The pursuit of perfection leads us down some very odd paths indeed. Those multisite churches that insist on piping in the preacher on screens do so on the grounds that we want the very best preacher in the pulpit. But that perfectionist tendency means fewer people are ever given opportunities to train because we can’t bear the thought of a dip in the preaching.

The subtle danger of perfectionism is that it hides behind a position that is ostensibly good. Surely, it insists, we want things to be as good as they can possibly be. On one level, that is right. Nobody wants things in church to be purposefully terrible. Naturally, we do want things to be as good as they can be. The problem is that perfectionism mistakes something being as good as it can objectively be with how good it could possibly be under the circumstances in the real world.

The preaching being as objectively good as possible – that is, compared with all other preachers in the world, this being the best – is not the same as expecting the preaching to be as good as it can be given the people we have and the circumstances we are in.

Read More