Excellence: [rant time] I'm not sure at what point we (the church) thought it'd be ok to be mediocre. Ok I can understand the point that the church said, let's forget outreach, it's scary anyway, then we have to deal with people that might not act like us and well, it's just too much work to do outreach.

I can understand when the church stopped deciding to do discipleship also. Discipleship is hard, the leaders can often feel let down, abandoned and that their work is fruitless. People are fickle, they are hard to predict and hard to reach. Discipleship is hard, I can understand why the church quit doing that.

So there we are the church has cut two major things it was told to be doing. So we must have a lot of time to do the other things with excellence right. With all that extra time and people we should have excellent children's programs or excellent nursery? Wrong. So we're just mediocre all around.

We don't offer good child care, we don't offer engaging worship. We basically just do everything...POORLY. This has to stop. You might not be the most cutting edge person at the most cutting edge church but doing things with excellence is not an option.

Youth Pastors: I am a youth pastor at a smaller church (100 attendees), I understand the woes of a smaller church. Not quite big enough to pull off the big stuff, not small enough to go unnoticed, so there we are stuck in the middle. I have friends that also work at churches like mine. I have a fact I want to share. FACT: Those churches don't NEED a full time youth pastor. Yeah I know I'm crazy but it's true. Those churches would be better to invest in a family pastor one that oversees children, youth and family ministries. I think churches are fooled into thinking they need one because they have so many youth. A good pastor can always create enough work for him/herself to keep busy through out the week. But fact of the matter is that a church of 100 people does not require two staff persons, especially one dedicated to youth work 50-60 hours. I actually propose this kind of individualized attention is harmful to the maturation of that spiritual generation.

Making this discovery is about doing things with excellence. The church isn't concerned with that!