No one disputes we’re living through an era of institutiona…

No one disputes we’re living through an era of institutional decline and distrust. Multiple surveys show Americans acknowledging their loss of trust in virtually every segment of society. This decline in institutional credibility is, in part, a result of poor leadership and the exposing of corruption, with organizations covering up past failures or widening the breach of trust through their defensive posture or apathy.
It’s no surprise churches feel the headwinds in this environment. This is why so many church leaders are pondering how best to repair and rebuild trust in an age of widespread cynicism and suspicion. We should ask several questions:
- What ingredients are essential for our church to be considered “trustworthy?”
- How do we preserve the trust and goodwill our church has right now, if things are going well?
- How can we regain trust and goodwill after something goes wrong?
- If or when we fail as a church, how can we respond in ways that repair rather than widen the breach of trust?
These questions matter because trust is at the core of Christianity. We’re people of belief, trust, faith, and faithfulness:
- Christians are marked out by specific beliefs: We confess Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead.
- We’re marked out by a life built on trust: We rely on Christ alone for salvation.
- We’re marked out by a life of walking by faith, not by sight. Faithfulness to God and to his people becomes a defining element of our lives.
A crucial aspect of living a faithful Christian life is our growth toward ever-greater trust in God and a corresponding growth in becoming more trustworthy ourselves. As people of belief, trust, faith, and faithfulness, we’re uniquely equipped to contribute to the repairing and rebuilding of institutional credibility. This is one way we fulfill our role as salt and light.
What Is Trust?
Earlier this year, an insightful report on trust, developed by Martin Seeley, David Ford, Veronica Hope Hailey, and Gordon Jump, was released within the Church of England. The authors lean on a definition of trust from a 1998 journal article:
Trust is the intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of another.
This definition covers a wide range of institutional life and helps us understand why breaking trust is so damaging. To trust someone else requires us to accept vulnerability. It’s possible we’re wrong about the person we trust. We might get hurt. And yet this vulnerability is indispensable to a properly functioning society.
In Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell says our initial response when something seems amiss is to “default to truth.” We’re inherently trusting of people, technology, and institutions. Sometimes this impulse goes wrong and leads to tragic outcomes, when we refuse to see (or are unable to see) the corruption or injustice taking place right before our eyes. But defaulting to distrust would be even worse. Our world would grind to a halt and life would be impossible if all trust were absent.
We can’t not trust people and institutions, at least at some level, which is why it matters that people and institutions work hard to build and retain trust. Especially when, as the old Dutch proverb goes, “Trust comes on foot but leaves on horseback.”
4 Ingredients of Trustworthiness
The report on trust lays out four essential elements for healthy and trustworthy leaders in an organization:
1. Ability: Have they got the right competencies and abilities to do their job?
2. Benevolence: Are they bothered about others or entirely self-interested?
3. Integrity: Are they guided in their decisions and actions by a moral code?
4. Predictability: Can people see a consistency in their approach?
In my experience, all four of these ingredients are crucial, but they’re not equally important.
Leaders can be forgiven occasional lapses in the first category, “ability,” because no one expects everyone to be fully competent at all times in all ways. In fact, a leader’s response—if he or she acknowledges mistakes, corrects problems, and shows growth in competency—can serve to increase trustworthiness over time. Likewise, the fourth category, “predictability,” is important, but erratic behavior can be overcome if the other three elements are in place and the leader demonstrates the desire for consistency.
The second and third categories are most critical: benevolence and integrity. The moment an institution acts in cravenly self-focused ways, or a leader makes decisions that betray selfish ambition instead of a servant’s heart, or people cross clear moral lines to preserve and protect reputation or power, trust dissipates. An organization can survive challenges and failures in categories 1 and 4, but it’s much more difficult to recover and rebuild trust when malevolence and dishonesty become obvious.
When Trust Is Lost
Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build focuses on the formational and aspirational aspects of categories 2 and 3:
We trust an i…