These items were in news letters and other church notices
1) Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles, and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.
2) The outreach committee has enlisted 25 visitors to make calls on people who are not afflicted with any church.
3) Evening massage - 6 p.m.
4) The Pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday morning.
5) The audience is asked to remain seated until the end of the recession.
6) Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 to 8:30 p.m. Please use the back door.
7) Ushers will eat latecomers.
8) The third verse of Blessed Assurance will be sung without musical accomplishment.
9) The Rev. Merriwether spoke briefly, much to the delight of the audience.
10) The pastor will preach his farewell message, after which the choir will sing, "Break Forth Into Joy."
11) During the absence of our pastor, we enjoyed the rare privilege of hearing a good sermon when J.F. Stubbs supplied our pulpit.
12) Next Sunday Mrs. Vinson will be soloist for the morning service. The pastor will then speak on "It’s a Terrible Experience."
13) Due to the Rector’s illness, Wednesday’s healing services will be discontinued until further notice.
As you know, Linda and I were on vacation last week. I’m sorry to say that I’m just not ready for this morning’s service on Excellence. [pause] OK. I was just kidding. But think for a moment about the thoughts that you just had. What would it mean to you if you showed up for church some Sunday morning, and the people who are responsible for organizing and presenting the service simply were not prepared? What would you think about their commitment? What would you think about their faith?
Is that far fetched? Not as far fetched as you might think.
Have you ever sat in a service that started five minutes late? Have you been there when they announced a trio, but only two people came forward? Have you seen bulletins full of typos? Have you ever heard the ramblings of an obviously unprepared preacher? Slipshod and disorganized services happen with alarming frequency.
Today we are continuing our series on building God’s church. The topic is excellence. We, as a church, need to demonstrate the seriousness of our commitment to faith through our commitment to excellence.
Excellence is attractive
How many of you make an effort to clean-up your home and fix a special meal when company is coming. Some of you do even more than that. Some of you make a special effort to keep your home, or maybe a room in your home, especially neat, just because someone might drop by unexpectedly. You maintain an air of excellence in your home at all times.
My mother is like that. When I was growing up, I was not allowed to go into the living room. Actually, there was no reason I would want to go there. There was no TV. There was a fireplace, but it had some plants in it. It was never actually used for a fire. No food or drinks were allowed, unless we were entertaining. The room was reserved for company. Our family room downstairs was where we really lived.
I proved last week while I was visiting my parents that my mother’s rules made sense. I have gotten to the point where I am allowed to sit in the living room if I like. The carpet there is white – or at least it was. As I came in from a shopping trip, I stopped by the refrigerator in the garage and carried a cold can of soda into the house. Many people don’t realize that Albuquerque is actually at a higher elevation than Denver. Opening a can of soda at that altitude is risky business, best done over the kitchen sink. No, I was not foolish enough to open the soda in the living room. I was just carrying it with me. As we were chatting, the unopened can slipped from my hand. It must have fallen against a chair leg or something because when it landed, an inch long hole tore open in the side. Powered by a jet of soda, the can spun like a pinwheel, spewing cola in every direction. In no time my wife, my 84-year-old mother, and I were all on our hands and knees trying to get cola out of white carpet. It was a disaster. I had violated my mother’s sense of excellence.
The notion that we might present something less than our very best to a guest who might happen by would be beyond my mother’s imagination. She would see it as demeaning to the guest as well as a personal embarrassment.
Now I did not inherit my mother’s sensibilities. I would not advise dropping by my home unexpectedly. If you do, you can expect to have to fight our three dogs for control of the couch. Still, my mother recognizes something valuable. Providing attractive surroundings for our guests is an expression of respect for them. It also says something about our own self image. As long as it is not taken to an unhealthy extreme, people will recognize and respond to our efforts.
If that is true at home, why not here? Aren’t we expecting guests? We want them to experience our commitment to God in a tangible way. One way for us to do that is to provide a service that is well prepared and is presented with excellence. We need to start on time. The sermon needs to be thoughtfully written and competently delivered. The quality of the music needs to be high. The bulletin needs to be eye-catching and accurate. The building needs to be clean and attractive. The teachers and greeters need to be personable and welcoming. All of that tells our guests that we a serious about our faith and concerned about their welfare. It tells them that we are not playing games.
So what is excellence?
Excellence does not need to be extravagant
Don’t confuse excellence with extravagance. While we don’t want to look cheap, we don’t have to spend tons of money. Excellence has more to do with being neat and thoughtful, and prepared, and punctual than it has to do with unnecessary frills. In general, we can achieve excellence using things that we can afford.
Excellence is not perfectionism
Have you ever watched the TV show called Monk? Monk is described as the “defective detective.” He has an extreme obsessive/compulsive disorder which causes no end of problems for him and his friends, but it makes him exceptionally attentive to detail which helps him spot clues and solve crimes. My favorite Monk scene is one where he is buying a shirt. He pulls out a little tag that says “inspected by number 8.” Monk asks the clerk, “I’m not a big fan of number 8. Do you have anything inspected by number 6?”
Perfectionism is parallelizing. If we wait until we can do things perfectly, we will do nothing. We will not take risks, we will not stretch our abilities, and we will not grow. In fact, arguing that we can’t do something well enough is often just a way of avoiding something that we actually don’t want to do. There is a secret saying among husbands when it comes to getting out of chores around the house. “The best way to avoid lifting a finger is to prove that you are all thumbs.”
Excellence does mean giving up on things that don’t work.
Often, we keep doing things that are no longer effective or we try to make something work that always seems to fail. There is a difference between risking failure, something we must do, and refusing to acknowledge failure. We sap our own strength and look foolish to others when we beat a dead horse. We must be willing to set the past aside, acknowledge the effort, and find a better way.
Excellence is in the details
I am not really into sports, but I did participate in sports in school. I wrestled for a couple of seasons, but my main sport was football. I played from junior high through my sophomore year in high school. Everybody had to play more than one position, so as a sophomore on the JV team I was a third string tight end, a second string linebacker, and the starting right guard. Playing guard was not an intellectual challenge. If it was a pass play, and I didn’t care what sort of pass play, I just had to pass block. Running plays were a little more complicated. Sometimes I blocked the guy in front of me and sometimes I blocked somebody else. Here was our system. Every running play was designated by three numbers and a word. The first number identified the formation, the second number designated who was going to run the ball, and the third designated the hole. For example, a 133 Dive meant that we were in an I formation, the fullback would get the ball, and the play would be run between the right guard and right tackle. As a guard, I didn’t care what the formation was and I didn’t care who was going to carry. All I really needed to know was the hole and the word. The holes were numbered from the center out with the odd numbers to the right and the even numbers to the left. The hole to my immediate left was the 1 hole and to my immediate right was the 3. For most plays, I just hit the guy in front of me and tried to move him away from the hole that was being used. The exceptions were cross blocks on the 3 and even numbered sweeps and traps. For example, on a 638 sweep, I had to leave my position and lead the runner around the left end. On a 223 cross, I had to step back, let the tackle block the guy in front of me, and block the guy who had lined up across from the tackle, but by now was somewhere in our backfield. That was as complicated as it got. It was not rocket science.
As simple as it was, we practiced like crazy. A month before the start of school we were at practice twice a day, every day. Most of that was conditioning. As we got into the season, the starting offensive line would spend most of every practice on the blocking sled. An assistant coach would stand on the sled and say “down, set, hike” and we would lunge at the sled and push it back a couple of yards. The coach would say, “Back straight. Head Up. Pop with your shoulder. Drive with your legs.” We would repeat that same silly routine at least 25 times a practice. I figure that in my 4 years of playing football, I must have heard some variation of that about 5,000 times. “Back straight. Head up. Pop with your shoulder. Drive with your legs.”
Why did we do that? How long does it take to learn to keep your back straight and your head up? We did it because on game day the head coach wasn’t going to be satisfied with anything less than a perfect block. The details mattered.
We don’t think anything of people practicing like crazy to play silly games. How many free throws and lay-ups do members of the New Albany basketball team practice each year? What is the point? We do that because we take these games so seriously. We are committed to doing our best.
But what happens when it comes to church? Do we put enough effort in to preparing what we will say and practicing what we will present?
One characteristic of large growing churches is the amount of time that they spend preparing for the service itself. Even though the people involved are experienced and talented, the rule, not the exception but the rule, is for the people who are responsible for the service to arrive two hours in advance of the first service to practice every element that will be presented. Lighting and microphones and camera angles are all planned and practiced. These folks could wing it and do well, but excellence requires more.
Just to finish my athletic history. I stopped playing after my sophomore year because I realized that I could get enough credits to graduate from high school a year early by taking a night class at the local community college. I couldn’t play football and take the class, so a Western Civ. class beat out football and I graduated at the end of my junior year. I promise that the team didn’t suffer from my absence.
What does excellence mean for us at Park? I think that we have taken big strides. Our choir rehearses during the week and practices again on Sunday morning. I think that our bulletin is attractive.
Could we do more? Of course. There is always room to improve. If we are serious about presenting a message that others will hear, we will find ways to constantly raise the bar. I know that I never spend as much time on a sermon as I would like. Even the ones that I think are good, I know could have been better. I was happy with our web page when I first designed it, but now it no longer looks professional to me. That is something we need to address again.
Excellence should be judged by others
There is a real difficulty with trying to judge whether we are doing an excellent job or not.
Have you ever walked into a house where there is an obvious odor? Maybe the cat’s litter box needs attention. At first the stench is unmistakable, but as you spend more time in the house, the odor becomes almost unnoticeable.
We, as a church, must continually look at our facility and our service through the eyes of an outsider. We might become accustomed to some eyesore or to some practice that newcomers see as sloppy. It is a tough thing for us to do, but we have no choice. It is the impression that we make on our guests that is critical.
Excellence gets criticized
One would think that doing a superb job would be welcomed. Yet, you would be surprised how often others will criticize what is done to achieve it.
There will be those that say that we are putting too much emphasis on externals. Churches are supposed to be changing hearts. Focusing on the lighting seems shallow.
We have heard some of that at Park. When we began doing our printing in color there were some who wondered if that was the wisest use of our funds. There is always room for differences of opinion on such matters, but I think that color printing has made a huge difference in our image. It was a statement about excellence.
Excellence is an attitude
So far, I have been talking about excellence as if it were simply a marketing scheme, but that really is not the point. Listen again to our text.
If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever.
The real reason for excellence has to do with our attitude of service to God. We want to reach others so that what they see in us offers a glimpse of who God is and the depth of our commitment to him. Still, the real audience for our service is God himself. Our service is our gift. God gave us his best. He gave us his Son. He deserves nothing less than the best from us in return.
In all of these sermons, I am including a word to our search committee. Excellence is different than other things. You can’t ask someone about their commitment to excellence and get a useful answer. You have to visit their current place of service and see how things are actually done. Excellence will be unmistakable when you see it.
Park is a congregation on the move. We are becoming stronger and are constantly improving the quality of what we do. We do this for others and we do it in response to God’s love for us. If you want to be part of a congregation that takes it commitments seriously, we would love to have your participation and we will find a place for your talents. Come, join with us in excellent service.
