As leaders we’ve all been in groups, organizations or churches where excellence has become an all-consuming and financial sucking idol.

If I were to give you $5,000 and ask you to improve some aspect(s) of what you are doing to make it more excellent, I am sure you would be delighted and find ways to improve a process, program or product. 

More Money

What If I offered you another $10,000? Could you find even more things that could be done?  Of course you could, and would.  The more money you have at your disposal, the more you could invest to make things more and more excellent. How do you determine when excellence has become an end in itself, an idol? 

When is “effective” effective enough without adding the latest toy, product, or technology tool that is increasingly costing you more but not making things more effective in getting you to where the Lord would have you be?

Pawns in a game?

Maybe we are living in age of excellence gone amuck.  We are pawns in the hands of the advertising and marketing world. In almost any investment of time and money we might make, we could always invest more; but why and for what end?  Would it be wrong to say, it is good enough as it is when someone wants to up the ante to make “it” more excellent by throwing more money and time at it? 

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. What are some of the guidelines you use or questions you ask in making decisions regarding making it more excellent as opposed to leaving it as it is?