Being Excellent

One of our Values is Excellence: Excellence – In everything we do, we will do it fully or not at all, depending on the Word and the Grace of God. After all, God gave us His best, His Son. We should strive to return to Him using the same standards

This message is about being a living witness – we are all called to be witnesses – Acts 1:8 So if we are to be witnesses, we need to be the best witnesses we can be. We need to be Excellent. Excellence is an Attitude. The opposite of Excellence is Mediocrity. When we are mediocre, we do what we have to do at the least. We do not strive to do more, do it better, or exert ourselves. Instead we just do enough to be able to say we did it. When we live like that, we are poor witnesses to Jesus. When we are mediocre, we should not be telling people about Jesus.

So where in your life are you mediocre? I know one place where I am mediocre. Patience. I’m always working on that one. But since I know I don’t have it, I don’t put Jesus in the way of my poor witness. For example, I will never put a fish on my car. The previous owner of a car I owned had placed a fish on the rear of the car. I took it off. Rick gave me a fish to stick on my car once. I put it on the dashboard so no one would see it. Why? Because I know that I have no patience and if someone sees me driving and sees the fish, I have been a poor witness for him! Where are you mediocre? What area of your life do you know needs to be better, needs to be changed? Are you praying on it? Are you trying to get better? Most of us aren’t. We’re satisfied with continuing in life the way we are. In fact, when someone comes to us and tells us about ourselves and we don’t like it, we don’t try to change, we try to rationalize why we are OK. Maybe we need to be listening to others more so we can see where we need to work on. OR maybe you know there is an area that you are not being who you need to be but you have made little or no change in your life to change that. All of these are examples of being mediocre. As long as we are fine with being mediocre, we will never become excellent. Remember – Excellence is an Attitude. Until you choose to be Excellent, leave Jesus out of it, because you will be a poor witness for him.

So, today isn’t about making you do things, twisting arms, forcing your actions – it is about attitude, focusing on changing the way we currently think, a paradigm shift towards the mind of Christ. If we can change our thinking on the way we are, we can begin to work on becoming excellent. The great part about working toward excellence is that it really isn’t hard.

Brian Harbour in Rising Above the Crowd says: "Success means being the best. Excellence means being your best. Success, to many, means being better than everyone else. Excellence means being better tomorrow than you were yesterday. Success means exceeding the achievements of other people. Excellence means matching your practice with your potential."  

Being your best, being better today than tomorrow, matching what you do with what you can do. Mediocre is not doing your best, staying the same today as yesterday and not trying to do what you are capable of. Too many times, we are satisfied with mediocre. But God calls us to be better than that.

Matt 25:14-27

In the parable of the talents, Jesus shows us that he expects us to be excellent. Using the definition from Harbour, he didn’t expect them to be better than they were capable or better than the next guy. He expected them to do the best they could and work within their abilities. The two who did were pleasing to the master. The one who didn’t was disgusting to him. This guy needed an Attitude Adjustment. HE was satisfied being mediocre. He needed to change is attitude. He didn’t realize that Excellence is an Attitude. God expects us to be excellent. Mediocrity disgusts him. After all, as stated in our value statement, God gave us His best, He gave us His son so that we can have eternal life. Jesus gave us his best, he gave us his life on the cross so we can have the promises of resurrection in immortal bodies along with the forgiveness of our sins. If God has given us His best, how can we not fell guilty giving anything less than our best?

But our witness isn’t only in the Church. Our witness is in our daily life. It’s in our work. It’s in our recreational activities. It’s in our devotionals to God and our disciplines to God.

When we are at work, we should give 100-percent – this is part of our witness. If we give less, we show the kind of people we are – mediocre. Then who will listen when we tell them about Jesus? An interesting thing about Excellence: If we are excellent at work, we don’t need to tell everyone about how good we are. For example, if we are mediocre, people can see that right away. We will lose our business, our promotions, our raises – maybe even our living. People can recognize mediocrity. However, if we are excellent – we gain those things. If I go into a restaurant and the waitress isn’t pleasant, she takes a little too long to get my water and my order and she never comes by during the meal to ask how I’m doing, I will not be pleased. It’s not that she has been rude or that she never took my order or brought my food. She’s not bad at her job. She’s just not being excellent. On another occasion, I go to the restaurant and the waitress immediately comes over, brings my water, takes my order and asks a couple of times during the meal if there is anything else she can do for me, if she takes the extra steps to get my order right and is pleasant in our interactions, she has done her job with excellence. In the first case, I would not be keen to tip well and may not come back to the place. On the other hand, I will give an excellent tip and will come back again. Same with car mechanics, tax return accountants or hospitals. The best past is that when we are excellent at work, it gives us the opportunity to speak about Jesus. Our coworkers know that we are excellent and that they can trust our thoughts and opinions on all kinds of advice, including the advice to listen to and accept the gospel message.

As a Church, we have the same goals. We need to remember that Excellence is an Attitude. We want to be excellent in all we do. That doesn’t mean we need to be bigger or better than the catholic church or that big evangelical church that are on both sides of us. If God has given us one talent right now, then we need to take that one talent and make it into two. We don’t need to compete with the churches with five talents. We need to compete with ourselves. We need to do the best we can. We need to do better tomorrow than today. We need to use the potential and capabilities that God has given us to its full extent. This is being excellent as a church and Excellence will bring people in. Laziness, lack of outcomes will keep people away. People will never know about us and they will never come. If we think we live in a place where setting up a church will bring people in, then we are sadly mistaken. If we want to spread the Gospel message, we need to go where they are. We need to use the gifts God has given us to its full measure. We need to be excellent. We will not be able to spread the word of God by simply existing in our little room. We need to go do what God is calling us to do.

Excellence doesn’t mean being extreme. (The Office parody.) If you are the clerk, you don’t necessarily need to be doing the job of the cook. If you are the manager, you shouldn’t be doing the work of the janitor. If you are the janitor, you shouldn’t be doing the work of the pastor. Everyone has their jobs to do and they need to do that with excellence.

Excellence isn’t hard, but nor is it just being there. The waitress was just there, doing what she needed to do. But she wasn’t excellent. In his book, Excellence, John Gardner says, "Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them...They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly by 'doing what comes naturally' and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose."  There’s that word, “discipline”. We hate that word because it implies work, hard work, or torture. We need to get over the idea that discipline is bad and recognize that when we embrace the work and discipline needed to become excellent, the rewards we receive are much greater than the hardships. I can think of no greater example of this than a mother giving birth. Though the pain she goes through is recognized to be almost unbearable, every mother would gladly go through it for the reward it gives. Is there a mother who would rather have never had her child so that she did not have to go through the trials of childbirth? In the same way, we need to just get through the difficult part of being disciplined to become excellent so that we can get to the rewards of being excellent.

Col 3:23-24 - Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Excellence is an Attitude. No one is born excellent, but we are all born with the potential to be excellent. Everyone of us here can be excellent in our personal lives, in our jobs and in our church. It is a choice we need to make. It is an attitude we need to have.

Send mail to david@TheArkNY.org with questions about the church or comments about this site.
Last modified: May 17, 2009