Christians are of two minds about excellence. We commend excellent teaching, seek out excellent health care, and celebrate excellence in the arts. When a Christian life or congregation is described as excellent, however, we suspect that ambition or success may be getting the better of us.

Resurrecting Excellence aims to rekindle and encourage among Christian leaders an unselfish ambition for the gospel that shuns both competition and mediocrity and rightly focuses on the beauty, power, and excellence of living as faithful disciples of the crucified and risen Christ. Drawing on ancient traditions and on contemporary voices, L. Gregory Jones and Kevin R. Armstrong offer both a theology of excellence and compelling portraits of pastors, lay leaders, and congregations that embody "a more excellent way."