Building Trust
Roy C. Price
We ought not to make any conditions of our brethren's acceptance with us but such as God has made the conditions of their acceptance with him.
Matthew Henry
The question of authority cannot finally be settled, though, until another issue is resolved: trust. Since a pastor's authority in the church is derivative, the question becomes "Do the people trust this leader enough to give him or her the power to operate?" Roy Price, pastor of The Alliance Church, Paradise, California, has done a great deal of thinking about trust:
"My experience has been that real authority comes only out of a trust relationship. I've been in churches where trust between pastor and congregation was nonexistent and also where there was a high level of trust, especially between pastor and board. The difference in what I was able to accomplish was great.
"One church held an underlying suspicion about any new program or idea. That meant a hesitancy to accept my leadership.
"I learned my lesson there. Since then, one of the first things I do in every new charge is get a reading on the level of trust. To do that, I have to get to know the people. I spend informal time with them. The more I know them (and they know me) the more trust will grow—unless there's a total mismatch, in which case I shouldn't be there.
"Another good time for this is prayer times together. We learn a great deal about one another from listening to prayer requests."
It sounds so simple. Where do most pastors go wrong?
"By rushing the process. It takes time. A lot of time. My error when I was younger was wanting to move too fast, making changes I thought needed to be made. But the people weren't ready because they didn't know me."
Price wrote the following chapter in a previous pastorate. ...
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