Here are two different types of people on a team (athletic, organization, ministry, etc.):
- One person considers the sacrifices willing to be made for the sake of the team or for the sake of excellence.
- Another person doesn’t view the same actions as sacrifices at all because of an overwhelming passion for the work.
The first person may be a person of integrity and work ethic filled with love for the team. And who just does not love the work. There may be (hopefully) other work the person loves or will love but just not this work. The second person loves the work or the mission so much that what others view as a sacrifice, they actually enjoy. In other words, the second person may not really believe what is sometimes passed off as common knowledge—“that every job or role has sacrifices.”
I am not suggesting these are the only two types of people. Of course, some don’t love the work and aren’t willing to make sacrifices. But, there is a difference between being willing to make sacrifices for the mission or the work and not viewing the mission or the work as a sacrifice.
In a famous scholarly article “The Mundanity of Excellence,” Dan Chambliss shared about the excellence of the swim club in Mission Viejo leading up to the 1984 Olympics. Coaches from all over the country came to watch the swimmers practice and the techniques of the coaches—only to be bored by how mundane their routines were. They were excellent not because of how much they worked but because of how much they loved the work. He wrote:
“What others see as boring, swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours, they find peaceful, meditative, therapeutic. Coming into the 5:30 AM practices, many of the swimmers are lively, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves, perhaps appreciating the fact that most people would positively hate doing it. It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals. Often, they don’t see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it.”
In a recent podcast, Chambliss told the story about the athletes swimming the lake in Mission Viejo for fun—eight times. After the swim, “They were bouncing up and down and laughing and just joking and just having the best time talking about what they had just done. They enjoy working hard.”
Chambliss’ observations and insights are about more than attitude and perspective; the swimmers also practiced differently and consistently over time—focusing on constant improvement in seemingly small and detailed areas of their craft. But attitude and perspective are key and serve as the foundation for someone who enjoys improving in the mundane.
We don’t get excellent at our work unless we love the work. Enjoying the work is better than making sacrifices in order to be excellent because we don’t think we are making sacrifices.
While we must not love our work more than God or neglect our marriages or families, we are free to love our work as Christ-followers. We should. He has given us work as a gift and we are to “work willingly at whatever we do, as though we are working for the Lord rather than for people” (Colossians 3:23). And the foundation of excelling in our work is to love the work God has given us to do.
