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True excellence

In these days of planned obsolescence it is difficult to find anything that is really well built.  And despite company promises of quality customer service, really excellent service is also very rare.  But we seek excellence. Jonathan Edwards wrote, “The inquiry of the soul is after that which is most excellent.”  And Paul prays that the Philippians will be able to ‘approve what is excellent’.  We all want our ministries to be excellent.  But what is excellence?  Three pointers:
  1. It is not God, it is worship.  In other words, excellence is not our destination, our ultimate goal, it is not an end in itself.  If we seek excellence for its own sake then we are idolaters and our god will prove a bad master.  We will tend either to pride or perfectionism.  As we study, or serve, or prepare a sermon we are not to worship excellence, instead excellence should be an expression of our worship of the one true gracious God.  We seek excellence not because that is our hearts desire but because we want to do everything we do with our whole heart for our Master and Saviour (Col. 3:23).
  2. It is not evangelism, it is love.  Sometimes we can fall into thinking that if our church meetings and revival meetings have excellent music, amazing lighting and slick presentation then we will impress people into the kingdom.  No.  No-one was ever saved by excellent presentation.  Evangelism (preaching the gospel of Christ crucified) is what saves (1 Cor. 1:21).  At the most, excellent presentation removes barriers to accepting the gospel but it is not the gospel.  We seek excellence because it is loving to answer emails promptly, it is loving to prepare well, it is loving to make people comfortable.  In fact you can turn it around - not only is excellence loving, the most excellent way IS love (1 Cor. 12:31).       
  3. It is not defined by the world, it is defined by Christ.  We can learn a lot from the professionalism of the world about how to deliver excellent service but we must be careful that we do not let the world define excellence for us.  It can become an elitist thing.  The world would not consider John the Baptist an excellent preacher.  Where is his smart suit?  Where is his iPad?  Where is his 10,000-seater air-conditioned auditorium?  But excellence is defined by Jesus Christ – excellence incarnate.  It was in Him that the apostle Paul (Phil. 3:8) found the most perfect, ravishing, soul-satisfying  excellence.  An excellence of perfect obedience, an excellence of wisdom, an excellence of love, an excellence of self-sacrificing service.  So excellent preaching is preaching the excellence of Christ and it is as we gaze on this excellence that we are transformed to be (kidogo) like him.
In the forthcoming Raising the Bar fellowship conferences we'll be looking at exactly this issue of refocusing our gaze on the excellence of Christ as the heart of our ministry and preaching. If you're in the Nairobi area put 4-7 February in your diary and if you're in the Kisumu area it'll be 31 March - 3 April. Contact RtB [at] iserveafrica.org for more information.

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