Values: Teamwork — From 'Doing Your Share' to One Body in Christ

October 6, 2026

Christ is in our midst!

For: Deacon, Leaders, All volunteers
Trail Life Context: Values Step 05 — adapting the official “Teamwork Helps” into an Orthodox opening devotional
Time to prepare: 15-20 minutes

Next on our calendar is the Trail Life USA lesson Values Step 05: Teamwork — the helps document is eight pages, the longest lesson in the values series — and I’ve rewrotten it as an Orthodox devotional. The result is One Body — Many Members, One Christ: one page, built for a 15–20 minute meeting opening.

Here is what I changed, and why. The posture is the same as the Obedience walk-through. The official lesson is a good document, written by people who clearly love boys and Scripture, and nothing below is a correction. These are humble suggestions, offered for your priest’s blessing. This time I have let the rewritten devotional do most of the talking and brought the official lesson in only where the contrast teaches something.

Two Documents, One Lesson

What we started with is eight pages. Purpose questions. A Skills Progression by patrol. A Goal-Lesson-Examples entry for each question, and then the toolbox: an ant farm, a field-day competition with team flags and team yells, braided cords for Ecclesiastes 4:12, the human bridge, the amoeba race, a minefield walked blindfolded, spider legs built from a bucket and lengths of rope. At the back, links to childrensministry websites. Whoever wrote it cared about boys.

What we made is the opening devotional. One page, in the same frame as every other devotional in the series: an Opening, a Devotional with one line each for Fox, Hawk, and Mountain Lion, and a word From the Fathers. It opens with a game small enough to play inside the opening itself. Pass a ball down the line, each boy using one hand, the man beside him lending his. Then one question — what did that need? — and the boys answer it themselves, each other, which is the door into the verse.

“As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ” (1 Cor 12:12).

Paul carries the rest. He lets the boys overhear the foot resigning because it is not the hand, and the eye telling the hand it is not needed. He points at the differences and says God built them in on purpose. And he names the Head. The devotional closes the way all of them close, with a Father — St. John Chrysostom on 1 Corinthians 30.

Five Changes, Humbly Suggested

1. Move the center off the scoreboard

The official lesson answers “Why is teamwork important?” with tug-of-war. One boy stops pulling, the team loses, so each boy should do his job “so that your team can be successful.” Success becomes the measure, and the boy learns to judge his team the way a coach does: by the result.

The devotional starts somewhere else. It hangs the whole lesson on the last clause of that verse — so also is Christ — and that changes the question. A team is assembled to win. A body is joined to a Head. Those are not the same thing, and a boy who can tell them apart has learned something his culture will never teach him.

Humbly suggested: the boys already know whether they won. That question answers itself on the ride home. Give them the one that does not — are we one body? A patrol can lose tug-of-war and still be whole. A patrol can win every event and be full of eyes saying “I have no need of thee.” Only one of those two outcomes ruins a boy.

2. Teach the two lies

Asked what gets in the way of teamwork, the official lesson gives a sensible list: poor communication, unclear mission or goals, lack of leadership, pride and ego (sin). Every item is real. But set pride and ego beside poor communication and you have told the boy that his problem is mostly logistics.

The devotional works from Paul’s two complainers instead. The foot looks at the hand and quits: “Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body.” The eye looks at the hand and sneers: “I have no need of thee.” One lies about his own worth. The other lies about everyone else’s.

Both lies are easy to spot once you have names for them. The boy who hangs back because he is not the fastest is believing the first. The boy who will not pass the ball is believing the second. Skip the inventory of organizational failures and give the boys these two sentences. When you hear one of them in the room, say so. That’s the foot talking. It lands harder than a lecture on communication, and is more memorable.

3. Industrious Ants

The official lesson reaches 1 Corinthians 12, but it gets there through insects: “Did you know that Christians are similar to ants? The Bible tells us that we have many members, but one body.” Ants get a page of their own — the ant farm, Proverbs 6:6, the colony dividing its labor. The lesson is industry, and the Church is the application. I could find no direct reference in the Fathers to that verse – the closest I could come is St. Basil (Hexaemeron IX.3) “Will you not lay up in the present age rest in that which is to come, after having seen the example of the ant?”

This devotional turns the order around. The Body comes first and the ants never appear. “If they were all one member, where were the body?” Paul asks. An ant colony teaches work, and it teaches it well. What it cannot teach is communion. The ants are interchangeable, none of them belongs to a Head, and none of them would say “I have no need of thee,” because no ant has ever needed to be told.

Let’s eave the ants from Proverbs as a future lesson or bridge to discipline or dedication (the Fathers suggest 2 Thessalions 3:10).

4. From “worth a lot” to glue

Here is the advice the official lesson gives the boy who wants to matter: “Your goal should be to become the best team member you can, and in this way, you will become a team member who is worth a lot.” Earn your place, and the team will value you. Our boys hear a version of this every week, from coaches, from teachers, from the culture at large.

The devotional answers it in two lines. Fox: you are a needed part of this patrol; without you we’re missing a hand. Hawk: don’t compare gifts; a job nobody sees, done well, is glue.

The second line is the one I want boys to remember. Nobody praises glue. Nobody hangs a picture of the boy who swept the floor and carried the water. He holds the patrol together all the same, and Paul says he holds it together “as truly as the loudest one.”

Whenever a boy or his father starts keeping score of who contributes what, do not argue with the score. Move the measurement. A hand is not valuable because it earned its place; it is needed because the body came that way from God. Worth can be lost. Need cannot.

5. The Fathers get the last word

The devotional ends with a Father — St. John Chrysostom, preaching on 1 Corinthians in the fourth century:

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 30 on 1 Corinthians: the members differ precisely so that the body might be held together by mutual need — none can say to another “I have no need of thee,” for the more the members differ, the more they must love and lean on one another.

Two things come from putting a name and a date on a quote. The first is weight. A boy can dismiss my explanation of a verse in a sentence. It is harder to dismiss a bishop who preached it sixteen centuries ago. The second is that the citation can be checked and researched further later.

There is a quieter benefit too, one I did not plan for. Boys who hear St. John Chrysostom on 1 Corinthians in the first fifteen minutes of a troop meeting are learning that their faith has a memory. They are not the first to stand in front of that verse. 1600 years. That’s 60 generations of grandfathers passing down our inheritance from the Golden Mouthed Bishop who survived a snake bite at the age of our Mountain Lions.

What We Kept

This rewrite is not a replacement of the official lesson; much of it is the official lesson, concentrated:

1 Corinthians 12 stays the heart of it — the original already had the boys read 12:12-27 aloud. We did not need to improve Paul.
The original’s best sentence — “God did not create man to be alone; He designed us to be a part of a team—His Church” (Gen 2:18). The devotional was built on that bridge; I only moved it from a sub-point to the thesis.
The instinct for the hidden contribution — the original already knew that “the foundation of a finished building can’t be seen, yet it determines the strength of the entire building.” The devotional keeps this insight and moves it from the building to the body.
The calling — the original’s own gloss on 1 Corinthians 12 tells boys “God has designed a perfect place for you to serve.” The devotional sharpens the same thought with Paul’s words: as it hath pleased him. Your place is a calling so fill it.
The games — tug-of-war, spider legs, the human bridge, the whole field day. All of it still belongs to Teamwork week. It belongs after the opening, out on the grass, where the boys can connect thought and wisdom with physical exercise and reinforcement through movement. I’m looking forward to our troop trying the spider legs bucket game.

The Finished Opening

For those who want to see the fullness of it, here is how the devotional begins:

Give the whole room one small task — pass a ball down the line, but each boy may use only one hand and the man next to him must supply his. Debrief: “What did that need?” (Each other.) “Today’s verse says the Church is exactly like that.”

One ball, one verse, one Father. Then the boys head out to the meeting, where the tug-of-war is waiting.

For Your Priest and Leadership

If your troop or church is working through the Trail Life values, here is the method in short, as this one lesson shows it:

Take the official lesson as given. Do not critique it in front of the boys, and do not be afraid of it. This one already had Paul in it.
Find where its good instinct stops short — here, doing your share so that the team succeeds — and ask what the Church believes about that same thing. We believe the Body has a Head.
Cut scope, not conviction. Eight pages become one. Fifteen games become one ball. The rest meet the boys on the grass.
Add what the tradition has that the curriculum lacks — for this lesson, a single Father with a citation, doing in three sentences what a page of application cannot.
Keep what is already true. The original gave us Genesis 2:18, the unseen foundation, and “Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27.” We did not edit Paul. We let him finish his thought.

Teamwork needed less work than most of the series. Not subtraction, in the end, so much as a shift of weight — the same members, arranged under the Head. Other lessons carried heavier Protestant assumptions, and the ones I write about when I have time will need a firmer hand.

Use this as a template, with your priest’s blessing. Each Trail Life value can be handled this way: take the good that is already there, and show the Orthodox ground beneath it.

Coda

I, personally, would finish with Psalm 132 (133) — it says in one line what the whole lesson is after: Behold now, what is so good or so pleasant as for brothers to dwell together in unity?

That’s what I’ll be leaving with the Navigators at the next meeting.

In Christ, Mark

Questions? Comments? How did this work in your troop? Share below.

Values: Teamwork — From 'Doing Your Share' to One Body in Christ