As a church we believe in excellence. It’s one of our core values. But it is so easy to confuse excellence with perfectionism. Perfectionism is: setting impossible goals; motivated by a fear of failure; meditating on failures/mistakes and discounting successes; taking criticism personally (value as a person is related to performance); unhelpful comparisons (with other people and organisations, leads to pride/discouragement); frustrating; elitist: some people will not be able to achieve an ‘A’, their best may be a ‘B’; expensive: lots of money being spent unnecessarily on state of the art/super luxurious stuff (yet Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee in a fishing boat not a 30ft luxury yacht); always out of reach, a perfectionist’s bar on excellence is constantly being raised, which gives the impression that leaders and God are never satisfied; exhausting; puts a person under the law.

Excellence on the other hand is: giving your best efforts; going beyond (your) mediocrity; motivated by God’s grace (Romans 12:1); about learning from mistakes how to fail forward (Proverbs 24:16; Psalm 42:5); learning from criticism (Proverbs 9:8-9); deriving our value as people from God (not performance); doing all things well for God’s glory; each believer reaching his/her greatest potential; being better tomorrow than you were yesterday; matching your practice with your potential.

As we pursue excellence together, let’s try to avoid the perfectionist trap by drinking deep from the wells of God’s grace.

The Labour Party’s recent proposed amendments to the Equality Bill, already rejected by the Lords, are a matter of heated controversy. The Pope has just strongly denounced them as against natural law and an attack on religious freedom, so this gives us all pause for thought. Labour MP Harriet Harman has crafted these new clauses fired by what we hope were sincere motives to advance justice, human dignity, and fair-minded treatment of others. It will inevitably produce the very opposite for some. All faith communities, and particularly evangelical Christians, would be forced to violate ethical standards taught in scripture. They would be compelled to employ church leaders and staff members who openly engage in fornication and immoral sexual activities as well as others who hold religious beliefs contradictory to their own. Conscientious objectors could face expensive lawsuits and heavy fines if they do not comply.

Some beliefs are totally destructive to Christian faith and culture for they are denials of it. Christ charges us to change the world for the better, not bed-down with its shallow-rooted ideas! This legislation is akin to enforcing the freedom of British National Party members to join the Labour Party and hold office, or a radical Socialist revolutionary’s right to work as an adviser to David Cameron and the Conservative Party since we’re all ‘equal’. Thankfully, this ain’t going to happen, for reasons fairly obvious to people of common sense! Sadly, this highly valuable commodity – common sense – once thought essential in decision making and public discourse in Britain, is increasingly hard to find.

I recently re-read a very old letter from a wise and highly respected thinker, who voiced uncommon wisdom on some very important issues that relate to this legislation and should concern everyone who’s worried about the erosion of the foundations within our culture. He urges us to embrace uncomfortable truths and make a stand for them, due to their importance to us all. Here’s an extract:

“I feel very strongly about this huge obligation to tell the truth to all kinds of people across the whole spectrum of human ethnicity and beliefs, even if I’m mocked as a fool for this. The fact is I’m not remotely embarrassed about the life-changing truths I feel compelled to pass on. I’ve already seen their power to transform countless human lives for the better. God can fix anything and anybody up. He plans to rectify everyone who believes this, and then everything else around them.

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Last Sunday evening, 24th January 2010, Channel 4 launched its new series of seven attractively produced documentaries on the Bible, each hosted by a well-known public figure. Howard Jacobson, the best-selling Jewish novelist and humourist, tackled the awesome subject of ‘Creation’ for the pilot show – truly the foundation for all that’s to follow – and rightly so. The result must have left most viewers confirmed in their suspicions that this foundation is a pretty shaky one, for if Genesis is telling us lies how can we trust the other sixty-five books of the Bible? When does God start telling us the truth?

Back in September 2009, I was invited to participate in this programme by preaching a sermon on Genesis 1 at Westminster Chapel, then being interviewed for 90 minutes by Howard Jacobson. Both would be filmed as material to be included in this hot debate about creation. Howard wanted to find out how ‘fundamentalist’ creationists explain and defend the theology of Genesis. Most ‘fundamentalists’ usually appear not much ‘fun’, slightly ‘dumb’, and occasionally ‘mental’ to me, but I was willing to take the risk and participate.

I found Howard Jacobson to be charming, witty and incisive in his questions. A Mancunian Jew who drifted away from the faith of his fathers and lived a secular lifestyle, he now hovers indecisively somewhere between wistful longings and strong scepticism on the God-question. This was reflected in the whole tenor of the programme.

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Some leadership musings on Exodus 18:1-23 that I’d like to be held accountable to…

Context
Although we cannot be sure precisely where Exodus 18 fits chronologically in Israel’s first year of freedom from Egypt, the significance of it being placed after Exodus 17 (whether in chronological order or not) by the writer is important.

Exodus 17:1-7
Water from the rock. Moses angry and frustrated with the people. Moses told by God to take some of the elders with him and strike the rock.

Exodus 17:8-16
Amalekites defeated at Rephidim. Moses’s arms being held up by Aaron and Hur crucial to victory.

Both of these stories illustrate the heavy leadership responsibility Moses had (a nation composed of nearly 2,000,000 people (600,000 men, cf. 12:37)) (and in the early part of chapter 17, some of his frustrations) and hint at a move towards sharing this leadership burden with others.

Outsider?
Jethro was a “priest of Midian” – not an Israelite. He had not lived under oppression in Egypt and taken part in their miraculous escape. He was not steeped in Israelite culture and history. He was, in this sense, an outsider.

But when Moses was on the run from Egypt, Jethro was the friend and father-in-law (for c.40 years) Moses needed. Sometimes Godly advice can come from unlikely sources – (‘unqualified’) outsiders – are we ready and willing to receive it?

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Times of feasting are mandated in the Bible.  So as you approach Christmas, remember that there is a good way to feast and a bad way.  A right way of enjoying festivals is defined by a couple of principles.

First, take all of God’s gifts with thanksgiving.  There are plenty of people who feel guilty enjoying rest and food.  That’s sad, because God has given them to us.  It’s worse than sad when they try and put their guilt on other people – in fact, it’s downright wrong.  Paul knew this, and that’s why he described such people as devoted to the doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1-2).  In contrast he tells you, Christian, to enjoy everything God has given with thanksgiving.  ”For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5).

Second, maintain discipline even in your feasting and your resting.  It’s very obvious as you look at the festivals for the Israelites in Leviticus 23 that they involve much enforced rest, but their feasting also contained rhythms and rituals designed to draw the worshipper’s attention to God their Redeemer.  So also at Christmas, I encourage you to rest well and eat well, but also to take up the opportunity to worship well, and to approach God daily in prayer and listening to his Word.

There are bad ways of feasting which involve the extremes of either pious legalism (and its accompanying false guilt and self-righteous pride), or flabby licentiousness (leading to the New Year blahs and a long recovery process).  As you seek to feast well this Christmas, take God’s gifts with thanksgiving, and return to him daily for the true rest that he alone can bring to your soul.