Chapter 16

True Leaders Are Responsible

By Dr. Lester Hutson

Proverbs 25:19

"Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint."

Surely responsibility is one of the very greatest requirements of effective leadership. People quickly lose their will and motivation to follow irresponsible people. Being responsible is vital to the leading of souls to Jesus, the success of any ministry, the well-being of every Sunday school class and choir, the health of every home, the pastoring of every church and the building of every business. Without responsibility, governments ultimately crash, businesses sooner or later fail, families flounder and sometimes break, Sunday school classes stagnate and usually die, ministries plateau and decay, churches reach zero or negative growth, and individual testimonies and reputations become laughingstocks and points of scorn.

A most defeating flaw

Irresponsibility is one of leadership's most defeating flaws. It is like a poison which undermines, undercuts and destroys trust and the will to follow. People can't depend upon leaders who are not responsible, and they will not follow people upon whom they can't depend.

Being responsible means reliability, dependability and trustworthiness. Responsible people are the ones whose job it is to take care of certain things. They're the ones who must get the credit or blame.

Being irresponsible is a great scorn. Solomon observed this in our text. People soon fix or get rid of undependable cars, watches that can't be trusted to keep correct time and guards who sleep on duty. Church people will either run off or leave an irresponsible preacher. Children and wives pay a heavy toll for an irresponsible dad, and irresponsible bosses and companies do not long survive in the marketplace.

Sad to say, but some of life's most irresponsible people are involved in the Lord's work, and they hold offices in churches. Some preachers get up late, have little structure or systematic order to their lives, and initiate and involve themselves in very little church activity; they just sort of float along with the current. Their churches are hurting, often going down, down, down. Things really are falling apart. Yet they admit no guilt, do not see themselves as accountable for the demise, and do not seem to feel any responsibility in the matter at all.

Irresponsibility is even more prevalent at other levels of church leadership. Praise God it is not this way in every case, but in too many cases, teachers take classes and all they want to do is teach a lesson. They're unwilling to shoulder their responsibility for the total class operation and it's well-being and growth. They drag in late, ignore absentees and problems, take no initiative to promote growth, tolerate sloppy class organization and a drab classroom, and sometimes present very stale lessons. Surprisingly, these sometimes have the audacity to condemn an irresponsible pastor, and vice-versa.

This irresponsibility is not limited to pastors and teachers. Older brothers and sisters in the Lord take no or little responsibility for the care and development of newborn babes or other newcomers. They're too busy with their old cronies and their own business to accept their God-given responsibility as older Christians. Ministry directors often propagate the trend. They're ministries can collapse under them, yet too often they make no effort at solutions. They do not encourage the people under them, seek to identify the problems, set any goals or really throw themselves into making things go. Like Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, they can make excuses and go on about their business as though it is not their responsibility at all.

In the rank and file membership irresponsibility prevails far too often. Church finances suffer, souls are not being won to Christ, church properties need attention, singing drags, and services are cold and lifeless; yet the common man often seems oblivious to the fact that he has any responsibility to do something about it. I'm describing irresponsibility as it really is in far too many of the Lord's churches, from top to bottom. The cancerous flaw goes home, and to the job, and into many facets of lives.

Among believers, there are many irresponsible dads, and numerous mothers who don't shoulder their God-given responsibilities, and Christians with whom irresponsibility is a lifestyle. In homes and churches, many of these wonder why they have no power of leadership with the people they want to follow them.

Adam and Eve syndrome

God made Adam personally responsible for his actions, yet Adam ate the forbidden fruit. When God held him directly responsible for his sin, he tried to deny his responsibility and lay the blame on his wife. Hear him in Genesis 3:12, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." Adam "passes the buck." Basically, he said, "God, I'm not responsible for what I did. It's my wife's fault. She's responsible."

Eve had the same irresponsible attitude Adam had. God also held her personally responsible for her actions. But when called into account by God for her eating of the forbidden fruit, Eve said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat," in Genesis 3:13. "The devil made me do it, God. It's not my fault."

What Adam and Eve did is exactly what men and women have been doing ever since. You let somebody go out here and get drunk and run over and kill five people, and the first thing he and some liberal lawyer will holler is, "He was drunk, and he's not responsible."

Sigmund Freud's whole theory of psychology is based on irresponsibility. It says, "Blame somebody else. Blame your parents, the Christians, society, but don't blame yourself." The world has swallowed it like a catfish eating stink bait. Such thinking fits the old corrupt human nature like a form-fitted suit. Men do not like responsibility, especially for their failures and for doing things that force discipline into their lives.

A few years ago a murderer went into the Malibu Racetrack in Houston, Texas, and systematically murdered every employee in a cold-blooded, pre-meditated crime. Right away, Freudian thinking lawyers were saying the poor murderer was a victim of society. Every day, new incidents of the bloodiest, coldest sorts occur, which just keep on revealing the Adam and Eve syndrome so innate in men.

Little children blame each other for their wrongs. People at the office say, "It wasn't my job," or "nobody told me to do it." So very few are willing to take responsibility. The saddest part is the fact that many Christians act just like the world in this regard. Just like Cain in Genesis 4:9 they piously ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We don't like shouldering the responsibility God gave us personally in Matthew 28:19 and 20 for winning souls, baptizing converts and building disciples.

"I'm not responsible for how my kids turn out."

"I'm not responsible for these new people around the church."

"Don't talk to me about teaching, serving on a committee or in an office, or getting into a ministry. It's not my job. I'm not responsible."

"I'm a teacher. I'm on a committee. I hold an office, but I'm not responsible for the fact that the area where I am is not doing well. It's the preachers job. It's their fault."

"I wasn't hired to do that. I don't know anything about it. You'll have to talk to somebody besides me."

"I just want to come to church whenever I feel like it. I don't want to be responsible for being there on time or faithfully. I don't want to be responsible for anything, and I surely don't want anybody holding me accountable for anything. I just want to do what I get to, when I get ready to, but I don't want to be responsible."

How many preachers have you ever heard of who admitted themselves to be responsible when their churches failed? How many people in failing churches admit themselves to be responsible? What husband or wife in a divorce of a Christian couple have you seen stand up and say, "It was largely my fault"? In a conflict between brethren, how many have you seen admit themselves to be the responsible party? It's always the other party!

Jesus said in Matthew 7:3-5,

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother. Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shall thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Yet, it's a rare spectacle to see any Christian shoulder the responsibility. Oh yes, the Adam and Eve syndrome is alive and well today, not only in the world, but in the Lord's churches; not only in the pew, but in the pulpit, and all in between.

The buck stops here

True Christian leaders are of the mindset that the "buck stops here. It's my job, and by God's grace, I'll find a way." How good to find that rare soul who thinks, "God gave me this charge, and I'm the one to whom He is looking to see it done. By His grace, this task is going to be handled, and in the best possible way." Real leaders, and not empty title-bearers, are the ones who determine personally to make their Sunday school class the best it can be. They're the ones who say, "This is going to be the best choir, the best youth department, the best ministry, the best church possible." They're the folks who think it's their job to make it that way, not the job of somebody else. They're the ones you can count on. God pity the pastor, the deacon, the teacher, the ministry director, the older brother, the dad, the mother, the soulwinner or anybody with a job to do (or should have taken a job), who comes before God and says, "God it wasn't my responsibility."

Woe unto the servant who had a responsibility, but who didn't shoulder it. Romans 14:11-12 says,

"For it is written, As I live saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then everyone of us shall give account of himself to God."

II Corinthians 5:10 says, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

On the judgment day, the Adam and Eve syndrome is not going to work any better than it did in the Garden of Eden. God is going to hold us personally accountable for the areas where He has given us responsibility. He's going to hold us personally accountable for the souls we should have won, the class we should have built, the ministry we had, the little brothers and sisters we should have helped develop, and the church whose need for a real pastor, a real leader, we should have met.

Nobody at the judgment is going to point a finger and say with success, "Lord it was his fault; Lord, that wasn't my responsibility; Lord, I didn't think it was important to take charge and get the job done." Responsible people say, "It's not the preacher's job, nor the members job, nor the job of somebody else. It's my job." Responsible people say, "There's a problem here. I'll solve it. I won't make excuses, or wait on somebody else. By God's grace, I'll find a way. It may take more training from me. It may take a drastic change. But, whatever it takes, you can count on me." Folks, that's a real leader!

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a whole church full of responsible people? People who, to a man, would accept total responsibility for their work? How wonderful it would be to have a congregation from the pastor to the pew who'd say, "I'm here, and I'm here to stay. This job is mine, and I'm going to make the most of it. I'll learn; I'll take correction; I'll follow my God ordained leaders, and I'll get this job done."

I'm confident that this is, in part, what Paul had in mind when he spoke of "the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth." (Ephesians 4:16) Brother, sister, you are going to fail as a leader if you do not develop and act responsibly. Responsibility is not everything, but without it, you are going to fail in spite of whatever else you are or can do. You are going to fail as a teacher, a preacher, a parent, a soul-winner, a boss, an employee and in every other way involving other people.

Nobody is going to long stay with someone on whom he cannot depend, or who is always making excuses, always pointing the finger at somebody else, is hit and miss and who ignores the problems. Leadership is a multi-faceted thing, but it seems pretty safe to say that responsibility is at the core of how it works.

If you want to succeed as a leader, get it into your system. Buckle down. Take your responsibility. Be a responsible person, and as you do, God will begin to give you followers.

"It Does Make a Difference What You Believe"