Oh crud, the Colts lost. Peyton didn’t have a good day–lots of tips. Looks like I’ll be rooting for the Packers from here on. Can’t possibly favor San Diego or New England in the Super Bowl. So it’s gotta be Brett & Company.
Excellence is Over-Rated
“Excellence is over-rated,” the speaker at MinistryCOM said.
My generation, the baby boomers, is mightily smitten with excellence. We need to give our best to God. We wear bluejeans to church, but everything we experience there‚Äîthe music, the message, the multimedia, the publications‚Äîmust be top quality. If it’s not, we complain about the affect poor quality will have on visitors, when really, we just demand excellence for our own pleasure.
At MinistryCOM, the worship team from People’s Church there in Nashville opened the sessions. They were great. I sat there basking in those remarkable worship experiences–the superb leader, the tightness of the music–everything. When Pam and I went on vacation in October, we spent one Sunday at People’s Church, hearing the team on a regular Sunday. Superb again. Likewise at Quest Church in Lexington. I thrilled at being part of such high quality worship experiences, and have no criticism to level at anybody.
My attitude was: enjoy it while you can. Because that’s not what I’m called to on a week-to-week basis. My calling is to a church of 120 people, many of them poor, uneducated, culturally untrained. We can’t pull off excellence. The worship team was pretty good for many years, but now we lack a strong worship leader and good singers. I know that musically-savvy may declare us woesomely insufficient. But hey–we are what we’ve got. We’re the willing, and we do our best. Meanwhile, at large churches across Fort Wayne, musicians and singers much more capable than we are go unused, because they aren’t needed. Or because their own abilities, though far beyond those of us meager musicians at Anchor, fall short of the “excellence” their own churches demand.
Daniel Schantz wrote an amazing article on the ChristanStandard.com website called “Recovering from Excellence.” He says that the quest for excellence can be:
- Elitist. Average people need not apply. Average buildings are unworthy.
- Expensive. Excellence costs money. I’ve said for a long time that churches “buy” excellence in the form of music ministers and other professionals. “Nowhere did Jesus emphasize having fine things as the mark of superiority,” Schantz writes. He notes that Jesus rode a fishing trawler across the Sea of Galilee, not a yacht.
- Exhausting. Schantz says people who demand excellence are just perfectionists, and “Perfection is a disorder.”
Sometimes people accustomed to excellence take a condescending attitude toward those of us who must “settle” for what they view as mediocrity. We, on the other hand, view them as uppity, or as as insubstantial fluff. Stereotypoes.
But what about excellence? Should we at Anchor strive for excellence? Should that be a goal for us, and for the other small churches who make up 90% of my denomination? Because though every small church has at least some quality people who could “make it” in a large church (for instance, my wife would make an incredible treasurer), in the end, we just can’t compete. We lack the personnel, we lack the resources.
I’ll come back to this subject with comments on Schantz’s “Alternatives to Excellence.”
2 CommentsPlaxo and LinkedIn
At work, we’re well along in experimenting with Plaxo, an online resource for managing your address book, calendars, and other things. One of the founders is the Napster guy. It’s a very cool resource. If a minister is a Plaxo members and updates his/her Plaxo contact info, that info is updated in our records and filters back to the Address Book. When we added our address book (over 1000 names) to Plaxo, we discovered that 29 of those persons were already Plaxo members.
Plaxo works very nice with the Mac Address Book, and also interfaces with Gmail, LinkedIn, and many other popular sites.
Speaking of LinkedIn: I also have a profile there. LinkedIn is very cool, and enables you to build a thorough profile. There are 17 million members so far, putting it just behind Myspace and Facebook. But unlike those sites, LinkedIn is designed for professionals, and particularly for networking.
In LinkedIn, you can find connections with people based on colleges and high schools you attended, plus organizations you’re part of. In Plaxo, you can import your LinkedIn connections.
I invite you to sign up for either of these, and then link up with me.
Megachurch Architecture
Slate magazine has a fascinating slideshow of megachurch architecture, including good commentary. You’ll find photos from Lakewood Church (Joel Osteen’s stomping ground), Willow Creek, the Crystal Cathedral (which is the only one which inspires awe), and others. Including the 21,000-seat Mormon conference center in Salt Lake City, the largest religious assembly place in the country. Really interesting stuff.
Scanning Our Library
Pam and I bought Delicious Library, a $40 Macintosh program for inventorying your library of books, videos, and music. You can buy a scanner (which we did), for scanning bar codes. It then transfers the info via bluetooth to your computer, looks up the item on Amazon, and downloads info about it–publisher, cost, synopsis, thumbnail photo, etc. Real slick. So far, I’ve scanned in over 700 books. Still got three bookcases to go. Plus all of our videos and music CDs. I love this program.
BTW: No, we don’t own Kill Bill. That screenshot is from the Delicious website.
1 CommentMcCain as a Speaker
Tonight was our monthly tournament night in the Three Rivers Table Tennis club. I never do well in these tournament. One two and lost one tonight. I left just after 9 p.m., and on the radio, John McCain was just starting his victory speech. I listened for about ten minutes, then found myself drifting off. He just wasn’t holding my attention. I’d come back, then drift away again.
Finally, after about 20 minutes, my mind went back to the radio and I mused, “Is he still talking?”
I’m a McCain fan, and I’m delighted he won. But I tell you–his speechmaking abilities don’t exactly qualify as captivating. Maybe it was better on TV.
Wednesday morning postscript: On Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough, they savaged McCain’s speech. A clip showed that it definitely was not better on TV.
A Hole in My Geographic Knowledge
I always get Vermont and New Hampshire mixed up. Is New Hampshire on the right, or the left? Every four years I care, but don’t bother cementing the answer in my mind.
Notes from the Gun & Knife Show
On Saturday I went to the Fort Wayne Gun & Knife show. Bought five bayonets for my collection, which now numbers 43. Added bayonets from Chile, Egypt, Italy, Siam, and Spain (though I already had a couple Spanish bayonets). I now have bayonets from 23 different countries, nearly 20 of them from the 1800s. My first one was Grandpa’s Civil War bayonet.
It’s a fun hobby. I like bayonets because there’s nothing fragile about them. You can drop them, or even throw them, and no damage. They’re made for the battlefield, after all. And you wonder: what kind of action has this blade seen?
My favorites? The pristine Danish sword-bayonet with the leather sheath, dating to 1860. The US Spanish-American War bayonet, with six notches on the wood handle. And the mammoth Swiss sawtooth bayonet. Oh, and the little Uzi bayonet…and the German WW1 sawtooth…and the French Lebel…. Oh, they’re all neat.
It was interesting, at the Gun & Knife Show, to see two booths for political candidates. Any guesses no who those two candidates were? They were John McCain and Ron Paul. The McCain booth was makeshift, but the Ron Paul people really had their act together.
Late-Night Post-Iowa Reflections on the Candidates
That was quite a speech by Obama. I like him. Rudy can be quite a speaker, too. I don’t like him. Can’t imagine Hillary or Mitt giving a speech that stirs me in any way. Way too scripted, cautious…boring. And yet, both might make decent presidents.
I’m still hoping McCain charges forth. In recent years, he seems to have softened, to be compromising, certainly to be backend-kissing George the Younger. And yet, at the core, McCain is still a maverick. He’s a man of character and conviction. I’d love to see him in the White House. But it’ll take some doin’ to get him there, and I don’t think it’ll happen. And besides, when it comes right down to it, I might prefer one of the Democrats anyway.
Huckabee? Interesting guy. Slightly more experienced than Obama, slightly less articulate. More than slightly, actually, but still can talk circles around most of the field. Obama, Huckabee, Rudy, and Edwards know how to move crowds. We’ve not had a real orator-president since Kennedy. I can’t imagine sitting through a State of the Union speech by Hillary or Mitt.
I’m definitely in the independent camp right now. Living in Indiana, I’m also irrelevant, because the state always goes Republican. But I could easily vote for Obama or McCain, somewhat easily vote for Edwards or Huckabee. Rudy, man of no morals, makes me wretch (and thank you for endorsing him, Pat Robertson, on behalf of Christians everywhere).
The blogosphere is the cyber equivalent of Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, a place where any idiot can stand on a box and spout silliness. I have a blog. Therefore I spout.
Photos from the Dennie Christmas
Here are some photos from my family’s get-together on New Year’s Day. Click on a thumbnail to get a larger version.
Benjamin (right) and Cameron. | |
Benjamin watching Anna and Cam open presents. | |
Cameron giving his irresistible puppy pose. | |
Dorene (Rick’s wife) with the hyper Daphne. | |
Mom and Dad opening presents. |