The best part about a team is that each individual member brings something unique to the collective whole for the purpose of advancing toward the team’s goal. Paul’s writings serve to spread this idea in the early Christian faith as he encourages the hearers of his letter to the Romans to not only discern their individual gifts (given graciously to them by God), but moreover to put them in action. Here, ‘the team’ is the body of Christ. As Paul has written before, a key element of his ministry is focused on unifying a diverse group of people, to advance the mission given to him by Christ. How can one ever endure this mission if they are lost in conforming to the (fleeting, faulted, and frail) pattern of this world...no, rather we must be “transformed by the renewing of [our] minds” as he writes in Romans 12:2!