Church Reform When You're Not the Pastor (Part 2)

I originally posted 5 articles from over at 9 Marks ministries blog titled "Church Reform When You're Not the Pastor". Well the boys over at 9 Marks have post more articles to the series so instead of updating the old post I created a new "part 2" so everyone would see it. These articles have been very helpful for myself. Hopefully they can speak to you and your situation at your church http://blog.9marks.org/

by Greg Gilbert

6. Train other leaders. Aim for majorities.

One of the things I've learned in my few years working on reforming a church is that congregation-wide agreement does not fall out of the sky on a silver platter. Reforming a church is a long process that requires a whole lot of conversations, a whole lot of persuasion---and a whole lot of votes. And at the end of the day, if you're going to facilitate reform, you need majorities that will vote for it.

Once you've been recognized as a leader in your church, the next step is to work on discipling other men who could also be recognized as leaders, and who, eventually, could join you in forming a majority of the leadership that wants to press for reform. As in so much of the Christian life, that's a long process of identifying men whom God has gifted for leadership, spending time with them, teaching them, and preparing them spiritually and otherwise for leadership.

When I came to Third Avenue, there were three men (including Aaron Menikoff who blogs here occasionally) on the board of deacons who were in favor of change. But there were three other men on the board who were not. When I was elected as a deacon, after several months of serving as a member in the church, all of us knew that my becoming a deacon made it 4-3 in favor of reform. And so we started reforming the church on a series of 4-3 votes.

Now one can argue that this was somehow unethical, and that it would have been better to try to persuade one (or even all three) of the other men to agree with the idea of reform.........

Click below to finish reading the articles
Article 5
Article 6
Article 7
Article 8