A Call to (Christian) Excellence

One way to understand the evolution of popular management publications over the last 50 years is to see it as beginning with a reaction to the struggles of American manufacturing in the 1970s. Shocked by the oil embargo and an invasion of cheaper, more efficient foreign imports, US car manufacturers attempted to adapt quickly but surrendered both quality control and efficiency.¹ High production costs and lackluster product development at technology firms like IBM and DEC led to their eventually being driven out of the most popular parts of the market. This is the era of the Ford Pinto and the Bell Telephone Picturephone.

In response to these failures, management experts like Tom Peters, Bob Waterman, Ken Blanchard, and Spencer Johnson published books like In Search of Excellence² and The One Minute Manager.³ These volumes sold millions of copies both to academics and to industry practitioners. They offered a new way of thinking about the work of business or any field that simultaneously sought to maximize both operational efficiency and organizational effectiveness. Their books provided examples of companies that achieved excellence, as they defined it, and were rewarded with pricing power over the product market, competitive advantages in the labor pool, and “strong buy” stock performance.

One of the downsides of some of these books was that they were based on a mechanistic understanding of human beings and human psychology. Just as Frederick Winslow Taylor’s work in scientific management at the turn of the century had sought to reinterpret workers’ bodies as equipment for production, some of the management theory espoused by these 1980’s era authors seemed to view employees’ minds as machines to be manipulated.⁴ My colleagues and I at the time quipped that we “would hate to be managed by a one-minute manager.” Nonetheless, the call to organizational and personal excellence retained its place in many a strategic plan and vision statement. Mercifully, the earlier publications in this area were followed by more nuanced works like Jim Collins’ Good to Great,⁵ which embraced a more empathetic approach to the workforce and to customers.

The ongoing popularity of the call to excellence, both in the professional literature and in industry, has posed a peculiar challenge for Christian professionals looking to integrate their faith with their occupation. How should Christians think about the call to excellence? Is it a biblical mandate? Is it sinful? The Bible can intersect with the industrial call to excellence from multiple trajectories. Texts like Colossians 3:23-24 might imply that seeking excellence is an act of piety and hold that we must work harder and smarter because that is what Christ demands of us. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord and not for people, knowing that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (NASB).

Other passages emphasize the transcendent role of God in history and might imply that we should eschew professional excellence because only God can do anything of eternal significance. We should focus on watching and waiting, not working and worrying. “The Lord will fight for you, while you keep silent” (Exodus 14:14).

Still other Scriptures can carry a warning that achieving excellence in our worldly jobs often comes with rewards and the potential for significant self-affirmation. Those texts might alert us that the search for excellence can become an act of idolatry where workers prioritize themselves and their organizations instead of the person and work of Christ. “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24).

One possible avenue into a biblically faithful integration of the call to excellence starts all the way back in the creation narratives. In Genesis 1:27-28, God creates man and woman in His own image and then bestows on them the work of stewarding creation. That work includes a number of elements. We are called to create, to cultivate, and to subdue the created world into an orderly form, just as God created and cultivated an orderly world out of chaos and emptiness in Genesis 1:1-26. If we applied an orthodox doctrine of God to His creative process, we would say that God created with love, with compassion, with wisdom, and with all of His other moral attributes in play. Surely we would expect God’s call to emulate His creative and cultivating work to include those same moral attributes (1 Peter 1:15-16). We are not only called to work of the kind God did, but to do that work in the manner that God did. This calling is part of the imago Dei.

We can imagine God joining Adam and Eve in the Garden on their first day of work and His instructing them in how to care for His creation. He demonstrates how seeds might be planted, watered, and watched over so that they produce a healthy, fruit-bearing plant. He shows them how moss must be planted in the shade, but sunflowers where they can get the full benefit of the light. He shares His love, wisdom, and compassion for all things. If on day two of their work, Adam carelessly tosses some seeds on a rocky overhang, God might have corrected him, demonstrating empathy for the need the young plants would have for shelter and irrigation. The fact that they are doing the same work that God did brings tremendous dignity to Adam and Eve, but they must do that work in the way He demonstrated in order to bring dignity to the work.

In my present occupation, doing work in the imago Dei means planning several semesters ahead for the classes my College will offer so that students have the courses they need at the times they need them. It means responding to students in my own classes with a combination of compassion and discipline so that they have a chance to mature into the professionals the job market will require and that they desire to become. God is a teacher and my calling to that field provides me with dignity, but if I do not follow Him in the way that I teach, I rob the work, and myself, of that dignity. I mar the imago.

Peters and his followers define excellence according to market perception. When your organization has become indispensable to consumers, even in a competitive environment, one has achieved excellence.⁶ Excellence, they claim, is always a moving target as consumer demands evolve and as competitors seek to imitate the distinctive attributes that have led you to monopolize your market niche. By redefining excellence as applying the moral attributes of God to our labor, we set an objective target towards which we can continually draw closer. So defined, the pursuit of excellence becomes part of our search for sanctification, drawing near to God so that He will draw near to us (James 4:8a). In my experience, it is much harder to pattern God’s excellence than the excellence of the marketplace. I have to think about more issues, sacrifice my time and energy, and deal with people in ways (God’s ways) that are counterintuitive and uncomfortable for me. My investment in that effort, however, can bear fruit over time, as I become more like Him through working as He does.

In the midst of all this hard work, now driven by God’s command for us to be holy and our desire to obey, it is important to capture the full counsel of God. Bearing the imago Dei does not just mean working like God; it also means resting like Him. Before there was a holy place, a holy person, or a holy offering, God made the Sabbath holy (Genesis 2:3). When we override God’s command to rest and think we are pleasing Him by working, even in the most morally exemplary way, beyond the boundaries of the time He commanded us to work, we have failed in our potential to manifest the imago.

Peters, Waterman, Blanchard, Johnson, and other management gurus can teach us a lot about how to improve our market performance, and if our only goals are measured in market accomplishments, then perhaps they are enough. Their own books, however, capture many stories of companies and whole industries that achieved excellence only to lose it as markets or the business environment shifted, and they failed to adapt. Somehow, we fell from the Pontiac GTO to the Ford Pinto. When we define the excellence to which we are called as working in the grace and Spirit of God, the market can move as it wills, but we will continue playing the long game. Relying on Colossians 3:23, we know that our work contributes to our continual sanctification and our eternal reward.

1. Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies. (Yale University Press, 2010).
2. Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. (Warner Books, 1982).
3. Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, The One Minute Manager. (Berkley Books, 1986).
4. Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management. (Harper & Brothers, 1911).
5. Jim C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. (HarperCollins, 2001).
6. Seth Godin. 2010. “What is Excellence?” tompeters! Blog.  What is Excellence? – Tom Peters.