Photo by Cindy

1. Never talk to them again!

Hahah, just kidding. Sometimes when you don’t agree with a person, you still have to deal with them. Perhaps they are in charge of an important ministry of your church or maybe they’re the pastor. You need to not only deal with them, but also convince them to agree with you sometimes.

I have disagreed with church leaders many times. I have to admit that I’m not “successful” at getting people to agree with me a lot of the times, but I have learned a lot of lessons throughout the years.. so I’m sharing those with you :p.

The real way to “deal with” church leaders is relationships.

1. Build relationships with the church leaders.
They may disagree with you on your stance on some issue, but buy building a relationship with the church leader, they understand that you are a person and you understand that they are a person. There are feelings and inherent biases in every person. We are much less critical of our friends. We tend to accept people we like and want to agree with people that we like. Show the church leader that you truly care about him/her and they’ll begin to truly care about you. Friendship is very very powerful. Make friends with the church leader.

2. Build relationships with other people in the church.
Have genuine care and friendship with the church body. A church leader may distrust your ideas if they don’t believe that you care about the body and really love the body as much as they do. If they see that you really do care about and love the church body, your motives become unquestionable. A person who has the wrong idea but correct motives is much more palatable than someone with wrong ideas and wrong motives. They might not agree with your ideas right away, but they will see that you have the right motives.

3. Build up your relationship with the Lord.
It is very easy to see someone who is doing spiritually well versus someone who is far from the Lord. Not that this should be the motivation for building up your relationship with God.. (that is dangerous and could lead to self-righteousness and false spirituality) but those with a strong relationship with God are naturally trusted. People will look to you for spiritual guidance.

4. Pray regularly for the people who disagree with you.
Perhaps their heart will change if the Lord changes their heart. Perhaps the Lord will change your heart. Who knows? By praying for the person, that will put your heart in line with God’s. It prevents developing bitterness or anger towards that person. Bitterness or anger, it it manifests itself will destroy any chance you have of building a relationship with the person or getting the person to agree with you. Once they know that you are angry with them, they will become angry with you.

5. Listen and consider what they say to you.
I know this is a shocker, but maybe you’re wrong. Or maybe you’re not as completely correct as you thought you were. Maybe your ideas need a bit of modification. It’s important to have a balanced perspective of your own ideas. Maybe you can come to some sort of compromise. Compromises are not always good and sometimes they must be avoided, but perhaps there is a part of your idea which is not essential.

Sometimes none of these things will work and you’ll continue to disagree. At that time you’ll have to decide how important the vision or idea you have is. Is it worth moving on without this person agreeing? Is it worth going to another church for?

But often with a bit of time and exercising these tips, the person will begin to come around. I can’t tell you how many times I personally have changed my mind about a subject just because I became friends with a person or realized that their true motivation is not a bad one.