Our values: Starting with the why

Malcolm Dragon reminds us that our passion and motivation begin with God’s love.

In his influential TED Talk and book Start with Why, leadership expert Simon Sinek introduced the Golden Circle – a framework for understanding how inspiring organisations communicate. Great leaders and movements, Sinek argues, don’t start by describing what they do or how they do it. They start with why – their core purpose, cause or belief.

As The Salvation Army, our values and how we live them out are valuable and necessary. But in our eagerness to think about our behaviour, we can inadvertently skip past the why – the compelling reason these values exist at all.

We have a powerful why. Our international mission statement declares: ‘The Salvation Army, an international Movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in his name without discrimination.’

There is our why: the love of God.

Our territory distils this further into a framework that’s both ancient and immediate: ‘Love God, Love Others’, drawn directly from Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:37–39. This isn’t a slogan we invented; it’s the summation of all the Law and the Prophets according to Jesus himself.

This is the fire that ignites everything else. This is why we exist.

When we understand our why – that we are a Movement motivated by God’s love – everything else comes into focus. Our values aren’t aspirational ideals we’re trying to adopt. They’re the necessary and inevitable expressions of a love-motivated ministry.

Consider each of our six values through this lens:

Boldness flows from confidence in God’s love. When we know we’re held by divine love, we can take risks for the Kingdom. Boldness isn’t bravado; it’s the courage that comes from knowing whose we are.

Compassion is God’s love made tangible. We don’t show compassion to appear virtuous or meet organisational targets. We show compassion because we’ve experienced God’s compassion towards us, and love compels us outward.

Respect acknowledges that every person we encounter bears God’s image and is the object of God’s love. We honour others not because it’s good policy, but because God loves them with the same fierce, particular love he has for us.

Mutual accountability creates the kind of genuine community that love requires. God’s love isn’t individualistic; it draws us into relationship. Accountability isn’t about catching each other in failure – it’s about helping each other live into the fullness of love.

Integrity reflects the trustworthy nature of God’s love. When we say we are motivated by love and then act with duplicity, we misrepresent God. Integrity matters because God’s love is utterly reliable, and we are called to mirror that reliability.

Passion is the natural overflow of encountering God’s divine love. William Booth didn’t manufacture passion through willpower; he was consumed by the love of God and couldn’t help but respond with everything he had.

Why does our why matter? Starting with our why helps others understand us. Many people encounter our social services, charity shops or community programmes. They might see us as a charity that happens to be Christian, but not realise we’re a church whose service flows from worship, whose compassion is an expression of gospel proclamation. When they understand we’re motivated by God’s transforming love, our behaviour takes on depth and meaning.

Knowing isn’t the same as being captured by it – many Salvationists can recite our mission statement, but in the necessary work of how and what, we can lose touch with why.

Our why gives our how and what their urgency. When our values become disconnected from their source, they become mere moral codes. They aren’t burdens but gifts, not duties but privileges.

Let’s anchor our how and what in the why. Let’s hold on to the fire that gave birth to our values: the love of God experienced, proclaimed and embodied.

• This article was in response to an interview about the territory’s values. Read it here.