matthew on Excellence

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

In life, whenever someone achieves success, criticism usually follows—regardless of their skill or the effort they’ve invested. An old story illustrates this truth. A woman crafted artificial fruit so...

The early Christian church conquered because the Christians of those days out-thought, out-lived, and out-died the pagans.

One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life w...

Success offers a hoped-for future goal. Excellence provides a striven-for present standard. Success bases our worth on a comparison with others. Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against ...

While from the outside there might not be immediately noticeable differences between a well-run company reflecting a gospel worldview and one reflecting primarily the world-story of the marketplace, i...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith provides an important analogy about the importance of spiritually preparing ourselves for the adversity and challenges that come with su...

In Jeremiah it is clear that the excellence comes from a life of faith, from being more interested in God than in self, and has almost nothing to do with comfort or esteem or achievement. Here is a pe...

The politician Helen Violet Asquith (later Bonham Carter) was once attending a dinner with Winston Churchill, who initially seemed lost in abstraction for an awkwardly long period of time. Abruptly he...