9.  Talk alot with those most opposed.  Make a good-faith effort to alleviate their concerns.

I suppose the alternative to this advice would be simply to count noses, see if you have enough votes to pass your reforms, and then rest on your laurels if you do.  I think a leader in a church, though, needs to do a little more in the interest of showing love and of preserving the greatest degree of unity possible.

If you find yourself deep in a reform process in a church, you're pretty quickly going to find out that most of your time is spent talking with people  who don't like what you're doing.  (That's just life, by the way.   How many calls do you think cell phone customer service folks get from people who just want to thank them?  Hmmm....might be a nice surprise for someone today if you have a free five minutes....)   At any rate, you're going to spend alot of time talking to people who, for one reason or another, are not fully on board with the reform.

There are essentially two kinds of people who have "concerns."  In the first category are those who are simply intractable.  They're not interested in having any particular concern addressed.  They're just concerned by the whole idea of reform, and no amount of persuasion or concession (short of throwing in the towel) is going to alleviate those concerns.  In the second category are those who really are bothered by a certain issue, but whose concerns can be alleviated either by a little persuasion or by a little thoughtful given-and-take.

It seems to me that it's best to begin with the assumption that every concerned person you talk to is in the second category, until they prove otherwise.  Merely concerned until proven intractable.  Innocent until proven guilty.

So how do you deal with a person's concerns?  Really, it's not rocket science, nor does it require Solomonic wisdom.  Start out by listening.  Try to figure out what's bothering them.  Try to see the theological or practical objection they're making, and try hard in your own mind to make it bother you, too.  If you can do that, if you can make yourself feel the problem, then you can start to address it honestly and effectively.  I think there are several ways to approach it at this point:

1. You can try to persuade.  Show them other parts of the reform plan that will head off the problem they're fearing.  If they think the elders have too much authority, show them the section of the constitution where the congregation can remove elders unilaterally.  Don't just go at the person with a logical sledge-hammer.  Try to see the root of what's bothering them, and aim your persuasion at that.
2. You can make concessions.  This is where the previous post in this series comes into play.  Be willing to concede something that will both alleviate this person's concern and preserve what you are convinced needs to be preserved.  At Third Avenue, for example, in the debate over who would nominate elders, we made a concession in which we added a clause to the constitution that once a year, the elders had to publicly solicit elder recommendations from the congregation (the recommendations had to be given in private, on paper).  That preserved the crucial (in our minds) provision that elder nominations would be made by the elders, but it also alleviated the concern that the elders would make that decision as a sort of secret cabal, without input from the congregation. 
3. You can change the plan.  Start out with the theological conviction that the Holy Spirit works through his entire church, and you have a strong justification for listening carefully to those who come to you with concerns.  Do that, and you'll also find that the church will very often be able to improve what you've put together.  More than once, I listened to a certain person and wound up saying, "Yep, I agree.  That's a problem.  Let's change it."

And what if none of that works?  What if you give it a good-faith effort and still come to no agreement?  In some cases like that, you'll realize that you're dealing with a truly intractable person.  In other cases, you'll realize that the other person is working just as hard as you to come to agreement, and you've just come to an impasse.  In either of those cases (though the spirit will certainly be much different), I believe you just have to press on.  Eventually, you have to make a decision and move forward.  That's not always fun, but sometimes good leadership requires it.

More on that next time:  #10--Don't insist on unanimity, and be really careful with supermajorities.