The number of global Christian leaders, who recently have had to confess and repent of moral failing or step aside from leadership duties due to some moral indiscretion, has been staggering. At the heart of the problem is the leaders’ inability to exercise integrity as a critical lifestyle in Christian living. Leadership of any sort can be a challenging endeavour and Christian leadership sets some of the highest standards of morality for those in positions of power and influence. Some of the Christian leaders who have unfortunately been found culpable of moral failings have been bold to publicly own up to them. Others have even written about their experiences as a challenge to others who may be struggling with besetting sins of the flesh.
This article reflects on integrity as a virtue of Christian leadership.1 In this context, leadership refers to being in a position of influence. Those who bear the name of Jesus Christ and confess him as Lord are leaders called to bear the marks of integrity and to exercise it in both the private and public spheres of life and service. The call to integrity is a call to offer generationally relevant qualitative leadership. Integrity is always a critical ingredient for journeying in leadership and ministry. The values of the world are distorted due to the lack of integrity. In all spheres of life, people have become more concerned about success, money, power, fame, and winning at whatever cost, at the expense of integrity.
Stories of Leadership Failure
In the mid 1990s, Pastor Jim Bakker wrote I Was Wrong, in which, as the subtitle indicates, he reflects on The Untold Story of the Shocking Journey from PTL Power to Prison and Beyond.2 In the 1980s, Jim Bakker and his then wife, Tammy Faye, led one of the largest televangelism ministries in the world. In 1989, he was incarcerated for fraudulently misapplying donations from ministry partners in one of the most high-profile cases of that nature in the twentieth century. The details of the story, for our purposes, are not as important as the reason Jim Bakker himself gives for writing the book:
For most of my life I believed that my understanding of God and how He wants us to live was not only correct but worth exporting to the world. One reason I have risked putting my heart into print is to tell you that my previous philosophy of life, out of which my attitudes and actions flowed, was fundamentally flawed.3
At the heart of this ‘confession’ is one Christian leader’s inability to uphold the integrity of God’s Word in wealth and prosperity. Indeed, the wrongful interpretation of Scripture to support lifestyles of greed, covetousness, flamboyance, and materialism was exported to other parts of the world facilitated by modern media technology. In writing the book, Bakker draws attention to the importance of integrity in biblical hermeneutics:
When I really studied the Bible while in prison, it became clear to me that not one man or woman . . . led a life without pain. God does promise that He will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter what trial or pain we must go through . . . whether it be loss of reputation, loss of position or power, financial calamity, addiction, separation, divorce, or imprisonment.4
Subsequently, Jim Bakker followed up his words with another book, Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse in which he corrects some of his flawed ideas on prosperity as a Christian lifestyle. When the Jim Bakker story was unfolding, one Christian leader who publicly criticized and chastised him severely and mercilessly, was his prosperity-preaching compatriot, Jimmy Swaggart. Unfortunately, it was not long after Bakker’s experience, that Swaggart himself appeared on television in tears, having been caught patronizing the services of prostitutes rather than, as a Christian leader would be expected to do, minister to them the Word of God.
At the heart of these stories and many others that have unfolded over the years, is the word, integrity. God calls for it in the Old Testament (eg in Ezekiel 34), Jesus teaches it in the Sermon on the Mount, and Paul admonishes the Philippian Christians on it when he wrote to them:
Finally beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Phil 4:8).
Paul adds in verse 9, ‘Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me,’ meaning, ‘my life and ministry display the marks and standards of integrity and so do not just listen to what I preach but imitate my lifestyle.’ Elsewhere, Paul makes it clear that the ultimate standard of integrity is not Paul himself but rather Jesus, for he writes in 1 Corinthians 11:1, ‘Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.’
Defining Integrity
A simple definition of integrity is when our private thoughts, decisions, actions, and claims, not only reflect our outward talk and behavior, but also bring about the public good
In the Christian life, integrity always manifests in loyalty to Jesus Christ. The gospel, as the Word became flesh, carries within it its own integrity, and Christian ministers and disciples are called to embody and defend that integrity. A simple definition of integrity is when our private thoughts, decisions, actions, and claims, not only reflect our outward talk and behavior, but also bring about the public good.5 The Latin origin of the word ‘integrity’ relates to something that is ‘intact’ or ‘integrated’—something that is ‘whole’, from which we get the word, ‘holistic’. The concept of integrity can be inferred from structures that have been formed well or human behavior that is uncorrupted. If for example, we take the issue of doctrinal integrity, the historic creeds of the church are crafted to ensure that heretical teaching does not hold sway in the church.
Integrity is a form of moral capital that one builds up over years of work and when people know they can trust your word, you will go very far. There are specific areas in the life and ministry of Christian leaders where integrity is especially crucial. They include personal/moral integrity, pastoral/relational integrity, and theological/doctrinal integrity. A biblical passage that summarizes these three forms of integrity is when Paul tells Timothy,
Pay close attention to yourself [personal integrity] and to your teaching [doctrinal integrity]; continue in these things [pastoral/leadership integrity, 4:6-10], for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers (I Tim 4:16).
The world of construction is accustomed to unfortunate developments of buildings collapsing and sometimes, causing human fatalities. Such buildings are said to lack ‘structural integrity’, which means those who were expected to ensure that pillars and columns are erected with the right materials and accurate specifications, may not have done their work with integrity. When physical structures lack structural integrity, they cannot stand the test of time. But there is integrity when the whole structure is working well, undivided, integrated, and intact. In the same way, an organization with ‘institutional integrity’ has all its various arms, departments, and ministries working well, and observing the basic demands of Scripture and doctrinal fidelity.
People respect you for who you are before they can respect you for what you do. The reason is that integrity or the lack of it, is what defines character. Jesus says in Matthew 15:11, ‘It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ This passage must not be understood to mean that ‘what goes into the mouth’ does not matter. What goes in the mouth matters, because what comes out of the mouth depends on what has gone into it. In other words, any disconnection between being(who you are) and behavior(what you do) leads to the loss of dignity.
any disconnection between being(who you are) and behavior(what you do) leads to the loss of dignity
Integrity is expected in situations that demand accountability and trust, and it involves our relationships with other people. Its closest associated characteristics include honesty, truthfulness, candor, and transparency. If we take ‘candor’ for example, it refers to the state of or quality of being frank, open, and sincere in speech or expression. Integrity flows out of character and it shows in commitment to worthy causes. The ultimate example of altruistic integrity is Jesus himself, who although God, ‘did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,’ in the cause of human redemption.
Christian Integrity as Redemptive
The integrity of Jesus Christ is affirmed by the Nicene Creed, when it refers to him as,
. . . the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made . . . .
In the light of the example of Jesus, we find that Christian integrity is redemptive in its purposes. In exercising integrity, we embody the words of Jesus that ‘you will know the truth and the truth will make you free’ (John 8:32). The lack of integrity creates a dysfunctional persona and guilty conscience in which words and actions do not cohere and so we are conflicted. When people act with integrity, the world may hate them, even persecute them, but they live with the peace of the Lord in their hearts and lives, and in the end, they vindicate the name of the Lord in their lives. The shepherds of Israel were castigated by God for lacking pastoral integrity because they exploited the sheep for their selfish ends:
You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them (Ezek 34:3-4).
If people are without integrity, they also lack the courage for the pursuit of truth. They are pretenders who are loyal to destructive causes, depravity, and falsehood. By contrast, Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith, ‘for the sake of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, disregarding the shame’ (Heb 12:2) of it.
Conclusion
One acts with integrity when he or she acts with honesty and transparency, and in an altruistic spirit, acting in the interest of the larger good. That is what Paul meant when he said, ‘Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves’ (Phil 2:3). His exemplar in this call was the Jesus who emptied himself of all but love and becoming a human being, died on the cross for human redemption that we might live to the praise of God’s glory. Let all Christian leaders also follow in his footsteps in every church and sector.
Endnotes
- Editor’s Note: See article entitled, ‘Abusive Leadership: Preventing abuse and misuse of power in Christian ministry’ by Merethe Dahl Turner in Lausanne Global Analysis, July 2024, https://lausanne.org/global-analysis/abusive-leadership.
- Jim Bakker with Ken Abraham, I Was Wrong: The Untold Story of the Journey from PTL Power to Prison and Beyond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers1996).
- Bakker, I Was Wrong, 13.
- Bakker, I Was Wrong, 13.
- Refer also to Henry Cloud, Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality (New York: Harper, 2006); and Gary L. McIntosh and Samuel D. Rima, Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).