Volunteer Culture, Worship
Excellence vs. Perfection
It’s okay for the execution of your worship service to be excellent. You don’t have to settle for “well, that’s the best we can do with volunteers…”
There are times when we have excuses for our services not being excellent:
“If I just had more time to…”
“If we had all staff members running our positions…”
“If our Senior Pastor would plan further out…”
Although these statements have some validity at times, with the things you can control, you must strive for excellence.
Perhaps I should define “excellence”. As I am writing this post, I actually looked up the definition of the word: “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good”.
I really wanted to say that I didn’t mean “perfection” or “flawless”, but the more I thought about it, that’s exactly what I meant.
I had to ask myself:
Do you desire for the ProPresenter volunteer to lead lyrics every time and stay right with the Worship Leader with no errors?
Do you desire for camera shots to be well framed, in focus, and with just the right amount of movement for the tempo of the song?
Do you desire for transitions to go seamlessly, for our crew to hit every light cue, for audio to be mixed beautifully for all to hear?
Honestly, the answer was yes. Yes! I want our team to nail it! To be flawless in execution! To be a training ground for other churches to come and ask “how do you guys do that?”, to show the world that we can execute alongside any concert, any production, any crew around!
Is perfection obtainable? No, but we can certainly strive for it. I’m thinking there’s a spiritual truth to this somewhere… in Matthew 5:48 after Jesus’s Beatitudes message, he challenged us to be perfect.
Does this mean we are going to beat a volunteer over the head and cuss them out if they miss a lyric on ProPresenter? Of course not. We lovingly coach the volunteer. Know that there are going to be mistakes, and things are going to happen.
There has to be a balance between being Unapologetically Excellent and knowing what the Win is (Read my Blog Post entitled “The Win” here.)
If you care about your team and they love and trust you, it’s okay, and should be expected, for you to lead them to the next level.
How do you feel about excellence as it relates to your team?
Does excellence mean perfection?
CARL BARNHILL
Creative Director / Owner
[twelve:thirty]media | Columbia, SC
twelvethirtymedia.com
Carl Barnhill has served on staff at some of the largest churches and organizations in the country. He served as Media Director at Precept Ministries International, directing the television and radio program Precepts for Life with Kay Arthur, broadcasted to over 98 million homes around the world. He served as Video Production Director at Pinelake Church in Brandon, MS, where he produced media content for four campuses, as well as led volunteer teams.
He most recently served as Video Coordinator for Newspring Church in South Carolina. Newspring has 10 campuses across the state with a weekly attendance of over 35,000. At one campus alone, the number of consistent volunteers serving in media production tripled, under his leadership.
He currently serves as Creative Director and Owner of [twelve:thirty]media, a company that serves churches and ministries all over the world through motion graphics content and church media coaching.
