10.  Don't insist on unanimity.
In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul mentions that the Corinthian church had punished a man who had been caught in sexual immorality---and that they had done so by a "majority."  Presumably, the fact that Paul had to use the word "majority" means that some of the members of the church voted against that action, and that they were, finally, simply outvoted.

There's nothing unbiblical about outvoting people.

During the reform of Third Avenue, we received advice from at least a couple of people that a church should never move forward on important issues unless everyone is in agreement, unless there is unanimity.  Given the Bible's exhortations to church unity, there's obviously some initial appeal to that advice.  After all, if the Holy Spirit wants a church to move in a certain direction, surely he'll lead all the members of that church to be happy with that direction, right?  And don't love, compassion, and mutual submission mean that a church ought to wait until all of its members can be unified in taking a certain step?

I can understand the appeal of that argument, but at the end of the day I don't think it holds up.  That's for a few reasons, the easiest and best of which is simply Paul's use of the word "majority."  He was quite happy for the Corinthian church to move forward with something less than perfect unity, because moving forward was the right thing to do.  Besides that, there's also the simple fact that we still live in a fallen world, and it is thus a category mistake---a forgetting that we haven't yet been glorified---to think that Christians will always come to agreement, even on very important matters.

In all likelihood, there will come a time in a process of reform when all the arguments have been laid out, all attempts at persuasion have been made, all reasonable compromises have been worked through, and yet still some members of the church are determined to oppose the reform.  What do you do then?  Do you simply press forward and outvote the people who are opposed, or do you put the reform on ice and wait?  Which of those is the more loving thing to do?

Let me make an argument that love means pressing forward.  Waiting may very well seem like a kind and loving thing to do for the opposing person.  But you also have to remember that your responsibility is not simply to that person--it is to the entire church.  And if the reforms you are introducing are biblical and good for the church as a whole, then love for the whole church compels you not to hold up reforms that would be good for them simply for the sake of a few. 

Besides, love ought to take a long view, and if these are good reforms, then they will be good also for those who are opposed to them, even if they don't recognize it right now.  At Third Avenue, there is one particular older couple who endured the reforms we made, pretty staunchly opposed to them the whole time.  But God bless them, they stuck it out, stayed in the church, and now even tearfully thank God for what he has done in their church---and in their lives.  This dear and wonderful brother told me just a few weeks ago in fact that he has grown more as a Christian in the last few years than in the whole rest of his life.  Pressing on with the reform of the church, even over his objections, turned out to be one of the most spiritually beneficial things we could have done for him.

As in so many of these points, being willing to press forward on something less than a unanimous vote is a matter of remembering that you are ultimately working for the good of the whole church.  As a shepherd, your responsibility is for the whole flock, and if one reluctant sheep decides to stay in the desert, loving that  sheep does not mean you keep the whole thirsty flock there with him.  Maybe it does mean that you trek back to the desert to go find that lost sheep.  But any shepherd worth his salt will get the rest of the flock to the pasture first.

In case you don't receive the eJournal, we just published a new one on family and parenting. You can see the articles and reviews listed individually at the 9Marks home page--www.9marks.org. Or you can download a PDF of the entire thing here.

A while back Kyle asked in the comments section:

I'd love to see some posts from y'all about how/where you search for or come across new music for congregational singing. I remember Mark seeming to have an endless supply of great hymns I'd never heard of. Reveal your secrets!

Well, I'll jump in and give some advice. But first, a caveat: I am completely illiterate when it comes to music. Music and chemistry were the two subjects in school where my brain simply decided it wasn't going happen. Countless times people have tried to explain to me what a chord is or what is meant by a key. It's just not something my brain wants to understand. All of which is to say, be encouraged... you can't be dumber than me when it comes to music.

Here are things that I have found useful when it comes to finding new songs (or old ones that you don't know):

1. Ask other pastors. This might seem obvious, but there is a treasure trove out there. If you have relationships with other pastors, pick their brains. I try to have lunch or coffee with another pastor at least once a week, and I try to remember to ask them to give me a song that I don't know but that they love at their church.

2. Ask new people in your church. Find out if there were any great songs that they sang in their old church that might be helpful.

3. Keep an eye out as you read. Lots of authors (Packer, Grudem, Piper...) quote old hymns in their writings. Make a note, look them up, and sing them!

4. Collect hymnals. I use The Trinity Hymnal, The Baptist Hymnal (1991), and Praise! most often. It can be helpful to search them using Scripture references or look for certain authors. You'll find gems that you never knew.

5. Other good resources:

a. Sovereign Grace Music -- Lots of great theological content in a contemporary style. We use songs from "Valley of Vision" a lot and are learning ones from the new "Psalms" CD.

b. RUF Hymnbook -- Awesome old hymns with updated tunes. This is a great resource because there are so many old hymns with rich, Christ-exalting words and terrible tunes. My favorites are: "The Love of Christ is Rich and Free", "The Sands of Time Are Sinking", "Jesus I Come", and "Sometimes a Light Surprises".

c. Reformed Praise -- Good site with lots of resources. I particularly like "O God the Holy Spirit".

d. CyberHymnal -- Tons and tons of hymns. You can listen to tunes, see alternate tunes, search by topic or Scripture.

I'm sure there are a million other resources out there, but those are the ones that I use!

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.

8.  Decide what's crucial.  Be willing to compromise on the rest.
I remember having a conversation with another then-deacon of 3ABC, right in the middle of the reform there, in which we agreed that we just might vote against our own proposed constitution, and recommend that the entire church do so as well.  It wasn't that we didn't like the finished product we'd proposed, and it wasn't that we'd changed our minds.  It was that there had arisen a possibility that something we considered crucial to the church's well-being would be changed.  And we decided that it was actually better for the church's well-being to send the constitution down in flames than to allow the reform to proceed on those terms.

Bull-headed?  Uncompromising?  Yea, I suppose so.  But that's not always bad in a leader, at least not when your motives are right.

Of course, that's not always the case, either.  Anybody who's ever spent time and sweat thinking through and developing something---whether a business plan or a church constitution---knows that there's a natural tendency to take inordinate ownership of every line of it, to impute some mystic, poetic beauty to the whole and think your opus is being marred if anyone tries to change anything.  Natural or not, though, that's a tendency that deserves to be fought against, because it's just not true.

A constitution is not a work of art.  Every line of it is not equally important, and you'll save yourself some heartache if you spend some time thinking about which parts of your plan are truly non-negotiable, and which could be given up without doing any real harm to the church.  So in our case, for example, we decided that one crucial matter for the church's well-being was that new elder nominations should be made by the existing elders, and not from the floor of the church (maybe that'll be another post later).  That requirement caused no small amount of conversation among the church, and we decided that if the church finally voted to amend that section, we simply couldn't support the adoption of the constitution.  It was a crucial matter, we thought---a deal-breaker even.

But there were all kinds of other matters that weren't crucial, even matters that were important.   And in the interest of protecting those things that were crucial, we found ourselves compromising on things we thought might be important, even wise.  Don't make "wise" your criterion for non-negotiability.  For one thing, if you wrote the thing, you're likely to think all of it is wise.  And besides, "wise" is very often a sliding scale.  You may not think a certain idea is as wise as your original one, but if you're a good leader, you'll realize that "less wise" is not necessarily "wrong," and that it is imminently worth it to give in to one or two points of less wise in order to preserve the crucial.

Two things are at stake here:  On the one hand, by defending those issues you truly think are crucial for the good of the church, you show strong leadership and deep care for the church.  But on the other hand, by being willing to compromise on alot---even most---of your plan, you show that you're not just being bull-headed and territorial.

The overarching point here is to keep the goal in sight.  Your goal isn't to push your particular plan through so you can get your name on a pew; it's to establish a structure that will tend to the church's good.  Some parts of your plan will be absolutely crucial to that goal.  Most parts won't.  Your job is to pray the Lord would help you to know the difference.

My man Carter posted this video over on his blog.  This puts another spin on "out of the mouths of babes!" 

And I'm pretty sure I heard someone say "Teach on!" and the pastor say, "Raise an offering!"

I can't tell if the lil' fella is imitating the Pentecostal preahing he sees or the WWF.

Between Two Worlds posts an excellent interview between iMonk and David Powlison on the application of scripture.  Good stuff to perhaps print and share with our people for their personal use.

Mike, a similar story appears in the Times.  Isn't the evangelical move left to support Obama mentioned somewhere as a sign of the end of all things and the coming of the anti-Christ?  Oh, I'm sorry.  Maybe that was the Left Behind novels.

Sorry about the long hiatus in this series of posts.  I've been in the process of moving from Louisville back here to Washington, where I've joined the pastoral staff of Capitol Hill Baptist.  What a joy it is to be back here with these brothers and sisters!  But on with the show:

7.  Show up to the meeting with a completed idea.  Then let go of it.

In some ways this is just a basic principle of any good leadership.  Have you ever been to a committee meeting where everyone came empty-handed, expecting to build a program or compose a document from the ground up?  It's excruciating.  No one knows where to start even thinking about this, and you end up pawing around until someone, almost by default, says something like, "Why don't we start with Church A's constitution, and go from there?" 

I know at first blush it might seem very open and fraternal for everyone to show up with no preconceived ideas.  That way everyone can put their heads together and come up with a truly community-created, we-are-the-world idea, right?  Eh, no.  The fact of the matter is that just about every committee will work better and more efficiently if someone shows up with a completed idea, and then lets the committee rework and rethink it.  So let's say your church has appointed a committee to write a new constitution that will be presented to the church.  And let's say you're on it. You have two ways of approaching that responsibility.  You could show up to the meetings with nothing in hand, no ideas on paper, and just see where things go as the committee talks---or where they don't go, which is more likely. 

Or you could show up with something that will serve as a jumping-off point, even a draft constitution that you present to the committee for consideration.  The benefits of doing this---or at least of somebody on the committee doing this---are enormous.  You save time; everybody sees a direction to go and you don't waste time sitting around waiting on someone to take the lead.  You facilitate others' ideas; the wheels start turning because suddenly there are some ideas to build on.  You set direction (that is, you lead); the draft becomes the fundamental structure on which other ideas hang. 

But here's perhaps the most important part.  Any time you show up to a committee with a draft in hand, you have to do so with a great deal of humility---that is, you have to be willing to give the draft up to the committee.  Let go of it; it's not yours; it's your gift to the committee, and they can accept it or not.  Don't show up with a draft and then get offended when people want to change it.  Don't go in with the attitude that everyone should just agree with your ideas.  Show up with your draft and say, "Here's an idea of where we might start.  Read through it and see what you think.  If you want to completely toss it out and start over, that's totally fine, but I thought this might give us a head-start." 

Nine times out of ten (eh...or at least several times out of ten...), your fellow committee members will breathe a sigh of relief.  They won't like every one of your ideas, but they'll appreciate your leadership.

Interesting front page story in today's WaPo on evangelical voters skewing left. It features a picture of James Merritt's son above the fold. Read it here.

HT: my newspaper delivery guy