Pressing on Toward Excellence

I am excited about coming back this Sunday. I will hopefully get the chance to elaborate sometime, but I will simply say that the weeks leading up to my study break were a real struggle for me. I desperately needed a break, and I’m glad to say that I really feel refreshed and alive again, I have some energy, and I feel like ‘me’.

But I don’t want to be the old me. As he wrote to the church in Philippi, Paul basically summarized his life mission as to ‘forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead and press on toward the goal’. I think Paul had a keen sense that he was on a journey…that he was supposed to be on the move…that he was supposed to look back and know that he was making progress. I don’t want to be stagnant. I don’t want to be satisfied with the ‘good enough’. I want to be better. I want to improve. I want to know that I am increasingly reflecting God’s nature in a better and more refined way.

We can broadly apply generalities to this principal: we should all sin less, love more, worship more sincerely, sacrifice more completely.

But this teaching also has a very tangible, personal application: How can I use my unique makeup, my gifts, my experiences, etc., to more effectively ‘press on’ and ‘strain ahead’? How can I use what God has entrusted to me to more fully live out my calling? This has application both for all of us individually and corporately (as a church).

For me, this is about preaching and leading. And for those of us involved in weekend services, this principal has application in the planning and execution of those services. It applies to us each in the area of our specific giftedness, calling, and expertise. How can we be more effective at communicating the message of Jesus Christ to the people He brings our way? This is our #1 goal in a weekend service…and it should be the question on the forefront of our minds in planning service elements, thinking about the flow, considering the ending, choosing who will sing what song, act out this character, or play that instrument. Excellence honors God and inspires people, and it means that we do the absolute best we can.

As I have processed these past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that I have not been doing my best when it comes to Sunday mornings. As our church has grown, so have the responsibilities of leading it, and I confess that I have not placed a high enough priority on message preparation and service planning. My commitment is to raise the bar on my own performance. It will require a paradigm shift for me, and I’m going to have to divest some things that I’m currently doing. Having Dennis Green on board as our Executive Pastor and effectively running the day to day operation enables me to focus on what I do best. But I still have some divesting to do. And since the rest of our staff are largely already carrying full loads, it may mean that some of what I currently do simply stops getting done. But I will put more time into our main outreach and evangelistic event – our weekend services – and I will do this earlier in the week.

Looking forward to raising the bar, being more effective, and hitting the bulls eye again...