Christian Leadership Alliance

Building a Team

Price: $12.50
Member Price: $10.00

See more …


In which Season does your ministry raise the most financial resources each year?

Take the poll

No Higher Standard

Ted Engstrom | Outcomes, Feb/Mar 2008

Ted W. Engstrom left an enduring legacy of leadership as president, CEO, and board member of some of the world's largest and best-run Christian organizations, including Youth for Christ and World Vision. In his seminal book, The Art of Management for Christian Leaders, coauthored with Edward R. Dayton, Ted articulated the scriptural perspective and godly purpose of excellence.

In 1961, John William Gardner, then head of the Carnegie Corporation who would move on to prominent leadership roles in HEW and Common Cause, wrote a book with the simple title, Excellence (Harper and Row).

The book was subtitled, "Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too?" and challenged the notion that it is undemocratic to excel at something beyond one's fellow man.

Gardner was on the right track—we need to excel. Yet Christians fall into the trap of believing that no one should be better than someone else. We become uneasy with the idea of having the best, being the best, or doing that which is outstanding. Too often in our thinking, we don't mind excellence if we can shift responsibility for it onto the Lord. "The Lord has really blessed his ministry," or "The Lord really gave him great gifts." But we may become suspicious if someone is praised directly for doing an excellent job.

There are some real tensions here, and they work themselves out in strange ways:

• We once visited a beautiful chapel on a new church campus. In contrast to three obviously expensive chandeliers was a hand-drawn Sunday school attendance chart taped to the foyer wall. The chandeliers cost $1,500, but the best the church could do to communicate what was happening to people was a crude graph.
  
  
• Another time, World Vision was criticized for purchasing first quality plumbing for a new building, a long-term investment that has paid good dividends but at the time seemed "too good" to some.
  
  
• In contrast is the pride we exhibit when a Christian "makes the big time" in athletics or politics. For some reason, it's all right to praise a man for excellence in non-Christian things!
  
  

A Problem of Theology

Part of our problem is just defective theology. Most of us cannot live with the biblical (can paradoxical) truth the God is doing it all—that he is in all and through all—and the parallel and just as incomprehensible truth that man is the one who has not only been given complete responsibility for his actions, but is commanded to act. This is part of the tension we experience in theology and life.

We constantly struggle with the concept of operating a business and ministry. They do not conflict; both are vital. But we are called to excellence. And we are called to set the standards of excellence for ourselves and all people. In Philippians 1:10, Paul prays that we may have the ability to prove those things are excellent.