Trust is fragile. Trust is the foundation of all healthy relationships. Trust takes a lifetime to build but can be lost at a moment in time. You cannot grow a church without trust.
When you talk about trust or distrust with pastors and church leaders, it almost always falls into two categories—sex and money. And while there have been some very public failures in these areas, I would submit to you these are not the areas most church members distrust their church leadership.
After countless conversations and almost three decades of personal leadership experience, I would submit the two areas where pastors and church leaders are least trusted by their congregations are … Competence and Execution.
- Competence is defined as “the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.”
- Execution is defined as “the carrying out or putting into effect a plan or course of action.”
Trust is most often lost not in whether the pastor or church leader is a good person, has the fruit of the Spirit, is godly, has high moral character or whether you personally like them or not.
Trust is lost because of broken promises, continual missed expectations, empty high-church rhetoric, lack of movement, inability to make a decision, perpetual stalling in the name of prayer, faulty systems, recklessness, plans that are not well thought through, not addressing issues, repeated poor decisions and multiple failed ministry initiatives.
When pastors and church staff are not trusted, you see the following:
- Polite smiles as vision is being cast.
- Shoulders slumped or shrugged.
- Blank faces indicating apathy.
- Frustration.
- Leaders leaving the church or leveraging their financial resources to other churches or organizations with greater Kingdom impact.
- Increased absences at leadership meetings.
- Disengagement.
- Increased efforts not in the church but parachurch organizations.
You also hear phrases like these:
- “I’ve heard this many times before.”
- “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
- “We never get anything right.”
- “Why didn’t they call me. I could’ve helped.”
- “Same ole. Same ole.”
- “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
- “They don’t have a clue what they’re doing.”
- “They’ll rotate off the Board soon.”
So the question becomes, how do you increase congregational trust? Leaders increase congregational trust by making and executing wise and timely decisions over an extended period of time. In other words, get some wins under your belt. This builds confidence and credibility, allowing you to make more important decisions moving forward.
