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The Essential Element of Leadership
In The Lord's Churches
Written by Dr. Lester Hutson

Copyright - Lester Hutson - 1986
This material is copyrighted and may not be copied or reproduced without the express written permission of Dr. Lester Hutson.

The Essential Element of Leadership In the Lord's Churches

Unit Three - Two Flies in the Preacher's Ointment

Ecclesiastes 10:1

"Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor."

Unit Three

Chapter 1

Lack of Study

II Timothy 2:15

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed; rightly dividing the word of truth."

Many pages in this book have been devoted to discussing a large number of fine qualities which earmark true leaders, particularly church leaders. It is possible for one to excel in a great many ways, yet to fail because of a flaw in one of two critical areas of life. I once knew a man with astounding potential. He was handsome and debonair, a very intelligent and likeable person. He had extraordinary skills and abilities. Most of the time he was as responsible and unselfish a person as you will ever find. He'd do anything for you, without even having to be asked, until he got drunk. Then he just seemed to fall apart. His drinking sprees didn't last too long nor come very often, but they ruined him. All his good seemed to fade into oblivion in light of those drinking sprees when he'd curse, grow violent, act like a fool and hurt so many people. The people in his life quit trusting him, and trust is such a vital element to true leadership. All but his drinking buddies wanted to get away from him. Even when he was sober, sorry and acting like a model citizen, they were wondering in the back of their minds when he was going to get drunk and blow apart again.

Wise Solomon was very much aware of how a person can be very wise and correct in so many ways, yet be defeated by one or two besetting sins as Hebrews 12:1 refers to: "The sin which doth so easily beset us." Solomon himself was an enormous success in area after area of his life and endeavors. My, his wisdom, skill, charisma, management abilities are mind boggling! Yet, II Kings 11 will show you that his love for strange women began to bring him down and erode his leadership powers. Surely Solomon could speak with authority when he wrote in Ecclesiastes 10:1, "Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor." Yes, "a little folly" in a person of otherwise great "reputation for wisdom and honor" makes his whole life stink to those around him. The wisdom is forgotten in light of the folly, especially so in a preacher, who is no longer regarded as "blameless" as he should be according to I Timothy 3:2.

An apothecary (pharmacist) can spend hours or days making a very delicate, sweet-smelling costly perfume or ointment. Yet, one fly can fall into the ointment and ruin the whole thing. That which had every prospect of smelling wonderfully fragrant will now stink with an equal repulsiveness. "A dead fly in the ointment" has become a byword for good things gone bad, particularly as a result of some small, dumb or dubious mistake.

I am going to talk especially to pastors in these next few pages. Pastors set the pace of leadership for all the other leaders in the Lord's churches. They, more than anyone, have the power to change the direction and climate of a church. Almost without exception, the attitudes of the pastor of a church soon become the attitude of the people of that church. It's hard, very near impossible, for a church to rise above its pastor.

Two enemies of pastors

There are two grave, destructive enemies which can invade the life and thinking of a pastor. Both, or either, will seriously hurt and limit the ministry and effectiveness of both the pastor and the church he pastors, and possibly destroy one or the other or both. These enemies lie directly within the pastor. They are his, and his alone, to either embrace or reject, although, if he becomes infected with them, his church will almost certainly come to share his approach and attitude in these areas. One of these enemies involves a pastor's lifestyle; the other involves his outlook, philosophy or mental perception of what the ministry is. I call these two rather subtle enemy two flies which can fall into a pastor's life and severely restrict, if not destroy, his ministry and the life of his church, even if he does have many of the good characteristics of leadership which we've previously discussed.

Lack of sufficient study

The first fly is lack of sufficient study. Every pastor's number one job is to adequately feed his flock with the Word of God. There is much other work to be done in pastoring a church, but no other aspect of the pastorate is as important as sound, solid, meaty Bible preaching. Paul wrote in the great pastoral epistle, II Timothy, to Timothy and to all that would pastor,

"I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine," in II Timothy 4:1-2.

Top priority for pastors is preaching the Word of God. Listen to the apostle Paul say it to us all as he spoke to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:28, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood." Note it well, "feed the church."

Listen to the apostle Peter emphasizing much the same truth in I Peter 5:2, "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind." Peter had a first-hand lesson from the Lord himself on this very point in John 21. Like a lot of us, Peter could easily have busied himself with many "important" aspects of the pastorate to the point of "just not having time to study like I ought," ever letting the good rob him of the best. But, one of the very last lessons Jesus taught Peter, and us, with great emphasis was "feed my sheep" in John 21:15-17. There's never a valid excuse for failing to do that. Every message of every pastor every time ought to be full of good, grainy substance and be delivered in the power of the Lord. People will forgive a pastor of nearly everything except failing to preach, but when he "bombs out" in the pulpit, he fails God as an unfaithful servant, robs his congregation of the nourishment they must have to survive, and publicly embarrasses himself.

Distractions abound

Oh yes, for the pastor there are always things to do, places to go, members in need of attention, a fellow-pastor or missionary wanting attention, a "brush fire" to put out in the church, facilities needing attention, but none of that is as important as getting ready to preach, then preaching a first-class sermon every time, not just on Sunday morning, with a "re-run" on Sunday night and a "discussion" or testimony meeting on Wednesday night.

God expressed His intent to the people in Jeremiah 3:15, "And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding."

Aunt Fannie's toenail may be hurting, and you may have to hold her hand while the doctor clips it, but you'd better never let that sort of thing keep you from being ready to preach a first-class message every time you address the flock. When the administrative work load became so heavy in the Jerusalem church that it began to interfere with the apostles, who are somewhat of a pastor's prototype, ability to pray and study God's word as they should, they asked the church to set up deacons to do a lot of that leg work so they could stay in the Word. Listen to Acts 6:1-2.

"And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables."

They added in verse 4,

"But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word."

As we shall more fully discuss, they didn't ignore nor neglect the administrative needs of the people, but they didn't let those needs take them away from the Word. They did two things.

First, they recruited some help to attend these business affairs, and second, they taught their people to accept someone else other than the pastor in these administrative roles.

Building the people

It is sound, solid Bible truth that builds people in the Christian faith, and which preserves churches from one generation to the next. Jesus said, "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," in John 8:32. Nothing grounds and establishes people like the truths of God's Word. Paul wrote,

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving," in Colossians 2:6-7.

Note it well. People become established by being taught the great truths of the faith once delivered to the saints. Oh, I know church members are often extremely fickle and petty, and that they will reduce a pastor to little more than a spiritual babysitter and errand boy if he'll yield to their pressure. They'll get really critical and vicious if he does not respond promptly to their every beckon call, and they may even accuse him of such things as unconcern, incompetency in pastoring, not doing his job and plenty more, but before God, a pastor's job is to feed the people with God's word. Only that will build them up, strengthen them in the Lord, and develop in them the convictions to carry them into the next generation. If a pastor will stand for it, his people will consume him with mundane activities to their own destruction. When they take him away from the Word with all of their demands for attention, they're making it impossible for him to adequately give them the Word, which is so vital to their own spiritual welfare. It is knowledge of and conviction in the foundational truths of the faith which keeps churches going from generation to generation, not petting, pampering and attention to their social needs.

I am in no way saying social needs should be neglected by pastors. I am saying social needs had better not become more important to any pastor than administering the Word, and those social needs had better not take him away from enough time in the Word to enable him to impart it to the church in an ever-fresh, deeper and more effective way. The thing that will keep you and your people standing when trials, pressures, lonely days and persecutions come, and the thing that will keep Junior going in the next generation when you are dead and gone is not a whole lot of social life and petting, pampering, and staying on top of the physical needs of the people and the church corporately. The thing that keeps people and churches going is true, heartfelt conviction in salvation by grace through faith apart from works, the infallible accuracy of the Bible, the sovereignty of our God, the justice and integrity of our God, the cleansing power of God for sinners and for saints, the hope of Christ's literal, bodily return, the resurrection of the dead, and the other wonderful truths of the Word. Nobody ever burned at the stake because he was so impressed with how faithful his pastor was to visit hospitals and how diligently he kept the grass cut and the church properties maintained. No! Men were willing to give their lives to the fire and their heads to the guillotine because they believed Christ saves sinners by His own blood, and no church can save anybody, because they were convinced baptism never saves anybody, but Christ does, and men are to be baptized as evidence of their salvation, not in order to get it.

I'm telling you that the thing that grounds people and strengthens churches is the Word of God, and pastors need to make it their business to stick to preaching the Word first and foremost. Nothing had better ever be allowed to interfere with preaching the Word.

Study is vital

Yet, the fact is a great many pastors do let something interfere with their preaching of the Word. No one can preach the Word with the depth and conviction he should, if he does not adequately study the Word. Jesus Himself personally said it in Luke 6:45, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh."

No preacher can preach truth he has not learned. Even if he has a head knowledge of certain truths, his sermons will be empty and without conviction where that preacher has no true grasp, practical absorption or working knowledge of that truth. Jesus talked about knowing the truth, getting it down into the fabric of your soul, making it yours, then preaching it with power and conviction to the people. What a sad state of affairs it is when a preacher just studies to preach or have a sermon to preach because it's time to preach and he's got to get up and have three points and a poem! Men of God ought to preach out of the deep abundance of their souls, not just deliver homiletically correct outlines, nor sweaty, frothy "hot-air balloons."

No wonder so many sermons are flat as a flounder, dry as a powder house, and about as filling and spiritually nutritious as cotton candy. Listeners are bored stiff. What preachers are accountable to God to do is go to the Word that they may feed their own souls, not just to "get sermons." Once a man of God has his own soul fed well from God's Word, he can in turn share with his people with power and conviction out of the abundance of his own heart. He's not preaching just to preach or because he's doing his job; he's then preaching a life message out of the riches of God in his own heart. And, I am here to affirm that heartfelt preaching of divine truth has a weight and power about it that reaches other hearts.

No preacher can preach soul-stirring messages from the heart who does not truly know those messages. Milton Gregory in his The Seven Laws of Teaching listed the law of the teacher to be, "The teacher must know that which he would teach." No wonder Paul was so insistent in II Timothy 2:15, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

Many a pastor ought to be ashamed of himself if he doesn't spend enough time studying the word to "rightly" divide it. He bumbles around "chasing rabbits" in the pulpit and using old worn out cliches and idiomatic expressions he hasn't even thought through. He just heard some old preachers use them and they sounded good and got amens. His theology, which comes through in the messages, is loaded with mutually exclusive, contradictory positions, which he doesn't even have the objectivity nor depth to see. The sad thing is that this is often true of even old preachers, those who've been around for a long time in the ministry. The longer a man is in the ministry, the deeper, richer and better his preaching and sermons ought to grow. More time with God and in His Word ought to build a great reservoir of latent Bible knowledge. Age and time in the ministry should enhance preachers.

Yet, because so many pastors spend so much of their time attending the social and business needs of the church and its individual members and so little time in the Word of God, we live in an unprecedented age of shallow and weak preaching. It's a sad commentary on any preacher who rarely spends more than three or four hours a week in concentrated Bible study. Yet, that is a high number of hours for many preachers, and it shines like a beacon in their preaching. Oh, they're too busy for things like study! There were just too many people wanting attention and too much church business to attend. Then they wonder why they have such a weak and unstable people to pastor.

Lack of study will result in what I call the Ahimaaz complex every time. II Samuel 18:19-32 records his embarrassing story. He was so eager to go tell David about how the battle had gone with Absalom. Oh, Ahimaaz was the fastest runner, full of zeal, and apparently a fast talker. His problem was that he didn't have his message straight. He ran to David, but couldn't tell David what he wanted to know when he got there. What he should have done was study the situation, gotten his message right, then ran to David with a clear report.

Oh, what a picture Ahimaaz is of far too many of the King's servants today. They don't spend enough time studying the Book to have their message down very well. Thus, when they stand before the people to give their reports, they can't give the people what they really need for their true spiritual welfare. Sad! Sad, indeed! How piercing ring the words of I Peter 5:1-4,

"The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away."

Note well, the man who would preach is to have a "ready mind," and that is impossible apart from adequate study.

Personal discipline

In a good many cases, poor study habits grow out of a lack of personal discipline. As discussed earlier in this book, pastors have no earthly boss nor time-clock to punch. It's pretty much up to the individual to structure his life and time, and properly prioritize it. It's so easy for pastors to grow lax, slothful and lazy. Priorities can get really fouled up. Many a pastor settles into a very unstructured lifestyle. They seek to impose very little order into their lives, and pretty well just take things as they come. In a very real sense, they are mostly reactors and not actors. They basically float along with the current with very little effort to deliberately implement any order or direction.

Some are even very defensive about such an approach to life. They say they are just letting the Lord control their total direction. That sounds good, but it overlooks some very important considerations. God should control our directions in life, but He doesn't do so by our taking no initiative, and our waiting for every whim or circumstantial event to control us. Yes, providence does sometimes trump our best plans, and we should never be so committed to our structured life that there's no room for God to disrupt our plans. God wants to control our daily lives, and His primary means of doing so is through His Word. In there, He tells us to deliberately plan on doing some things and to make time provisions for doing them. One of those is study that we might be able to feed the flock. We are to systematically impose many other Godly practices into our lives too, not just float along hoping providence will make them happen.

When a pastor lives an unstructured, undisciplined life, void of good study habits, his preaching will almost invariably be of the same nature, a sort of "shoot from the hip," "helter-skelter" style. He has a hard time holding an audience and building men when it is that way.

Lack of study, it's a great fly in the pastor's ointment. All of his fine personality, serving ways and other fine qualities begin to smell kinda bad when he can't preach, his people don't grow and the conviction to carry it beyond his lifetime is absent. Study of the Word is essential to effective pastoring, and its absence will ruin the sweet ointment in the long run.

"It Does Make a Difference What You Believe"