No church can function without designated leaders. For example, the book of Acts, chapter fourteen, verse twenty-three, indicates individuals appointed to be an elder or overseer or bishop by spiritual persons. These two men were spirit-filled missionaries who sought God’s will through prayer and fasting. However, following spiritual qualifications by the Holy Spirit makes someone an overseer of the church.
One of the duties of overseers is to feed the sheep by teaching God’s Word. The leaders must always keep in mind that the flock given to them is no other than the people that God has purchased for Himself with His Son’s precious blood. The overseers of today must likewise declare to their churches God’s whole will. These leaders must preach, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine, as stated in the Second Timothy chapter four, verse two, and refuse to be preachers who seek to please people and say what they want to hear.
Overseers must protect the sheep from their enemies because Satan will raise false teachers and infiltrate God’s flock with imposters: who adhere to the unbiblical doctrine, worldly thought, pagan and humanistic ideas; both will destroy the Biblical faith in God’s people. In Acts chapter twenty verse twenty-nine, they are called “grievous wolves.” They are strong, tough to handle, ferocious, and dangerous. Such individuals will draw people away from Christ’s teachings and toward themselves and their distorted gospel. Overseers have a solemn obligation to guard the church and oppose all who would distort the fundamental revelation of the New Testament faith.
The church consists of those by Christ’s grace and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God. Therefore, as an aspect of guarding God’s church, church leaders must discipline, correct in love, firmly refute all within the church who speak perverse things by teaching contrary to God’s Word and apostolic witness.
Church leaders, pastors of local congregations, and administrative officials do well to a member that the Lord Jesus has made them responsible for the lives of all people under their care. If leaders fail to declare and perform God’s whole purpose for the church, especially keeping watch over the flock, they will not be pure from the blood of all men. as stated in Acts chapter twenty verse twenty-six. Instead, God will hold them guilty of the blood of those lost because the leader refuses to protect the flock from those who weaken and distort the Word.
Exercising discipline concerning the theological, doctrinal, and moral matters by those responsible for the church’s direction is significant. The purity of doctrine, life, and adherence to the inerrancy of scripture must keep guard against the church. The main issue here is one’s attitude toward divinely inspired scripture. The False teachers, pastors, and leaders will attempt to weaken the authority of the Bible by their submissive teachings and unbiblical principles. By rejecting the power of God’s Word, they deny that the Bible is true and trustworthy in all that it teaches. The false teachers must be disciplined and removed from fellowship for the sake of the church.
The church that fails the Holy Spirit’s burning concern for church purity refuses to maintain a firm stand for truth and refrains from disciplining those who undermine the authority of God’s Word; they will soon cease to exist as a church according to the New Testament norms. The church will become guilty of departing from the original revelation of Christ and the apostles, sliding further and further from the New Testament purpose, power, and life.