The Challenges of Ministry as a Public Responsibilty

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, discusses the challenges of ministry as a public responsibility. Iorg compares leadership to living in a glass house or under a spotlight, where every aspect of a leader's life is subject to scrutiny. He emphasizes that leaders must accept this reality and learn to manage the consequences of their public role. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

What is Lead On Podcast?

Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.

Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.

From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.

Put these principles into practice and Lead On!

Jeff Iorg: 00:54

Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. On this podcast, we talk about the daily work of ministry, the ins and outs, the ups and downs of what it means to minister to people in the name of Jesus Christ. We talk about church ministry and organizational leadership, and about how we do our work practically, that we've been assigned by the Lord. Well, today, I wanna talk about the challenges of doing ministry as a public responsibility.

Jeff Iorg: 01:35

In fact, it's so public that one of my friends actually has a podcast about ministry marriage entitled The Glass House, and you may feel that way today. You may feel that you live and work in a glass house where everyone knows your business. It reminds me of a childhood game that I enjoyed playing called spotlight. Spotlight is hide and go seek, but with flashlights. Summer nights, when I was a child, we would get together as kids in our neighborhood, run around in the dark trying to tag each other with beams from the spotlight or the flashlight.

Jeff Iorg: 02:17

We had all kinds of variations on that game with safe zones and flags to capture and whatever else we could imagine. Spotlight was a lot of fun. Leaders sometimes wish, though, that life in

Jeff Iorg: 02:31

the spotlight was as much fun as that game. Leaders have

Jeff Iorg: 02:36

to learn to live on stage in the spotlight of public observation and opinion or in the glasshouse where everyone gets

Jeff Iorg: 02:48

to look in and see who we are and what we're doing and why.

Jeff Iorg: 02:54

You know, part of learning to lead is accepting that leadership is a public role, and you have to learn to manage the consequences. Now from a distance, the leadership spotlight looks inviting to the uninitiated, but leaders, leaders soon learn the spotlight is like a siren's song. It's inviting from a distance, but it is often painful to experience. Now as a leader, you you have to expect that your professional life will be well known, but the surprising discovery for many is how much their personal lives are also considered public information, open for analysis by their followers. It's amazing how supposedly private matters like medical information,

Jeff Iorg: 03:50

vacation planning, issues with our children become public concerns. Leaders

Jeff Iorg: 03:59

in churches and ministry organizations soon realize their lives are an open book, read by all and reviewed by many. If you buy a new car, get ready for questions. If you change your hairstyle or dress more casually or more formally, you'll be asked if you're having a midlife crisis or if you're trying to impress somebody. Announce you're going on vacation, and someone will ask you where you're going, you're flying or driving, how long you'll be gone, when you're coming back, what you're planning to do while you're there. Try to slip away without telling anyone, and the rumor mill runs amok, insisting that you are looking for another job or that something has gone wrong in your family.

Jeff Iorg: 04:42

You're a parent. You've had to deal with all kinds of issues, like announcing a pregnancy, or an adoption. That can be interesting. One pastor told me that a church member replied to his announcement about their about their pending adoption by saying, that's great news. That's how all pastors should get their children, as opposed, I guess, to the other way of getting your children.

Jeff Iorg: 05:07

And then after your children arrive, parenting them in public can be a challenge. You've gotta care for infants, choose preschool programs, discipline your growing children. All of this is fodder for public discussion. You have to make decisions about education, homeschool, private school, Christian school, public school, and I will assure you, this will guarantee contrary opinions to be expressed no matter what choices you make. And then as your children turn into teenagers, you have to answer questions about church involvement, school choice, college plans.

Jeff Iorg: 05:42

All of these decisions are openly evaluated and critiqued, and they can make the already challenging role of parenting even more difficult. Get an illness, even a cold, and it seems everyone wants to know the diagnosis and share their experience and tell you how their uncle or their grandfather or their friend or someone had the same problem. Now this can be encouraging on one level because you realize people care about

Jeff Iorg: 06:07

you, but on another level, it can quickly become uncomfortable or embarrassing when health problems are so personal. Grief can also be hard in public.

Jeff Iorg: 06:19

When someone that you love, a family member or friend, dies, you will experience profound loss. Just because you're a Christian leader doesn't make you exempt to such feelings. Leaders also have to deal with aging parents and eventually their deaths. We have family and friends who die, as well as other grief inducing losses, like friends relocating or spouses losing jobs or adult children going through different difficult times. Sometimes, you just like to keep some of this private.

Jeff Iorg: 06:51

You just don't want everybody knowing your business all the time. You wanna grieve in private.

Jeff Iorg: 06:59

You wanna handle these family crises alone or with the people involved and no one else, but so much of this plays out in the public eye. A leader's job and in ministry leadership, a leader's life is often a public responsibility.

Jeff Iorg: 07:23

I like to

Jeff Iorg: 07:24

say it this way. Leaders live out loud personally and professionally. We

Jeff Iorg: 07:30

live in the spotlight with the microphone on. There's always a pressure, in fact, of being on, of being ever present, of being ready to go, of always having that

Jeff Iorg: 07:46

pressure, and it can be quite a challenge. It can become wearisome, always living

Jeff Iorg: 07:54

in the public eye.

Jeff Iorg: 07:57

So today on the podcast, I wanna talk about some things that you can do, that your spouse can do, that even you can help your children learn to do, that will help you to

Jeff Iorg: 08:10

manage the bright glare of the leadership spotlight.

Jeff Iorg: 08:15

1st, the first step to becoming more comfortable with the public nature of leadership is to accept the inevitability of your situation. Stop complaining about it. Stop wishing it weren't so. In plain terms, you gotta get over it. You you

Jeff Iorg: 08:34

may think it's inappropriate for so many people to know about or comment on every aspect of your life, but that won't change the situation. If you're a leader, you've chosen to step into the spotlight, so you have

Jeff Iorg: 08:47

to get used to the glare. Stop whining about how bright it is and how unfair it seems. Doing so, this whining, is futile, and, frankly,

Jeff Iorg: 08:59

it reveals your immaturity and your inexperience as a leader. Now my first experience on a stage that was lighted for television was unnerving. And I stepped on that stage, and the lights were brighter than anything I had ever experienced as a speaker. It was disconcerting. I was blinded by the light.

Jeff Iorg: 09:21

The glare was so intense, all all I could see were were shadows in the first few rows. Now as a speaker, I I enjoy a lot of audience interaction, and not being able to see the crowd in that, TV lit studio type environment was unsettling.

Jeff Iorg: 09:38

And in the moment, I had one of 2 choices. I could have

Jeff Iorg: 09:42

the lighting adjusted, which was not going to happen, or I could adjust to the situation, which meant I had to quickly adapt to my new reality. Listen. If you're in the leadership spotlight, that's what you have to do today. You have to quickly adapt to your new reality. You may not have expected this much scrutiny.

Jeff Iorg: 10:07

You may not have expected your family to be subject to this much interest. You you may not have known that leadership would be such a public responsibility, that people would be interested in your life, not just your personal life, but, your professional life, but your personal life as well. Now on another podcast, I've talked about creating boundaries to separate your personal life from public life and to preserve some aspects of your personal life just for yourself and for your family. I believe in setting those boundaries, but no matter where you set the boundaries, you're still going to have a public lifestyle as a leader.

Jeff Iorg: 10:47

You have to accept this reality. Your life

Jeff Iorg: 10:51

as a leader will be lived on stage in public with many interested spectators. People are watching. You have to learn the essential skills to thrive in this environment, and doing so is much better than wasting energy complaining about it or wishing it would change. Besides, as a Christian leader, you lead with your life as much as with your words, ideas, and vision. So in some sense, putting your life and all that goes with it on display is a part

Jeff Iorg: 11:28

an integral part of your Christian leadership responsibility. In other words, living in the spotlight comes with the territory of Christian leadership. In fact, it's more than something that comes with the territory. It is the territory. So step 1, to leading in the spotlight, accept your new reality.

Jeff Iorg: 11:53

Step 2, don't play to the crowd. The temptation, since you have this inescapable audience, is then to play to the crowd,

Jeff Iorg: 12:04

performing to please people, thus trying to minimize your followers' negative impressions

Jeff Iorg: 12:10

and negative comments. Giving into that

Jeff Iorg: 12:13

temptation has devastating long range consequences because it ignores something that I call the doctrine

Jeff Iorg: 12:22

of the crowd. Now the doctrine of the crowd can be

Jeff Iorg: 12:26

summarized this way. Crowds are fickle, can't be trusted, and often believe the last voice they hear. Now there's a great example of this in the book of Acts chapter 14 when Paul and Barnabas were on their mission trip to Lystra. The team had a rough time in a place called Iconium in Acts 14:1-7 before they showed up in Lystra. Their work in, the Iconian synagogue had been fruitful, but ultimately resulted in opposition from both Jews and Gentiles.

Jeff Iorg: 13:02

In fact, Paul and Barnabas ultimately learned of a plot to stone them, and when that happened, they fled the Lystra. Now their ministry opened there with a remarkable healing of a lame man. Upon Paul's command, he he jumped up and started to walk around. It was a dramatic example of the power of God working through Paul and through his preaching. You can read that in Acts 14:8 through 10.

Jeff Iorg: 13:29

Then the story continues. The Bible says, when the crowd saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices saying in the Lyconian language, the gods have come down to us in the form of men, and they started to call Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes because he was the main speaker. Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates. He, with the crowds, intended to offer sacrifice. Acts 1411 to 13.

Jeff Iorg: 14:05

Well, Paul and Barnabas might have thought, that's more like it. We don't wanna be stoned and run out of town like we were in Iconium. We wanna be called gods and receive accolades for the miracles that we do and the truth that we preach. Man, who wouldn't prefer that kind of reception rather than being run out of town? I mean, let's be honest.

Jeff Iorg: 14:27

Wouldn't you like it just for once for your followers to erupt in tumultuous applause, celebrating your spiritual power and wisdom? I know the Bible says they brought oxen and garlands. That might be a little much, but wouldn't a generous bonus or a special gift or some welcome expression of support just make your day? Of course, it would. We're human, and something deep down inside of us longs for the approval of others.

Jeff Iorg: 14:58

We we want the crowd to like us. We we want our followers to appreciate us. We we want people to see what we do and say thank you.

Jeff Iorg: 15:07

But Paul and Barnabas model something in this passage that's very significant. In verses 14 through 18, they they they show us how to respond to this kind of rapturous, aggressive, tumultuous even support they were receiving. The Bible says they tore their robes.

Jeff Iorg: 15:31

That's really interesting. Probably signified 2 things. First of all, they tore their robes as a sign of grief, a cultural symbol that their hearts were being torn open by what was happening to them. But second, this tearing of their robes also revealed their human bodies in in in terms, of shouting, hey. We're men also.

Jeff Iorg: 15:54

In other words, we're tearing our our our clothing so you can see we're men also. We're we're

Jeff Iorg: 15:59

we're just like you, and yet their resistance to being praised in the way they were being lauded barely stopped, the Bible says, the crowds from sacrificing to them.

Jeff Iorg: 16:15

Let me ask you this question. Would you have had the discernment and the discipline to short circuit that celebration? Now remember, Paul and Barnabas, early in their missionary careers, they had been subjected to intense opposition, and finally, they had a city that welcomed them and their message. In fact, more than welcoming them, they were called gods and were on the verge of being worshiped. They were being called Zeus and Hermes.

Jeff Iorg: 16:46

Wow. If you had recently been stoned and run out

Jeff Iorg: 16:50

of a city, you came to a new place and they loved you this much,

Jeff Iorg: 16:55

don't you think you'd wanna soak in those accolades? Would you have the spiritual discipline to resist? It's important that you do. Here's why. Because the Bible says in Acts 14 19 that within a few days after this incident where they were being praised so highly, within a

Jeff Iorg: 17:14

few days, some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and when they had won over the crowds, get that phrase, won over the crowd, and then, next phrase, and stoned Paul, They dragged

Jeff Iorg: 17:28

him out of the city thinking he was dead. Now get this. The same crowd that had worshiped Paul and Barnabas were now whipped into a destructive frenzy. They stoned Paul,

Jeff Iorg: 17:44

dragged him out of the city,

Jeff Iorg: 17:46

and left him for dead. This is a great example of the doctrine of the crowd.

Jeff Iorg: 17:54

Fickle people easily influenced to impulsive action. While Paul had been praised for his preaching

Jeff Iorg: 18:04

and his miracles, some

Jeff Iorg: 18:06

fellows won over the crowds and convinced them to attack the men they had previously

Jeff Iorg: 18:15

called gods.

Jeff Iorg: 18:17

Brothers and sisters, when you lead in public, be careful not to trust the opinion of the crowd, good or bad, positive or negative, and never let it control your

Jeff Iorg: 18:29

behavior. Some followers will comment on everything from your wardrobe to your parenting style to

Jeff Iorg: 18:36

your card choice to your speaking ability, and they may say very positive things about you, and it's easy to be influenced by what they say. But when they're negative, it's also very easy to be overly discouraged by their critics or by what they may have said to you in the negative. Either way, whether you're made overly confident by your supporters or deeply discouraged by your detractor, either way, you're giving in to the crowd mentality. Resist the temptation to go along with the crowd and its opinion of you. Resist the temptation to develop your sense of well-being and your sense of acceptance from the opinion of others.

Jeff Iorg: 19:24

Look for a better source of security than the fickle whim of your followers.

Jeff Iorg: 19:32

Don't follow the doctrine of the crowd. Well, a third thing you can learn to do to help

Jeff Iorg: 19:41

you lead in the spotlight is to develop security in Jesus Christ. Now I think I'll come back and do an entire podcast on security as it relates to leadership, but today, let me just talk about it briefly and say that part of learning to lead in public is developing deep security in Jesus Christ so that your security and your significance that grows out of it does not rest on the opinions of others, but instead something much deeper and that is your rock solid relationship to God and His acceptance of you through Jesus Christ. You know, when I first heard of the doctrine of the security of the believer, I heard it phrased in the common way that a lot of Baptists phrase it. Once saved, always saved. And I accepted that, and I believed it, and it is true.

Jeff Iorg: 20:36

But some years later, I learned that that was a truncated version of the doctrine of security of the believer. Security of the believer doesn't mean once saved, always saved, meaning that it's only for eternity. Security of the believer is also for right now. What what does that mean? It means that you are as secure in Jesus Christ today as you will ever be in eternity.

Jeff Iorg: 21:07

The security of the believer means that you are secure now and that you will be secure in the future, that you are as secure now in Jesus Christ as you ever will be. Man, this is such encouraging news that our security rests in Jesus Christ and that he is the bedrock for maintaining our spiritual, emotional, and and and even psychological equilibrium for leadership. The beginning point of overcoming the insecurity which drives you to misbehave in the context of the public pressures of leadership, the beginning point of overcoming this insecurity is settling on your security in Jesus Christ. You know, the Bible says that God and Jesus made you secure. You can find this in John chapter 10 verses 2829.

Jeff Iorg: 22:05

There's a beautiful illustration there that says, Jesus promising no one is able to snatch them, meaning you and I, out of the father's hand. And then he said, because the father and I are 1. When I'm teaching this sometimes, especially to children, I'll pull off my wedding ring as I'm doing here in the podcast studio. I'll place it in the palm of my hand, and I'll put my other hand over it, and I'll clasp it down as tightly as possible, and I'll say to a child, now can you get the ring out of my hands? Well, of course, they can't do it.

Jeff Iorg: 22:34

And then I'll use this verse and I'll say, no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand because the father and Jesus are 1. And so, as God and Jesus encapsulate this ring, as my hands are encapsulating this ring, God and Jesus, encapsulate you and hold you just as tightly. That's the groundwork of God and Jesus making you secure. You know, this is so vital because you're going to run into situations in leadership that really do create just such incredible conflict around you and cause so many difficult things to happen that you will compulsively be drawn to drawing people's approval in order to gain their blessing, and to find some kind of sense of significance in what you're doing. It's so difficult to stand strong when everything is going wrong around you and to know that you simply have to do what's right in the moment.

Jeff Iorg: 23:32

That kind of security can only come from faith in Jesus Christ. But even beyond that, you have to have security to be able to say no to people and to not rush always to try to p please people as some kind of compulsive servant.

Jeff Iorg: 23:46

I once worked with a pastor who was always at

Jeff Iorg: 23:49

the beck and call of his church members. He believed when the phone rings, I've gotta go. And no amount of pleading by his wife or counsel from his mentors or or even support of some of his church leaders changed his behavior. He was addicted to the well-being he received, the feelings of well-being that he received from his sense of personal indispensability.

Jeff Iorg: 24:14

You know, he was addicted to crowd approval. He he needed the Attaboys for being Super Pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 24:21

That's what gave him a sense of security and significance. And because he was a hardworking man who who did so much for so many, his church grew, and the crowd around him grew to an unmanageable size. And it got to the point where he spent almost every waking hour consumed with how to meet the needs of and please people that were part of this crowd. And ultimately, his wife had an affair, not because she was promiscuous, but because she was desperate. She ultimately left him, and their marriage ended.

Jeff Iorg: 24:55

She was looking for security and significance in a relationship. She should have never started. He was looking for security and significance in relationships with church members and through his work that were unfulfilling. They had the right principle. You seek security in relationship, but they had the wrong application.

Jeff Iorg: 25:15

You have to seek security in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And so security resists all threats and gives us a freedom to obey God that cannot come from any other source. Well, I'll probably come back and do a podcast sometime later on developing security and what that means for us in ministry leadership. But today, we've talked about 3 resources that you can use to help you in the spotlight. Accept your reality.

Jeff Iorg: 25:44

Don't play to the crowd. Work on your security in Jesus. And then one last thing, and that is stick to your convictions in key areas. Now I can't go into all of them on the podcast, but I'm just gonna give you 2 today, especially that'll be appropriate for those of you who are perhaps younger leaders. Stick to your convictions in the area of parenting.

Jeff Iorg: 26:07

Establishing core convictions and sticking to them, no matter what anyone outside your marriage thinks, it's particularly important related to parenting. You know, we are, even by biblical mandate in first Timothy 34, expected to be examples of healthy parenting. Now Now, we're not supposed to be perfect parents. We don't have to have perfect children, but we are expected to relate to our children in healthy ways and create a healthy environment for their upbringing. Now, my wife, Anne, and I had poor convictions about parenting.

Jeff Iorg: 26:42

We believed, for example, that our parental mission, if you will, was to produce emotionally healthy, spiritually growing adults. Once we settled on that mission, that's what we focused on doing. We focused on producing adults, which meant we didn't evaluate our teenage children too quickly. We weren't looking to create emotionally healthy, spiritually growing 13 year olds. We were looking to create emotionally healthy, spiritually growing adults, and so we made many parenting decisions with that long term goal in mind.

Jeff Iorg: 27:16

And quite frankly, we took some criticism for it. People didn't understand why we were making certain parenting decisions about childhood activities, about school participation, about church involvement, about spiritual growth practices. But we were sticking by our convictions because we had a goal in mind, and we knew what we were supposed to do to get our children to accomplish that goal. And even though we were being observed by our followers and sometimes commented on them negatively,

Jeff Iorg: 27:48

we stuck by our convictions. We knew our mission. We knew what

Jeff Iorg: 27:53

we were trying to accomplish. And while our children were definitely not perfect and we were definitely not perfect as parents, we believe we were on track so that our children would grow into young adults who would love Jesus, serve their churches, and value ministry leadership. We had to decide all kinds of issues that all kinds of other families also have to struggle through, but we had to do it in public where everyone had a comment. And so, we had to develop our convictions, stand by them, trusting the long term goal that we had in mind was the best goal, and that the behaviors along the way had to be shaped to accomplish that long term goal. And then another area you have to establish your convictions is about managing your finances.

Jeff Iorg: 28:38

This often creates tension for leaders because so many of things that we do that are related to our finances are very much open for others to see. Cars we buy, trips we take, clothes we wear, schools our kids go to, the activities our children are involved in. All these things relate to how we manage our finances. Now, you can be overly sensitive about this area and you have to be careful that you that you don't let what other people think about your financial management dictate how you manage the resources God has given you. You have to set out the same thing with parenting.

Jeff Iorg: 29:13

What are your financial convictions? What are you trying to accomplish? And then live by those steadfastly so that you can fulfill the goals and responsibilities that God has given you in this key area. This can be a confusing and difficult area, and yet it's one in which you have to make special, or specific choices so that you do the right thing right way in the area of financial management. Now with so many of these things going on around us, it's hard to sort out how to live in the leadership spotlight.

Jeff Iorg: 29:52

So let me encourage you today. The spotlight's not going away. You've chosen a public leadership responsibility, and you've got to fulfill what you do in public. And that's not just your professional life in public, but also your personal life. So accept that reality.

Jeff Iorg: 30:12

Determine that you are not gonna play to the crowd. 3rd, develop your security in Jesus Christ. And then 4th, stick by your convictions. Especially in key areas like parenting and finance. Establish what you're convicted to do.

Jeff Iorg: 30:29

Establish the the roles, responsibilities, the life practices, and the standards you're gonna live by. And then hold to them no matter what the crowd thinks. We do live in a glass house. We do ministry leadership in the spotlight. It may be a little overwhelming to you.

Jeff Iorg: 30:48

You may not have been fully prepared for it. You may think it's unfair, and in some ways it is. But on this podcast, we talk about what's real, and the spotlight is definitely real. So put into practice what we've talked about today so that you might continue to live and to lead in the spotlight because the bright light that's shining on you is an opportunity for you to demonstrate the gospel and what it looks like to a watching world as you lead on.