Pastor's Blog: Building Trust
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How do you see other people? Do you tend to see them as colleagues, or do you see them as competitors? Do you think people are worthy of your trust, or do you view them as folk you need always to keep your eye on? A good bit of your answer to those questions stems from your past experiences. Have people in your life blessed you or betrayed you? Can you point to persons who have given you a hand up, or has your experience with others been one in which they have constantly put you down?
If you have tended to have been on the receiving end of mistreatment, then you likely have chosen to write people off and go your own way. You probably have decided to retreat into your private world and not put yourself out there to be hurt again. But according to a recent study, that decision doesn’t serve your highest interest because of how it shrinks not only your world, but also your soul.
A recent study by two sociologists, Rubia Valente and Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, has dealt with the recent decline of trust in American culture and how religious belief has affected it (Bob Smietana, “When It Comes to Building Trust, Belonging Beats Belief, Study Finds,” Religion News Service, 01/28/21). For me, the biggest takeaway from their study is how religious belonging builds trust more than religious belief. In other words, just because someone professes belief in God, that belief doesn’t necessarily result in higher degrees of trust. What seems to make the most difference is when people of faith join forces together in a community setting does their level of trust reach significant levels.
The reason these findings jumped out at me was because of the challenges we’ve been managing during this season of COVID. By now, you all know my disdain for the term “social distancing,” even though I can appreciate the need to maintain a safe physical distance from others to prevent the spread of the virus. But at the same time, my heart has gone out to all the people who have been cut off and isolated from their church family and the toll it has taken on their mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Little wonder that so many conspiracy theories have taken root among so many today because of how they’ve been deprived of honest conversation with others, aside from what they read and hear on websites and chat rooms, where the prevailing agenda is to engender suspicion instead of trust.
That’s why our church has been so focused on providing the type of online content that can keep everyone at MBBC connected and why we have structured so much of it from the standpoint of participation and engagement. If we can sustain a spirit of community, even if only virtually, then we can continue to build our congregation’s trust not only in God, but also in one another. We can assure one another that none of us is in this alone. We have God’s everlasting arms to lean upon, which we always best feel when we hear from a fellow believer through a call, a card, or a text.
So, thank you for what you’ve been doing over these past months to strengthen our trust in our church’s ability to manage this moment and keep ministry going. Thank you for caring for one another so that even in this season of detachment no one feels totally on his own. Thank you for not just watching our worship but participating in it. Such faithfulness makes me confident that when we’re all back together again, it’s not so much that we’ve not missed a beat in ministry, but that we’ve actually done more ministry than any of us might have thought possible. That’s because all things are truly possible for those who believe, for those who believe in God and who also believe in one another. Therefore, keep believing and belonging and becoming.
“We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing” (2 Thessalonians 1:3).