High-trust vs. low-trust churches

A church lay leader recently contacted me asking some questions about church structure.  The church had an interim pastor a few years ago who encouraged them to change the way they were structured.  They went from having deacons, committees, and boards to forming a Church Leadership Team that made many of the decisions.  According to this lay leader, this new structure had never worked the way the church thought it would and people wanted to return to their previous structure.  One of the reasons people did not like the new system was they believed the leadership team was not adequately communicating to the congregation, and some in the church wanted to return to the days when the congregation voted on everything.  I cautioned the caller that the older system would not allow the church to respond quickly to rapid changes and that ministry opportunities could be lost in a maze of committees and business meetings, but he felt the church would probably make the change anyway.

When I explained that this was symptomatic of a low-trust church, he agreed that was what their church was.  In a low-trust church people feel they have to vote on everything that might affect the church because they do not trust others to make the best decisions for the church.  In many traditional churches, even though the people have attended church together for years, there is a lack of trust among the church members.  People are afraid that others will make decisions that will give them more power or prestige in the church.  The only way to prevent that from happening is to have numerous committees where people can watch one another and a requirement that everything has to be brought before the church in a business meeting for a vote.

In a high-trust church people trust the leaders to make decisions that will be best for the church.  It has always amazed me that churches will select people to positions of leadership but will not let them lead.  In high-trust churches the leaders do lead.  The structure of such churches is reduced to a minimum so people have time to actually be involved in ministry.  Standing committees are eliminated and replaced with ad-hoc committees when needed.  Rather than having people serving in maintenance tasks they are encouraged to be involved in ministries that impact people in the community.  Pastors and lay leaders are allowed to make decisions that improve the ministry of the church.  Such churches will often have only one business meeting a year to approve the budget and perhaps to elect new leadership.  Special called meetings are held when major decisions need to be made, but the leadership team is trusted to handle the other decisions that keeps the church functioning smoothly.

No doubt there are a lot of factors that influences whether or not a church is low-trust or high-trust.  Many of those factors will probably be found in things that happened in the church's past.  The problem is that low-trust churches are seldom growing churches.  These churches simply cannot respond quickly enough to the ministry needs they might encounter in their community.  They are too busy watching one another to be looking for such ministry opportunities.  If past events create low-trust churches, and that trust cannot be recovered, then the history of the church will determine the future of the church.  As long as it remains low-trust it will be unable to grow and unable to enjoy any significant ministry to persons outside the church.

How does a church move from a low-trust status to one that is high-trust?  The answer depends on the reasons why it is low-trust, but one important piece is the length of time the pastor has been at the church.  It is very difficult for a church to be high-trust if its track record is that it changes pastors every 2-3 years.  Especially in smaller churches, it will normally take longer than that for the pastor to earn sufficient trust in the church to be able to lead it.  Churches need the stability of a long-term pastor to become a high-trust church.

Another factor that leads to a church becoming high-trust is that there is good communication throughout the congregation.  No one believes that others are keeping secrets.  I recently told a low-trust church that it was impossible for them to over-communicate right now.  I cautioned them that if they didn't get tired of communicating what was happening in the church they probably were not communicating enough.

The questions you need to ask are

• Are we a high-trust church or a low-trust church?
• If we are a low-trust church, what can we do to change that?
• If we are a high-trust church, what do we need to do to ensure we don't lose that?