Welcome to Priority Pastor, this is Daren Wride. I’m going to talk today about trust busters and trust builders.
A question we find helpful to ask going into transitional situations where there’s often been a crisis of some kind or some kind of awkward pastoral transition, is to ask the leadership both, formal and informal- that would be your board of elders as well as people who are just part of the church, but influential long term members- ask them what kinds of things that if you did them inadvertently would would break trust, would raise suspicion, would put up a wall between you and the congregation. And these are things that are not necessarily bad things, but because of the history and the culture of the church in the community, they would immediately break trust.
For instance, I went into one church and when I asked this question, right away some of the people said don’t use the phrase “on the bus, off the bus.” That whole terminology about the right seats in the bus… The previous pastor really used that phraseology a lot and always challenged people to get on the bus or get off the bus in a very dictatorial, almost offensive kind of way. They said any kind of phraseology like that is going to put up an immediate wall.
