What started this for me was a “Dear Marilyn” column in the Sunday “Parade” magazine a couple of years ago. Columnist Marilyn Vos Savant was answering some character who wanted to know what the big deal was about compromising and giving in, in order for parties to reach an agreement. “I never give in,” he wrote, “when I think I’m right.” Marilyn wrote back, “So when do you give in–when you think you’re wrong?”

When something lodges in my mind–a story or quote or event–even something as inconsequential as that little exchange, I know the Holy Spirit is handing me a spiritual lesson on a platter and that I’m to pull aside and listen.

What the Parade writer called “compromising” or “giving in to others,” the Bible calls “submission.” And it makes a great deal of that subject.

We’re told that the young child Jesus submitted to his parents (Luke 2:51). We’re instructed to submit to the laws of man (Romans 13:1). The church is to submit to Christ (Ephesians 5:24). Wives to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22). The younger to the older (I Peter 5:5). And servants to their masters (Titus 2:9 and I Peter 2:18).

The Parade writer is not alone is disliking the concept. The great mass of humanity lines up with him, each person feeling his point of view is right, his rights take precedence over all other considerations, and that if he does not look out for “number one,” no one else will.

Bible historians tell us that meekness and submission were looked upon with scorn by every society until the Christian faith turned values on their heads and made these into virtues. That did not, however, change how people feel. We have an innate resistance to bowing before anyone or anything. “I am the captain of my soul” is article one in the spiritual credo of untold millions.

Many would call this resistance to submission one of our greatest strengths. If so, sometimes our strength can be our weakness.

I’m writing here to Christian people, disciples who believe the Bible and want to obey its teachings. I call your attention to two particular texts where we are commanded to submit to others. These may be some of the most ignored teachings in all Scripture.

First: “All of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time.” That’s I Peter 5:5-6 and it’s a command for the people in a church to humble themselves before one another.

Think of that. Every member of the Lord’s church is to put the rest ahead of himself. No one insisting on his rights. No one promoting himself. No one campaigning to get elected as a deacon, no one’s ego on the line when the nominating committee passes him by. No one upset he was not chosen senior adult of the year or she was not named to the blue ribbon committee. Each esteeming the other’s opinion above his own.

Now that’s something you hear emphasized and see demonstrated in church all the time.

Not!

In fact, a lot of our people would be shocked to find these commands in the Bible at all.

And the second: “Obey those who have the rule over you and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.” This is Hebrews 13:17 and it’s a command for church people to submit to their leaders.

As difficult as it is for us to humble ourselves before one another–and for many it is practically an impossibility, I grant you–think how hard it is for a certain element in our churches to humble themselves and obey their leaders. But there it is in Holy Scripture. No amount of parsing the Greek will explain it away.

This teaching to obey the leaders of the church is a clear command of Scripture, and that makes it a test of faith for believers. Paul said, “For this reason I wrote to you, that I might know the proof of you, whether you are obedient in all things.” (II Corinthians 2:9) The proof of a believer is his obedience.

These days, “submission” is a magnet for dissension, the very thing it was put in place to prevent. A few years ago when some Southern Baptist leaders decided submission ought to be included in the Baptist Faith and Message, you would have thought from the furor that erupted they wanted the Communist Manifesto included. This doctrine is not for the faint of heart, strong of head, or stiff of neck. Only the strong can submit.

As much as anything, the command to obey leaders was instituted by our Lord to get His church on the move.

Imagine how cumbersome it would be if the congregation met to discuss and vote on every decision the church had to make. It would be like a football team that met in the huddle before every play for a discussion and a majority vote on which play to run next. The referees would call delay-of-game on every play!

Imagine an army that stopped to discuss everything that came up and took a vote on each decision before doing anything. They would be sitting ducks for the enemy.

I once heard someone say that if a Baptist church were a football team, it would be made up entirely of quarterbacks. Everyone wants to call the signals. That’s not entirely true, but close enough.

I love the line from the Song of Deborah in Judges 5:2, “That the leaders led in Israel, and that the people volunteered, O bless the Lord.” (Note: It reads this way only in modern translations. The difficulty results from some Hebrew metaphors found in that text.)

That’s the plan–leaders leading, and followers doing their job. It takes both to win a war. An army with no officers is a mob. An army of nothing but officers is a men’s social club.

In the part of the world where I labor, we have hundreds of tiny churches that were birthed decades ago and never flourished. My observation is that the smaller a church is, the more business meetings it is likely to have, and the more detailed decisions the congregation insists on making in those meetings. One pastor said his small church spends an hour discussing whether to spend 15 cents a month on call-waiting.

You would think that sooner or later, someone would figure out the correlation between the size of the church and the frequency of these meetings. The point is a simple one: the church that insists on making every decision in a business meeting may take pride in its democratic principles, but what they are really demonstrating is a failure to trust their leaders. There’s not a word in the Bible commanding the church to be democratic, but plenty about trusting and obeying their leaders.

It comes down to a matter of obedience to the Word.

(I grant you there are places in the Bible where we see leaders asking for the congregation’s involvement and decision-making, such as Acts 10:47 “Can anyone refuse water for these to be baptized?” and Acts 6:3 “Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation….” That’s just good leadership. No one is suggesting the pastors should ignore the will of the congregation or be lone rangers.)

One of the biggest differences in the growing church and the stagnated church comes down to this: whether the congregation frees its leaders to lead and gets behind them in full support.

This week, I learned of three churches in our area whose members are upset because the pastor is exerting His God-given assignment to lead the congregation. New people are coming in, new songs are being added to the worship services, new ministries are being inaugurated, and some members are resisting the change. Unable to control the church and incapable of commanding the pastor, they’re moving out.

One pastor said, “I’m not unhappy they’re leaving. Our congregation will be better without them. They’ve been miserable for so long.”

Another said, “Pray for me. This Sunday I’m drawing a line in the sand and telling the disgruntled members to get in and get with the program or get out. One or the other.” He added, “It’s scary. It’s not my nature to be confrontational like this, but I know what the Lord wants me to do.”

I gave the pastors a line from John Maxwell: “If you make changes in the church, you will lose the whiners. If you don’t make changes, you will lose the winners. Either way, you’re going to lose somebody. Decide who you’d rather lose.”

One wishes these unhappy church-hoppers a) knew their Bible and b) that what the Bible teaches mattered to them. I suspect they don’t and it doesn’t. As one lady told me in the middle of a telephone debate we were having over a project in our church, “Well, I don’t know what the Bible teaches, but I know what I believe.” I said, “You just ended the discussion. Nothing matters less than what you believe or what I believe. The only thing that counts is what God’s word says.”

God chose to organize His church so that there would be a few leaders and a lot of non-leaders. He gave the non-leaders a name: Followers. The very definition of a disciple is one who follows Jesus. “My sheep hear my voice and follow me,” Jesus said (John 10:27). “Take up (your) cross and follow me,” He said in Matthew 16:24.

The problem is, of course, everyone wants to be a leader. Few want to follow. It goes against the grain of our old nature.

It appears so simple on paper–that is, until one starts telling his inner spirit that his own opinion is not all that important, that he is part of a team, that he should get in line and follow the fellow up front. “Wait a minute,” the little demon inside him cries out, “I have my rights.” “My opinion matters too.” “I’m somebody.”

Let me say this plainly to God’s people: Christian, you most certainly do not have any rights. In Christ, you have died. And the dead have no rights.

My beloved friend James Richardson, now in Heaven, used to tell of a fellow who stood up in the midst of a vigorous church business meeting and bellowed, “All I want is what’s coming to me.” A little saint sitting nearby pulled on his coattail. “Sit down, Harry,” she said. “If you got what was coming to you, you’d be in hell.”

Those who have been redeemed from their self-destructive lifestyles–and that’s all believers–should now live in eternal gratitude for the grace of God. You would think our new lives would be defined by mercy and kindness toward everyone, and that the old ego which made life so miserable before Christ would be cast aside and left to decay as the corpse it is.

You would think.

I’m about to turn 67 years old. I’ve been attending church all my life, first a Free Will Baptist Church, then a Methodist church (before they were United Methodists), then the Free Will again, and from the age of 19 until now, Southern Baptist churches. I have been a minister of the Gospel since 1961. You’d have a hard time coming up with church situations I have not seen. And I will tell you….

The faithful practice of Christian submission could stop 90 percent of the church fights dead in their tracks.

The Apostle Paul once told some people to submit “for the Lord’s sake.” That’s the idea. Or, to put it another way: you submit “for the greater good.”

In the military, an enlisted man salutes an officer not because he’s smarter or stronger or better. Not because he’s older or richer or more experienced or powerful. He salutes the uniform the other is wearing, for what the officer represents. He salutes and submits and obeys for the greater good. A failure to respect his officers would cause a breakdown of such proportions that it would undermine all the training which in turn would result in chaos during battle.

As I write, the news media announces that a lieutenant in the U. S. Army is on trial for refusing an assignment to Iraq. He says the war is unjust and illegal. The military is prosecuting this vigorously, insisting that to allow him to pick and choose which commands he will obey would result in chaos throughout the army.

Whatever the merits of this officer’s case, the Army is right that in allowing members of the military to obey as they please would destroy a fighting unit. If anyone needs evidence for this, I direct you to the nearest Baptist church where many members have insisted that because of a doctrine we call “the priesthood of the believer” each may pick and choose what and whom to obey.

I cannot forget a little incident from the early 1990s when our church was mired down in inactivity and attempting to “call” a new staff member to lead the educational program. I asked the congregation to write their answers to this question: “Will you get behind the new minister and follow his leadership?” Most agreed to do so, but one man–strong of head, stiff of neck–wrote, “I will if I agree with what he’s doing.”

That may appear to sound reasonable to some, but look a little deeper. He was saying, “I’ll follow that minister if I’m already going in that direction.” In the firm tradition of the Parade writer, he will not give in when he thinks he’s right.

And we wonder why so many of our churches are so ineffective.

When the follower of Jesus Christ decides to respect the leaders of his church–all of them, not just the man in the pulpit–he pleases the God who commanded it, honors the Christ whose reputation and honor are at stake, strengthens the unity of the Body, and bears a strong witness to the outside watching world.

As with a thousand other commands of the Lord, this one can be carried out only by daily humbling ourselves before the Lord and asking the Holy Spirit to cleanse and fill and empower us to obey.

There’s no good way to end this message. Detractors can think of a hundred objections. We’ve all seen pastors who lorded it over their congregations–in direct violation of Scripture (I Peter 5:3)–insisting on “my way or the highway.” Such ministers are as misguided as the Pharisee-in-the-pew who thinks he owns the church because he gives the most or has seniority on everyone else or is more spiritual than the others.

No one wants a Diotrephes in the congregation or the pulpit, one “who loves to have the preeminence.” (III John 9) Life is too short to have to deal with these little ayatollahs.

Some liberals will accuse us of twisting Scripture to make the pastor a dictator or a little pontiff. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The command to submit is for every member of the congregation, no matter where he or she sits on Sunday.

Humility and submission to Christ will lead to the same attitudes toward one another. That will sweeten the spirit in the Church and grease the effectiveness of every ministry throughout the congregation.

Ultimatelythen, it all comes down to one’s relationship to the Lord Himself.

I suggest to pastors and church members alike that they give the Church back to Jesus. It’s His, bought with His own blood, and He wants it back. We have amply demonstrated that by ourselves we run it into the ground, that we do not have mentality enough, maturity enough, or morality enough to operate the Lord’s church.

Jesus said, “I will build My Church.”

It’s His. He is its Lord. It’s time we returned the ownership to Him and started operating it as He has ordered in His Word.

One of our pastors said, “I can’t preach this in my church. It sounds too self-serving, like I’m trying to convince them that I’m the boss around here.” He laughed and said, “I may have to ask my associate pastor to preach it.”

I said, “Here’s a better idea. Humble yourself before your people and serve them. Stay on your knees before the Lord and when you get up, do what He tells you. He will show you what to preach and how to help your people find the order He has instituted for the church. And He will do it on His own schedule.”

Wait on the Lord. Go in His strength. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid.

Always the right thing to do.