Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry

Christians are of two minds about excellence. We commend excellent teaching, seek out excellent health care, and celebrate excellence in the arts. When a Christian life or congregation is called excellent, however, we suspect that ambition or success may be getting the best of us. Resurrecting Excellence aims to rekindle and encourage among Christian leaders an unselfish ambition for the gospel that shuns both competition and mediocrity and rightly focuses on the beauty, power, and excellence of living as faithful disciples of the crucified and risen Christ. Drawing on ancient traditions and on contemporary voices, the authors - a divinity school dean and a parish pastor - offer both a theology of excellence and compelling portraits of pastors, lay leaders, and congregations that embody a more excellent way. Excellence in Christian ministry requires the capacity for measuring life by the complexities of judgment and grace as well as budgets and buildings. Resurrecting Excellence commends this beautiful and challenging task to all with a heart and mind for the excellence of God.