4.  Aspire to leadership.
I realize I'm in danger here of sounding like I'm calling for some Macchiavelli-style takeover of a church.  I don't want to do that, which is why I posted numbers 2 and 3 of this series before this one.  As a faithful church member, your goal isn't to weasel your way into leadership and start issuing diktats.  It's to edify the saints.

That doesn't mean, however, that leadership---and aspiring to it---isn't important.  I've known a few men in my life who have seemed to eschew leadership in the church, having no interest in it, not aspiring to it, and generally treating it like politicians treat questions about a vice-presidential nomination:  haven't thought about it, thanks for asking.  I can understand that.  There's definitely something unseemly and subChristian about a person who claws after positions of leadership and whose ministry would evaporate if he weren't nominated as a leader eventually.  What you want in a leader is someone whose motivation for ministry is not desire for recognition but rather love for the saints.

But here's the next question:  What if your motives are right, at least as far as we can talk about right motives in fallen creatures?  What if you've spent time in prayer and self-examination, and you've worked hard to eclipse any motive for personal aggrandizement with a desire to lead God's people for their good?  Is it still unseemly to desire to be in leadership?  Should every Christian be indifferent as to whether he's ever recognized as a leader or not?  I don't think so.  "If anyone aspires to the office of overseer," Paul writes (1 Tim 3:1), "he desires a noble task."  So long as you're aspiring to leadership for the right reasons---that is, for the good of the saints and not your own honor---wanting to be a leader in the church is not some breach of humility or evidence of pride.  It's an honorable, noble desire to use your gifts for the good of God's people.  After all, as Paul writes, leadership exists "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." (Eph 4:12)

Practically speaking, too, it's just a fact that you're probably not going to be able to reform a church unless you're a part of that church's leadership.  Congregations will follow their leaders, but they're not very likely to adopt sweeping changes that someone throws at them from the floor of a business meeting.  If you're recognized as one of the church's leaders, then you can persuade, you can teach, and you can even challenge from a position of recognized trust.  Not only so, but in most churches the processes of change usually run through the leadership.  They're the ones who have to recommend, or enact, or nominate, or whatever.  If you're outside the leadership, yes, you can make suggestions and let the leaders know what you think, but you're not able to be part of the conversation when decisions are actually being made.  But if you're part of the leadership, then you're able to talk and persuade all the way through the process.  In trying to effect change, that's invaluable.

So how do you do it?  What's the right way to aspire to leadership?  That's probably a good thing to think about at length, but I'd say  the best way to aspire to leadership in the church is to act like an elder.  So do the things that Scripture says an elder does.  Disciple younger Christians, help the church's leaders think through how to get things done, solve problems, teach publicly when you can, take responsibility for some ministry.  Also, spend some time getting to know the current leaders---not all your time, but some of it.  Cultivate a desire for the good of the church, and let the current leaders see it.  Your goal should never be to pull together a large enough faction to install you as a leader over the current leaders' objections.  Your goal ought to be to earn the trust of the whole church, and of the current leaders in particular---so that they see the benefit you would bring to the church as one of its leaders, and so that they want to work with you.

I think this is true even if your church has a really deficient definition of Christian leadership.  Even if your church tends to put in leadership the men who are just financial or political leaders in the community, if it's a Christian church there will still be a hunger, however buried, for genuine Christian leadership.  If you're in that situation, you have a long, hard haul ahead of you, but I think what you have to do is pretty clear:  Model that kind of real Christian leadership, and pray that when the church sees it, they will resonate with it and recognize it.

There's a reason we try to talk at our church about "recognizing" leaders instead of "making" them, or even "electing" them.  You don't become a leader after the church puts you in leadership.  It's the other way around:  The church puts you leadership after you've become a leader.  Even if your church doesn't use that kind of language---"recognizing" leaders, for instance---that's what it's doing, really.  It may take some time, but earning that kind of trust and recognition as a leader is an important step in working for reform.