Google #10: Great Isn’t Good Enough

This guest post by David Hansen is part of the blog series Google’s 10 Things We Know to be True.

We’re going to flex our memories today. I want you to remember way back to five years ago and think of every TV show that you watched. Not just which TV series – but remember the episodes.

How many do you remember? All of them? Half? A fraction?

If you’re like me, you remember very few of the TV episodes you watched. The good ones have faded away, leaving only the exceptional episodes in their place. Something great about them stood out and stuck to your memory. The writing, the visuals, the plot, the special effects – something about those particular episodes were great.

Now for the next question: How many of those shows – which had exceptional episodes – are still on the air?

We’ve all seen it happen. Season one is great. Season two is ok. And by season three most of the audience has started to tune out. Same thing with movie sequels. The first movie is fantastic. Everyone goes back for the second one and it’s just ok. And most of us wish they never made the third one.

What went wrong? They settled for great. But great isn’t good enough.

We do it all the time in the church. We think that “great” is the goal – the end point. Something in our ministry is great – the preaching or the music or the youth program – and so we turn our attention to something else. We try and shore up the weak points, and let the great stuff run on its own momentum.

And then it doesn’t. We turn around, and our great ministry has become good – or mediocre. We went from being an amazing movie to a so-so sequel. Because great isn’t good enough.

Rather than the goal, great is our starting point.

In a fast moving world, there is no such thing as momentum. A ministry that is “coasting” is a ministry that is preparing for decline.

This is a challenge for us. We want to do all things well. But often, we do all things well (or try to anyway) at the cost of the thing we could be doing excellently.

What is great in your ministry? What is the one thing that your congregation is most gifted in? What would you have to stop doing, in order to focus more attention on that?

Take that, and make it even better. Continue to work on it. Put as much effort into it now as you did when you got started.

Great us just the starting line.

[image by flickr user tableatny]