Integrity Matters

Over on the Church Marketing Sucks blog, author Anne Jackson responds to a question about how churches can ensure they have effective marketing and communications without burning staff out. In her response, Anne writes about the importance of integrity in church communications. She tells the story of a time she refused to design a mailer for a church because they insisted on projecting an image of their church that wasn’t true. She lost the job as a result, but she kept her integrity.

This topic resonates with me because of Christians who have recently accused me of slapping photos of children on promotional materials to raise funds for missions the easy way. Our missions department does have a humanitarian ministry that meets the physical needs of many children, but we are careful to not convey a message that isn’t true. If an offering isn’t going to meet physical needs, we don’t use images or language that would convey a lie. To do so, as she writes, would be a sacrifice of integrity incongruent with a holy life.

In addition to the overwhelming spiritual reasons to not mislead people about your ministry, such a strategy is also likely to backfire. Misleading your audience will confuse them. They may not recognize that the materials are for your ministry, or they may begin to associate your ministry with something else. Moreover, as your audience begins to discover that you have misled them, you will lose their trust. Once you have lost trust, good luck raising funds or recruiting volunteers.

Yes, a dishonest approach to fund raising may temporarily meet your needs. But it’s not worth the long term consequences – to your ministry’s credibility or your personal integrity. I find it interesting, too, that Anne suggests that dishonesty in church communications is one way to lead to staff burnout. If you don’t want to burn out, don’t lie.

Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

While the discussion on worship in our young adults group Wednesday night frustrated me because of its focus on particular expressions of worship through music, I had a great conversation with a friend afterwards about true worship. True worship is denying your self, submitting your will to God’s, and serving others. A deep reverence and fear of God that transforms how you live are critical to worship, not raising your hands while singing.

That conversation, and the Biblical study I’ve done since then, has made me reflect on the lack of daily emphasis I place on holiness, worship, and devotion. I’m a member of a conservative church and work for holiness fellowship, so right-living before God has always been a focus in what I’ve been taught and what I’ve lived. But I am not restrained enough in my daily actions in light of the holiness He requires.

I started reading A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law tonight after looking for some old-school material on the topic to read. This excerpt from the first chapter is helping in showing me how the devotion God deserves has to be evident in my daily, common life:

If contempt of the world and heavenly affection is a necessary temper of Christians, it is necessary that this temper appear in the whole course of their lives, in their manner of using the world, because it can have no place anywhere else. If self-denial be a condition of salvation, all that would be saved must make it a part of their ordinary life. If humility be a Christian duty, then the common life of a Christian is to be a constant course of humility in all its kinds. If poverty of spirit be necessary, it must be the spirit and temper of every day of our lives. If we are to relieve the naked, the sick, and the prisoner, it must be the common charity of our lives, as far as we can render ourselves able to perform it. If we are to love our enemies, we must make our common life a visible exercise and demonstration of that love. If content and thankfulness, if the patient bearing of evil be duties to God, they are the duties of every day, and in every circumstance of our life. If we are to be wise and holy as the new-born sons of God, we can no otherwise be so, but by renouncing everything that is foolish and vain in every part of our common life. If we are to be in Christ new creatures, we must show that we are so, by having new ways of living in the world. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending every day.

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If our common life is not a common course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.

Let that be the way I spend every day, Lord.