TRUSTING THE WRONG PERSON
Ministry is a joy, and a pain all at the same time. I think Jesus found it that way. Working with people is a part of that dichotomy. They are sometimes blessings and sometimes not. In this article looking at ministry the focus will be placing trust in people and learning subsequently that the trust was not well placed. A disclaimer on this article. I have covered a lot of stuff that has much broader application than the direct subject.
Background
Your Trust Matrix
Your Personality
Your World View
Working Philosophy
Your Working Theology
Your Character
Your Trust Practice
Reflects Your Matrix
Discernable Pattern
Reveals how You want to be Trusted.
Projected on Others
Your Trust Ministry
Reflects Your Trust Matrix
Shows in your Collaborative Efforts
Depends on Communication
Gives away control
Your Trust Paradox
Risk is unavoidable
Accountability is difficult
Everybody is different
Misplaced trust can be catastrophic or just annoying.
Your Trust Matrix
A leader’s most important knowledge is not gathered from education, or experience, or training, but from within. In ministry, as soon as possible we have to truly, and as objectively as possible know ourselves. We all have a background. We all have family histories. We all have formative events in our lives that make up who we are in general and in ministry. We all have innate tendencies in our personality and character that are both positive and negative. The same trait can be both a positive and a negative given the situation you are facing.
Personality We all have one. Some of us are outgoing and gregarious. Others are more introspective and introverted. Some are totally motivated by a task or assignment. Others are more motivated by relationships and people. All these characteristics are foundational to our leadership style. Without getting too deep in the weeds here your personality drives how you approach people and task.
From the perspective of personality we all have strengths and weaknesses. There has been so much written and said about personality that it is easy to get lost in the weeds. I do not profess to understand personality types. I have been tested and I have one. And as you might or might not know I am weird. But for the sake of illustrating a point in all the tests that have been done on my personality and leadership tendencies I always test just slightly introverted. Shying away from the spot light, withdrawing from hard conversations, and being comfortable working in the background is not the list that most people think of in a great leader. Not necessarily thinking you are always absolutely right all the time makes you appear non leader like. Thinking about things before you speak makes you slower to respond in almost all situations. But God called me. Just like He called you to be the person you are, the leader you are, the worker you are, the minister you are. Unlike me, you may have personality traits that seem more naturally inclined toward leadership. Your level of emotional intelligence, analytical skills, previous experiences are all formative, and informative to your leadership. God knew all these things before He called you.
For example, if you are task centered you want to get the job done no matter what. If your are people centered you want to make sure everyone is happy while doing it. If you are both task and people centered you work to get things done while bringing the most people possible along with you in as pleasant a state as possible. You may at times sacrifice speed of accomplishment while keeping the team together. If you are task centered and unconcerned about the team you may step on folks to accomplish the task. Control is important to the task oriented while relationships are important to the people oriented.
World View Your perception of life in general, how you think, your work ethic, your understanding of normal and abnormal behavior also feeds into your trust matrix. If you were raised to work hard, be honest, add value to your surroundings then you tend to project that on everyone you deal with especially in ministry. Most of us need to turn off our projectors and get out our feelers.
Theologically, for example, we all have a default sense regarding what the Bible calls Grace and Truth. In John 1 the Book says of Jesus that “we beheld His Glory, Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH.” It is my opinion that this balance of grace and truth was unique to Jesus. It was a manifestation of His incarnation in that regular men and women do not have this perfect balance of fullness. We tend in one direction or the other on these spiritual character traits. We either lean toward truth or we lean toward grace. I do not think this is a bad thing but it is a thing that we need to know.
Character is your self imposed boundaries. What you will or will not do in a certain situation at least partially reflects your character. Your character is also revealed in how consistently you relate to people. Character shows when you are dealing with questions of motivation. Why you do something is a clue to your character. Your basic assumptions about life are also driven in part by character. Integrity, honesty, transparency, and even your trust patterns reveal character. The personal priorities you have for life, family, work, and faith are all reflective of your character.
Your Trust Practice
Things in this life are often not what they appear to be. Individuals can completely fool you with regard to their intentions, integrity, and relationships. Some are intentional in this deception while others are just bent in this direction. But you have to trust people. Driving down the road you trust the guy in the oncoming lane of traffic is going to maintain his or her heading in their lane. When this trust is poorly placed really bad things can happen. At work in the secular world you have to trust that the people around, above and below you on the organizational chart are competent in their skill levels and character to get their part of the job done. Like the driving illustration when that trust is poorly placed bad things can happen.
In the church we ofter inherit leaders, workers, servants that have been in their position in the church for some time. We place people in places of responsibility. We cannot do it all. Our task as spiritual leaders is to facilitate the ministry not only of ourselves but others over whom we have responsibility and stewardship. And since we always need workers, helpers, teachers, and other folks in ministry we have to trust.
I believe it was Ronald Reagan who used the line “Trust but verify”. We do this kind of thing all the time. We check references on mechanics, doctors, hospitals, banks, the list is nearly endless. But in regular life and in ministry in particular you cannot check out everything about everybody. You cannot interview every driver on the road with you to get your own personal read on their fitness as a safe driver. You cannot go into you work place and start interviewing your boss, your coworkers, your superiors and your subordinates to see if you can trust them.
In the church the people that are there when you arrive, that are serving in what appears to be a faithful way are often a great blessing to the ministry of the church. They have kept things going for no telling how long. They are generally not bad people. However, time will tell if they are trustworthy. These folks have been pretreated for you.
People that you choose to help in the ministry are a different story. Careful selection screening practices can help but are not flawless. Developing and maintaining accountability systemically is complex in a volunteer organization, but it can be done.
There are many levels of trust that we express in life. We have trust that we express when we walk into a store, choose a restaurant, buy a car, move into a home, go on vacation, pick an airline . . . you get the idea. The point is that not all trust is the same. Choosing the wrong restaurant can get you a poor meal. Choosing the wrong hotel or airbnb may make a looked-forward-to vacation a disappointment.
In the church the same thing is true. There are many different levels of trust. You have to trust the pastor more than the janitor, the deacon more than the member, the teacher more than the student. I suppose in some ways all trust is graded. Trust is never insignificant but is always measured by purpose and result. All this makes trust something that can be experimented with to some degree. But, putting too much weight on an individual or group can set leaders up for trouble.
Who and how you choose to trust fits into your trust matrix, and is a discernible preexisting pattern. You have adopted this pattern likely without thought or intention. This pattern also reveals how you want to be trusted. This is also the pattern or approach that you assume when you trust another person. You project your own thoughts, character, and assumptions on others, which can lead to everything misunderstandings to all out conflict.
Your Trust Ministry
So you bring all this to your ministry and go to work. Everything you have learned and experienced in life rolls into your ministry and trust is no different.
Besides that ministry is, or at least should be a collaborative work. If your church only does what you can do, control, make happen there are at least two problems. One, you are greatly demenishing the potential of the work that can be done. And two, you deny the members of the body of Christ from exercising their spiritual gifts in the corporate setting. Therefore you must trust some people.
Other people have developed their own trust matrix, including their personality, their worldview and their character. When you trust them you are trusting the whole person, not just what you know. They are a product of all these things in their lives just like you are. They will generally operate in alignment with their integrity, however their definition of integrity is probably different from yours. The more intimate your knowledge of them, the longer you have known and observed them, the more accurate your assessment of their trustworthiness will be theoretically.
Here is where the rub comes. You trust. They talk and act out of their thinking and it either goes well or not so well. They can tell you something and you know not whether they are lying to you, leading you on or being honest. They act on the basis of their internal system not yours. You on the other hand may have projected your own views of truth and trustworthiness on them.
Bottom line, your trust will either be vindicated or you will realize it has been misplaced. If your trust has been misplaced, what do you do now?
What should you do now?
Obviously, praying and seeking the counsel of God is primary.
Alongside that, seeking counsel of both internal and external advisors. If you do not have such advisors look into your past and see who has never given you poor advise or encouragement.
Evaluate the situation. This stage is both something to do alone with your thoughts and a piece of paper taking notes and in conversation with your advisors.
How large is the impact area of this problem? The number of people affected, witness of your ministry personally, and the witness of the church in the community are possible areas for consideration here.
How deeply will those offended be affected? Major impacts can affect people for long periods of time, while less major impacts may have little to no long term effect.
How long has this problem been working its way through the congregation? You can be clueless about some issues until they have festered for a while. An antidote to this is developing a listening network within the church.
Has this trusted person or persons mounted a campaign to question your leadership? In more severe situations your leadership may have been attacked. This is not the case in every situation but it bears monitoring.
Note: Smaller impact area will obviously decrease the difficulty of mitigation but be thorough. One of my mentors in ministry used to say, “That’s just little enough to get Big!”
At some point as soon as possible using the Matthew 18 model have a conversation with the person or persons involved in the breach of trust.
I would recommend that this not be a private conversation because in the church seldom do these kinds of problems remain between just you and the individual. Therefor, take a neutral trustworthy person with you as a witness.
In some cases that might not be the case but as a general rule the cat is out of the bag already and triangulation(talking to friends outside the disagreement) has already started.
Witnesses are protection in these kinds of conversations.
Determine the likelihood, length, and severity of effects this could cause.
During evaluation you will have covered much of this same material.
Prepare to handle the these outcomes. What must you do? What must you not do?
Proceed with courage not fear. Trust in the Lord. While most of us avoid uncomfortable situations as a rule, leadership has to do the tough things.
Make sure you are standing on Biblical principals. Do not be caught working out of your own sense of right and wrong, emotional responses, or prejudices. Make sure you do this by the Book.
Do not be surprised if those you trusted do not completely share your world view. In today’s world that has been manipulated by Satan and his minions how people think and live is really messed up. Try to understand the world view of your problem person. You do not have to agree with it, but you do need to understand it.
This may actually be the foundation of this misplaced trust for you. Assuming that you have a Biblical World View you are the exception rather than the rule in how people think and live. Do not be surprised that this kind of world view exists in some form in your church.
Determine an appropriate personal, organizational, and corporate response.
Personal response: As long as this was an honest mistake of misplaced trust do not beat yourself up too much. Every leader has made mistakes like this.
Repent as necessary. Sin can sneak in during challenging events. Be honest.
Apologize to those you may have genuinely offended or those offended by your trusted individual that precipitated this situation.
Commit to learn from this situation as aggravating as it is. Maturing leadership will always learn from everything.
Try not to repeat this exact same mistake again.
Organizational response: In every organization key parts of culture must include; missional alignment, personal accountability, and open systems IMHBAO.
Missional Alignment simply means the organization knows what it is supposed to do, be or believe, and that knowledge extends vertically through the organization from top to bottom. Keeping the mission simple and straightforward may be as simple as building a question into the psyche of the organization that attempts to address this mission for everyone. For Example: Does what I am thinking, or about to do directly or indirectly forward the mission of our church? Or Does what I am thinking, or about to do directly or indirectly help us reach people for Christ and forward their discipleship journey?
Accountability in the church means that we are all accountable first to God, to the Bible, to the Gospel, and to each other. Even volunteers need to be accountable. This is a little bit counter culture in the US. Our emphasis on individual liberty can make people think they are completely independent contractors. As a leader of leaders in the church the pastor has to model and expect accountability from and to all leaders. However, a culture of accountability needs to reach all the way to members. In churches who are less member focused this can be more difficult.
Open systems means that there are very rare occasions when a direct question does not deserve a direct answer. Put another way, secrecy works against high trust organizations. Smaller churches would seem to be less prone to to closed system issues, however that may not be be the case. As churches grow larger, open systems are more challenging. Open systems promote transparency. As scary as that is hiding subterfuge becomes more difficult. As a leader open systems make it harder for there to be festering, unknown issues.
Corporate response: Having looked at many church constitutions over the years, I can tell you that churches are constantly trying to fix problems with constitutional changes. It is possible to determine what kind of problems the church has faced in the past by looking at the constitution. This review may also tip the reader to the issues faced by founding pastors prior to starting this church.
Occasionally there may be some foundational issue raised by the trust issue just faced.
However, manipulating guiding documents at the constitutional level to address such issues is probably over kill. In the past it was common to go directly to the constitution to address such problems. This rarely helps in a culture of distrust in the long haul. Constitutions rarely come out unless the distrust has generated significant conflict.
Policy Manuels also have become a method to try to codify methods to deal with staff, volunteers and members. Like constitutions they generally reflect previous problems.
Evaluate appropriate resources that are available to you to resolve the issue.
Are there solid, proven internal leaders who are capable of helping.
Are there people outside the leadership of the church but within the church who are mature enough and willing to engage to assist in this situation and possibly come into your circle of advisors as pastor to help you avoid such problems in the future.
Do you have personal friends and mentors in life and ministry who could help you in evaluation and implementation during and after the trust issue situation.
Learning to take away from this experience. After getting these kinds of situations handled it would be poor stewardship not to try to learn everything you can as a leader from the experience. The default for most of us is to just be happy it is over. We relax and rejoice that it is over. But ask a few learning questions before you move on.
If we lose people, was that loss necessary? All or part? Strategic or catastrophic?
How did accountability work in this situation? If it was new to the church or individual did they handle it well? Note; Sudden accountability after no accountability will often draw heated, angry responses.
What did you learn personally from this event?
What did you learn as a pastor/leader from this event?
Could this have been avoided? How?
Can you teach someone else how to avoid this kind of event? Who?
Is this a policy informing? Beyond your personal trust learning curve is there a way to avoid this kind of event in the future.
Could the church benefit from some training at the leader, membership, or attender level? From elder, deacon, teacher training to membership class additions to sermon level teaching. Note; My suggestion would be to build training/sermons around Biblical series on leadership or Books of the Bible that address our responsibilities as members and leaders. I would take some time after the event to allow feelings to normalize.
Should a policy be developed to try to prevent reoccurrence? Personal or church?
Personal observations:
None of us are perfect.
The only thing we are professional in is our humanity. Humans make mistakes.
Do not be too hard on yourself for being fooled by people. Some of them are really good at fooling people.
Allow yourself the grace to make mistakes, learn from them and move on.
Even your mistakes were known to the Father before you made them, before He called you and He called you anyway.
Hang in there! The world needs the Gospel in you making a difference.
The Trust Paradox
Risk is Unavoidable. Trusting people though risky must be done.
Accountability is difficult. Though people are used to certain levels of accountability in other parts of their lives, they may be resistant to accountability at the church.(Church Covenant)
Everybody is different. As we have discussed everything from family of origin to personality to training feeds into the approach people have to life in general and church life in particular. It will often take considerable time to build a culture in the church that levels out understanding in the church.
Misplaced trust can be catastrophic or just annoying. There are many levels of result from misplaced trust. Effects of misplaced trust could be just a personal situation not really related to the church at large. This is the easy one to learn from and grow. However, effects can be very broadly distributed in the church. These are tougher exponentially.
Final Suggestions:
Trust first in smaller things if possible. Those who are faithful in the small are more likely to be faithful in the large.
Note your own feelings regarding trusting others. Low trust leaders tend toward workaholism. This pressurizes decisions to trust. High control leaders trend toward command and control style organizations. Servant leaders are more Biblical in their mindset. Study how Jesus led. Unafraid of the tough conversations but gracious toward all, Jesus modeled Servant Leadership.
Develop open systems where accountability is readily apparent to the leadership and the body of the church at large.
Gentle but firm accountability is more comfortable for most people. Sudden accountability will meet greater resistance.
Steady sharing of the common mission and vision of the church reaps greater rewards than intermittent emphasis on mission and vision.
Remember the church’s mission is determined. It is Biblical. It is Simple. It is not really negotiable. It is scaleable. It is local. It is universal.
Preach and Teach the Jesus of the Bible all the time. Soaking your people in the Word and the person and work of Christ will encourage them to let God shape them over time.
Model and Reward actions, attitudes, and achievements that you want repeated among your people.
Hard Moments in Ministry
by Dr. Eddie Miller