Excellence begins with the little things. Booker T. Washington once said, “Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

Tom Peters, in his book A Passion For Excellence notes that in business excellence is decided

by the way a secretary answers the phone, by the way the clerk handles your package, by the way some people — who may seem unimportant in the whole scheme of the company — treat you as a customer. The author keeps implying all through the book that it is excellence in small things, in the minor details, that makes a picture of excellence for the whole company.

If you are diligent with the way you spend your minutes at work, your supervisor will more than likely trust you with more and greater responsibility. If you are honest with your pennies, nickels and dimes, you will never steal fives, tens and twenties. If you are too honest to cheat on a math exam, you are no doubt too honest to cheat the government out of it’s taxes.

This is oh so true for a church as well. How are the children treated? Are the grounds kept up? Do we keep the trash emptied? Are phone calls diligently returned? Excellence is realized inch by inch!

Is it any wonder that the Bible speaks of God’s concern for:

one little lamb?

one lost coin?

one fallen sparrow?

the dot above the letter “i” and the crossbar in the letter “t”? The little things; the things that others might miss or ignore.

Without attention given to the little things, the big things eventually cease to matter.

This has been Pastor Michael Jackson of Janesville’s New Life Assembly of God with today’s LIFELINE!

- New Life Assembly of God church in Janesville, WI

What is the difference between excellence and mediocre?

Excellence is going beyond the expected, the normal. The word speaks of one
going beyond or further than the average.
Mediocre speaks of that which is of ordinary or of moderate quality; neither good
nor bad; barely adequate. Rather poor or inferior.

Jesus illustrates what I mean by excellence. He taught, “If someone forces you to
go one mile, go with him two miles”. In those days the law allowed a Roman soldier
to draft someone to carry his pack for him for one mile. The pack was heavy. The
roads were rough. The job was always an imposition. Then, too, these soldiers
were, as a rule, hated. These men enforced the iron-fisted rule of Rome. Jesus was
simply drawing for us a picture of a hated, evil and demanding boss who was
wanting more than he justly deserved. Jesus said, “don’t just go the one mile, go
two!” Tell the fellow, “this second mile is on me. I’m into excellence. My faith in Jesus
Christ demands that I do more than is expected.

Jim Conway writes that some people feel “a weakening of the need to be a great
man and an increasing feeling of `let’s just get through this the best way we can.’
Never mind hitting home runs. Let’s just get through the ball game without getting
beaned.”

Those who want to be excellent cannot afford to have that kind of attitude. They
need to do the job, and then some.Mediocre is never good enough for children of God. Never.

God didn’t call us to
just be average, run-of-the-mill Christians. No. He called us to change our world.
To make things better. You should never be satisfied with mediocrity either. As
saints, we such discipline ourselves to work harder. Dream bigger. Desire to
excel. That is the language of excellence.

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- New Life Assembly of God Church in Janesville, WI