If you work with a group of leaders, you want them to know their workers. You want relationships to be built and a spirit of mentoring throughout your organization. The goal is for leaders to be able to say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be ye followers of me as I also am of Christ.” Because workers will notice both actions and words, leaders can endanger their credibility when the two don’t match. Use a list like this to remind your team that actions speak louder than words.

Our Music—needs to be consistent with biblical principles; the world’s music should not be part of our daily conversation.

Our Entertainment—we should have and follow standards based on biblical principles and make our reasoning known to those enjoying entertainment
with us.

Church Involvement—we need to serve and be involved in our local church; when and why we get involved, miss services, etc., are all noticed and priorities are shared according to your choices.

Disagreement, Disdain, or Discontentment Disguised as Humor—sometimes our jokes are told often enough or in such a way that they aren’t really jokes; we should not use humor to disguise something that needs to be talked about in a serious manner.

Keeping Rules—we ask our workers to abide by rules and policies; when we hold them to the rule and then break rules, we kill our credibility.

Our actions are yelling. Our words are whispering. They need to both match up.