EXCELLENCE – Go Beyond Average

This week spoke to my interns at SURFCiTY College about excellence – they requested I post the notes on this bog, so here’s the first part.

Psalm 8:1

The name of a person in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, denotes their personality or character.

Psalm 8:1 tells us that God is an excellent God and everything He does is excellent. He doesn’t do anything wrong, He does it right the first time.

God didn’t make the earth an average place – He made it excellent! He made man excellent.

God went beyond average. And that’s what excellence is about; it’s about going beyond the average.

If, as Ephesians 5:1 tells us, we are to be imitator of Him, then we too should be people of excellence.  Excellence should be the lifestyle of His people.

The word “EXCELLENCE” is derived from the word “excel” which means to go beyond average.

Leaders of excellence are those people who refuse to settle for the status quo. They are the people who see average as a place they want to keep in their rear-view mirror. They are the people who continually look for ways to stretch themselves, to get better and to do better! They are the people who set their sights on goals others haven’t even thought of. They are the people who shoot so high, even if they miss; they still go higher than everyone else. This is what sets them apart.

Where 100% is average you need to go beyond that if you are going to be a person of excellence.

Seize the day and go beyond average. 99.9% is not good enough. Some time ago I heard of some things that would happen if we settled for 99.9%

  • 22, 000 cheques would be deducted from the wrong bank account in the next 60 minutes.
  • 12 babies would be given to the wrong parents each day.
  • 268, 500 defective tyres would be shipped this year.
  • 2, 488, 200 books would be shipped with the wrong covers.
  • 2 airliner landings each day would be unsafe.
  • 18,322 pieces of mail would be mishandled in the next hour.
  • 291 pacemaker operations would be performed incorrectly this year.

Excellence is what puts the extra in ordinary in an ordinary world.

So, how do we achieve the extraordinary in an ordinary world?

Find out next post.

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