Good & Great

What would you choose if you could be made good at something instantly? Would you become a good cook? Perhaps a good investor? Maybe a good basketball player or skilled with the rod and the reel. The choice is yours. What would you be good at? For me, it would be music.

I do wish I had even remedial skill at playing the guitar or the piano. To be called “good” at tickling the ivory would be fulfillment of my one unrequited love. In my dreams I picture myself sitting on my porch playing guitar for hours on end as I work my way through the Eric Clapton catalog or sitting at the piano as the family gathers for Christmas playing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Professional aspirations aside, I would be good playing the guitar and the piano. If only wishing made it so.

Would you choose if you could be great at something? Would it be the same? Would you choose to be truly great at cooking or basketball? Would you elect to have your named etched in stone for generations and generations because you were great at fishing? As much as I dream about playing an instrument, I am confident that it would not be the thing I elect to be great at. Perhaps it would be peacemaking that I would choose. Then again it might be communication. Maybe I would elect to be great at something yet unrealized; a skill and talent for the next phase of my life and ministry. To choose what to be truly great at would require some serious discernment, and then hard work and commitment.

The difference between good and great is epic. Good is fine but great is better. This truth led Jim Collins in his book Good to Great to bluntly call good “the enemy of great” for its ability to arrest effort, progress, innovation, and discernment. If you were good at fishing would you put in the time, energy, effort, focus, and rugged determination to work to become a great fisher-person? We often work towards good and settle there; good is good enough. Good gets you in the door. Good makes you some money. Good can produce but how much less than Great? Imagine the different between a good signer and a great one. Imagine the difference between a good pitcher and a great one. Imagine the difference between a good restaurant and a great one. Imagine the difference between a good church and a great one.

One last question, do you want Boulevard to be a good church or a great one? If good is good enough then we have very little left to do. Yet if great is where we are called, if great is where we are to aim, if becoming a great church is how we are going to provide for future generations and our community then there is no time for just being good. The first step is simple: a decision. Shall we band together with a common focus as we begin the journey to make Boulevard great or shall we rest here at good?