“Foundations of Honor” – Study Guide by Danny Silk – Session 10
Building a Powerful Community
LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF HONOR
Congratulations! You have nearly completed this journey of digging deeply into the biblical core values that comprise the Foundations of Honor in a relational environment. You have also hopefully begun to engage with the recommendations at the end of each session for how you can further study and practically apply these core values in your life, family, business, school, church, or organization.
This final session is an invitation to make an individual and corporate commitment to upholding the core values of honor in the form of a social agreement, or Constitution of Honor.
Please read the following template for a Constitution of Honor:
Core Values and Commitments
CONSTITUTION OF HONOR
WHAT IS HONOR?
1. Honor calls people to perfect freedom — the ability to express the Father’s design for our relationships and reproduce His kingdom of love.
• Commitment: We will be powerful in using our love to love God and others.
2. Honor involves valuing, building, and protecting relationships.
• Commitment: We will develop the skills and attitudes necessary to build and protect healthy relational connections.
3. Honor connects our individual destinies to our common purpose: “On earth as it is in heaven.”
• Commitment: We will continually seek to align our hearts, minds, and behavior with heaven so that we accurately appreciate people’s unique destinies and how they work together.
CULTIVATING AN ABUNDANCE MINDSET
4. People of honor carry an abundance mindset based in the Father’s heart to supply every son and daughter with the resources, opportunities, and wisdom to flourish, succeed, and overflow with blessing to others.
• Commitment: We will seek to approach our lives and those around us with an expectation that there is always enough to fulfill our divine calling and assignments.
5. While the resources of the Father’s house are unlimited, they flow to and through us as we become fully aligned with His heart and His mission and with the leaders He has called to equip us to fulfill that mission.
• Commitment: We will align ourselves with the godly leaders in our lives and their mission as they align with Christ.
6. Generosity is an essential joy, privilege, and responsibility for people of honor.
• Commitment: We will establish a lifestyle of extravagant generosity through cheerfully giving and investing in people.
CONFRONTATION
7. People of honor are prepared to confront behavior that threatens the health of relational connections.
• Commitment: We will refuse to allow the fear of confrontation to infect our relational connections.
8. People of honor highly value giving and receiving feedback to create awareness of how others are experiencing us, and we are experiencing others.
• Commitment: We will call out the best in people and trust others to call out the best in us.
9. People of honor create a safe place to give and receive feedback.
• Commitment: We will develop the skills to reduce anxiety and give people what they need to experience a safe place as we communicate truth and productive feedback.
10. People of honor care about meeting the needs of the other person in the relationship and will adjust in order to do so.
• Commitment: We will seek to understand the needs of those with whom we are in relationship and be prepared to adjust to meet those needs.
11. People of honor walk in humility. Humility is essential to successful confrontation.
• Commitment: We will esteem to serve one another, especially in confrontations.
12. Asking good questions in a confrontation creates a safe place to find the core problem(s) needing resolution.
• Commitment: We will develop the skills to ask powerful, compassionate questions that help people see and identify the root causes of problematic behavior.
13. The best person to fix a problem is its owner. Confrontation empowers people to own their problems and collaborate in creating powerful solutions to them.
• Commitment: We will empower people to build effective solutions to their problems and champion them as they carry them out.
14. A successful confrontation enables people to grow in vulnerability, self- awareness, wisdom, love, courage, freedom, and commitment to honor.
• Commitment: We will acknowledge and celebrate the courage it takes to have a successful confrontation and affirm the personal growth that results from it.
15. A successful confrontation strengthens relational connections by resolving harmful conflict and identifying ways to meet people’s needs more effectively.
• Commitment: We will learn and practice effective communication skills as our way of life together.
16. When people fail to resolve conflict and repair connection following a confrontation, honoring responses include forgiveness, setting boundaries, and carrying hope for future repentance and reconciliation.
• Commitment: If people fail to resolve a conflict, we will live out forgiveness, set limits as necessary, and always carry hope for the future reconciliation.
EMPOWERING OTHERS
17. We empower people when we communicate value for them through knowing, trusting, and appreciating them.
• Commitment: We will pursue knowledge of people’s unique strengths, behavior styles, and other traits so we can entrust them with roles and responsibilities where they can flourish and excel.
18. In honoring relational environments, vision is communicated clearly, discussed regularly, and pursued collaboratively.
• Commitment: We will consistently communicate, discuss, pursue, and partner in our corporate vision.
19. Honor empowers team members to bring their best to the surface, collaborate successfully, and synergize in pursuing a common vision.
• Commitment: We will continually seek to understand, appreciate, and empower the unique contribution of each team member.
LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS
20. We honor the truth that God has chosen us as members of His eternal family by working to preserve and protect long-term relationships.
• Commitment: We will remember that we are brothers and sisters accountable to the same Father.
21. In order to build healthy long-term relationships, we must cast out fear, control, and punishment with perfect love.
• Commitment: We will respond to hurtful behavior with love and forgiveness rather than fear and punishment.
22. People of honor commit to following Jesus’ standard for faithfully loving people to the end in long-term relationships.
• Commitment: We will keep Jesus as our standard and model for loving people faithfully in long-term relationships.
EXPORTING HONOR
23. The finished work of the cross removes divisions and false spiritual hierarchies, and compels us to honor and embrace all those for whom Christ died.
• Commitment: We will remove “us and them” attitudes and agendas in all of our relationships.
24. We export honor to our communities through service marked by ownership, humility, compassion, and wisdom.
• Commitment: We will live as community members and not simply church members.
25. We are responsible to tangibly, visibly influence the world around us through good works that put the beauty, excellence, nobility, and honor of the Kingdom on display.
• Commitment: We will continually look for ways to help people in our community experience the benefits and culture of the Kingdom of Heaven.
SUCCESSION
26. We transfer Jesus’ mission successfully to the next generation by cultivating relationships in which we train people to be led by the Spirit and walk in His power and presence.
• Commitment: We will demonstrate the priority of the presence of God to those we lead.
27. Spiritual parents honor their spiritual sons and daughters by investing the time, challenging interaction, and encouraging words necessary to cultivate spiritual maturity in them.
• Commitment: We will raise up leaders from the younger generation in purpose and love.
28. Spiritual fathers and mothers train the next generation to run with endurance by teaching them to honor God’s timeline and process of maturity.
• Commitment: We will teach our children the value of inheritance and how to steward it well.