Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at IIT

As a fellowship, we affirm these values in our evangelism:

1. As Christians called by the living God, we seek first of all to honor him and his ethical standards in all of our private and public lives, including our efforts to persuade others to believe the good news about Jesus Christ.
   
2. As Christian evangelists, we seek to follow the mandate, motives, message and model of our God, who is always pursuing and reclaiming those who are lost in sin and rebellion against him.
   
3. We believe all people are created in God's image and therefore endowed with the capacity to be in relationship with their Creator and Redeemer. We disavow any efforts to influence people which depersonalize or deprive them of their inherent value as persons.
   
4. Respecting the value of persons, we believe all people worthy of hearing the gospel of this loving Lord, Jesus Christ. We equally affirm the inalienable right of every person to survey other options and convert to or choose a different belief system.
   
5. We believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and affirm the role and goal of the Christian evangelist. However, we do not believe that this justifies any means to fulfill that end. Hence, we disavow the use of any coercive techniques or manipulative appeals that bypass a person's critical faculties, play on psychological weaknesses, undermine relationship with family or religious institutions, or mask the true nature of Christian conversion.
   
6. While respecting the individual integrity, intellectual honesty and academic freedom of other believers and skeptics, we seek to proclaim Christ openly. We reveal our own identity and purpose, our theological positions and sources of information, and we will not be intentionally misleading. Respect for human integrity means no false advertising, no personal aggrandizement from successfully persuading others to follow Jesus, and no overly emotional appeals which minimize reason and evidence.
   
7. As Christian evangelists, we seek to embrace people of other religious persuasions in true dialogue. That is, we acknowledge our common humanity is equally sinful, equally needy and equally dependent on the grace of God we proclaim. We seek to listen sensitively in order to understand and thus to divest our witness of any stereotypes or fixed formulas which are barriers to true dialogue.
   
8. As Christian evangelists, we accept the obligation to admonish one who represents the Christian faith in any manner incompatible with these ethical guidelines.