The Pursuit of Excellence

Last year, I attended a conference aimed at Gen-Z leadership as an aging Millennial, making me one of the elder statesmen in the room. As I sat back and listened to the opening rally, I was immediately intrigued by the focus of the morning session. It was excellence. 

The panel started with a message about the pursuit of excellence. Each of the three leaders said their piece about the importance of excellence and giving God the very best. After that, they opened up for a quick Q&A session with the audience. 

A young woman from West Virginia explained that she is from a small town with a small church of around forty. They don’t have excellence, “just people who love Jesus and are doing their best.” Her question was, how can they pursue excellence?

I wanted to leap out of my seat and scream, you have it! You have excellence! You have people who love Jesus and are giving it their all. Surely, the panel would say the same thing. 

They went in a different direction. Each panelist detailed how she must squeeze excellence out of her group and how they could search for the little things, like making sure there are no stray wires. Everything about their answers had to do with the presentation and not with the hearts of the people. 

The pursuit of excellence is a trap. 

After celebrating God’s salvific power, the Psalmist says to Israel in Psalm 98:4: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous songs and sing praises!”

Make a joyful noise, not an excellent noise. The keys don’t need to be right; it’s not about the lighting or perfect harmony. It is about joy. 

We tend to import our cultural values into the church; everybody does it. This pursuit of excellence involves applying a Western value structure to God’s commands, very specifically, an overresourced environment. 

That does not mean we shouldn’t seek to give our best and brightest to God. Remember, Cain’s offering was rejected because he wasn’t giving God his best. Our problem is that we think excellence translates to highly produced services with giant LED walls, professional singers, and the best-tasting coffee. All of that is cool, but if it is the precursor to a discipleship strategy centered around milk for infants, then what’s the point?

I never hear the word excellence used when talking about discipleship, formation, or shepherding. Excellence seems to be limited to how pretty the package is. I can’t help but think of Jesus’ words to the Pharisees when he called them white-washed tombs. The external package looks nice, but what’s inside is rotten. It makes me wonder if the goal is to attract people to a brand or attract people to Jesus.

Two of the speakers at the conference, David Platt and Matt Chandler, encouraged me. Both gave short messages about why the pursuit of Christ should stand above all. Platt recounted stories of pastors in underground churches who had to meet in secret, who traveled miles to sit in a basement and share a single Bible. He asked a piercing question: Do we love the Word of God so much that we are willing to risk our lives for it?

Chandler brought a message about where our hope is—not in the pretty show or the bright lights but in Jesus, the Jesus we will need to cling to when the dark night of the soul comes. 

The Strategy 

Excellence is most often a strategy. It’s prized by big churches seeking to be attractive. Understandably, they believe that if we put forth the best product and experience, it will draw non-believers in. 

One of my favorite quotes about organizational psychology is that culture will beat strategy any day of the week. 

Excellence is subjective. My peak is probably your base level, and my design eye may produce something you abhor. 

What happens when your excellent tops out as good? When your excellent, is forty people in a dim room singing their hearts out off-key but full of passion and love for Jesus?

Excellence is doing your best with what you have with a joyful heart. 

Remember Psalm 98: make a joyful noise. The center of the Christian life lived out is joy, not excellence.

When excellence is the strategy, it often serves as the pretty face to hide the ugly beneath. Which leads to the all-important question:

What is your culture?

As a church, this is a critical question because, in the end, you reproduce what you are. If the culture is shallow, it produces shallow Christians. If the culture lacks empathy, it produces a bunch of judgmental Christians. If your culture is solid and mature, those are the types of Christians it will produce. How you get to any of these places is important. 

Another great organizational psychology quote is apt: create a culture where good things can run free. 

I don’t think there is one way to make disciples. We’re all different. Culture, time, and place all matter when it comes to discipleship. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. I think the job of pastors, as they shepherd their flocks, is to let the good things run free. 

The good things help form people into the image and likeness of Jesus. Looking more like Jesus leads to joy.

That’s what it’s all about in the end—being formed in the image of Jesus. 

Over the last decade, I have had countless conversations with people born and raised in church—people who did all of the church things. They went to VBS and Bible studies, and they were deep in their youth group. 

Yet so many of them entered the post-college era unsure of what they believed, why they believed it, and whether they wanted to continue. Most concerning for me is that many of them came from “excellent” churches. 

The emphasis on fun and games and being the most attractive didn’t prepare them for life as adult Christians. It didn’t arm them for the questions their future co-workers and classmates would ask. They didn’t spend serious time speaking about the cultural issues of their day with empathy and biblical clarity. It didn’t tell them that joy amid suffering was possible. Joy can be had even when it feels like the sky is falling. 

Millennials were the first generation to be less religious than their parents, and now Gen Z isn’t even thinking about the church. 

The megachurch movement of the last forty years hasn’t produced the most excellent results. I say that not critically but with fear. Where have we gone wrong?

If we hope to reach the next generation, then it will be done through excellent, not perfect, relationships. It will be by showing up and caring, taking the time to listen, and pouring into them what God has said. Youth group and Bible study will feature more than pizza and games; a culture of inquisitiveness and reverence for God’s word will run free. 

A culture of joy will run free. Joy isn’t just happy moments. Joy, in many ways, has to be taught. The formation of joy is an act of discipleship. We must teach believers how to count it all joy, as James tells us to. You don’t fall backward into that. It’s intentional. 

I pray that our destiny is not one of excellent productions and coffee in quarter-filled buildings but rather of being a people marked by a joyful, slightly off-key noise.