Excellence vs. Perfection

Carl Barnhill

It’s okay for the execution of your worship service to be excellent. You don’t have to settle for “well, that’s the best we can do with volunteers…”

There are times when we have excuses for our services not being excellent:
“If I just had more time to…”
“If we had all staff members running our positions…”
“If our Senior Pastor would plan further out…”

Although these statements have some validity at times, with the things you can control, you must strive for excellence.


Perhaps I should define “excellence.” As I am writing this post, I actually looked up the definition of the word: “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good”.

I really wanted to say that I didn’t mean “perfection” or “flawless,” but the more I thought about it, that’s exactly what I meant.

I had to ask myself:

Do you desire for the ProPresenter volunteer to lead lyrics every time and stay right with the Worship Leader with no errors?

Do you desire for camera shots to be well framed, in focus, and with just the right amount of movement for the tempo of the song?

Do you desire for transitions to go seamlessly, for our crew to hit every light cue, for audio to be mixed beautifully for all to hear?


Honestly, the answer was yes. Yes! I want our team to nail it! To be flawless in execution! To be a training ground for other churches to come and ask “how do you guys do that?”, to show the world that we can execute alongside any concert, any production, any crew around!

Is perfection obtainable? No, but we can certainly strive for it. I’m thinking there’s a spiritual truth to this somewhere… in Matthew 5:48 after Jesus’s Beatitudes message, he challenged us to be perfect.

Does this mean we are going to beat a volunteer over the head and cuss them out if they miss a lyric on ProPresenter? Of course not. We lovingly coach the volunteer. Know that there are going to be mistakes, and things are going to happen.

There has to be a balance between being Unapologetically Excellent and knowing what the Win is (Read my Blog Post entitled “The Win” here).

If you care about your team and they love and trust you, it’s okay, and should be expected, for you to lead them to the next level.


How do you feel about excellence as it relates to your team?
Does excellence mean perfection?

About Carl Barnhill

Owner, Church Visuals

Carl Barnhill is a creative entrepreneur, motion designer and author. He is the Owner Church Visuals, a company that helps Ministry Leaders visually communicate the Gospel. He is the host of the Your Visuals Matter Podcast. You can find him in Columbia, South Carolina with his wife, Katie and two sons, Jacob and Wesley.

More Articles by Carl