Integrity in Christian Leadership

Integrity is more than we appear to others to be. It has to do with truth in the inner parts(Psa. 51:6), which no others but God and yourself know what is happening. Remember, in the Day of Judgment, God will call into account even the most successfully hidden secrets. He will expose to public scrutiny even what we have whispered in the secret of our friendships and in the inner rooms of our homes (Luke 12:3). Integrity is one of the greatest needs of the church today", says Hughes (123). Of course, he is right. Integrity is apparently something in which the church and its leadership do not engage in sufficiently. We are taken up with appearances, with numbers and with the kind of success that is tangible. We preach that this earth is nothing and that God is not impressed with appearances (I Sam. 16:7), but our actions often betray quite a different view of things. We have forgotten or ignored the high standards which the Gospel teaches and no longer understand aspirations such as those expressed by Tycho Brahe, a Scandinavian astronomer who said that he longed "to be, not to appear to be".