In a recent Gallup survey it was revealed that Americans have continued to lose trust in most of the institutions that are part of the social fabric daily life. The results are on the graph below.

Of particular interest to those in the church, “organized religion” garnered a positive response from only 36% of respondents. LifeWay Research looked at the previous years of the Gallup survey and found that this is in line with an ongoing trend of declining trust in the church among Americans. They showed this on the graph below, which drops from over 65% of Americans trusting organized religion in the mid 1970s to just over 30% in the 2020s.

There are undoubtedly larger cultural and political reasons behind this drop. These are regularly discussed in both the media and the church itself. No small part of it has been how Christians especially have chosen to align their beliefs to specific political/social/cultural agendas or to particular politicians. This has happened the Left and the Right, and Christians across the theological spectrum have lost credibility as bearers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because of this.

While it is helpful for us to ask how this happened, a more helpful question to ask is, “What can we do about this, especially on the local level?” The average American church in 2024 has around 60 people in it. How does it tackle this massive cultural decline in trust?

The answer is that the local church does not have to overcome this massive decline on its own. It only needs to build trust with the people that are in its neighborhood.

Look at the graph again. The most trusted institution in the United States right now is small businesses. Why might this be? Most people do not think of small businesses as a massive, monolithic group, but they think of the specific small businesses that they frequent: the family-owned bakery that makes the personalized biscotti, the barber who helped get their son over his fear of having his haircut, the butcher who sets up a grill outside his shop during the summer so patrons can stop by and get his fresh kielbasa for lunch. People think fondly of small businesses because they have relationships with the owners and operators of those businesses.

Likewise, while people may have overall negative views of “higher education” and “the medical system,” they likely still have a favorite teacher or physician. The overall, faceless structures may not be trustworthy, but the specific people with whom they have relationships are.

This where the local church can step into this situation. The Christians in these congregations are not called to change the overall cultural view of “organized religion;” they are only called to build relationships with those who are not part of the church. They build these relationships by volunteering in the neighborhood, being social with others, and inviting people to appropriate activities that their congregation is hosting (maybe an ice cream social or Christmas pageant–something that would not be awkward to have someone who is uncertain about organized religion attend).

The goal of this is not to reverse the cultural trend per se. It is, instead, to give those who the pollsters ask about their trust in organized religion next year, the opportunity to say, “No, I still don’t trust organized religion, but I have been very impressed with that church on the corner over there. They are good people, and I am glad they are part of my community.”