I love how words and meanings change over time. In modern common usage today, most agree that something great is better than something good. We even have a business book titled Good to Great that examines how companies moved from mere success to world class status. There is a difference when someone says that they feel great from when they simply feel good. But this connection and distinction is relatively new. For centuries in many global cultures being good was vastly superior to being great. The reason? Goodness measures value, greatness measures size. Goodness is all about integrity, identity, and ethics while greatness is all about mass, weight, and scope. For followers of Jesus, being good is much more important than being great.

But what about being good enough? What does one mean when one says, “well, that’s good enough!”? It depends on how one defines enough. Etymologically, you can go two ways. From the Germanic and Nordic, it derives from the idea of “sufficiency, or the least amount through which to get by.” From the Latin and Greek it means “out of, or from, nothing,” essentially saying, “well, at least it is something!” Either way, the modifier enough essentially lets one off the hook by basically phoning it in. And this is the rub: we live in a culture where good enough has displaced good.

As a pastor, I was always flummoxed (please use flummoxed in a sentence…) by people, mostly adults rather than children or teenagers, who would seriously ask me, “How much do I need to pray?” or “How much should I be reading in the Bible?” or “How often should I attend worship?” or “How many hours of volunteer work should I put in?” The motive behind the questions were “how much is good enough?” My concern was and is, what does it say about the Christian faith when many followers are looking for the bare minimum they can give and still be considered “Christian”? This, in my mind, is antithetical ((please use antithetical in a sentence…) to Christian discipleship. True lovers of God, following Jesus Christ, open to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit should seek to give the most, their very best, a great amount, to God. We should not be seeking the lowest common denominator for Christian conduct.

I often make the point that when Christians are encouraged to pray there are two basic responses that say a lot about our understanding of a relationship with God: 1) “oh, no, we have to pray,” or 2) “oh, yay, we get to pray!” Too many people adopt the “e-nought; the out of zero,” mentality when it comes to their faith. Loving God and following the teachings of Jesus is all well and good, but let’s not get carried away.” I remember when Barna Group defined “regular church attendance” as “once or more every six weeks” and thought we could not lower the bar much more than that. This statistic wasn’t even about involvement in the life of the community of faith, but simple worship attendance.

When a person joins a congregation of The United Methodist Church, they are asked to make five commitments, to serve and support the community of faith by their “prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.” But what are we really asking them to do? What is “good enough” to fulfill these promises? Pray once a week, before meals, when I am in church, when I want something? Presence at worship a few times a year, serving on a team, joining a class or small group? Gifts – oh, the church wants my money! I can toss a Lincoln in the plate when I attend. But what about our non-monetary gifts? Service on a committee, a project, teaching a class, working at a dinner? Witness to whom about what? Am I really supposed to talk about my faith with others? I have a fish sticker on my car. Is that “good enough?”

Am I laying on a guilt trip? Yes, but mainly to myself. In retirement I am finding it harder and harder to overcome inertia. I am actually praying and studying scripture and reading devotionally more, but I am slacking on my “presence, gifts, service, and witness.” There is much more I could be doing to work on the good, but too often it feels like I am driven by the good enough. Our world, our church, our faith cannot survive let alone thrive on good enough. We need to let the nought drop and get back to focusing on, embracing, and doing the good. And the best way we can do this is together.

Church isn’t the building we go to; the building we go to assists us in being the church. Our commitments to prayer, presence, gifts, service, and witness do not bind us to a single entity (any one congregation of The United Methodist Church), but to the community of faith that represents our connection and place in the Body of Christ. The purest form of faith is the good we offer 24/7/365. We don’t need a great faith – faith the size of a mustard seed should suffice. God gives us more than enough. God is good. God is goodness. God is all we need to become the good God needs us to be. We should be seeking to give God and neighbor the very best good we’ve got, then maybe we will actually see God’s kingdom/kin*dom come, on earth as in heaven.