  I received a sermon in my email inbox from John Piper @ urlLink desiringGod.org that deals with the question of making decisions as a church body, needing to take votes, needing 100% unanimity, etc. Sometimes when a decision is made, the congregation can feel left out, put out, or put upon - and our democratic egos get bruised because we not only disgree, but we were also not consulted, and now we don't really have a say in the matter. He is one of my favorite speakers; I love anyone who makes me stop and go hmmmmmm... and this case is no exception. There are changes coming at CWO, and if I'm really on board with what God's doing at the church, what am I to do if I don't agree with the decisions being made?
Piper shares an interesting thought in this paragraph: "I would go to urlLink Philippians 3 . Here Paul would like for them to come to one mind (as he often pleads), but he does not envision an inability to continue working together until that unanimity happens. He says, &#8220;I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained&#8221; (3:14 -16). This strikes me as amazingly realistic. There are some people who are not yet persuaded. If they took a vote now, there would be differences. But Paul does not talk in either-or terms for the fellowship. He sees process and movement. There is no reason to think the whole church is paralyzed till the minority arrives at agreement.
That can even happen after a vote that they disagreed on. " I have always considered those lines to come from Paul-who-knew-better to those-who-didn't that "if you don't agree with me, fine - God can show you I'm right". I'd seen it with a certain amount of arrogance and cockiness, maybe a remnant of his Pharisee days; but also with a confidence that God was showing Him something important right now, take his word for it, ask God to show you the same thing. But the new twist I'm seeing is that Paul is more concerned about moving now in God's purposes, and allowing Him to move in the hearts of others without being held back now.
There's a thought in Brian McLaren's urlLink FINDING FAITH that fits here: If I don't agree with something that might in fact be right, I have the option of "jumping in" and feeling it out from the inside, rather than just poking holes from the outside about why I think it's wrong. That's a huge leap of faith for me most of the time, probably for most people. But if you trust your leaders, and trust God in leading them - then why shouldn't they be given the benefit of any of my doubts?
Why can't I jump in and let God prove that it's wrong? More often than not, I find that my own understanding was limited and wrong, while the vision ahead of the pastor or other leader was in the direction of God's plans for us at the time. Just thinking out loud. Real humility recognizes that God's got something going on, that He's undertaking it and we're just along for the ride, and that with the Spirit's discernment we can join in the effort and stop kicking against the goads. 
