Dear All,
This weekend I issued for completion 'CRB forms' to members of our Junior Church Team, those who take communion to the elderly in their homes and the drivers who offer lifts to church for senior members of the congregation. As a church we must rightly obey the law that seeks to protect children and vulnerable adults from abuse through the CRB system: unfortunately the world wide church doesn't have a good record in this sphere....

Last week the Parish Hall Association sought to apply for a grant to help install better lighting in the Hall Guild Room: the application was returned as we had not enclosed our Child Protection Policy with the application - what that has to do with improved lighting is anyone's guess…

On Thursday my stipendiary colleagues and I will attend a day conference which will introduce us to the delights of Ministerial Development and Review: clergy are soon to have ‘Job Descriptions’, our ‘Training needs’ will be calculated and disciplinary procedures beefed up for those who fall down on the job…Many reading this will already have similar procedures at their place of work.

What the examples above have in common is the issue of 'trust' and how trust can be sustained in community. Horrific experience has warned us, as a society, to the fact that there is a small minority of people who would abuse the trust of the most vulnerable amongst us and that old 'markers of trust' (for example 'position' or 'reputation' in society) are no longer sufficient guarantors to others of our integrity. Clergy can no longer rely on their clerical collar to speak for their trustworthiness; Members of Parliament lost the voters' trust over expenses and 'Trust me, I'm a Doctor' carries no weight after Harold Shipman.

Once trust is lost it is hard to regain—ask any cheated partner, ask Lord Triesman who went for lunch with a 'friend' only to find his indiscretions recorded and passed to the newspapers—We fill in forms, we are expected to have policies for this, that and the other (all on file but rarely read), we tick the boxes (more to cover our backs than because we believe all this micro-managing achieves anything of value), we record and monitor and report and yet the more we do the more we sow the seed of doubt into our relationships.

Maybe that's the key: relationships. At a local level, where people are known, 'trust' can grow (in families, churches and other institutions) but beyond the very local, assurances of trust are required and the paper pushing starts: a sad but necessary requirement in a complex and changing society. So we play our part in offering assurances of trust to those who look to us for care and support but of far greater value are the good, honest relationships we foster in this community. To paraphrase St. Paul: 'Though I have all the CRB checks in the world without love they are nothing worth.'

Alec