Do You Have a Problem with Excellence?

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (24) The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

My wife and I are different in our personal approaches to excellence. She is as close to a perfectionist as you can get, and I am an entrepreneur and business-minded production person, closely monitoring the return on expended energy. Today, I’ll filter these attributes through scripture and discuss how each of them affects your life as a Christian leader.

Raking leaves gives a good example of how we put these attributes into practice. When my wife rakes leaves, she will get into the corners of our 1 1⁄2 acres and spend whatever time it takes to get a result she can find satisfaction with, usually down to the last leaf. I, on the other hand, see that 25% of the leaves are still in the trees. I know many of them will fall tomorrow. In fact, within hours, the yard might have a new coat of leaves, whether that coat be thick or sparse. With that in mind, I hop on our tractor and mow/mulch as many as possible, holding back on putting forth my best leaf-raking effort until the trees are empty. I think she frowns on me from inside the house. When the situation is reversed, I wonder why she "wastes" so much energy. I think excellence is great—when it is needed.

How Much Excellence is Enough?

Ponder with me for a moment this question for Christian leaders: When should we require excellence from those we lead? When should we encourage it? When should we replace someone who is falling short of expectations?

Before I go any further, let me exclude a portion of society (or your followers) that I am not talking about. These are the people who will always be unemployed. They do not want to work or follow instructions, and some are just plain lazy. In your church, there may be a segment of volunteers who, frankly, are not believers and who don’t take their ministry seriously. These will never reach their full potential no matter how you lead.

No, I am talking about your average follower or employee who needs good leadership to produce work that reflects the next level of quality for them, while simultaneously supplying you with a level of quality that will sustain the purpose of your organization. I would suggest to you, that within this context, we require from those we lead the same level of perfection or excellence that God requires of us.

The Perfection that God Requires of Us

If you believe in progressive sanctification, a life that increasingly reflects the life of Christ, you know that we will never achieve our perfection until Jesus returns, when "our whole spirit, soul and body is found blameless.” Theologically, this takes place first by being "justified,” being declared righteous when we were not, then through the continual transforming work of the Holy Spirit. Finally, it occurs all because of the grace of God. In a lifetime wherein we, especially us leaders, will always fall short, the Holy Spirit keeps inspiring us to be sanctified to the next level of our leadership ability. I would suggest to you that without the inspiring work of the Holy Spirit, you would cease to be a leader immediately. The pain of always falling short of excellence would be debilitating.

In the same way, when leaders are given the spiritual gift of leadership, they are also given the ability to continue to sustain their followers, while hopefully demanding of themselves a certain level of excellence. Leaders who observe and are conscious of their followers’ attitudes toward quality, and who work toward improving those very attitudes, will be much more effective in progressing their followers to the next level of excellence, inspiring management skills.

"May the ministry leader realize that, ultimately,
he or she is responsible for helping grown people,
not things, into the likeness of Christ."

A good leader does things to improve the followers’ "beliefs" about quality. If you demand quality, it only reveals that you and those you lead think differently about quality. Keep demanding from those you lead and you will lose respect; your environment will be a strain to work in, and people will eventually leave.


Which kind of leader are you?

So is my wife's raking excellence better than mine? I would say both are valid. While my wife demands a level of perfection from her own work, I, as the family leader, don't drag her down by explaining to her how her energy could have been better used.

The trees in our yard are now almost barren of leaves. Recently, I mowed, raked and burned my final pile of leaves. While many leaves have now blown back into our yard from our neighbors’ yards, last week you could not see a single one of them under the new coat of snow. It was then that we both thought the yard looked perfect. Only God could bring perfection to our yard.

I suspect we would agree that, in this journey of "excellence sanctification,” we all will welcome that ultimate day of "perfection.” Until then, may I encourage the business leader reading this to stress a level of quality that "exceeds the competition”? And may the ministry leader realize that, ultimately, he or she is responsible for helping grow people, not things, into the likeness of Christ.