“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.”
Dad, who served under Clarence Kopp (as bishop of the West District), says Bishop Kopp always brought him something worthwhile–an idea, an insight, something he had read or come across. I’ve heard Dad say that for many years. He said it again last week.
After church Pam and I ate at Biaggis, a wonderful Italian restaurant. We go there maybe once a year, and often in conjunction with our anniversary. The place is expensive. Our bill, before tip, was an uncannily even $50. I had Shrimp Oregonata, which I order nearly every time.
