Thoughts Along The Journey

Decision making may not be an easy science, but we can grow in our competence in regards to the various decision making approaches. Several of you suggested tools that are available to help us get needed training in the different ways to process decisions in groups or individually. The real sticking point, however, comes when we start talking about the context or the atmosphere in which decisions are made, particularly when a decision is made where one doesn’t have a ‘vote’.

Trust has a major bearing on the context created.  Trust means that I give or grant you the right to influence my life and work.  I don’t do that quickly necessarily, but once I give you my trust, I know that you will act with my best interests in mind.

However, because we are often more self sufficient than other centred, we can chafe under decisions made by others.  We don’t like it when others ‘make decisions for us’ or ‘in our place’.  Our words and thoughts at that moment often communicate that my world is no larger than myself; that though I may speak about accountability, I am ultimately believe I am accountable to myself alone.

This stance runs counter to the biblical call to community.  Yes, community implies sharing of tasks and responsibilities.  However, it also implies that others may be making decisions for the group because group members have chosen to ‘trust’ that person to lead the group well.

When we ‘miss’ trust, we can end up doing everything ourselves.  We can hold back from sharing responsibilities with others.  We can become islands unto ourselves that ‘bump’ into each other at meetings rather than deeply intersect with one another’s lives.

Trust takes time to build, but it begins when we simply say to another: “I trust you.  I know you have my best interests in mind.  I will be a Christ like follower, bringing my best part to the work of this group.”

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Nowhere in the Bible do we find an exhortation to: “trust one another”.  We are told to “encourage one another” (1 Thessalonians 5:11), “exhort one another” (Hebrews 3:13) and “love one another” (1 John 4:7).  We are told to put our trust in God (Proverbs 3:5-6).  However, “trust one another” does not make the list of ‘one another’ commands.

Why?

This is the question I asked myself.

Trust is placing confidence in another. It is giving another an open door into my life without having to order what that engagement should look like.  It is not an action like encouragement.  I encourage another when I tell them they did an excellent job in facilitating a gathering of the community, for example.  That’s a tangible outworking of that one another command; a very specific step that was taken.

Trusting another is difficult to describe in tangible steps because it requires relinquishing control, believing the other is “for me”. Trusting another is also a two-way street in that it moves us to desire to see another excel.

Now that’s the ideal, but it’s the ideal that we should be striving towards by the grace of God.  Sometimes, we determine our engagement with one another by a series of guidelines or by a “process”.  Though these are helpful at times, they may cause us to skirt around the issue of trust, and not push us to consider the level of trust that exists between us.

Trust is built over time, but trust is also granted.  Rather than always waiting to see if another merits our trust, maybe we should consider first what keeps us from trusting others.

Filed under: Community, Trust | 4 Comments »