When I played
college baseball our coach had a saying:
“Don’t ever let good enough be good enough.” No matter how good things were going he would
always tell us to never be satisfied. Sometimes
it got comical.
After a fall
doubleheader, in which we split with a much better team, we came off the bus ecstatic. The previous year we had won a paltry four
games (losing 29!), so one could understand our excitement. But Coach was not pleased. “Don’t be satisfied with just winning one
game. We should've won them both.” He then proceeded to tell us that we shouldn't be satisfied until we won the conference, and then not until we won the College
World Series, and then not until we won every single game, and then not until
we won every single game by the 10-run rule.
We couldn't help but laugh.
Coach never really
lived down that moment, but his mantra to never let good enough be good enough
stuck with us. In the sports world it’s
not a bad mantra. It pushed us to be
better today than we were yesterday, to be better tomorrow than we are today;
in fact, that attitude led me to have what is without a doubt the best pitching
season of my life. We didn’t win the
conference that year, or the World Series for that matter, but we improved
dramatically, and we were happy with that.
But in my two short
years of ordained ministry I have wrestled with this concept. As a Christian, and especially as a Christian
leader, I wonder exactly when I should be satisfied. When is good enough really good enough?
In his book The Grasshopper Myth Pastor Karl Vaters
addresses this issue. A non-denominational
pastor, he had been schooled by the Rick Warrens and Joel Osteens of the world
who had said that the goal of every small church should be to transform itself
into a mega church. The goal is more
people in the pews, as many as you can get (and, subsequently, more money in
the plate). Pastor Karl tried this approach;
he developed newcomer ministries, increased his own hours at the church, and
even built a new, giant auditorium for all the folks who would be coming
through those doors. And it worked! For a while.
Eventually Pastor Karl burned out.
Attendance dwindled, and the pastor took a sabbatical and wrestled with
that very concept of ‘good enough’ until he came back and realized, quite simply,
he was a small church pastor. And that
was good enough. It was good enough for
him, for his congregation, and, most importantly, for God.
There is the old
saying about things they don’t teach you in seminary. This is one of them. As one of my colleagues commented in a clergy
gathering, “How do we know if we’re really doing our job?” That’s a great question! I've walked away from pastoral visits and
wondered if I actually did enough for the person I just visited. I've worried whether or not a sermon that I had
hoped would inspire anyone would actually have a lasting effect. How do I really know if I’m succeeding at my
job, at my call?
What is our
barometer of success? What does success
look like? In sports it’s easy. Stats simply do not lie, and wins and losses
make it pretty clear. In the Episcopal Church we have a necessary evil called
the Parochial Report, which lists how many members we have, how many came to
Christmas mass, and how many folks we baptized and confirmed in the last
year. Are we meant to use that to
measure success? But if that’s the case,
do we count a year when we did not grow in numbers as a failure? Is that Christian way of measuring success?
Jesus said nothing
about Parochial Reports. And none of us
took vows at our ordination to “Fill them pews, people!” (as George Carlin’s Cardinal
Glick says in Dogma). So when is good enough really good
enough?
I wonder what would
happen if we focused less on the quantity of our ministries and more on the
quality. When one church says they grew
by 30% last year maybe our response should be ,”That’s great! Thanks be to God!” rather than “That’s
great! What can we do to be like them?” Instead of asking our colleagues, “What’s
your ASA (average Sunday attendance)?” maybe we could ask them, “What’s one of the
most life-giving ministries that y’all are offering?” What would happen if we
knew that we were already good enough for God as we are?
It’s stewardship
season, I know. And we all have the
Great Commission to live into, to make disciples of all nations. So we can’t exactly escape the need to
address issues of money and parish growth.
But Jesus said nothing about growing OUR church, but rather THE
Church. And there is a difference. The former often focuses more on quantity,
while the latter focuses on quality. Remember
what the prophet tells us, that God’s ways are not our ways. Perhaps that means God’s standards, God’s
means of measuring success are not ours, either.
Maybe we too can
focus more on quality than quantity. We might
find, as we focus less on how much money we have and who isn't coming to
church, that God is continually providing grace among those folks who are
already with us. And that grace is all
sufficient, after all.
We do not have to
impress God. And whether we average 30
people on a Sunday or 300 God is still glorified. If we recognize that fact we may find that we
don’t have to continually worry about being better tomorrow than we are today,
that we who are ministers can sleep easy at night knowing that what we do
matters, even if we don’t have a means by which of measuring success. We may find that God is already doing amazing
things among us. We may find that, as
far as God is concerned, we are already good enough. And that’s good enough.