Present the New Testament's design for the church to a congregation, plainly, from the text, and something strange happens. People who believe every word of Scripture will resist it, and since they can hardly disagree with verses they're reading, the reasons are ones they can't quite name.
Jesus saw it:
No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. (Luke 5:39)
The old is better. Straightway tells you he says it before he has tasted the new. The preference for what one already has arrives ahead of evaluation, and Jesus states it as a plain fact about people, without a word of rebuke.
The reasons for this are now well understood, and knowing them lets a congregation deal with its own objections before they arrive.
The current arrangement is judged right because it exists
Human beings assume that existing states are good, simply because they exist. In one experiment, students judged a degree requirement of thirty-two credits "right and the way things ought to be" when told it was the current rule, and judged thirty-eight credits right when told that was the current rule. They heard the same arguments and reached opposite conclusions. Prescription followed from existence.
This requires no motive. It's a default of cognition. Everyone in your congregation already judges its current arrangement right, before any argument has been made, for a reason that has nothing to do with its merits.
Jesus met this in the Pharisees:
For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men... Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. (Mark 7:8-9)
You might expect wicked men rejecting God's word, but these were sincere men whose tradition had existed long enough to feel like the commandment. The existing thing had become the standard against which the text was measured, instead of the other way around.
The first objection you can predict is This is how the church has always done it. That is existence bias spoken aloud. Since it wasn't produced by argument, arguing won't answer it. It is answered by history, by showing era by era which century each feature of the modern church arrived in, and by the recovery of the old paths.
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein. (Jeremiah 6:16)
Jeremiah's remedy is to reframe. The design is the old path. It's older than every feature that replaced it, and once that's seen, the same bias that protected the current arrangement begins to protect the design.
The challenger needs credentials; the defender needs none
Defenders of an existing state appear principled, because they're asking for nothing, while challengers, who are asking for something, appear self-seeking. The arrangement's advocate needs no standing; its critic must justify having one.
Expect the second objection, Who are you to say? Claim no standing at all. You're a reader, with nothing to propose. The Bereans were commended for exactly this: they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11). Put the text in front of people and let the text make the claim. A reader needs no credentials.
Criticism strengthens what it criticizes
The finding that should change how anyone speaks about the church is that people exposed to criticism of a system they belong to defend the system more afterward, not less. Threat produces defense. And the effect is strongest in exactly the people the system serves worst, because they have the most dissonance to resolve. The more it has cost them to stay, the more they need to believe staying was right.
Conversely, when people are reminded of what their system has really done well, the defensive response drops. Affirmation lowers the guard that threat raises.
Apply that to intra-ecclesial apologetics, which is a critique of the arrangement a congregation is inside. Delivered as a threat, it produces the opposite of what it intends, and the congregation shores up the arrangement with more conviction than before.
The same mechanism lies behind the third objection, you are being divisive; you are attacking the church. It is a sincere objection. The people saying it have experienced a threat and are doing what threatened people do.
This is also why honoring must come first, and at length. It isn't diplomacy. I say this because the research says affirmation is what makes critique hearable. Paul knew this; his letters to the most troubled churches open with thanksgiving for what's real in them (1 Corinthians 1:4-7; 2 Corinthians 1:3-7). And it's why the design must be taught before anything is touched. A proposal threatens people in a way that teaching the text with no proposal attached does not, and the moment the proposal arrives, the defense arrives with it.
What seems inevitable is defended hardest
People defend most fiercely the arrangements they can't imagine escaping. A person who can't picture leaving will justify staying, because the alternative (living inside something one has judged wrong) is unbearable. And the more of a person's life a system contains, the more he defends it.
Then comes the fourth objection, That is unrealistic. There is no alternative. It could never work here. Those words sound like an assessment of alternatives, but they come from the perception of inevitability doing its work, and that perception feeds itself, since a system judged inescapable is defended and a defended system looks more inescapable.
Demonstration breaks it where argument fails. A circle of four believers meeting in a house, visible and costing nothing, is a trial of the design and also evidence that the arrangement isn't inevitable. Evidence of escapability is what reduces the defense.
The wounded defend it too
It hurts to learn that the people a system serves worst often defend it hardest. Nineteen years of remaining inside an arrangement that didn't serve you is nineteen years of dissonance, and the easiest resolution is to believe it did.
The fifth objection comes from the very person this discipline exists to help. But I love this church. It has been so good to me. She may say it first, and most fervently. Don't argue with her. Although her defense can look like evidence that the cost wasn't paid, it's a symptom of the cost she paid. The structural account is offered when it's asked for, and not before.
"God has blessed this church"
The last objection wears a theological costume and treats prosperity as proof. The church exists, it has grown, therefore God approves.
Scripture answers this one directly, from the mouth of the one who assesses churches:
I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. (Revelation 3:1)
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. (Revelation 3:17)
Sardis had a reputation. Laodicea had wealth. Both were rejected as indicators. The Lord of the churches doesn't treat a name or a budget as evidence of anything. Neither should we.
The list, and the posture
In the order they arrive, with the mechanism behind each and the answer to each, the six objections run like this. This is how it has always been is existence bias, answered by history and the old paths; Who are you to say is the standing deficit, answered by claiming none and reading the text; and You are being divisive is the threat response, answered by honoring first, at length, and by teaching before touching. There is no alternative is inevitability, which demonstration answers where argument can't; But I love this church is the wounded's defense, which you receive and don't try to answer; and God has blessed this church is the just-world belief, answered from Sardis and Laodicea.
Underneath all six, people defend the arrangement because defending it is how they bear being inside it, and the person defending most fiercely is very often the person it's costing most.
The diagnosis must explain the sincere. This is why the sincere will resist the diagnosis. They stay sincere while they resist, and once you see the resistance as a symptom, you treat it with patience instead of force.