastors. When we left that church, I took another interim assignment for a couple of months before I was called to another church in 1994 as their resident pastor after they had been served by a non-resident pastor for twenty-five years. Betty and moved into their restored parsonage where we lived for about a year and half before I retired in 1996 from my professional service as a Baptist minister and we moved into our new manufactured house in a mobile-home park in Rockford, Illinois.

Something happened in the early years of the second decade of our marriage that broke the “honeymoon” mood of our relationship particularly from her perspective. I “broke” her “heart”, which she acknowledged to Mike, her son, during the early years of the second decade in our marriage. This “break” in her devotional commitment to me was inevitable, because neither one of us knew how to prevent it or to fix it because we were each participants in three divorces in our previous marriages. We continued to work together during the years from 1996 to 2010 in various Christian ministries in our local church where I was teaching a Sunday School class and serving on the governing Board of the Congregation and Betty took on a leadership role in the church’s Women’s Missionary Society, which was a new experience for her. We eventually decided to leave this church because of the lack of support from the pastor for our personal services, but I was able to use an old computer that I had received from a man in the church from which I had retired to create and to operate a personal Christian website that gave me a world-wide platform for my special writing and teaching ministry, and Betty got me a nice roll-top desk and a big book case to help me handle this ministry from a bedroom in our home that I had converted into my office. I also had the opportunity to serve as the interim pastor of three other local churches to which we moved to live temporarily in furnished apartments and Betty actively and personally supported me in these ministries away from our home.

During these enjoyable years of service, Betty began to experience some minor physical strokes that would cause her to fall to the floor. This happened once before I took the last interim assignment for my ministry, but Betty quickly recovered from the incident and was willing to move with me to the distant church for our new service. While we were there Betty had two more strokes that caused her to fall in our apartment. In each case I was home and able to take her to the local hospital to get her arms treated for the skin wounds that she had suffered in these falls. These episodes convinced me that I needed to give up this ministry to take Betty back to our home where we could begin to treat her for this medical problem in her body. We were doing this when she had another fall in 2011 in which she broke her left hip. She got a hip replacement and went into a nursing facility for therapy, but she suffered some physical abuse from an aid there that caused us to bring her home before her incision for the hip replacement had completely healed. She got an infection in the hip tissue that required two more surgeries and the replacement of the hip joint with a spacer bar that left her with permanent and persistent pain in her left hip although she could stand up and move around with the help of a walker. Although she was offered more physical therapy treatments to enable her to walk without a walker, she was too afraid of falling again to do the necessary personal work to do that. So now it was up to me to help Betty move around our home safely without the risk of falling and to be somewhat comfortable in our bed, in her chair, on the couch, at our table for meals, or on the toilet as I helped her with all of these moves and the changing of her under garments and clothes during the day and at bed time. This physical work from me was not easy, because I suffered from persistent physical pains in my back and left hip and leg from a serious injury that I had suffered in high school and I now had Copd and my childhood asthma had returned which often left me out of breath. We were now two old people trying to take care of each other with our severely damaged bodies and no available local helpers.

With my own physical handicaps and discomfort, I was not always as careful and as comforting as Betty needed in her personal situation, particularly when we were each trying to get ready for bed every night. There were a lot of different physical moves for each of us that were required to get through this process, and sometimes Betty would complain to me, as her son explained was her normal pattern of behavior when she was uncomfortable with what was being done to her by someone, even through their efforts were intended to be helpful. When I talked to him on the phone about her critical habit, he urged me not to take it personally, but that was hard for me to take. So in my ongoing frustration with my inability to make her comfortable and my inability to get some help with her care and her criticisms of my efforts, my response was often to suggest to her that she could contact Mike, her son, to have him arrange to take care of her away from me. I learned from some personal notes that she had made in several notebooks that had found as I was cleaning out our home that when I made this suggestion she took it to mean that I really wanted to get rid of her in my life and that I was no longer lovingly taking care of her in our daily lives. I now recognize that my inability to positively handle the pressures of taking care of her by myself with my own painful handicaps “broke” our marriage by destroying her mental and spiritual devotion to me as her husband and it refreshed the memories of the loving and comforting care that she had received from her sisters whom had often taken care of her and supported her and protected her from the abusive physical and emotional treatment that she had received from their angry father who was personally very frustrated in his inability to get his children to live the proper moral lives that he sought for them. All of his children suffered personally from his angry outbursts of abuse and they each left home early to get away from it as they learned to comfort each other in their independent lives.

I recognized this change in Betty’s perspective in our caring relationship, but I wasn’t able to get her to talk with me about it so nothing was done to correct it. In her very handicapped experiences in our home that later included another broken hip and the experience of becoming blind, she had concluded that “Bob” was the only person who was daily available to her in her moments of need who could make her to feel somewhat comfortable and safe. In her moments of confusion from the Alzheimer’s disease that also began to affect her mind, she wasn’t always able to remember that this “Bob” was her husband, but she never hesitated to call for “Bob” when she needed some special caring attention, and she became very nervous when she didn’t know that he was close by her. This expression of her devotion to “Bob” was a big encouragement to me, although I now know that her calls to “Bob” were not calls of devotion for him but they were only calls of practical dependency that he was the only person in the world that could make her somewhat comfortable in her helpless condition.

On the afternoon of December 30, 2022 Bob had to leave the house to meet with the surgeon and his team for a preliminary consultation session to guide him through the surgery for the hernia that he had that was scheduled for January 13, 2023. Since it was obvious that Betty was experiencing the final stages of her body’s permanent sleep, I had made arrangements for Betty to be placed on a bed in the living room of our home by the local hospice service, and Kathy, one of their volunteer care givers had come to sit with Betty for the couple hours that Bob would be gone in case that she needed some comforting care. Betty became physically alert when she was present and they began to talk. Betty told her about her sisters and how they had cared for each other as they were growing up after leaving their angry father. Kathy told Betty that her “husband” really loved her a lot, but all that she could say in response to this commentary regarding his care for her was “that is what he says all of the time”. In this brief conversation with Kathy, Betty expressed her personal feelings about her husband. Betty had previously mentioned to her husband that she knew how hard it was for him to take care of her every day and night by himself. In these days that she was experiencing her body shutting down, she even expressed her willingness to help him to fix some meatloaf for a meal or to do the dishes or do some laundry. And at one point in these days, Betty told her husband that she would soon be “out of your hair”, which was an expression of her conviction that he wanted to get rid of her in his days of overwhelming care that he had accepted for his role in their marriage. When Bob returned from his consultation with his surgeon, Betty was now resting quietly on her bed as the living functions of her body continued to shut down. Later that evening as I prepared to go to bed, I gave Betty a shot of sedative in her mouth in case she needed to be calmed down during the night, but she couldn’t swallow it and I couldn’t get her to do so by closing her mouth. Sometime during that night or in the hours of the 31st Betty’s body went to sleep with her broken heart but her peaceful spirit as she passed out of our marriage and the personal struggles of her daily life. These calls to “Bob” were used by the Spirit of the Lord to free me from a persistent bad addiction that I had in my spiritual and personal life for many years, and her peaceful passing assured me that my personal efforts to provide her with physical comfort and freedom from mental fears and stress in the final years of her life had been effective.

In spite of our personal handicaps and failures in our personal lives, I believe that God brought Betty and I together in a somewhat committed marriage of imperfect love so that He could do His loving and transforming and comforting work in our respective lives. When Betty’s role in that work was done, He took her out her personal situation of stress and fears in a very easy and stress free experience of complete bodily sleep, leaving me with the benefits of our special marital relationship to move forward in a refreshed experience of faith in the personal expression of service to which He has called me in my marriage with Betty.

Let’s talk about this.

What marks “genuine” love in your life? What is the quality of love that you commonly express and experience? What are you willing to do to repair the misunderstandings and faulty judgments that are hampering your experiences of love in your marriage?

What is good for you?

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In this blog

I try to make the focus of this blog and the various topics that it presents on matters of personal secular and social interest and concern. It is written to generate thought and discussions about these matters and comments about this in this platform. These Posts don’t seem to produce many comments in this blog, but I trust that they do produce some good thoughts about these matters in our daily lives. My focus in these Posts is to be practical on what can really work in your life rather than just being theoretical. I have lived a long time (now 91 years) and gone through a lot a different personal experiences, some successful and many failures, including lost jobs and several broken marriages. I have many years of formal education in the fields of liberal arts and several career specialties that have enabled me to function as a preacher/teacher and writer in various private services. I continue to write, but I no longer need to sell anything that I write. I write to try to make a positive difference in my reader’s personal lives. I invite you to think about this Post and the many others that I have published in this blog to evaluate what good benefits they may have provided for you.

In my website

The focus of the material in my website, christianityetc.org, of which this Blog is a part, is on matters of spiritual interest and concern, like what my readers believe about theology and practice daily in their moral choices and spiritual habits. This means that the particular focus of the statements and resources in my website are on the issues that influence the cultivation of my reader’s personal spirits rather than just their personal social lives. This gives them some significance for their time in eternity rather than just for the duration of their physical lives in this world. Again, my objective in these statements and resources is to provide some material that can have practical positive benefits rather than just theoretical benefits in their lives. Since I do not often get personal feedback from my readers regarding their responses to my statements and resources, I am not sure about the good qualities that these statements and resources actually provide to my readers. I invite you to review some of this material and to give some thought to the benefits that you receive from it.

The source of what is good in your life

You may not have previously recognized this before, but I would like to remind you that all that you experience and receive in your daily lives comes from what you choose to think about in the moments of your daily lives and whom you decide to trust to provide you with what you want. These possible providers are either yourself, Satan, or God. You will never be wise enough or mature enough to know in accord with your own insights what will ultimately be “good” for you out of all the possible options that you have every day. The options that Satan will offer you will never be “good” for you, because they will be designed and applied to you to make you into his slave, which will have deadly consequences for your physical and eternal lives. God is the only source of what is “good” for you, because He knows very clearly what will be “good” for you and He alone has the power to bring it to you over the foolishness of your own selfish options and deadly options of Satan, and He loves you more than any of your other possible providers. Your best choice for what is “good” in your daily life is to trust God to provide you with it as you surrender your selfish will to His loving and wise directions.

Let us talk about this

What is basically being good for you in your daily life? From whom are you getting it? How long does its effect last? Is it worth the cost that it takes to get it? What are your practical options for getting what is ultimately “good” for you in your current daily life? Are you only expecting it to come from what you can experience through your five senses or could it come from a source that is outside of these senses? What changes are you willing to make in your daily thoughts and choice to get what is “good” for you? Finally, is this Blog being well displayed in your online device? I will be glad to publish your comments about this matter as attachments to this Post.

Emotions: Good and Bad

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What are emotions

From my study of psychology and theology and my personal experiences of trying to learn how to survive and enjoy my personal daily experiences in this world of thousands of options for my personal choices, I have recognized that the emotions that I feel in my mind are the God-given chemical or electronic tags that God has designed into my brain to help me to evaluate the quality of the choices that I make each day as to whether they are coming from sources that are either “good” or “evil” and whether the experiences that they bring to me will be either beneficial or harmful. These sources that I choose to trust are either God, my creator, or Satan, my enemy, or my Self, who has been created by God in His image to make free personal choices and to reproduce myself in generations of children and personal relationships in accord with whom I choose to love with my heart and mind.

God warned my initial parents, Adam and Eve, about the possible dangers of this choice for whom I would trust in His commandment not to eat the fruit of “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” that was in the “garden” where He had placed them or they would “die” (see Genesis 2:7-24). But, when they chose to disobey God and to seek this knowledge for themselves in response to Satan’s appealing lies, their physical bodies became subject to death and they became separated from God in their personal direct relationship with Him in this world that had now become corrupted by their “sin” with its selfish and Satanic influences were now to be inherited by all of their children, including me (See Genesis 3:1-24). So now I have to struggle in my daily choices with my emotional feelings and the various tags of evaluation for the personal experiences that they produce in my life so that I can experience what is “good” that comes from God and avoid what is “evil” that comes from Satan and not get distracted by my own selfish passions and wilful choices.

How to manage different emotions

Some of my emotions mark experiences that brought me personal pleasure and comfort and peace and joy that made me feel “good”. Other emotions mark personal experiences that were “evil” and made me feel abused or harmed my personal relationships or made me very uncomfortable and frightened about my daily and eternal safety in relationship with God, my creator, and my family and friends. Some emotions that were produced by my selfish choices were mixed in their qualities and were “bad” making me feel sad or bitter or angry or sorry or anxious about the experiences that they influenced me to make although they were initially made for the “good” benefits that I thought that they would produce. That is the nature of selfish choices; they are always mixed with “good” and “bad” experiences.

My mind is full of both “good” and “bad” habits of behavior that have produced both “good” and “bad” daily experiences from the thoughts and subsequent choices that I have made in the moments of my life. The quality of the experiences that my choices bring to me in these moments of my life will depend upon whom I choose to love and to trust, God or Satan or Self, in my daily choices. These choices will depend upon the quality of humble repentance that I offer to God, my creator and Lord, for my rebellious and selfish sinful choices against His loving and wise will for my life and my willingness to surrender all of my heart and mind to Him and to trust Him and His loving powers to protect and deliver me from the “evil” lies of Satan and his tempting appeals to my worldly comforts and security and selfish pleasures.

Although I have surrendered my heart to God and am trusting His Spirit for His personal guidance in my mind, the battle between Satan and my selfish desires and my Spirit-directed choices continues moment by moment every day because God has not completely finished His redemptive and transforming work in renewing my mind in accord with His perfect love and will for me. So I have to constantly decide in my thoughts moment by moment every day whom I’m going to choose to love and to trust for guidance in the personal choices that I make, God or Satan or Self, and I’m thanking God in these moments for His grace and wisdom that He gives to me through the presence of His Spirit in my heart and mind who helps me to make choices that are personally and eternally “good” for me. Here is a statement from my website that describes this process: https://www.christianityetc.org/meditate-to-feel-good.php.

Let’s talk about this

What are the primary emotions that you constantly feel every day? What are you choosing to do about them and their influence in your daily life? Whom do you recognize as the sources of these emotions in your life? How do you expect to experience inward personal peace in your daily struggles between these “good” and “bad” emotions and habits in your life?

Good Teamwork

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Its nature

Good teamwork is recognized as being necessary for any winning athletic team. It is also necessary for every successful business, non-profit agency, governmental body, military unit, family, or other social group. A team is a group of individuals who are committed to working together for the achievement of a common goal that they believe is worthy of a high level of their personal effort. It is different from a group that just gets together to discuss topics of common interest. They expect to have to work hard to achieve their objective, and to submit their personal incentives to the task of being trained in the personal disciplines of behavior that are required by the particular tasks that are required for the effective achievement of their common objective It may be winning athletic contests, manufacturing and selling a good useful product, providing a necessary personal service for others, making wise political rules for the conducing of personal civic operations, getting along with a spouse in the raising some dependent children, defeating an enemy in violent military conflicts, or just achieving a worthy objective with a group of associates.

It is usually assumed that a good team has a specific coach, or boss or supervisor, chief executive officer, or ranked military officer, or family head, or chairperson. But, the operation of a good team cannot be managed by one single person. It must be done by each of the team members sharing the functions that are required for the achievement of their common objective in an ongoing process of shared leadership that involves every member of the team, not just its stars or most talented individuals or most experienced workers, or even the owner of the business. Good teamwork cannot be purchased with a big budget, and it cannot be commanded by a line of officers or supervisors. It is a quality of cooperative work in which each member of the team automatically implements the appropriate function that will enable the team to achieve its objective and to maintain its organized effort. This is a process of shared leadership that is the mark of any successful team and a demonstration of good teamwork.

Task functions

These task functions are specifically designed to enable the team to clarify and to solve any emerging problems that they encounter in their cooperative efforts to achieve their common objective. The first task is one of initiating, which is proposing subsequent tasks or goals, defining the problem, and suggesting a procedure or ideas for solving a problem. Then next task is one of information or opinion seeking, which is requesting facts, seeking relevant information about team concerns, and asking for suggestions or ideas. The next task is information or opinion giving which is offering facts, providing relevant information about team concerns, stating beliefs, and giving suggestions and ideas. Then the next task is one of clarifying or elaborating, which is interpreting or reflecting ideas or suggestions about the team’s concerns, clearing up confusions, indicating alternatives and issues before the team, and giving examples. Now someone can provide the task of summarizing, which is the function of pulling together related ideas, restating ideas or suggestions that have been discussed, and offering a decision or conclusion for the team to accept or reject. Then someone can provide the task of consensus testing, which is sending up “trial balloons” to see if the team is nearing a conclusion or how much agreement has been reached. Finally someone can implement the task of testing feasibility, which is applying suggestions to real situations to examine their practical ability to work in their situation. It should be evident that these functions have a natural sequence to them in the work of a team, and they are best implemented by the automatic cooperation of every member of the team rather than being implemented by any single “leader”.

Building and maintenance functions

These task functions are designed to enable a team to maintain the productive way in which its members work together and to enhance their loyalty to each other and the team. The first task is to be encouraging to each other by being friendly, warm, and responsive to them for their contributions and giving them more opportunities to be recognized for their helpful participation in the team’s work. The next task is one of expressing team feelings that express the ongoing moods of the team regarding the relationships that are being established between the members of the team. Then the next task may be one of harmonizing any emerging disagreements by reducing any tension between members and getting them to explore their differences. The task that can do this is one of compromising by getting members to admit any personal errors when their ideas were not apparently helpful in achieving their common objective and their status in the team became one of conflict rather than one of mutual cooperation. The task of gate-keeping, which is working to keep the channels of communication between all of the members open and facilitating the participation of each member rather than falling into the pattern of having one member take charge of the team’s work. The task of setting standards for the member’s work together as they seek to achieve their common objective will help them to build and to maintain the positive qualities of their teamwork. The final task in this set of functions is one of following, which is just agreeing to accept the decisions of the team by listening carefully to contributions of each member and the decisions of the team that are being made. These functions should enable the team to preserve its identity as a group of cooperating individuals rather than just the expression of one “star”.

Non-functional behavior

This is self-centered behavior that is focused more on the achievement of individuals on the team than on achieving its common objective. The first of these behaviors is that of blocking, which is interfering with the progress of the team by going off on a tangent, such as one’s personal experience that is unrelated to the team’s objective or arguing too much on a personal point that the teams has resolved or even preventing the team to take a vote. Aggression is acts of behavior that are critical of other team members without relation to what has happened in the work of the team. Other acts of behavior that are non-functional are seeking recognition to one’s self by excessive talking, suggesting extreme ideas, or boasting about one’s accomplishments in an unhelpful way. An example of this is special pleading that one’s idea or suggestion should be considered by the team because it represents the opinion of a recognized larger popular group of individuals. Another non-functional type of behavior is personally withdrawing from the ongoing discussion or work of the team by just becoming passive to its work or whispering to other team members or giving your attention to more personal matters of concern.. Dominating the work of a team by attempting to manipulate its discussions by “pulling rank” or constantly interrupting other team members in their efforts to participate in the work of the team is very non-functional behavior in teamwork. Unless these expressions of non-functional behavior are eliminated from the ongoing work of the team, they will destroy its efforts to accomplish its common objective.

Conclusion

Good teamwork is basically the cooperative effort of various individuals who are personally committed to the achievement of a common goal to which they will give their thoughtful attention and selfless energy and personal insights and skills. It cannot be ordered by any authoritative leader or purchased by any wealthy “boss”, but all of its task functions and building and maintenance functions must be implemented by members of the team as they work together in the process of shared leadership to eliminate any non-functional behavior that will destroy their efforts to accomplish their common objective.

Let’s talk about this. What is your positive and negative experiences in working as a member of a team? Which of these functions do you recognize as being most essential in good teamwork?

Happy New Year

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Where is it?

If you didn’t have a calendar, how would you know when it arrived? If you listened to the news from the world’s media platforms, where would you go to experience some “happy” days? There doesn’t seem to be much happiness being announced anywhere these days. Various political authorities who are in charge of the civic operations of the different forms of government in place in our world don’t seem to be offering any positive solutions to the “old” social and personal problems that confront the residents in their countries. All of their strategies seem to be the same “old” forms of government power and control that have been demonstrated by the historic systems of communism, socialism, democracies, dictatorships and their various economic forms of doing business that are right now not providing any real practical daily benefits to anyone anywhere. Efforts are being made to establish “global” systems to establish civic forms of government that can provide some benefits of “happy” days to the different residents of cooperating nations in this world, but they only seem to be drastically dividing people in accord with their different personal agendas rather than their abilities to provide real positive solutions to the common problems that we all face every day. Dictators are seeking to maintain and to expand their personal power over the residents of their “realms” of authority in spite of some popular protests for civic reforms, and they are even seeking to take over more areas of possible resources for their wealth and power by the violence of military wars and civic agreements. There are almost no areas of secure “peace” and daily happiness for individuals and their families in this world.

With God

The only source of a happy new year and daily “peace” in your life is with God. History has demonstrated over and over again that He is basically in charge of what happens in this world that He has created and which operates in accord with His absolute authority. God’s Spirit is the only authority that anyone can trust to provide them with any “happy” days in this world. God is the creator of this world, and He is the only one who knows what is “good” for any of its residents. Any daily choices that human beings make for what they seek that they hope will provide them with a “happy new year” that is not in accord with God’s wise loving guidance will separate them from God and cause their days to be filled with various personal struggles and deadly consequences. For some resources that are “good forever” and could provide anyone with a “happy new year”, I invite the interested readers of this post to check out this website at https://www.christianityetc.org. I will be glad to answer any questions that anyone has about any of these resources and statements. Let’s talk about this. A “happy new year” is available to anyone through the choices that they make to spend their days with God as they trust Him for His wise and loving guidance in their daily choices.