City of Refuge Founder Bruce Deel on Rebuilding and Honoring Trust

1. How do you define trust?

I define trust to be an unwavering belief in the potential and inner strength in someone regardless of their current condition.

True trust allows an individual to begin with what I call ‘a clean unwrinkled sheet of paper’ which they can use to write their story, beginning at that moment.

2. How do we rebuild trust after it’s been broken?

One of the keys to rebuilding trust is to acknowledge our own shortcomings. If somebody has let us down, we often go: ‘Well, now you have to prove this, this, and this.’ Instead, take a step back and think: How many times have I let down those around me? How many times have I let down myself? When we acknowledge our own shortcomings, it makes us less apt to judge others on their shortcomings or failures. So that is the first thing: To acknowledge that we all fail, too.

We want others to give us a second or third or a fourth chance. It is about being able to weave our own life experiences with that person and to say, ‘our failures may look different, but I could list seventeen things just last week where I let others down or I let myself down.’ If we want the opportunity to rebuild that trust, we need to extend that grace and emotion to those around us.

3. What gets in the way of our ability to trust?

One of the main things that hold us back are our preconceived notions. We often judge an individual based on their appearance or some historical narrative related to that individual. When we allow preconceived notions or historical narratives to play into the picture that automatically results in walls of mistrust being established right up front.

When individuals walk in and I meet them for the first time, they often want to give me their back story—and my first response is: ‘I don’t want to know that right now.’ I don’t want my perception of them to be colored by where they’ve already been. I want to know: What’s their name? What’s their current situation? Do they need food or a place to sleep?’ Then we start from there. 

So I’ll often say: ‘I don’t want to know your story right now. Let’s just walk together as though we’re friend and friend and we both have a lot of potential.’ Because if we don’t do that, we’ll start to formulate a plan for them based on what we know about their past versus what we know about them as an individual.

4. In your book you talk a lot about your compassion work at City of Refuge and how your approach involves meeting people where they are and listening to what they want. You write, “a big part of what makes us different and special is still our emphasis on trusting the people who come through our doors from day one; not the person who they will be, but in the person they are.” Will you reflect on this?

Too often with trust, especially for those of us in compassion work, we have a picture of what we want the end result to be and that doesn’t align with what the individual is looking for. And if they don’t travel the path that we’ve set for them, we feel like it’s failed, but they may feel they’ve succeeded. So, we don’t measure success by the end result. We measure success by the number of opportunities we have to join someone on their journey.

Many NGOs and non-profits—and I don’t mean this in a negative way—work toward “recovery” or graduation or success in some measurable level. In my mind, that creates a scenario where that individual becomes a number that you are now processing through your machine to come out with a stamp of approval somewhere down the road.

We start without a specific end in mind. Our goal is to trust and to bring dignity to that individual; to help them believe in themselves and to share the resources they need to move in a place in life that they desire, not simply the place that we desire for them.

5. What else has your compassion work taught you in regard to building trust in others and having that reciprocated?

We have a program that works with survivors of human trafficking, which includes 48 women and some children. I should never automatically assume that a female should trust me day one because most of her pain and sorrow has been inflicted upon her by men. The only way I can ever get her to trust me is by showing her that I trust her. I don’t label her a prostitute no matter how many prostitution-related arrests she may have had. We’re also careful with the other labels we use: We don’t call people victims; we call them survivors. We don’t call people homeless; we call them in-transition. By using this vocabulary, it starts to bring a level of dignity and self-fulfillment to their own identity. If we can help to rebirth that in them, which is often lost, then they can start to trust.

I don’t have any assumption that because I extend trust that that is automatically going to be reciprocated. That will take a long process, especially for the people who come to us because they have been disappointed over and over in life.

6. Is it necessary to trust oneself in order to trust others?

Absolutely. But I actually trust those who I serve or walk with more than I trust myself because I know my history more than I know their history. I know how many times I’ve let myself down. I know how many times I’ve let people around me down. We have to trust ourselves, but more importantly, I believe we learn to trust ourselves better by trusting others.

It may be a bit of a reverse from what this question implies—that we may have to trust ourselves first before we trust others—but I think it is actually the opposite. As I have learned over these 23 years to trust others, I’ve been able to trust my own instincts more. I’ve been able to trust my own motives more. To trust my own drive and why I do what I do more because of what I’ve been able to invest in others in the form of trust.

7. What else is important to know about trust?

Trust crosses all economic, racial, social statuses. In my travels around the country for speaking engagements, trust is too often related only to those who work with people in poverty, returning citizens, or veterans with PTSD. But trust has to be practiced in the corporate environment. In the political environment. Everywhere. If there is not a feeling of trust in those environments, people will always operate out of fear rather than out of confidence.

Trust is not just about compassionate operations. Trust is about life in general.

Bruce Deel is the founder and CEO of City of Refuge, Senior Pastor of the Mission Church, a speaker, and an author. Based in Atlanta, City of Refuge is a transitional environment that provides housing, medical and mental health care, educational training, vocational training, case management, a safe house for victims of sex trafficking, an auto repair training center and a host of other services to the disenfranchised and homeless of the city.