While it is a challenge you can balance excellence with authenticity. To do so retains the “humanity” of the worship experience that some over produced services lose.

Amen to this post.  While a few might actually be able to pull off something as entertaining as the Tonight Show (which would be cool) I think that you can be “real” and “excellent” at the same time.  But really the issue mentioned here is “perfectionism” rather than doing your best and better each time.  The words “excellence” and “perfection” are easily confused.

I think the balance here becomes what type of excellence you are striving for.  Let me explain. 

I would think a non-negotiable is what I would call relational excellence. Are we relationally showing the love of Christ every, and I mean every time we come together to worship.  Is there a lazy response of the church of someone who may be in our midst who needs relationship or is there a passionate pursuit of conversation and knowing new and seeking people.  When it comes to relational excellence, we better hit it out of the park every week so that hospitality gift is in full use in our worship together.

The next kind of excellence is what I will call preparation excellence.  Is it evident that the people who are leading music, preaching, leading have prepared ahead of time?  I think this burden lays on everyone, on the church members as well as the church staff.  1 Corinthians 14 implies each of us must prepare for worship in bringing an encouragement for one another.  Corporate worship is to be an overflow of our heart.  If a preacher gets up and it is obvious she hasn’t prepared, then what in the world is she doing up there?  If she isn’t “prepared” then is she depending on the Holy Spirit to move through her?  In short, is she sharing her heart or some canned message?  That is a whole other subject.

The third kind of excellence is production excellence.  This means, did every thing run smoothly, did we flow nicely etc.  This can become important but I think it is the least important of these three.  but let me say this, if you are trying to reach this culture you should strive to not distract people.  Paul makes reference to this as well in how people should only speak in tongues one at a time etc. 

The scriptures speak to all of these principles.  Our challenge is to live the scriptural principle and worship in the Spirit, not worship by our own strength and excellence.

This is an excellent subject.  I feel that God is bringing many to accountability in this area.  While excellence is a Godly virtue, striving for excellence as a human being can be a challenge.  What starts as a genuine move toward excellence can veer off down the road to “professionalism”.  Things can become extremely complex and stressful just to maintain.

Recently in our church our worship leader stepped down and moved on.  It was rather sudden.  Since 3 other members of the team were his family, they left too!  This left us with a keyboard player and 1 singer.  Add to that a couple of others who jumped in faithflly.  I’ll have to say that our worship has never been more powerful.  The simplicity has been so refreshing.  We had no choice but to do it this way.  But it was God’s choice.  God has moved on me to make my messages more simple.  I’ve even done it without power point!  This experience has refocused us on the meaning and the importance of excellence.  Many times in our striving for excellence we lose sight of the forrest because of all the trees.  Thanks again Todd for the topic.

Having re-read the poast and response again, it struck me that the problem in the majority of the church I am aware of is not the overdoing of excellence but the high level of mediocrity. There is the illusion of if you lack resources then excellence is not possible so why even try? What ever we do we ought to make the very best we can. The just getting by mentality seems to be an issue far more prevalent than the excess in excellence.