Quality Matters

Not long after I got married, life was pretty simple. We were just going through the motions of being newlyweds, working, paying bills, and in my case spending probably more nights in the woods than any newly married man with good sense ought to.

A couple of my buddies had some really good coon dogs, and our dogs hunted well together. We were seeing plenty of coons, having a big time, and somewhere along the way we had what we believed was a million-dollar idea.

Now, most million-dollar ideas that begin with several young men standing around a pickup truck late at night don't actually produce a million dollars.

Ours didn't either.

This was during the DVD era. There weren't many good-quality hunting videos featuring hounds, and this was before everybody carried a high-definition camera in their pocket. If you wanted video, you needed an actual video camera, tapes, batteries, lights, and apparently a man willing to carry enough equipment through the mountains to qualify as a pack mule.

We happened to have a buddy who was a minister and did professional video work on the side. He was excellent at it, so we convinced him to go hunting with us and film enough footage to make our own coon-hunting DVD.

And we weren't going to make some cheap, homemade-looking thing either.

We wanted quality.

The first night he showed up with a camera, a little headlamp, and a few batteries.

That was cute.

As the season went along and we kept saying, "You know what would make this look better?" his equipment pile grew.

Soon the poor man was climbing the hills of Buchanan County carrying a camera, extra batteries, a backpack, and a Maxa Million light that weighed twenty pounds bright enough that if you pointed it toward the sky, I'm pretty sure Tri-Cities Airport started redirecting incoming flights.

Those hills are hard enough to climb carrying yourself.

But we were committed.

Besides, we had decided that if we made any money off the DVDs, we would donate it to the church building fund. So technically, every time we sent our cameraman crawling up another mountain loaded like a military pack animal, we could tell ourselves we were doing ministry.

As we started watching the footage, we kept making suggestions.

"Get a little closer."

"The shot would look better if you were closer."

"Can you get underneath the tree?"

Our buddy listened.

At first, when a coon came out of a tree, he filmed from a safe distance.

But apparently "safe distance" didn't meet our growing standards of cinematography.

So he kept getting closer.

And closer.

Until one night a coon came out of a tree and nearly landed on him. It grazed the camera on the way down.

There was a brief moment of silence.

Then I believe we collectively decided, "Maybe that's close enough."

But the footage looked great.

Eventually, our buddy edited together about ten minutes of finished video. This was during the early days of online video, so he uploaded the sample to YouTube where we could all watch it.

Man, we were proud.

It looked professional. Good editing. Good camera work. Good dogs. Good hunting.

Quality.

So naturally, we shared it with a few people.

A couple days later my buddy called.

"We need to get that video down."

Apparently our little Buchanan County coon-hunting production had experienced an early version of going viral.

Unfortunately, it had gone viral with people who hated everything about it.

Before long we were being called cruel, ignorant, uneducated hillbillies and several other things that probably shouldn't be printed in a Christian publication.

I was offended.

Not about the hillbilly part. That was fairly accurate.

But I knew we weren't cruel.

Things escalated into threats and all kinds of foolishness, so we took the video down. We decided that selling a hunting DVD to raise money for the church building fund probably wasn't a great idea if our first ten minutes were already creating an international incident.

So after months of work, miles of walking, countless hours of editing, and nearly killing our cameraman with a falling raccoon, the great hunting-video empire quietly closed its doors.

But I still have some excellent DVDs.

So if anybody still owns a DVD player, apparently I'm your man.

Looking back, though, there's something about that adventure that has stuck with me.

We cared about the quality of what we were producing.

We could have thrown something together, but we didn't want to. We kept looking at the footage and asking, "How can we make this better?"

There is actually a biblical principle underneath that.

Paul writes:

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."Colossians 3:23 (ESV)

Notice those words: whatever you do.

For a Christian, there shouldn't be a great divide between "church stuff" and "regular life." We represent Christ in both.

If I'm working at the mines, driving a truck, teaching a class, running a business, cleaning a bathroom, preaching a sermon, coaching a ball team, or serving somebody who can never repay me, my work says something about the God I claim to serve.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31: "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

Even the ordinary things can become acts of worship when they're done for His glory.

That means my work ethic is part of my witness.

If I claim Christ but I'm known as the employee who is always late, cuts corners, complains about everything, gossips about everybody, cheats the company, or does just enough to keep from getting fired, what kind of testimony does that give?

Titus 2:7 says: "Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works."

Our faith ought to show up in the quality of our lives.

That doesn't mean Christians must be perfect. It doesn't mean every project has to be flawless. It means that because we belong to Christ, we should desire to give Him our best.

Sometimes we get caught up wanting recognition from people. We work harder when the boss is watching. We serve better when somebody notices. We put more effort into things when our name is attached to them.

But Colossians changes the audience.

I'm ultimately working for the Lord.

And if Jesus is the One I'm serving, then "good enough" starts looking a little different.

So whatever God has placed in front of you today, do it well.

Be the employee people can depend on.

Be the Christian who keeps your word.

Show up when you say you'll show up.

Work when nobody is watching.

Serve faithfully when nobody applauds.

Don't cut corners just because you can get away with it.

Because quality matters.

Not because everything we do has to impress people, but because everything we do has the opportunity to honor Christ.

So whether you're building houses, mining coal, teaching children, serving your church, raising a family, or filming coon dogs while dodging airborne raccoons...

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord."

And one final word of wisdom from personal experience:

Doing your best for Jesus is biblical.

Standing directly underneath an angry raccoon for better camera footage is optional.