June 21, 2011 | The book “Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry”  grew out of a conversation that began in 2001 among a diverse group of people gathered to consider what the vocation of ordained Christian ministry looked like at  the beginning of the 21st century.

Armstrong

Jones

The gathering was part of Pulpit & Pew, an interdenominational research project funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. to assess the state of the pastorate in the United States.

The title of the book refers to their belief that “excellence” is “an important and life-giving notion, so long as the primary referent is God” and it is patterned on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A decade after the conversation began, and five years after the publication of the book, authors L. Gregory Jones and the Rev. Kevin R. Armstrong discuss how the landscape and language of ministry has changed -- and stayed the same -- in the intervening years.

Jones is senior strategist for Leadership Education at Duke Divinity and a professor of theology in Duke Divinity School, where he served a13-year tenure as dean. He is an ordained United Methodist pastor and the author or editor of 14 books and has published more than 100 articles in a variety of publications.

Armstrong is senior pastor of North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. He is a graduate of DePauw and Duke universities.

Jones and Armstrong spoke to Faith & Leadership about how the idea of “excellence” can be applied to ministry. The following is an edited transcript.

Q: What do you see different in the landscape since you wrote and published this book in terms of this notion of excellence?

KA:  Well it’s certainly become a measure of pastoral congregational vitality in the way that’s different than before the book; the introduction of excellence as a helpful way to consider, biblically and theologically, our life together.

Excellence, I think, had been pushed to the side of the conversation because it had been attributed only to marketing or to business or to a sense of ego rather than recovering a more robust biblical and theological mission.

GJ:  I think also, as Kevin suggested, the claiming of biblical and theological understanding has helped people move away from just assuming that excellence has to be understood competitively; to see it as an aspiration that actually helps all people flourish.

We had to wrestle with the ways in which excellence is understood in some contexts and whether we were just importing it from an alien context. As we wrestled with Philippians and have helped to engage others in conversation, I think it’s now understood much more in a rich biblical and theological way.

Q:  Do you get a sense there’s a change in the acceptance of the idea and the language?

GJ:  There are still some people who argue with it. It’s a lot less than there was 10 or 12 years ago. Still, it’s not a term that’s been part of the last 100 years of accepted discourse, so there are still going to be people for whom it raises an eyebrow.

Q:  Where have you seen a difference as this conversation has advanced and what does it look like?

GJ:  For a number of clergy and congregations there’s a more aspirational and hopeful tone. One of the things that did happen for a period of time was people got into a kind of “ain’t it awful” mode of complaining about church and ministry, that things had changed.

The notion of a theological sense of excellence and the way Paul describes it, particularly in Philippians, gives a sense of a communal way of life that’s really rich and hope-filled that I see congregations living out in new ways.

KA:  I hear people recovering a sense of attentiveness to the arts and to beauty. I don’t attribute that to anyone reading the book, but the landscape itself has changed.

I think this has a lot to do with young adults bringing with them a passion for the arts and a search for beauty in relationships and in the treasures of our tradition and our literature.

Q:  Do you see evidence that there’s a new narrative related to ministry?

KA:  I think the term “excellence” becomes inserted into conversations because of the literature and conferences that are available to pastors now. I think there is still a long way to go in discovering what excellence means for the community of faith in this culture and in this work. But I think the introduction of the notion is an important starting point.

GJ:  It’s going to take longer to actually live into that in a rich and fulsome way, but I think the very language begins to shape imagination. That’s what has really become significant: People see a hope-filled imagination as something that’s possible and important in a time when it’s easier to get preoccupied with the problems or bureaucracies or the things that are stuck.

Q:  You talk in the book about these images; the learned minister, the wounded healer and the CEO.  Have new images of ministry emerged?