Written in Heaven

Integrity is a word that we often throw around, especially in the church world, but don’t really dialogue much about until someone’s integrity fails. I was at a leadership conference in August and one of the leaders there spent some time dialoguing about integrity. He said integrity means that you are ‘whole;’ meaning that you are the same person everywhere no matter who’s around.

I actually had an integrity challenge this week (not surprising since I seem to have them daily). I had purchased some items for BridgeWay out of my own pocket and needed to be reimbursed for the expenditures. At the time I purchased the items for BridgeWay, I also purchased some items for personal use. I turned in the receipts and highlighted the items for which I needed to be reimbursed. Later that day I received my reimbursement check. I noticed that it was about $15 higher than it should have been. I had been reimbursed for everything that I had purchased, including my personal items.

This was a weird moment, because in all honesty it froze me. It took me a moment to realize what happened. At first I thought I did poor math and was $15 off in my assessment of my purchases for the church. I realized that my original math was right and I needed to give back the check and get the check cut for the proper amount – which I did.

Even as I’m writing this I’m thinking, ‘c’mon Matt, it’s only $15!’ I’m not telling this story to show how saintly I am, but to make a pretty simple point. As leaders, we can’t let something as dumb as $15 stand in the way of our wholeness as a person. There is no way I could have accepted that money and remained whole in front of my peers. Before you can show integrity in the big things in life, you have to show it in the small things. Consider that ‘integrity practice’.

If the cost of my integrity is $15, I’m in the wrong profession anyway.