Excellence or Authenticity?
// February 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // Church Life
I’ve written a lot about the importance of excellence in the Church on this blog before. I believe it’s important to do things in a way that communicates that we value what we are doing, we value those we are ministering to, and most of all we value the God we are worshiping. However, I also believe that there is a higher ideal that we must pursue without forsaking excellence.
Authenticity.
Boiled down to it’s root, authenticity is about truthfullness. It’s about not concealing reality behind a veil of mystery and false piety. It’s about letting the seams show a little as if to say, “this was made by human beings, not by a machine.” It’s about celebrating the risk over the result to the point of being willing to celebrate failure as a true sign of a big risk that has been courageously taken. This is not something we traditionally do well.
The church growth and seeker sensitive movement has produced mixed results. Churches have certainly grown, which I believe is almost always a good thing. However, I think we’re all in danger of placing pragmatism and professionalism in a place of greater importance than Spirit-led, Christ-centered authenticity.
Here’s the thing: our culture values authenticity over spit-polish any day. I think we are about to see a wave of reactions against the auto-tuned, over produced, over sold, over hyped mainstream music and film industry. I think people are sick of the trite and begging for the real. And isn’t this something Jesus-followers should be experts in? We of all people should get the fact that we are all broken, that the greatness in mankind is only an imperfect image of a perfect God. Aren’t we the ones that get to “boast in our weakness”?
Several months ago during our Sunday morning worship set a mistake was made. Our guitarist (who rarely makes mistakes on his instrument) began the song in the wrong key. It was awful and impossible to ignore. Most people would have made an adjustment and tried to stumble forward acting like it had never happened. But, instead of doing that he stopped playing, waved at the congregation and said something like “Thanks very much, everyone! That was me over here.” It was a beautiful moment.
What was beautiful about it was that a sigh of relief went through the room as if to say, “Oh, thank God. We can make mistakes here and it’s ok.”
I find that in most churches the opposite is true. Performance mistakes are highly criticized and covered up. Sermons are memorized, worship is auto-tuned, every moment choreographed. No mistakes.
But “no mistakes” isn’t realistic for most of us and we need to see that reflected in our churches.
I believe that at some point every leader, and every local church is faced with a decision. They will have to make a choice between becoming more excellent and polished or becoming more authentic and real. At some point, one will directly compete with the other.
Again, this doesn’t mean that we can say excellence doesn’t matter because it really, really does. It just isn’t the ultimate value because in the end it’s authenticity that will connect with people.
Incidentally, this gives the small church (with a small budget, and few people resources) some hope. You can overcome a LOT of in-excellence with extra doses of authenticity. If you don’t have a good worship band, or your building is old, or your preaching is boring, you can overcome a lot of those things by hammering authenticity and relationships.
People will say, “Yeah his preaching isn’t that great but he’s so REAL.” or “The music isn’t that great, but there is so much love and acceptance there that I can’t help but go back every week.” When people say those kinds of things they are making value statements. They are saying that excellence is important to them, but what really matters MOST to them is authenticity. Authenticity doesn’t require money. It doesn’t require a lot of people. All it requires is grace, which is the one thing the Church has in great supply no matter how small.
