On Excellence

What a new book reminded me about what matters in congregational life

If you’ve seen me on Zoom from home, you know I have…books. My Zoom background is of bookcases and I am convinced that 1/3 of my moving costs have been just boxes of books.

Acquiring books comes along with the profession and the years of grad school. They are both an albatross and a badge of honor…if only I had read them all.

You see, I used to put a line in my bio: “and he loves buying books.” I do love buying books, and sometimes I read them beyond the intro and early chapters. But this week, a bit of wisdom comes from the intro of my latest book purchase and project, The Way of Excellence by Brad Stulberg.

I genuinely loved Stulberg’s last book Master of Change. His framework for Rugged Flexibility was quite helpful in my last job as I taught congregational leaders about holding together tenacity and agility as key traits of flourishing.

In his new book, The Way of Excellence, Stulberg declares that excellence is a practice we embody in ways that make our experiences of the world better. He writes that excellence “emerges from involved engagement in something worthwhile that supports our values and goals.”

What I love about these ideas for a congregation is how they drive us toward connection to things that matter and to each other. Excellence demands careful attention — not just to the institutional ethos or organizational structures that support a church, but to the people who make up a congregation. It’s found in how we go about working with, for, and alongside each other, not just in getting our website, documents, meeting notes, or processes polished to perfection.

In the weeks to come, if past is precedent, I’ll probably say more about what I read. But for now, I think we have a banger on our hands (do they say that?).

And as I sit with these ideas, a few questions keep surfacing:

I wonder if the desire for congregational life to be stable somehow naturally undermines excellence…if the pull toward predictability quietly replaces the pull toward what matters.

I wonder if nostalgia is an enemy to excellence…if our love for what was keeps us from the involved engagement that Stulberg describes.

I wonder if excellence is also a push toward radical empathy… so that, in working with, for, and alongside people, we are continually pointed toward what matters, not just what’s comfortable.

I think the simple idea that excellence is a practice that drives us to do what matters, and not just what is rote or easy, is worth naming. Especially for people of faith.

So as we live these post-Easter, pre-Summer days, let us not forget that the things we care about…they ask something of us. But may we also remember that when we engage with what truly matters, we find deep satisfaction.

May we be willing to work for one another and those who need the deep satisfaction of God’s love and care.