Suppose you're convinced that the design is in the text, that the church has drifted from it and that the drift has costs. Anyone with any influence will then be tempted to change things, to restructure, announce and implement.

The New Testament forbids the method, though not the recovery.

Paul declines to command

The shortest letter in the Pauline corpus is a study in refused authority:

Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee... whom I would have retained with me... But without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. (Philemon 8-9, 13-14)

Paul has the standing to command. He says so. And he declines to use it, for a stated reason: that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. A good thing done under compulsion isn't the good thing. Paul would rather Philemon do less, freely, than more, by order.

The principle is that the church has no instrument for compelling the will. It has power enough, but the thing it wants can't be produced by power. Peter says the same to elders: not by constraint, but willingly... neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock (1 Peter 5:2-3). His elders are examples who enforce nothing.

Wheat and tares

Jesus's parable of the tares is usually read as a lesson about the final judgment. It's also a lesson about method:

The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat. Let both grow together until the harvest. (Matthew 13:28-30)

The servants want to fix the field now. The master forbids it, even though the tares are no good, because pulling them would destroy the wheat. The impatient correction does more damage than the problem.

Apply that to recovery. A congregation that has drifted has real believers inside the drifted structure, whose faith is entangled with it. Rip out the structure and you rip out the people. The design has to be recovered the way the master saved his wheat, by letting it grow.

Why coercion fails even when it succeeds

There's a practical reason underneath the theological one. Compliance isn't formation, and compliance is all that imposing anything can produce.

The research on motivation is clear that when people do something because they're made to, the doing stops when the pressure stops, and often the willingness to do it freely is damaged in the process. A congregation that's restructured from the top gets the structure and loses the thing the structure was for. The members experienced it as something done to them, and the one-anothers can't be done to anyone.

A second reason is that criticism of a system a person belongs to makes them defend it harder. A leader who announces that the church has been doing it wrong and will now do it right has, by that announcement, made the congregation into defenders of the old way. What looks like stubbornness is what threatened people do.

So the method has to be teaching, since teaching neither threatens nor compels.

Teach before touch

The rule is to teach the design from the text, with no proposal attached, for as long as it takes, before touching anything.

Teaching isn't a threat. To read 1 Corinthians 14 aloud and ask what it describes attacks nobody's church, because that is Bible study. The Bereans were commended for exactly this when they searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11). A congregation that has read the one-anothers, the elder texts, the assembly texts, and the money texts, slowly, over a year, without anyone proposing anything, will arrive at its own conclusions. Conclusions a person reaches are held in a way that conclusions handed to him never are.

Paul's instruction to Timothy describes the posture:

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. (2 Timothy 2:24-25)

Not strive. Gentle. Patient. In meekness instructing. And the outcome is left to God: if God peradventure will give them. The teacher teaches and leaves the change to God.

Three traps attend the rule. The first is teaching with a proposal hidden inside (a Bible study that's really a campaign), which people detect instantly and rightly resent. The second is teaching without ever demonstrating. Then the design remains an idea. The third is impatience, which means teaching for a month and then touching, when the text needed a year. A fourth trap is worse than the other three. The teacher must not be the beneficiary. If the person teaching the design is the person who would gain from its adoption (in standing, in position, in vindication), the teaching is compromised before it begins.

The circle is the whole technology

If nothing can be imposed, then things change by demonstration. The demonstration is small.

Four or six believers meet in a house each week and do the one-anothers. They read the text together, confess to each other, bear each other's burdens and share a meal. They meet as a circle of friends who have decided to obey some verbs, outside any program of the church.

Nobody needs permission to have friends. The circle requires no vote, no budget, no restructuring, and no announcement. It threatens nothing, because it takes nothing from anyone. And it is visible. The research on how innovations spread finds that a powerful factor is whether people can see the thing working in someone they know. A circle that's running, quietly, in the congregation's own sight, is worth more than a hundred sermons about it, because it turns the design from an argument into a fact.

The method is an old one. John Wesley's class meetings (a dozen people, weekly, asking each other how their souls fared) began as a way of collecting a building debt and became the engine of a movement. The Moravians had their bands. The Pietists proposed ecclesiola in ecclesia, the little church within the church, and their six proposals for reform read almost exactly like the design: more Scripture in the hands of the people, the priesthood of all believers exercised, practice over doctrine, gentleness in controversy, formation of ministers by life as well as by lecture, and preaching for edification.

Every renewal the church has ever had began as a circle inside the structure instead of a restructuring from above.

When blessing is refused

Ask the leadership for their blessing. Say what you're doing and why. Most will give it, because a circle of members reading the Bible and caring for each other isn't something a pastor can reasonably forbid.

If the blessing is refused, don't fight, and don't leave. Keep meeting, since nobody needs permission to have friends. Keep honoring the leadership publicly, and keep the circle free of any agenda about the church. Either way the outcome is worth having. In time the leadership will see the fruit, or the circle will have become the one place in that congregation where the design is real.

The three-year horizon

Nothing here is fast. There is a year of teaching, then a year of the circle running, then a year of the circle multiplying. When it reaches ten or twelve, it should divide, so that each half can keep the table small enough for every one of you.

That makes three years, with no announcements, no restructuring, and no coercion. At the end of it, a congregation will have inside it a network of households doing what the New Testament describes. It grew and was chosen, without being imposed or enforced, and like the wheat it stood undisturbed by anyone pulling tares.

Without thy mind would I do nothing. That was Paul's method with one man. With a church, no other method works.