Developing a Culture of Adaptability in your Ministry

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses how ministry leaders can build a culture of adaptability within their churches and organizations. Whether you’re a seasoned pastor or a young leader, this episode offers actionable insights on leading with vision, humility, and a willingness to adapt for lasting impact.

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Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:55

Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Hey, one of the fun things about my work these days is traveling around the country and speaking to different groups and frequently someone will come up to me before or after and say, I listen to you on your podcast. This happened to me, just recently. I was at a event speaking and two young women came up to me and introduced themselves.

Jeff Iorg: 01:26

They were on the leadership team at Murray State University for the Baptist Collegiate Ministry on that campus. So shout out to Murray State if you're still listening to the podcast this morning. And to all the rest of you who are out there listening, thank you. Thank you for, listening to this podcast while you're working out or while you're driving your kids to school or mowing the yard. Different people tell me they use it for different things, but thank you for the time you give to think about ministry, ministry leadership, and how to do it practically and hopefully more effectively.

Jeff Iorg: 01:55

So today, I wanna talk about building a culture of adaptability in your church, particularly, or in your ministry organization. A culture of adaptability. A culture of flexibility, of meliability, of being able to shift shapes, if you will, in order to meet the needs of the moment or of the generation. One wonderful example of this was a deacon named Ralph Kearns. Now Ralph was an interesting fellow on a lot of levels.

Jeff Iorg: 02:25

First of all, he had a huge privately owned collection of merchandise, which I mistakenly called junk one time, all over his two acre property. If you needed it, Ralph likely had it. Second, he was, the only man I ever knew that had hair that grew out the front of his nose. I was often distracted by those two or three hairs that stuck out the front of his nose and wondered why I couldn't just clip those off, but, hey, that was part of Ralph's personality, I suppose. But the best thing about Ralph was he was a leader who understood the need for adaptability and stayed flexible, malleable, who stayed moldable, if you will, by God in church leadership as he continued his life of

Jeff Iorg: 03:09

service. By the

Jeff Iorg: 03:11

time I met Ralph, he was a charter member of our church, but also our senior deacon. He had been there the

Jeff Iorg: 03:17

longest. He was chairman of

Jeff Iorg: 03:20

the pastor search committee that brought me to the church, itself an example of adaptability because I was only 20, four years old. He was a man who loved the Bible and his family and his church and loved pastors and wanted to see the church constantly moving forward. Now Ralph could be stubborn if he felt like it was an issue that mattered, but on the most significant leadership decision the church ever made, he stepped forward and demonstrated the the adaptability needed to take the church into the future. Our church was growing. We had, filled up our small worship serve center, and we had moved to two worship services, and now we had filled up both of those.

Jeff Iorg: 04:06

And we were nowhere near being any kind of mega church or anything like that, but we were packing 300 people into a building that seated about a 25 every Sunday. We tried everything, multiple services, portable space, and finally, I made the suggestion, perhaps we should consider relocating. Well, there were two heart attacks and a couple of strokes. No, I'm just kidding. I said, maybe we consider relocating.

Jeff Iorg: 04:33

And so we prayed and talked about that for several meetings. And then finally, after one particularly packed Sunday, we had a deacons meeting that evening and I said, man, we're we're really needing to figure out what we can

Jeff Iorg: 04:46

do about more space. Ralph said, I

Jeff Iorg: 04:50

think we're out of space. God is blessing our

Jeff Iorg: 04:53

church. It's time to put together a committee and see if there's any land available, not in our part of town, to build a new campus. Well, when he said those words, it was like

Jeff Iorg: 05:07

the earth moved under my feet because I realized that the the most senior member, the most respected deacon, the most stalwart leader, really, in our church had just recommended the unthinkable. Well, within a few weeks, I won't tell that story on this podcast, but within a few weeks, we had property in hand. And within four years, the church was in a new campus, in a new location where they are still vibrantly serving the Lord today. That would have never happened apart from vision that was cast for the church to continue into the future, but also it would have never happened apart from a leader who had an adaptable spirit, a spirit of flexibility and malleability, a spirit of adaptability, who was willing in the moment to say, some things really need to change if we're going

Jeff Iorg: 06:08

to keep moving forward into the future. Well, as

Jeff Iorg: 06:12

I thought back about Ralph and his example, and as I've tried to emulate that over the years in my ministry and in my work in church leadership, several things come to mind that will help us build a culture of adaptability. These are things you can practice yourself, but also things you can teach others. But I'd encourage you to teach these to others from a position of being a shared pilgrim on the journey of adaptability, not someone who has all the answers and is mad because people won't be flexible to do what you want them to do. That's two different perspectives. I think the second one is almost always counterproductive.

Jeff Iorg: 06:48

So the first suggestion I have for developing a culture of adaptability is to recognize generational differences and help people identify them and celebrate them. You know, I was once a younger leader. In fact, I like to joke that thirty years ago, I was the innovative church planter and now I'm the old bureaucrat in a suit. I was once a younger leader. I once planted a church with a few families in a middle school gymnasium.

Jeff Iorg: 07:15

I once pioneered some methods of, doing church, if you wanna say it that way, in the Pacific Northwest that, while they might not have been unheard of, certainly were not popular in the day. I was once a younger leader, but now I'm on Medicare. Are you kidding me? In an eye blink of time, two generations passed by. You know, thirty years ago in ministry when I was forming my methodologies,

Jeff Iorg: 07:42

they were cutting edge. But now they're part

Jeff Iorg: 07:45

of a bygone era. But the hard truth is I still prefer comfortable ministry methods. I like the songs, the preaching style, the worship flow. I like the programs and the schedules and countless other church defining practices that I adopted thirty years ago and built into the church we planted and led for those years.

Jeff Iorg: 08:12

Now I like things a certain way, and so do you.

Jeff Iorg: 08:19

My children, however, and my grandchildren see church ministry today through a very

Jeff Iorg: 08:25

different lens. In fact, sometimes I listen to my adult children who are all vibrant Christians and engaged in ministry. I listen to them and I think, what in the world are they talking about? Why would they see it that way? What would they need?

Jeff Iorg: 08:46

What would they Why would they want to do things the way they're talking about?

Jeff Iorg: 08:51

They view ministry through a different lens in their current generation than I do as someone two generations removed from when I was in their place as a young leader. You know, a few years ago, I was teaching a leadership seminar, and I said something that really set up a bit of a firestorm in that church. I made this statement. I said, if you're 60 and you like everything about your church, your church is dying.

Jeff Iorg: 09:22

I still stand by that. If you're 60 and you like everything about your church, your church is probably dying. I'm 60. In fact, I'm closer to 70 than 60.

Jeff Iorg: 09:35

There are things about church and the churches that I visit and the church where I'm a member and frankly, I don't like. But I look around and I see 35 year old dads with their kids there sitting with them in the service and the schedule that they prefer and the methods of ministry that connect with their family and the needs that they have that are being met. I just smile because I know that I don't see it the same way they see it, but if our church is going to have a future, we have to see it their way. It's hard for those of us who are in my generation to realize that our time has largely passed. Now don't misunderstand me.

Jeff Iorg: 10:16

I still think we have a contribution to make. We have wisdom to offer, resources to give, time to invest. We still have something to give, and I intend to keep giving it the as long as the Lord gives me breath here, but but we have to understand that the way we see the world may not be the way ministry needs to be designed to reach current generation. My friend Ralph saw that. He realized that he would likely not be around to enjoy the long term fruit of the decision to relocate.

Jeff Iorg: 10:50

Because of his age and the passing of time, he knew that that the decision to relocate that church was probably not about him. It wasn't gonna be comfortable for him. It was gonna be expensive for him. It wasn't it was going to be disruptive for him.

Jeff Iorg: 11:06

But he looked down the road and saw his children, and even beyond that, his grandchildren, and realized if they were going to have a church, a vibrant living church, they were going to need to move into the future.

Jeff Iorg: 11:22

And they did under the adaptable leadership of a man who recognized the generational differences between him, a deacon in his seventies, and me, a pastor in my twenties, and said, I'm willing to trust this young man because he sees the future, he understands his generation, and I'm gonna get behind him and help him along the way. So the first thing that we can all work on is recognizing generational differences. They're they're natural and they're to be celebrated, but they're also to be recognized particularly by those of us who are in the older generations that realize that things have changed and we must as well. Now I wanna just underscore to teach this from a position of being a fellow pilgrim. I recently talked with a young pastor, and he's in a situation where he's in his thirties, he's trying to lead a church into some significant change, which it needs to make.

Jeff Iorg: 12:12

And I said to him, now remember this. I said, thirty years ago, was you, and now I'm one of the old guys in this church. I said, thirty years ago, I was you. And thirty years from now, you're going to be me. So just think about the older generation of how you want to be treated someday when your ideas are no longer cutting edge and a new generation needs to lead.

Jeff Iorg: 12:32

Now in this pastor's credit, his eyes lit up and he said, man, I received that. Thank you for that. He said, I realize we're all in this together, and we need to have that kind of attitude. So, yes, a culture of adaptability can begin by recognizing generational differences and recognizing that it's a natural flow of life for things to change generation by generation. A second thing you can do is learn to advocate for for accommodating preferences without sacrificing convictions.

Jeff Iorg: 13:06

Now most leaders, including most pastors, have ministry preferences. We like a style of music. We like a particular bible translation. We like a certain dress code. We have a certain personal work style.

Jeff Iorg: 13:19

We have favored approaches to ministry like evangelism or discipleship or other programs. We just have certain things that we like and certain ways that we like to do them. But the reality is these preferences vary from leader to leader. One of the advantages I have of speaking in a different church almost every Sunday and seeing different models of ministry is I recognize how many different preferential ways there are to do church in a meaningful way. Now preferences may vary, and they may vary from past practices.

Jeff Iorg: 13:52

They may vary from the preferences of some current members. They may vary from the practices of a previous generation. Preferences always vary. And wise leaders support pastors, and pastor support leaders who recognize that preferences can be accommodated and help church members understand that these preferences are not biblical or theological essentials. Their preference is to be accommodated.

Jeff Iorg: 14:20

Now, that doesn't mean that every church has to accommodate every preference, but it does mean that people tend to coalesce around preferences, and churches tend tend to take on personalities or stylistic methodologies that sort of represent those preferences. But it's when those need to change that this culture of adaptability must be strong. Now leaders, especially lay leaders who advocate for preferences to be accommodated are a pastor's best friend. You know, if someone comes to you as a church volunteer leader or a lay leader and says, you know, I heard the pastor wants to do this, and you have two choices in that moment of how you're going to respond. You can say, yeah, I know he's always changing everything, and I'm not sure I really like this one, and it's not the

Jeff Iorg: 15:05

way I would do it. Or you can say, Yeah.

Jeff Iorg: 15:08

Isn't it exciting that pastor's trying new things? Or, Isn't it interesting that we're talking about reaching people in a new way? Or, You know, this is an idea that at least ought to be field tested. Let's give it a try and see how it works. You can facilitate a culture of adaptability by advocating for preferential choices.

Jeff Iorg: 15:29

Now, you can also, in appropriate ways, help a leader when they're pushing too far or going too fast or when they make the mistake of compromising a biblical essential, then you may need to raise an issue with a leader and say, hey, I understand we're accommodating preferences and we're trying to do things new ways and learn to work in new ways together, but I think this one either goes too far or pushes a biblical essential envelope that we need

Jeff Iorg: 15:54

to back off from. Let me give you

Jeff Iorg: 15:56

just one example of how this plays in my life and ministry. When I was at Gateway Seminary, we had a very diverse student body. In fact, as you've heard me say before, only about 35% of our students were Anglo, sixty five, seventy percent were from the various nations and cultures of the world. And this impacted our worship services in our chapel and other programs that we did. We used a lot of different kinds of worship styles.

Jeff Iorg: 16:26

We've had Polynesian worship. We've had worship led by Koreans, Chinese, Hispanics, African Americans, and sometimes a blend of all of these in multicultural worship services or events. Now you might say, well, all of that is a good example of accommodating adaptability. Yes. It is.

Jeff Iorg: 16:44

But there was one thing I insisted on, and that is the music, no matter what style it was, had to be theologically sound and in fact, biblically robust. And so I would meet with the chapel worship coordinator every year and say, look, I want a wide variety of worship styles. I want there to be an adaptability to what we do that recognizes the diversity of our seminary community. And I want there to be some services devoted entirely to one particular style or one particular culture and others that blend all of these together. But the one thing I insist on is that the lyrics of the music be theologically sound and biblically robust.

Jeff Iorg: 17:29

And so don't evaluate the style, evaluate the content. Now that's just one example I'm talking about, where you have an intentionality about a culture of adaptability, but you recognize that you have to preserve some theological and biblical essentials, and you don't compromise those. And so finding creative ways to be adaptable without compromising those essentials is, of course, one of the needles to thread on the challenge of leadership today. But I wanna advocate for advocating for accommodating preferences, but while recognizing that you do have to hold to a theological and biblical standards. Well, here's a third thing you can do that facilitates a culture of adaptability, and that is to speak positively about change.

Jeff Iorg: 18:14

You can tell a lot about a leader, about a leadership group, and about a church by the language they use, the tone they adopt, and even their body language when they're talking about change. For example, if a change is proposed and leaves well, we're always changing things. Well, here we go again making another change, or, man, I don't understand why we have to keep making all these changes, and things have to be different every week when we come to church. Well, that kind of negative whining undermines a a culture of adaptability. Discipline yourself instead to speak positively about change.

Jeff Iorg: 18:52

When you speak as a leader, and even as a lay leader, when

Jeff Iorg: 18:55

you speak, people pay attention. Now they wanna know what you

Jeff Iorg: 18:58

think when new ideas are proposed. And remember, remember, they're listening just as closely to what you say in the parking lot

Jeff Iorg: 19:06

as to your comments in the formal meeting. This is one

Jeff Iorg: 19:10

of the most important lessons I learned about leadership communication many years ago, and that is you go into a meeting and you have a formal process, and then you dismiss and go out and get the coffee and keep talking about what just happened in the meeting. And it's in those moments that I learned the discipline of staying on mission, on message,

Jeff Iorg: 19:29

and speaking positively about what was happening in the formal context. We see this all the time in our denomination. We see it in churches. You've experienced it. And that is leaders undermining the changes that need

Jeff Iorg: 19:46

to be made, not by what they say in the

Jeff Iorg: 19:48

meetings, but what they say in

Jeff Iorg: 19:50

the hallways. So speak positively about change. When a change possibility is proposed, rather than immediately picking apart with the negative, think about the positives that can be spoken about that in the situation. Now this is particularly hard for some of us. I am told by people who know me well that I'm a bit of a contrarian.

Jeff Iorg: 20:15

I tend to see the negative in things. Now that may surprise you because you you think, oh no, Jeff. You're a positive visionary leader. You're always challenging us to go forward and to to do new things, and that's all true. But when I hear a new idea, I will quickly quickly in my mind click through the seven or eight positives about it and bypass those to get to the one negative that's a part of the idea or that's within the issue.

Jeff Iorg: 20:44

Now, I do that because as a leader, I very quickly default to problem solving. But the people around me don't realize what just went on in my brain, that I clicked through seven or eight positives within a very short period of time, that I saw quickly the possibilities of the new idea, I saw how it could be implemented, I saw what it could do, I saw why it might work, But immediately, after clicking through those positives in my mind, I land on the negative. Not because I want to be negative, but because I want to solve the negative so we can get on to the positives.

Jeff Iorg: 21:18

However, I oftentimes only verbalize the negative. And when I do this, it tends to

Jeff Iorg: 21:26

demoralize people around me. Now, I've learned to be better about this at work. I've learned to take a breath, vocalize some of the positives, and then address the negative we have to resolve. Where I find myself really messing this up is in my family and at home, where an idea will come up and I will immediately fall to the negative. Not because I don't like the idea or because I don't think it has promise, but because I want to solve the negative problem so we can get on with it.

Jeff Iorg: 21:52

Quite frankly, I sometimes take advantage of my family and think, oh, they'll understand, and let's just get to the point. Well, if that's you, you have to work with me on the leadership discipline of speaking positively about change, of letting the first words that we actually vocalize about a change be positive, and then we can sort through those to get to the negative and solve the negative aspects or the negative issues that need to be addressed. Now, aspect of speaking positively about change is once a decision is made, speaking publicly with one voice about this issue. You know, one of the great privileges of my life has been working in leadership teams, and I had a particularly powerful, dynamic, awesome team at Gateway Seminary. Not to say I didn't have one here at

Jeff Iorg: 22:44

the executive committee or in the Northwest Baptist Convention. I've been blessed with good teams in different places. But at the seminary, I was there long enough, twenty years, that our leadership team made some decisions that not everyone on the team was in favor of doing. And

Jeff Iorg: 23:02

we would have some very spirited debates about these issues. There would be a proposal put forward to change the way we did recruiting or change something about fundraising or change something about our schedule or change something about our student expectations. Some new idea would be put forward, and some vice president usually would be advocating for that idea with a list of reasons why he felt like it would improve the seminary. Others would say, no, that won't work. This is not going to happen.

Jeff Iorg: 23:28

This will cause problems in other places. This is going to cost money you don't understand. And the negative would start being kicked back, and

Jeff Iorg: 23:35

the debate would be on. Well, we'd go at it for a while.

Jeff Iorg: 23:39

Sometimes multiple meetings, depending on the gravity of

Jeff Iorg: 23:42

the issue. But finally, finally, we would make a decision. One of the most moving things that I experienced at Gateway Seminary was when our leadership team would go forward with a decision, and some of

Jeff Iorg: 23:58

the people who had been opposed to the decision so strenuously in private, once the decision was

Jeff Iorg: 24:05

made, became its public advocates. I saw the humility, the teammanship, the loyalty demonstrated by some men who came to a decision and then said, while I don't necessarily agree

Jeff Iorg: 24:29

with it and maybe didn't even vote for it or wasn't vocally for it, the decision's been made. The team has spoken. And now, it's my job to adapt my personal preferences to the decision that's been reached and to become its advocate.

Jeff Iorg: 24:45

I saw this several times, and then it happened to me. There was this one particular decision that we just really struggled with as a team. The reason we struggled because the vote was four to one, and I was the one that didn't wanna do it. Now when you're president, that one can be a pretty powerful veto, But I was committed to listening and working and functioning in that kind of team environment. And so I had

Jeff Iorg: 25:18

to ask myself the question, is it my responsibility to pull the line here, or am I

Jeff Iorg: 25:23

supposed to learn and demonstrate adaptability once the decision has been reached? We finally concluded the way to go forward. And I had to stand up as president and tell the seminary, we're going in this direction with this program or this project. We're going to

Jeff Iorg: 25:38

do this new thing in this new way. When people started asking questions, I couldn't say, You know, I understand that question. I had the same questions. I don't like what we're doing either, but we're going to do it because that's what the decision was made. No, I didn't say that.

Jeff Iorg: 25:51

When the questions were raised, I said, That's a great question, and here's the answer. I was giving the answers that others had advocated for that, frankly, I still had some questions about, but it was my responsibility to advocate for the decision, to adapt my preferences to what had been decided and to move forward. Another way to facilitate a culture of adaptability is to speak positively about change, to speak positively in the hallway as well as in the meeting, to speak positively, not just analyzing the one negative thing about the new change that's being proposed, but to speak positively about it first before you get to the negative. And third, when a decision has been made, adapt. Adapt to what the group has decided and become its advocate and move on.

Jeff Iorg: 26:38

And, oh, by the way, on that particular issue, which I really won't go into in detail, but the other four guys were right and the president was wrong. It was a great learning moment for me to realize that sometimes I'm the one who needs to adapt. Then the last thing I would say is a culture of adaptability means that you account for the results of the change and adjust as needed. A culture of adaptability doesn't mean you adopt every new idea that comes along and stay with it no matter what. It means that you're open to new ideas, that you adopt them sometimes incrementally, and you watch them as they're unfolding.

Jeff Iorg: 27:17

If they're resulting in more conversions, more baptisms, more discipleship opportunities, more service being done, more missional advance taking place through your church or ministry organization, then celebrate and keep going.

Jeff Iorg: 27:29

If not, have the courage to make additional changes, to make improvements along the way, to even have the courage to stop something and say, You know, this change isn't working like we thought it would, and we need to stop, retrench, and go a new direction. You know, leadership does involve risk, adaptability, and sometimes failure as we look for the best preferential methods and options of doing ministry in this generation. The best leaders are not

Jeff Iorg: 28:07

the leaders who get it all right. The best leaders are the leaders who learn to fail fast. Fail fast means you move on from something that's unproductive, that you're willing to say, We tried this. We all thought it

Jeff Iorg: 28:21

would work. Hasn't worked out like we hoped. Let's adjust. You know, an old leadership saying is, when the horse dies, dismount. But adaptable leaders prefer this phrase, when the horse is headed in the wrong direction, change horses.

Jeff Iorg: 28:41

Just because you have made an adaptive decision

Jeff Iorg: 28:46

to go a new direction doesn't necessarily mean you're only going in that direction and nothing can ever be adjusted along the way. There are always unintended consequences of decisions that have to be mitigated, managed, or sometimes you have to change directions when you learn new information. When we moved the seminary from Northern California to Southern California A Few Years ago, we had a plan laid out. We knew we had made the right big picture strategic ministry decision. We had a plan mapped out of how we were going do that, and it required a significant amount of adaptive change from a lot of different people.

Jeff Iorg: 29:22

But once we got into it, we started realizing some of this isn't working. We need to retrench and go a new direction. We need to back up and try a new method. What we thought was gonna be easy turned out to be hard, what we thought was gonna be hard turned out to be easy. We were constantly adapting along the way.

Jeff Iorg: 29:38

So just because you've made an adapted decision, just because you've chosen to go a new direction and you may have the overarching missional reason right for doing that, doesn't mean that you're not gonna have to make a lot of changes along the way into what that's gonna look like and how you're gonna get it done. So account for the results of changes that you start making, really analyze if they're actually producing what you set out to produce, and then adjust along the way. Don't be so locked into your new idea that you can't say, we still need to be adaptive as we're moving along. Well, today on the podcast, we've talked about developing a culture of adaptability in your church or your ministry organization. Some suggestions that I've seen from good people who've modeled this for me over the years, recognize generational differences, advocate for preferences, speak positively about change, and account for the results and continue to adjust along the way.

Jeff Iorg: 30:34

A culture of adaptability is essential in ministry organizations that remain pliable and pursue God's best as they move forward. Put these principles into practice as you develop a greater culture of adaptability, first of all, for yourself and then for the church or the organization you lead. Put it into practice as you lead on.