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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the difficult reality of leadership transition—why older leaders often struggle to step aside and how to navigate that process with wisdom and courage. He offers practical guidance for both seasoned leaders facing transition and those responsible for leading it well, all for the health of the church and the advancement of God’s mission.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention carrying on our continuing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Over the past few months, I've been called into several situations where older leaders have been struggling with transition. Specifically, older leaders struggling with letting go of their current leadership responsibilities and moving forward and allowing others to take on those roles. And I've been in various situations with this ranging from ministry organization leaders who had been in place for a long time to pastors who've been in their organizations for or in their churches for a long time to some lay leaders who have been significantly invested in their church over the years who are facing the same kind of struggles.
Jeff Iorg:So I wanna talk today on the podcast about what is happening when older leaders are asked to transition out of responsibility. And I wanna talk about the difficulty of that and what causes some of that difficulty. And I wanna approach it from two perspectives today. First, I wanna talk to those of you that are in that phase of life where you need to be thinking about transitioning out of aggressive first chair at the front of the parade leadership and into a different role. But I also wanna talk to those of you who are having to lead organizations where this is happening and give you some thoughts about how you can do it more effectively.
Jeff Iorg:So here's the sad reality. The clock keeps ticking. The calendar keeps turning. Every one of us is getting older, and we all come to the place where we need to step aside and let a rising generation of leaders take our place. Whether you're a deacon in a church, a pastor in a church, an executive in an organization, it happens to all of us.
Jeff Iorg:Now a funny thing happened about this. Few years ago, I was starting to observe this phenomenon taking place, and I had been called into some situations, back when I was at the seminary in California with a particular couple of churches I'm thinking of right now that were going through this. And I saw how one of them was doing it really well and one not so well. And I saw one leader transitioning out with a pretty effective and healthy perspective and the other one really struggling and causing a lot of difficulty. And I realized that that there was gonna come a time when I was gonna be that guy.
Jeff Iorg:I was gonna be that older leader, and I needed someone to step in and say, it's time for you to transition out and let someone else come in. I went in my own mind to say, oh, I'll I'll know when that time comes, but I also know how deceptive our own hearts are. And so I had my sons home for a holiday, and I sat them both down together and I said, hey. I wanna talk to you guys about something serious. Now you gotta remember, my sons are, both in their thirties at this point.
Jeff Iorg:They're both successful men. They're both, godly men, and they're both guys who do not mind one bit giving me the business. All right? They like to grind on their dad. But in this moment, we were having a serious conversation.
Jeff Iorg:I said, I need to have a serious conversation with you guys. I need to talk to you about something. They're like, okay, dad. And I said, every leader reaches a point where they need to step aside. They need to put the microphone down.
Jeff Iorg:They need to let others come in and really start leading, and they need to fade a little bit into the background. And I said, guys, I've watched a couple situations recently where this has not gone well, and and I don't wanna be that guy. So there's gonna come a time at some point when I'm going to need someone to say to me, dad, it's time. It's time for you to step back. It's time for you to let others lead.
Jeff Iorg:It's time for you to put the microphone down. And I said I said, guys, you guys know me well and I love you both and I'm counting on you in the right moment to say the hard thing to me that needs to be said. My boys kind of looked at each other, smiled just a little bit, and my oldest son looked back at me and said, well, dad, now that you've brought this up, it's time for a conversation. I said, you you are kidding me. You're not doing that to me today.
Jeff Iorg:He said, well, actually, dad, you know. And we all had a big laugh. And then I said, now listen, guys. Today we're laughing about it, but there's gonna come a time. Well, that time does come, doesn't it?
Jeff Iorg:But it's hard. It's hard when you're a leader to recognize that it's time to step aside and let others take your place. It's time to let others take the point of leadership. And if you're in a church or an organization where this needs to happen, it's hard. It's really hard for you to facilitate it in the moment.
Jeff Iorg:So let me talk with you today, first of all, about why leaders struggle with this. Really, there's three big reasons. The first one is leaders struggle with confusion about identity. And because they're confused about identity, they have a hard time releasing their role or their title or their position because they've defined themselves, certainly their ministry role, but maybe even more importantly, they've defined their personhood by their title or by their job. So they no longer think of themselves without the descriptor, pastor, or president, or director, or deacon.
Jeff Iorg:They no longer think of themselves without that title defining who they are. I was recently involved in a situation where I was talking with a senior leader who's been struggling with stepping out of his role, and he said, if I give up this job, and here's his exact words, I don't know who I'll be anymore. Now I appreciated his honesty, but that's a chilling confession. I don't know who I will be anymore. He has defined himself by his role, title, and position for so long that who he is has been subsumed, if you will, by the role that he has.
Jeff Iorg:I'm thinking of another situation where pastor was not quite that articulate, but after stepping out of the role, relinquishing it formally to another person that he actually mentored and brought into the position. Within a short period of time, he was causing all kind of difficulty in the church because he could not relinquish the role of pastor. Now he gave up the title, but he couldn't relinquish the role. He kept wanting to interject himself into meetings and and have people come to him for decisions and information, and it was really problematic. So this issue of confusion about identity.
Jeff Iorg:Now if you're a leader, you have to establish your identity somewhere else than your role and title and function. I think that for Christians, we have the great advantage of establishing our identity as a spiritual identity that we are in Christ. That is our identity. We are Christians in Christ. And then beyond that, we identify with his mission, meaning the mission of the great commission and the spirit of the great commandment, and that's what we live for.
Jeff Iorg:We live for a mission that is bigger than ourselves, but it's not the mission of a particular church or organization or a person. It's something much bigger than that. If your identity is in Christ and your life is consumed with his mission, you can give up a position anytime because your position is not what defines you. Your identity is not caught up in that. Your identity is in Christ and your function is in his mission.
Jeff Iorg:Your identity is not, I'm the pastor or I'm the president or I'm the director or I'm the deacon. And his mission is not accomplishing my job description today or fulfilling my organizational goals today or getting done what I feel like is my assignment in this particular task or setting today. No. Identity has to be much larger than those narrow definitions. This means you define your personhood by being in Christ, and you define your personal responsibility or your personal sense of mission with being on mission with God.
Jeff Iorg:And if those two things are true, you can step out of your role, title, and function and still have your identity and mission intact. You know, one of the things that's helped me over the years has been having a hard last name, Org, I o r g. I have had my last name mispronounced in almost every way that is humanly possible in multiple languages. But my first name's pretty easy, Jeff. So oftentimes when people ask me, how do you pronounce your name?
Jeff Iorg:I'll say, Jeff. And they just kind of startled because they were expecting me to say Doctor. Orge. I have always wanted to be called by my first name. Now in my professional responsibilities and particularly when I was at the seminary, most people used my academic credential, and I was fine with that.
Jeff Iorg:Doctor. Orge. No problem. But for the most of you that are listening to this podcast, if you run into me somewhere, just call me Jeff because I have always liked being called by my name because it remind me of who I am as a person. When I came to faith in Jesus Christ, I did not come as doctor Ord's seminary president or doctor Ord's denominational executive or doctor Ord's pastor.
Jeff Iorg:I was Jeff. And I came to Jesus as Jeff, and I'm in Christ as Jeff, and my personhood is settled in who I am in Jesus. Nothing more and certainly nothing less. And my function? Listen, when I came to Jesus, when Jeff came to Jesus, he got the mission of God in his heart, and I've been living for that all these years, and that supersedes any kind of functional mission assignment I might have taken on.
Jeff Iorg:So what I would say first of all is the reason that some older leaders struggle with giving up their role or title or function is because all of that has become their identity. You can prevent that from happening by yourself focusing on your identity in Christ and your mission or your function being the fulfillment of his plan in your life, his mission for your life, and not getting too caught up in either one of those things being attached to any particular position or title or role or organization or function. Identity. Confusion about this is the number one reason that I've encountered older leaders who cannot relinquish and step out of the role that they've been serving. Now what do you do if you've got one of these people in your church or in your organization?
Jeff Iorg:Well, you cannot you cannot, as a leader, compromise the long term effectiveness of your organization by accommodating their confusion about identity. You may still have to say to them, we've got to move on. But in a moving on to another leader and moving them into another phase of life, you can address the identity issue with them by listening carefully to comments they're making. And if they say, you know, I don't know who I'll be if I retire. I don't know what I'll do if I retire.
Jeff Iorg:I I don't know what meaning they'll be in life if I retire. It's when you hear those kind of comments that you can come back to say, hey, I hear you struggling with that, but let me remind you, your identity is in Jesus. Nothing about that's changing. Your mission is the same, the great commission and the spirit of the great commandment. That's what God wants every one of us to do.
Jeff Iorg:You can still keep doing that. Your identity and your core mission of life are not impacted by losing a role, position, or a title, or even a function. No. Those things remain the same, And this can become a moment of intense discipleship even at a person's later stage of life as you help them to confront, deal with, and resolve identity issues. Alright.
Jeff Iorg:Here's a second reason why older leaders sometimes struggle with giving up their responsibility or their title or function. It's confusion about vision. Now vision is a God directed perception of the future that draws people toward its fulfillment. And many leaders, pastors, presidents, directors, and sometimes even lay leaders in churches, deacons, elders, and others. We are vision casters.
Jeff Iorg:We challenge people of what might happen, what could happen. We we talk about the possible and even sometimes what seems like the impossible. We cast vision. Our focus is on the future. We're talking always about what's coming.
Jeff Iorg:We're enamored with anticipation of how God might work. We're visionaries. Vision is powerful. The Bible says this. It illustrates it over and over.
Jeff Iorg:Vision creates momentum and that is a good thing. But now listen carefully. One of the reasons that some older leaders struggle to give up their role is because they are confusing vision with momentum. They are confusing vision with momentum. You see, vision creates momentum.
Jeff Iorg:It gets people moving in a common direction and in a forward direction. Vision creates momentum. And if you've been leading for a while, that momentum can become almost like an inertia that just keeps feeding on itself and propelling an organization forward. And because that's happening, older leaders sometimes think I'm still casting vision when what they're really doing is riding the momentum of their past decisions. And quite frankly, this is one of the observations I had about myself at the seminary.
Jeff Iorg:When I stepped out of Gateway Seminary after twenty years, there was, as far as I know, not anything wrong. I was doing well. The seminary was relatively healthy. The finances were fine. The board was pleased with me.
Jeff Iorg:My team was loyal. Work was going in the right direction. But I had a sense. I had a sense we were riding the momentum of my past decisions, not being compelled forward by my vision for the future. Now, if you're an older leader, how can you know if you're riding momentum rather than still casting vision?
Jeff Iorg:Well, let me give you two indicators that I see. Number one, you're focused on momentum instead of vision when you celebrate success more than strategize for the future. When you celebrate success more than strategize for the future. I found myself at the seminary in my last couple of years thinking a lot more about what we had accomplished than what we were going to accomplish. Focusing back and thinking more about what God had done rather than anticipating what God was going to do.
Jeff Iorg:We had lived through the relocation and the rebranding of the seminary and all that went along with those years of service and sacrifice. And I found myself in the last few years of my presidency thinking often about those experiences even more than I was thinking about the future experiences of where we were going. Now this is not an either or equation. I was still casting some vision and thinking some about the future, but not like I was ten years before and certainly not like I was twenty years before. And as I had to think through what I was dealing with, I had to come to really honestly admit, we're we're riding a lot of momentum here of a lot of good past decisions that were based on a clear and articulated vision about where we wanted to go into the future.
Jeff Iorg:And quite frankly, I just wasn't doing that as well anymore. Riding momentum instead of casting vision, one indication is you're focusing more on celebrating the successes that are genuinely happening and are a part of your past than about strategizing for the future. Another indication I think of this for older leaders is when we see problems more than solutions in the future. When we look into the future and rather than seeing the possibilities that are before us, we see all the problems that are coming at us. Now again, this is not a either or thing.
Jeff Iorg:Every leader that is a visionary looks into the future and sees some problems coming, But we're typically viewing those as we look through them to the future possibilities that we see even farther ahead than the problems. When you're a leader and you've been doing something for a long time and you start thinking more about the problems you have to address than the possibilities you have to achieve, you may be riding momentum more than casting vision. Now, this is hard to admit, but that's the way leaders often progress as life moves on. We find ourselves riding momentum and there's often a lot of it because we've made a lot of good decisions and cast a lot of great vision and people have bought in to do a lot of great things, but we're being propelled forward by all of that rather than a compelling vision of where we're going to be. And I know I'm referencing the seminary several times today, but I've lived through this, and so this part of this is really personal with me.
Jeff Iorg:The beautiful thing was when I stepped out of the seminary and doctor Adam Groza stepped in as president, he started talking about where the seminary is going to be in the next decade or the next two decades, and the seminary has caught fire under his leadership and is going strongly into the future. You might say, well, couldn't you have done that? No. I could not because I was riding the momentum more than seeing the vision. But he is seeing the vision and now creating his own momentum as God works through him to lead the school forward.
Jeff Iorg:So a second reason that leaders struggle is confusing vision with momentum. Now the third reason, and this one's hard to talk about, but I'm gonna just put it out there, and that is money. You know, older leaders that have been at it for a while tend to be at their peak of their earning power. They're making the most money they've ever made in the in their lives, and especially if you're like a lot of industry leaders, you started out with very little and and then you went into some really challenging years of family raising and launching kids and all of that. And then you get to those last ten years and you finally got your children raised and the biggest bulk of your life expenses behind you, and now you're making the most money you've ever made.
Jeff Iorg:And it's nice to save and enjoy that and spend some of it on some things maybe you and your wife have always wanted to do. But frankly, it can be very tempting, very tempting to hold on to that level of income and to cling to it in such a way that you just can't give it up and move into those retirement years that may be a little more lean. As you get to the end of ministry, you're making the most money, best compensation, least amount of life demands, and the most opportunities to use those resources on things that you would enjoy and be a part of life and that you've put off because you've been serving others and now it comes your way. It's easy to feel like when you get to that phase of life that you're owed something and that you need to keep the job that you have because of all the sacrifice you made, especially in the early part of life that you're now being paid back for. Listen.
Jeff Iorg:That's a devilish temptation to a materialistic perspective you can't afford to adopt. You never reach the place where anybody owes you anything for doing ministry. You may enjoy the support that you're given, but you don't deserve it. And sometimes you have to have the courage and the discipline to say, I have to step aside even though it's going to cost me. I've gotta do that.
Jeff Iorg:But now let me talk about another aspect of this that's equally tragic, and that is some people can't step out of a ministry role as they get older because, frankly, they haven't prepared themselves financially to do so. And because of that, they feel themselves almost trapped in staying with some kind of role or responsibility because they just don't have the resources any other way. This was a tragic situation I dealt with years ago when I was a state executive director. One day, a Baptist leader called me and said, hey. I'm a deacon in our church and we need help.
Jeff Iorg:I said, well, you know, what can I do for you? He said, here's our situation. Our pastor's now in his eighties. In the last several years, his health has declined dramatically. He's now trying to preach sitting in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank on him.
Jeff Iorg:I said, well, he needs to he needs to retire. We know that. But he never saved for retirement. We never forced the issue by putting money aside on his behalf. He opted out of Social Security, and now he basically has nothing except the salary we pay him.
Jeff Iorg:And he tells us if he resigns or retires, he won't have anything. And they said our church has dwindled from a 150 attendance five years ago down to about 20. Well, that was a tragic situation. On a lot of levels, a lot went wrong, but the hard reality was there wasn't anything else that could be done in that situation. I couldn't intervene from the outside and save that situation, and the church had let it go on far too long until now it had reached a catastrophically bad point in the process.
Jeff Iorg:I'd like to tell you that story had a good ending. It really didn't. The church essentially eventually closed. The pastor eventually had to be forcefully retired. It was a very difficult time.
Jeff Iorg:So there are times when people can't step aside because of inadequate preparation. Now what can you do about these situations? Well, first of all, take care of yourself and prepare yourself to retire someday. You say, well, I don't make that much, and it's hard. I understand.
Jeff Iorg:I was in that situation very much for the first half of my adult life. Didn't make a lot, but still had to set aside some. Do whatever you have to do to make that happen. Second, if you're in a church, make sure your church is taking care of your pastor so that they can someday step into retirement with a reasonable amount of compensation. You say, well, we give them a lump sum and they have to decide.
Jeff Iorg:Stop doing that. Take responsibility to make sure that money is put aside for our pastor and other leaders so that their retirement is a part of their future and retirement funds are available when the time comes. And then if you're in that situation and you're on the other side like that deacon who called me and said, we need help, you have to have the courage to understand that a person has made choices about their own finances, and they have to live with those choices. And the church at some point has to say, we've done our part. We've done all we can do.
Jeff Iorg:But now for the good of the whole of the church family, we have to move on, and you're simply going to have to step out to whatever financial future that has for you. That is a hard conversation, but it's part of leadership to have those kind of conversations, if the well-being of an entire church organization is at stake. Alright. Today on the podcast, we've been talking about the challenge of older leaders, veteran leaders stepping out of role, title, or function and moving into retirement or moving into other phases of life. This is hard.
Jeff Iorg:It's hard because these leaders are often confused about their identity, confused about their vision casting capacity, confused about money and who's financially responsible for them. If you're a leader and you're dealing with one of these kinds of people in one of these kinds of situations, you have to have the courage to confront the situation, the wisdom to help the outgoing leader understand why they're struggling and what spiritual and other resources are available to them to help them in the moment, and the discipline and willingness to make the hard decisions necessary for the well-being of your church or your organization. This is often, unfortunately, at the expense of the immediate ease of the person that you're dealing with. It may be difficult for them in the moment. But in the long run, everyone's going to be healthier if the right decision gets made.
Jeff Iorg:I've been called into several of these situations, some of them this year, in fact. They're always challenging. It requires courage, discipline, pastoral care, but it requires a willingness to help people do the right thing the right way, in what may be a very hard circumstance to make sure that organizations and churches can move forward into the future. If you are one of these aging leaders, veteran leaders, you're a deacon, pastor, professor, president, if you're one of these people that I've been describing today who's in that phase of life, If you're struggling with identity or vision or money, recognize that God will sustain you. But it may be time for you to say, a new generation needs to rise and I need to relinquish this title, this role, this function.
Jeff Iorg:Not only for my best, but for the best of the organization of the church, and most importantly, for the advancement of God's kingdom. And if you're a younger leader, a deacon, an elder, a pastor, a staff person who has responsibility for helping when these transitions take place, have courage. Be pastoral. Try to help the person that's going out understand what's happening and why it's difficult, but have the courage to do what has to be done to lead your organization forward. These are challenging issues.
Jeff Iorg:It's always hard to make these kinds of transitions because of the personalities involved, because of the investment of so many and so much of the organization, because of the difficulty and sometimes painful ways these things have to be done. Nevertheless, it's a part of what it means to help an organization, a church move into the future. Think about what it means to do transition well, and if you're one of those who needs to transition, think about doing it sooner rather than later for the good of the organization you've given your life for or the good of the church that you've served all these years. Do the right thing and transition well as you lead on.