Does God Demand Excellence From Us?

COLLIDE

Creating a Great Experience

Brad Lomenick - Originally posted Thursday, October 14, 2010 - Comments (15)

It’s important that we start and end with this: God demands excellence from us. And excellence is not about having more money, more staff, or more talent. Excellence is a choice. It’s setting a standard and living up to it. And our Creator wants a level of creativity in our churches and in our programs that is at the highest level. We are commanded and required to deliver.

Brad Lomenick is the Director of Catalyst, a movement of young leaders. Keep up with him at www.bradlomenick.com.

Ugh... I was loving this article until this closing paragraph. It has me think about whether God indeed demands excellence from us and what that means. My thoughts have lingered around Galatians... "For freedom Christ has set us free..."(Gal 5:1).

I think offering the utmost of our skill and creative beauty to God as an act of worship is pretty cool. Let's definitely set our sights high. However, I am a bit cautious about claiming that God demands that we set excellence as our goal. Especially, figuring that excellence can be fairly subjective.

Beth Moore, at Passion 2010, shared a story about a young Special Olympian, who after running his race came in dead last, but in the end he won the gold medal. It turns out he was the only participant that stayed in his own lane. True excellence can be tricky and I think the point of Beth's story was to just get out there and run our own race the best that we can.

I think that this is why James wrote about true religion being marked by caring for widows and orphans. Also, why Jesus, not so gently, steers some folks struggling with "right church practice" toward justice and mercy in Matthew 23:23. Running with Christ as the goal rather than excellence.

Reading some of the posts here and replying to your questions about setting our sights low, there is a danger in viewing this conversation through a monochromatic lens - for vs. against, Spirit vs. show, excellent vs. crappy...

I lean towards a vision and values approach that is contextual, rooted in grace and motivated by love for God and the people we are serving. Again, I really resonate with Brad and get to enjoy some of that production skill from both sides of the platform. I think God deserves my best, but I don't think God demands it. The latter subtly crafts an image of God that may be skewed.