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Rules for Feedback & Comments
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Our goal at Desired Haven Ministries is to put people into a place where they encounter and consider the great love of God. Usually this occurs during storms in their lives, and they're extremely vulnerable. Because of that, we make a concentrated effort to approach faith and life from an encouraging and/or inspirational perspective.
In fact, we believe this approach is Biblical in that God never grants us permission to be harsh, corrective or negative with someone unless our motivation is compassion/love and our objective is redemptive in nature. So, please understand feedback and comments will only be printed if they adhere to these rules:
- We want to hear from you! Please help us develop this community of believers by joining in the discussions.
- Courtesy is always appropriate; discourtesy never so.
- Ours is a search for truth, so if there's something you don't think is correct, please feel free to write us, respectfully.
- Information, feedback and comments sent to us via the feedback and comment sections will be considered as having been granted permission for us to use in promoting the ministry, and we may use them that way from time to time. IF YOU DESIRE YOUR FEEDBACK OR COMMENTS to be considered private, please send them by email instead of posting them to the boards. We consider all personal information, stories, testimonies, details, questions, confessions, or other information sent to us in emails as personal and private, and we never use that information in any way without specific written permission, with one exception: We may, from time to time, pull quotes from emails that offer praise for the ministry's work or materials and use them as anonymous clips to encourage others to visit our website, use our resources or support our efforts. When we do so, we are careful not to use any comments which could be traced back to you.
- It's okay to disagree, but please do so respectfully. We'll let you get away with a little more when the comments are directed to our Senior Writer, Randy Kilgore; we'll let you get away with almost no disrespect if the comments are directed at others.
- Be careful to tell stories and give information only on yourself. The Internet is a giant billboard, and anything you post on it is viewable to billions of people, so while an endearing story about your boss may sound okay to you to post, your boss might find it embarrassing. With only rare exceptions (parents writing about cute or wonderful things their kids have done), we'll not post feedback or comments that have identifiable personal details of anyone other than the person sending the feedback or comments.
- Profanity is the language of the lazy, so we don't publish comments containing profanity because it shows the sender hasn't thought through their response carefully. We're among those rare few who believe profanity is never necessary.
- Jesus always held people who knew Him (disciples), or should have known Him (legalists, Pharisees), to a higher standard than He did those who might not know Him. We invite readers to disagree with one another, but to avoid name-calling or accusatory language of any kind. Only those comments which we believe God would find acceptable will be allowed by those who claim to be followers of Jesus. For those who don't yet know Him, we may be more accepting of angry feedback--if and only if it's directed at our Senior Writer--because we believe emotional reactions from non-Christians are a sign they're under conviction by the Holy Spirit. Believers, however, must adhere to the higher standards of compassion and gentle correction/reproof in their disagreements with each other.
- Feedback and comments may not target individuals or people groups. Derogatory comments will always be refused.
- The goal of allowing feedback is to invite an interactive exploration of God's interest in faith being completely integrated into all facets of our life. Before you click "Send", please ask yourself how this comment encourages that interactive exploration. Because we believe reasoned, rational discussion of even difficult topics can be done with civility, we encourage people to disagree with each other and with our Ministry team. Unless and until we are able to recapture the art of reasoned public debate, change of any kind is impossible in a culture. We'd like to image that on this site.
- As always, there are people who will find cracks in these rules, so we add this last comment with reluctance: We universally retain the right to refuse to print any comment we wish for any reason, despite the rules printed above. While we'll endeavor diligently to avoid using this catch-all, we hold that right just in case there's a hurtful comment we can't find another reason to keep from passing through.
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