That’s one of my bibles. It made it onto the online pictures from the wedding I did last week in Luray.
And that’s my morning coffee. See the little green thing sticking out of the lid? It’s something new that Starbucks made so your coffee won’t spill all over your car when you’re driving. Genius. You see, before when you wanted to cover your drink so that it wouldn’t spill, you had to put one of their stickers over the hole. And, when you removed the sticker, there was a bunch of sticky residue left for you to enjoy while you finished your drink.
I don’t expect things like that from Starbucks. Or pictures like these from photographers. Or from restaurants. Unfortunately, I don’t expect them from churches, either.
I only expect things like that from Apple. They seem to think of things before I even open the box.
What would happen if we paid that kind of attention in churches? What if we thought about the things that people were looking for … things to make their lives easier … things that would help them along the way instead of relying upon their resilience to make their way into our church?
Andy Stanley does a great job with this down at Northpoint. He uses the illustration of a ladder. Many churches, hoping to equip people, build bigger and bigger, taller and taller ladders. But, in doing so, they remove the bottom rungs of the ladder … because they become unnecessary in helping the people already there to grow.
I’m prepping for my next “big church” sermon. It’s from 1 Peter 2 and begins with a great passage where Peter admonishes the church help those far from God and new to the faith. John Phillips says, “many churches are more like refrigerators than incubators”.
God help us if we become so inward focussed that we become God’s frozen instead of His chosen.
thanks for letting me borrow the bible! i owe you!
-jaime
Brett, you are ridiculous.
Excellent is the enemy of Just Good Enough. People out there making things Excellent are raising the bar for those of us who are content to let things stay Just Good Enough, and it has really wrecked our world.
Seriously, why would Starbucks spend resources on improving your cup lid? It’s a throwaway piece.
I think if the Just Good Enoughs all put our heads together, we could slowly and stealthily decrease our standards in a way that people hardly notice. One day, what we now know as Substandard or even Rather Poor will be accepted as Just Good Enough.
The only thing standing between me and my dream are all those wasteful, ignorant Excellent people.