In an ever-growing list of words that annoy the living daylights out of me, excellence has clawed its way to the top. It's everywhere, and I'm sick of it. Funny, because I used to love this word--when written in perfect grade-school-teacher cursive atop a worksheet or when my piano teacher (rarely) scrawled it on top of a page of a songbook.
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It meant something then because it didn't always happen--because it recognized something rare and wonderful: achieving excellence.
And yet now in leadership circles this word has become synonymous with how we are to always be, how everything should look or feel or be perceived. While I'm sick of hearing about it in secular leadership circles, I'm actually troubled by how often I'm seeing it pop up among church-folk.
More and more I hear how churches strive to do everything with excellence or how Christian organizations seek excellence in all their products or services. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I think we should go out of our way to offer shoddy products or services or that churches should always eek out the bare minimum.
And I am familiar with the verses like Colossians 3:23 that say, "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people." I get why people use this to justify excellence. But I think we've got it backward. Because our view of excellence is different from God's--many times, at least.
