By Editor Bob Terry
Back in the days when Americans were landing on the moon, a leadership training exercise emerged based on moon exploration. In the exercise, each player pretended to be an astronaut whose lunar rover had crashed miles from the landing site. The player was to use 20 items aboard the lunar rover to help himself or herself get safely back to base. Each participant was given a list of the items to place in priority order. The possibilities ranged from oxygen tanks to a rope, but only 10 of the items could be carried by the astronaut.
After each participant placed the 20 items in priority order, listing the 10 to be taken and the 10 to be left behind, the participants worked in small groups and ended with the decision of the group.
No group ever got the list in the order that NASA used for such a hypothetical situation. In fact, in some cases, some individual in the group came closer to the prioritized list than the group did as a whole. That was the point of the exercise. Participants were to learn that sometimes better ideas are abandoned because of group pressure. The trainers would end the exercise by emphasizing the importance of a leader being able to resist group pressure and stick to what one believes to be correct.
What the leaders did not say is that although most participants in the leadership training exercise were leaders in their own right, only a few did better than the group. Most did worse.
Still a teaching about resisting group pressure and going one’s own way resonates with American culture. We prize the rugged individualism reflected in the leadership training exercise of a lone individual standing against the group and succeeding against impossible odds. We make a hero of the one who stands against the crowd, who resists group pressure, who goes his or her own way.
But when that rugged individualism, that one against the group spirit, carries over into the church, the situation can look very different. It can look a lot like the tyranny of one.
Too often, the person prone to a spirit of rugged individualism conveys the idea that “the church sure is fortunate to have me as a member.” From that mind-set, he or she proceeds to demonstrate how fortunate the church is by trying to set everybody else straight on how the church should be run.
Sometimes the self-appreciation grows out of what may be called efforts of personal piety. One has gone to more conferences, read more Christian books, taken more Bible courses, participated in more missions projects than others. Sometimes the self-appreciation grows out of personal experience. One has served longer on a committee than others, or one may be the only one to have ever served on such a committee previously. Perhaps it is experience from another church that has empowered the individual to be sure he or she has the right answer for the current situation.
Whatever its source, the result is the same. The individual demonstrates a calling to straighten out everyone else. “They are wrong and it is up to me to show them the errors of their ways” seems to be the dominant mind-set of such an individual.
What others see, however, is an enormous ego reflected in a tyranny of one.
Baptist polity precludes such a tyranny, of course. Baptists are prone to point out that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. God is the respecter of no person. His Holy Spirit speaks to all Christians. Baptists call that belief personal priesthood. It is a birthright of all Christians, and it cannot be given away or taken away. That is why Baptists believe in group decisions rather than rule by one individual or a small group of individuals. God is not the author of confusion. If something is of God, then His children, the church, will embrace it.
As Baptists, we know ourselves as sinners totally dependent on the grace of God. Our goodness — either reflected in knowledge or experience or lifestyle — is of little merit before God. We live by His grace, not our goodness. That recognition should be a sufficient antidote for those plagued with an unnatural ego, but it is not always so.
It is God’s leadership and power that the Christian seeks. No one can trust in his or her own abilities. No one can demand compliance with personal understandings. It is the body of Christ that affirms, that grants influence and leadership. A tyranny of one is not appropriate in God’s church.
None of this is to negate the importance of personal obedience. God still seeks those through whom He can speak in the church and the community. Instead these thoughts are to remind us all of the danger of equating our will with God’s will to the point that we try and impose our preference on fellow believers. Whenever we make such a mistake, we may be about nothing more than a tyranny of one.
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