September 8, 2025
by Greg Henson, Kairos University President and CEO
Fostering fresh expressions of theological education begins by building trustworthy community. Cultivating such a community is not easy. Trust is not built through inspiring language, good intentions, or simply increasing the amount of time people spend together. It is formed through practices. I suggest there are three such practices that can nurture trustworthy community. The first we will address is alignment. For innovation to take root as a way of being, institutions need to embody the values they espouse.
Most theological schools lead with strong values. Words like justice, humility, transformation, and formation appear in mission statements, websites, and strategic plans. These values are often taken seriously and sincerely. Yet, even with the best of intentions, many institutions struggle to align espoused values and lived experience. This is not because of malice or neglect. It is because the systems, practices, and philosophical commitments that shape daily operations have usually been inherited from models designed for different purposes.
Decision-making structures, program development, communication routines, and governance models often reflect priorities such as institutional preservation, centralized control, particular types of academic performance, or operational separation. These systems may still function, but they do not always support the values the institution now claims to hold. When these inherited systems are not examined, a gap begins to grow between what the institution says and what people experience.
We don’t tend to notice this misalignment because we rarely question underlying assumptions about our work. It’s why, for example, a school may espouse justice as an important value while continuing to have operational structures that burden students with unsustainable levels of educational debt. We can also see it when formation is named as a goal, but the only recognized measure of excellence is academic performance. Another example could be when a school talks about being student-centered but builds program structures around a calendar that is most convenient for faculty. These examples are not failures of intent. No one is setting out to foster misalignment. Instead, they are signs that the institution’s actions have not yet caught up to its convictions.
The practice of aligning espoused values with lived experience begins by acknowledging this reality. It does not assume that things are already aligned. It assumes that some level of misalignment is always present and that addressing it is an ongoing responsibility. Engaging in this practice, therefore, is not an attempt to fix everything at once. It is about cultivating a posture of learning across the whole organization.
That learning posture requires humility and disruption. As institutions begin to name areas of misalignment, they must also be prepared for the implications. Many of the traditional processes used to include voices or gather input will no longer be sufficient. Over time, those processes may even become harmful because they reinforce existing patterns of exclusion or control. As alignment deepens, older ways of engaging the community can feel inadequate or even performative.
This inclusion of new voices is one of the more difficult aspects of the work. When new voices are invited to speak into decisions, it can unsettle those who were used to being heard first or used to having their own space and time to talk about decisions. When long-standing structures are questioned, it can create discomfort. But these disruptions are signs that the institution is taking seriously the values it espouses.
In that way, the language of “values” begins to dissipate over time. It is replaced with a commitment to shared practices. In short, what an institution does (i.e., its actions) communicates what it believes and values. When there is misalignment, trust will be nearly impossible to build. This practice, therefore, is about embracing the ongoing work of becoming more faithful to what we claim to believe. It invites the whole community to pay attention to the ways practices may unintentionally contradict commitments. And it opens the door to new patterns of participation, where every voice is seen as essential to the life of the whole. Over time, this kind of alignment builds trust and strengthens the integrity of the institution by making it more coherent, more honest, and more responsive to the mission it serves.
In the next post, we will turn to a second essential practice for building trustworthy community: stewarding resources with transparency.