Excellence:

When Good Isn’t Good Enough

The good can be the enemy of the best.  I first used this title when I was teaching seminars and workshops with the Integrity Music worship teams as we traveled the world training church and worship leaders.  One time there was a typographical error in the program and the title was listed “Excellence: When God Isn’t Good Enough.”  One woman came to the seminar just to see what I would have to say about that!

That humorous story highlights how difficult it is to achieve excellence.  We’re only human and we make mistakes.  It’s often hard to translate our best intentions into a finished product that matches how good we want it to be.  It’s therefore important to define excellence so that we know what we’re pursuing.

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Personal Goals

Let's Set Some Goals!

Exercising faith that “in his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps” (Proverbs 16:9), begin to examine every area of your life.  Ask yourself where you want to be and what you would like to accomplish in the next two years in your job, ministry, family, finances, health and spiritual life.  As you formulate goals, ask yourself what you must do to make those goals a reality.

For instance, if you are a pastor and desire to see your church double in size within two years, what is your plan to see that happen?  How often will you pray, what will you preach, and who will you enlist to help you reach your goal?  If you want to write a book, how many pages per day or week must you write to be done in two years?  If you want or need to do more reading, how many books will you read each month and what kind of books will they be?

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Organizational Goals

Goals Revisited

I’ve named this chapter “Goals Revisited” because I discussed the issue of goals in my first book, Life Is a Gold Mine: Can You Dig It?  That discussion focused on setting personal goals, and I reiterated that everyone can and should set goals for their life.  This book, however, is addressed to present and future leaders, so in this chapter we’ll look at organizational goals from a leader’s point of view.

John Haggai, founder and president of the Haggai Institute for Leaders in Singapore, writes, “Goal-setting is an ongoing discipline of the true leader.  Failure at this point destroys the confidence of the followers because it destroys the credibility of the leader.”  I agree.

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