Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Church
You may have heard it said, ‘If it can’t be done with excellence, don’t do it.’ Well, Jesus never said that! The truth is, almost everything we do is done poorly when we first start doing it—that’s how we learn. At Saddleback Church, we practice the ‘good enough’ principle: It doesn’t have to be perfect for God to use and bless it. We would rather involve thousands of regular folks in ministry than have a perfect church run by a few elites.
This is good counsel. Sometimes, in the quest to make sure we do something perfectly, we end up never getting to it all. We say to ourselves that we’ll do it “someday” because we don’t think we’ll be able to do it well right now. So we plan to wait until conditions are better, or until we have everything lined up and perfect. And then we never get to it.
Or, we might think we’ll never be able to do a certain thing well, and so we never even plan on trying — even though there is a clear need and we could do something. We say “I’m not able to do it up to the standard at which it should be done, so I won’t do it at all.”
It’s far better to realize that “less-than-perfect service is always better than the best intention.” If there is something you feel like you ought to do, get started now, with what you have. And, ironically, you’ll probably find that in the doing of it you will get better than if you had waited.
I’m not saying that there is not a time to prepare. There is — and sometimes preparation can be a long process. But if the reason you are holding off is because you have an unrealistic view of perfection, when you do have the ability to get moving now, then you should get moving even if it won’t be perfect!