It is our experience that personality and character can easily become confused.  Sometimes the articulate, beautiful, up-front or outwardly gifted individuals are assumed by leaders to be strong Christians.  This is a dangerous assumption.  However it can also be the case that in an effort to correct past mistakes, outgoing, young, attractive or achiever types can be assumed to be 'proud' because they are gifted.  It is dangerous to assume that because someone excels they must have poor character.  Christian character transcends personality, achievement, appearance, talent or the lack of any of these gifts.  Christian character is rarely truly seen because it is, by its very nature, hidden to first inspection.  It is the inner heart attitude.  This will eventually come through, but it is not always immediately apparent.

It is also possible to spiritualize poor character, to hide our failings behind our schemes and slogans.  Christ-like character gives the embrace of Jesus to all.  But we can easily dress up our poor character issues by calling them other things.  For example 'My ministry is to people like myself', so I won't put myself in the uncomfortable position of living somewhere difficult and different, or even of talking and giving to people who are different.  We may think: 'My ministry is to middle-class people who have got life together and are going to make excellent tithers to the body of Christ in years to come.'  But this is just dressing our own selfishness up as spirituality.....  The New Testament envisions a church in which the haves and have-nots are worshipping together, where no worldly barriers of class, ethnicity, education or economic circumstance mean a jot, where no one is treated differently in church because of their financial or social position in the world.