Picking up from yesterday…I believe God has called the church to do everything with excellence! By that I don’t mean we should strive to be perfect, but that we should strive to give our very best in everything we do so that God is glorified!
I believe God has not only called us to excellence but that He has also equipped us to be excellent! But how do we tap into what God has equipped us to do? For me it starts in remembering that excellence isn’t just a standard…it’s a way of thinking. So how do we change the way we think so that “excellence” becomes how we think…?
Say NO to what is good!
If we are going to begin to do things with excellence we have to be willing to say NO to what is good! Why? Because “good” isn’t good enough! It’s just…good…mediocre…normal! Our Biblical calling has never been to just…be average! Our calling has been to spread the name of Jesus with fire, passion, excellence..not just in a “good” way!
Say YES to what is GREAT!
When we learn to say NO to what is “good” we enable ourselves to say YES to what is “GREAT!” When we aim for something to be great we are saying we want it to be the very best it can be! This is our calling! Our calling has never been to compromise the quality of the medium in which we profess the good news. Our calling has been to always aim for greatness in the quality of the medium and much more so that God is glorified in everything we do!
Strive to always be improving!
With everything we do we should be looking for ways to make it new, improved, improving! Not for the sake of making it new, improved or improving but because we never want to settle on what was or used to be great…because what was “great” yesterday may only be “good” today! Another way to say this is to be in a constant state of evaluation. Meaning, notice the things that can be better, take it a step at a time, and alway…always strive to make things better and better? What company or church has ever failed because they wanted to just do things better?
A great book that kind of sheds some more detailed light into how to think this way is a book by Jim Collins called, “Good to Great.” In this book he taps more into how to change the way we think so that we choose what is great and throw out what is just…good!
There are many more things we could add to this list…maybe you have some ideas of how to make “excellence” a way of thinking? What insight could you add? How do you train yourself to think…with excellence? Is excellence a standard or way of thinking for you and your ministry…why or why not?
Please share…
May 30th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Pudge,
Great thoughts. Now let me bring this around to the area we both work in, Children’s Ministry. How many churches say “good enough” in their children’s ministry? How many churches really strive for excellence? If we were to strive for excellence in our children’s ministry then our budgets would be much larger, we wouldn’t “advertise” help needed in the church newsletter for teachers and take anybody who shows up, we would do a background check (as NewSpring does) on all people who work with children, we would train all of our leaders, we would intentionally build relationships with children we work with, and we would make sure they have an awesome experience at church and fianlly and most importantly we would introduce every child we meet to Jesus! I think even churches that might strive for excellence with their adults often overlook excellence in children’s ministry. Children need our excellence too!
May 30th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Pudge,
I came across this link yesterday, wasn’t sure if you had read it. Congrats to you and your team. Also from one children’s pastor to another tell Perry thank you for me for saying he values kids and actually valuing them.
http://thelogosministry.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/children%e2%80%99s-ministry-rules-at-newspring-church/
May 30th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Brother, I am pickin’ up what you are layin’ down! Well said. I love that you are passionate about excellance. I always say to my team that we may have ONE OPPORTUNITY to show Jesus to someone who comes to our church so it better be our best effort. I am blessed, as you are, to have a pastor that thinks children’s ministry is TOP priority and makes my job a lot easier when it comes to having what we need to do that thing we do!
May 30th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Sam,
I am the author of that link. See my comments in front of yours. I hope you listened to the podcast interview of Pudge as well, http://thelogosministry.podbean.com/ . I think those of us in children’s ministry need to raise our voices as one to shout out the importance of children in our churches. I agree with you Perry is a great guy and so is Pudge.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:30 am
Hey guys!
Some great comments and thoughts here! Thanks so much for adding to the dialog and for the encouragement! Keep ROCKIN’ with EXCELLENCE!
pudge