Here is a perspective on the use of the word "excellence" in church life from the blog, "out of URl"
It's an emergent church perspective. (Emergent church is out-of-the-box, youth oriented Christian church movement) It's an interesting blog... I always think it's nice to know we're not alone in our agonizing about churchy issues!
Just a few more thoughts of mine on this issue; firstly, I never thought that "excellent" and "perfect" were synonyms. secondly, I wonder what word between "competent", which we surely must expect of everyone, and "excellent", which is seen as out of reach, might we want to put forward? For myself, I'm leaning towards thinking of "excellencies", as a way of suggesting that there are many ways one can be doing high quality work and they are likely to look very different.
Finally, and most importantly, I do hope that we go forward with looking at how to move in the direction of "better" even if we have not found the perfect words to describe our initiative.
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I'll admit that I think that more "apprenticeship" and less academophilia might serve well. I say that as someone rolling gleefully in the academics right now... trying to figure out if I can cram extra classes that are interesting looking into the time I have in seminary.
But I suspect that more practical arts and practical experience might be better ways of setting the functional bar high to start with, allowing new ministers a better idea of what the actual work of ministry is, and how to do it. (Keep the academic required material as something like continuing education requirements monitored by the MFC--a way of helping keeping all our ministers 'fresh' in an academic/intellectual sense). That would also provide congregations more contact with ministers in formation... helping some better understand ministry--and providing more hands doing learning-ministry in the congregations, where there's always something more that could be done.
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