I would like to introduce you to a few of my favorite blogs.

I think you’ll be interested in checking them out because each of the following blogs I’ll mention is written by a member of our Family Ministry team here at Southside. 

So, let’s get right to the introductions.

If you have children who are in our preschool ministry, you’ll want to read Jennifer Tucker’s blog.  Jennifer is our Awali Land Preschool Director here at the church, and she loves preschool aged children like nobody I know.  You can check out her very cool blog here. 

Jim Gray and Josh Ray also have blogs.  Jim is our pastor to middle school students, and Josh is our pastor to high school students.  They are two very different dudes, but they both have a passion for reaching and ministering to students.  You can check out Jim’s blog here, while Josh’s blog can be found here. 

Finally, the awesome husband-wife team of Kevin and Micki Torres lead our college ministry, Journey.  Kevin and Micki are two of the most amazing volunteers this church has ever seen, and they are like a second set of parents to many of our college students.  Anyway, they love to talk about college ministry a lot, and you can find their blogs here and here.

Anyway, I thought some of you out there might be interested in checking out these awesome blogs, so I’m passing them along.

Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (NIV) 

I love the word “whatever” in this verse.  It implies that anything and everything you do should be done with excellence, as good as you can do it, just like you were doing it for God Himself.

Which brings me to the motivation for excellence.

Pleasing God. 

Sometimes, if we’re not careful, we may forget our motivation for excellence.

The motivation for doing things with excellence is to please God. 

If we forget this, we might as well say, “Away with Jesus, and on with the show!”, because before you know it, we’ll be worshipping excellence instead of God. 

And I don’t think I have to tell you, but as great as excellence is, and as much as we want to achieve excellence in every area of our ministry, God is infinitely greater, and He is our motivation for doing things with excellence in the first place. 

So, as a church, let’s do things with excellence.  But let’s make sure our motivation is to please our Heavenly Father and not for some other selfish reason.

I don’t ever want our church to ever be an “average” church.  (And by average, I’m not talking about the size of our church, but how we operate here at Southside) 

The reality is, and I’m not going to spiritualize this, if we’re going to reach Warner Robins with the Good News, we’re going to have to do things with excellence.  The typical, average, ordinary, “business as usual” approach to church isn’t going to reach any lost people I know. 

Isn’t that true? 

Allow me to share a hypothetical situation with you to try and make my point. 

Let’s say a new family visits our church this Sunday, and none of the family members have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Imagine that this family walks onto our campus and is greeted by a sloppily dressed greeter, encouraged to drop their children off in an unclean and unsafe children’s area, escorted to the sanctuary to listen to a poorly prepared worship band and even more poorly prepared pastor, and never even spoken to the rest of the morning.

Will they be attracted to the Christian life?  Will they ever come back to our church?  

You’re smart.  You know the answer, don’t you?

Now, imagine the opposite happens instead. 

Imagine that this same family is greeted by some appropriately dressed greeters, encouraged to drop their children off in a clean, safe, and friendly children’s area, escorted to the sanctuary to listen to a professionally prepared worship band and a pastor who’s obviously been thinking about this issue for weeks, and are greeted by multiple smiling and friendly people.

Will they be attracted to the Christian life?  Will they ever come back to our church?

Maybe.  Maybe not.  I don’t know.  But I do know that they’ll be much more likely to come back.  Right?

And they’ll be much more likely to come back because the door has been opened a little wider for the Holy Spirit to do His work because of a commitment on our part to do things with excellence. 

So, what do you think?  Do you agree with me that excellence opens the door for evangelism?  Or is it worldly to try and do things as well as we can possibly do them?  I’d love to get your feedback.

On Monday, I was given the opportunity to go to the Augusta National Golf Course, the most prestigious golf course in all the world.  It’s where “The Masters” is played every year.   

While I was there, I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful the landscaping was, how organized the event was, and how excited everyone was to just be there.

And although I don’t necessarily want to do a post on “What the Church can Learn from The Masters”, there were several times throughout the day when it was plainly obvious that the people who run “The Masters” and take care of Augusta National, are committed to excellence and could teach those of us in the local church a thing or two about giving our best. 

With that said, I thought I would take the next few posts and talk about why we as a church we need to be consumed with doing things with excellence.

Although the course is definitely the ”star” at Augusta National (aka “The Masters”), there is little doubt that everyone wants to see Tiger Woods at some point.  Here he is with Mark O’Meara.

My three year old, Brody, obviously doesn’t understand golf and certainly doesn’t know any golfers by name, but I told him that I was going to go see Tiger Woods.  

When I came home he remembered that name, but asked, “Dad, did you have fun in the ‘Tiger Woods’?”