blast from the Past - 10 years ago

(this article I wrote 10 years ago. Since then Tiger has become the best player. With every challenge he has risen higher. Will his surgery and recovery this year do the same again?

Is Tiger Woods the best player in Golf? The World Rankings say so. But ask any golfer, including Tiger, and they will say the best golfer right now is someone else.

Two years ago Tiger Woods became a full time player on the PGA Pro Golf Tour. In his first year he ran away from the field in the Masters Golf Tournament and won Player of the Year. He electrified golf spectators and terrified his competitors. Augusta National, site of the Masters Tournament, has even redesigned some holes so they will be harder for Tiger.

Some said at the time that "Competition raises every sport to a higher level. The uneasiness we feel from being bumped (or shoved) out of our comfort zone is understandable." Commentators speculated that golf was going to get even more boring as one man would dominate the tournaments.

One group of golfers decided the talented young man was not going to dominate them. It included Wood's friend and neighbor Mark O'Meara. Some said O'Meara was too old to be competitive any more. Playing in the neighborhood course with his new buddy Woods, he took his game up several notches and won the Masters and the British Open last year.

Another young man decided to lose some weight and refine his game. He has become the most dominant golfer on Tour. David Duval has won 9 out of the last 28 tournaments he has entered. Two weeks ago he shot a record tying 59 to win the Bob Hope Golf Classic. That score has only been equaled three times in pro golf history. Duval had already won the Mercedes Championship two weeks before that. In between the two tournaments, he took a ski vacation.

Even Tiger Woods said of this accomplishment: "What you want to do out here is to prove you're better than any other player," Woods said. "David has been doing that."

Woods initiallly raised the bar and now Duval is raising it higher. Tiger set a new standard and expectation of excellence two years ago. The true competitors are going beyond.

I stroll down this path not just because I am a Duval fan, (hey, we went to the same school), but to illustrate how expectations of excellence motivate Champions to improve themselves.

I had confirmed again this week that when I find one large, healthy congregation in a community or county, I will also find at least two others. They may not all be the same size but they are all of significant scale and scope to be viewed as the leading churches of the area. I have also noticed that at least one of the congregations is relatively new. The clusters rarely share the same denominational label.

When you explore the history of these clusters, I find one of the churches began the growth path first. The others saw it could be done and followed.

In conversation this week with a pastor he told me of a mid sized city with 6 very large congregations within several miles of each other. Only two shared the same denominational affiliation. All had emerged in the last 10 years. Even more amazingly, it is not one of the fast growth cities of Florida.. The population is relatively stable in that city.

A recent Harvard Business Review article by Michael Porter, one of the leading authors on strategy, describes cluster effects. (See HBR – November/December 1998)

Porter describes the various industrial and service clusters in the US and Europe
The Silicon Valley would be one example for high technology while Dalton, Georgia would be the one for carpets would be one for carpets. In these company clusters groups of similar companies emerge to spur one another on to greater innovation and efficiencies. Suppliers and services to these clusters emerge. Peer pressure and civic pride spur the leaders of these organizations to excel. The companies find themselves constantly comparing their performance to their counterparts.

I don't want to equate churches to the same characteristics of the companies but churches on the growth edge do tend to compare themselves to other churches on the growth edge, not to another smaller church within their denominational tradition. An advance or innovation by one church in a community cluster will lead to adoption or reinvention in one of the other congregations. The expectation of excellence has increased in that community. I also usually find a lay organization or para church organization within those communities which acts as an informal network of shared ideas among the lay leaders within that community. In this way, innovations can be explored and normed before adoption within those congregations.

Leadership Network has built its ministry through the years through gathering the innovative, creative leaders who want to encourage one another to do great things for God. This is the story of all of our various networks. We want to help raise the expectations of excellence.

Our founder, Bob Buford says that the day Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile, every high school miler in the country lowered their time by 10 seconds. (How should I know it was 1954 and I wasn't around.)

Fifteen days later, Bannister's record was broken by 1.4 seconds. Within a year, 12 others had broken the four minute mile.

A challenge had been issued by Bannister, the expectation of excellence had gone up.
From the elite runners to the average high school athlete, the standards had been raised.

 How are you raising the expectation of excellence in the churches you serve? God does not call every church to be large but I do think God wants our best. Are the churches that you serve being encouraged on to excellence?

 

(this article originally appeared in a 1999 edition of Church Champions Update)