How to Trust Church Leaders When You Do Not Trust Church Leaders

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool. ~Stephen King

The intention of this work on church leaders and trust reveals the heart felt and disappointing perception of many served and led by church leaders whose behavior and leadership has not been exemplary. To the contrary, it has been immoral and often illegal. It will also assert to establish pathways to trust development between church leaders and the people they serve holding each other accountable for the roles they serve in the mutual interest of their church family and community.

What is Trust?

Trust is the safe and secure place in relationship that results from the engagement of one individual and at least one other individual who share acknowledged and affirmed mutual interests. The same enter into agreement for how they will behaviorally manage their shared image, accomplish their shared goals, share rewards or losses, and mete out consequences for activity violating their agreement. 

Trust is the baseline and epicenter of operations for productive relationship development. It is the same for organizations, groups, and institutions sharing acknowledged and affirmed mutual interests. Relationships suffer where there exists lack of character in one or more parties preoccupied with self and not the relationship and people to be served.

Trust is the belief that individuals, groups, and institutions of good character, reliable and honest are effectively able to maintain and be accountable to relationship agreements entered into and deals made premised upon mutual interests. Trust is important among clergy because their leadership and direction is premised upon the ultimate human values of love, respect, and service.

Trust is believing people committed
to you will help keep you from falling.

Why Church Leaders Trusted Less

The Pew Research Center reported July 11, 2013 that of the top professions determined to contribute 'a lot' to society's well - being, church leaders come in at number 6 on the top ten with a favorability rating of 37%. This represented a trend downward by 3% from four years earlier in 2009.

Clergy are trusted with the confidences of those they lead, counsel, and serve. They are instruments of empowerment to spiritual formation, plus personal and communal relationship development. The Gallup Poll established this favorability rating negligibly different from that of United States Congress during the same period.

The Aquila Report  recalls that traditionally church leaders are observed figures of authority. Church leaders receive the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of their service tenures until such time as trustworthiness challenges emerge. New pastors following pastors whose actions cost them the trust and respect of their congregations can prove to be difficult having to live out the former pastor's behavioral record.

Thom S. Rainer asks why pastors are no longer held in high esteem. He offers these and other reasons in 11 Reasons Pastors Are Trusted Less Today.  They include:

1. The moral failures of a minority of pastors receive widespread media coverage. This happens especially when pastors serve congregations numbering in the thousands.
2. Social Media encourages criticism from a distance.
3. A few pastors have poor work ethics.
4. There is a failure of some pastors in two key areas; leadership and emotional intelligence.
5. Some church members have a strong entitlement mentality.
6. Churches are dying in America.

Rainer is more than polite. As this caption captures clearly from Wolves in Shepherd's Clothing from Tejado Hanchell. Too many pastors are exploiting their privilege and apparently fleecing their own sheep through general immature leadership behavior, sexually acting out, being violent with their families, lying, stealing and sometimes worse.

Theological Training and Trust

How do the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, the Pontifical College Josephinum, the Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary educate and train church leaders on trust? Registrars for each institution were directly asked whether or not specific courses in their curricula educated and trained specifically for trust.

NO was the response. All made effort to share that while trust did not merit a stand alone course in curricula, it is addressed among courses educating and training for pastoral services and spiritual formation. Only the registrar at Trinity Lutheran Seminary expressed that trust is sufficiently important to church leadership and quality of service that church leaders would be better served as would their congregations if more specific attention was directed to its education, training, and development.

Parishioner Perceptions on Trust

The 21st Century has proven to produce skeptical observation of leadership whether secular or sacred. As a result, members of churches are decided that more training is desirable among church leaders in the area of trust. 

Members of churches want to be in position to hold pastors accountable and are no longer willing to just surrender blind trust to the church leader currently serving. Clergy discover trust is not longer simply given, it must be earned.

Church leaders do not share parishioner perceptions. Many consider that this only adds to an already overfilled plate. 

Re - Development and Re - Deployment of Trust

If church leaders are to resurrect positive regard for their office of servant leadership and influence, these things must happen.

1. Education and training institutions serving as conduits of preparation for service must engage congregations to work together on addressing trust concerns and design education and training tools in curriculum to proactively train for it.
2. Church leaders and congregations must be in agreement with respect to service description and expectation. Both must work in harmony to develop tools for regular inspection and evaluation of church leader performance by measurable and observable standards.  President Ronald Reagan may have stated it most succinctly, "Trust but verify." Early on, frequency may be weekly, bi - weekly or monthly. After the first quarter, evaluate every two months or quarters. Each time performance review is determined within acceptable parameters, the trust meter will go up. The relationship will be enhanced and should be celebrated.
3. Church leaders must be competent to serve by character and preparation. Anything less is maladministration from the beginning. A productive relationship between church leaders and their congregations can become the place many will discover trust and secure enough to desire the relationship of spiritual union. 

Conclusions on Church Leaders and Trust

Church leaders’ favorability is low for the office formerly held in high esteem. Honorable church leaders must serve in the shadows of the corrupt, the irresponsible, and the immoral that generate scandal after scandal. Honorable church leaders assert that some remain to hold up the blood stained banner and that the influence of Jesus is yet alive. 

Theological schools might consider re - examining their approaches to pastoral education and training to include the elephant in the room, the issue of trust for church leaders. A collaboration of church educators, church leaders, and parishioners would best serve the church in this area desperate for positive development.

Conditions precipitate the need for this approach. Support determined necessary comes by conclusion reached in Angie Ward's work in Christianity Today in August 2006 entitled, Leader's Insight: Can I Trust You? Strengthening the Three Legs of Trust; Character, Competence, and Communication. 

She writes, "The unavoidable conclusion makes clear trust is critical to a church’s health and ultimately, to its ministry effectiveness. When people in a church do not trust each other or their leaders, the church becomes a diseased organism that will poison those who come into contact with it, or shrivel up and stop producing fruit – oftentimes both."  

By God's Grace, might theological schools, Bible colleges, church leaders and the people of congregations work together to become a more wholesome community than church behavior can too often demonstrate.

Community Living in Covenant Community- Six Primary Components of Christian Spirituality - Part Four

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, The Gospel of John 3 vs 16 a

Part Four of the series, Six Primary Components of Christian Spirituality, establishes community living in covenant communion established by the Messiah, Jesus become the Christ after shedding his blood and giving his life to compensate for all who humanity could not behaviorally achieve. 

A covenant is a spoken or written agreement or promise usually under seal between two or more parties especially for the performance of some action. Serious consequences follow breach of the agreement. A community is a group of unified individuals bound together by interests, culture, religion, race, politics, etc. A communion is a more intense form of intentional community. It demonstrates a close relationship between people or groups with enhanced meaning.  In Christian context, communion is a ceremony in which bread is eaten and wine is drunk as a way of remembering and showing devotion to Jesus Christ.

Following the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus; the Apostles record in the Book of Acts the development of a community living in covenant communion. Families of men and women now model the lives after the life of Jesus. This is the moment for which the God human, Jesus given evidence to the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave.”

And the giving does not stop after Jesus ascends from the Earth to heaven to return to God, his Father. As God has so loved the world that he gave his only son for all of humanity, so those who remain behind began to live a spirit of giving.

In Acts Chapter 2 vss 42 - 47, the followers of Jesus were noted to sell their belongings to share with the whole of the new community living in covenant communion. The followers of Jesus not only pledged their allegiance and loyalty to Jesus and the Apostles but also to each other and others.

² And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. ⁴³ And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. ⁴⁴ And all that believed were together, and had all things common; ⁴⁵ And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. ⁴⁶ And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, ⁴⁷ Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

The legacy of the people of the God, the ekklesia, the whole Christian Community that began in Jerusalem, is the spirit and service of a loving woman devoted to her chosen by God Husband. The Messiah, Jesus, the Christ is the husband of the ekklesia, the Church, the community followers of Jesus’s model for living.

Jesus made clear in Luke Chapter 4 vs 18 – 19 he had been sent to Earth to fulfill God’s intention of loving the world so much that he gave Jesus to the world . ¹⁸ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, ¹⁹ To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

If you are to honor the six primary components of Christian Spirituality, it is directed that we share community living in covenant communion. God honors his promise to all of us living in this order of relationship through the words of Jesus in Matthew 28 vs 20b, “I am with you always.”

Next time, we shall take on intentional individual meditation. There we listen for God’s direction from the Word of God to our thoughts reminding us that we have been created by God (Genesis 1 and 2), loved us (John 3 vs 16a), given himself for us to redeemed us (2^nd Corinthians 5 vs 21), and is always with us (Matthew 28 vs 20b).

Until then, May God bless you and keep you, care for you during your sleeping and your waking, in your going outs and your coming ins, in your labour and your leisure; May God make his face to always shine upon you and give you peace. Amen!