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Jeff Iorg discusses the challenges and opportunities presented when people leave ministry organizations in his "Lead On" podcast. He emphasizes that departures—whether through resignation, retirement, or termination—disrupt relationships, emotional equilibrium, and morale. However, these moments also offer opportunities for organizational learning and meaningful change. Leaders should assess and rethink job roles, eliminate outdated tasks, and introduce new priorities. Iorg advises functioning above emotional engagements, making decisions for the organization's health, and handling departures with honor and respect. He concludes by encouraging leaders to use these transitions to advance their missions and improve their work.
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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!
Welcome to the Lead On podcast. This is Jeff Ords, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. On this podcast, we talk about the daily work of ministry leadership, of being a pastor, a youth pastor, of being a ministry director, a faculty member, an administrator at a school, maybe a mission board administrator. We talk about what it's really like to do the day to day work of ministry leadership. Well over this summer, I've had a very interesting experience from several perspectives that is common to almost all ministry organizations.
Jeff Iorg:And yet, it's been a new one for me because of how I've had to live through it. I'm talking about responding when people leave your organization. Responding when people leave your organization. I'm talking about when you have a staff pastor resign or maybe even a senior pastor. Talking about when you have a staff member or a team member quit and go to another occupation or another job or another ministry, talking about when someone has to be terminated, or when someone has to have their position ended through layoffs or reorganization.
Jeff Iorg:I'm also talking about when people retire or make other kinds of, intentional choices about ending their employment and moving forward. Over this last few months, I've lived through this from several perspectives. First of all, I've left a ministry organization. I was for 20 years the president of Gateway Seminary, and I brought that presidency to a conclusion in May of 2024 and have moved on to other ministry assignments. But I've also, over the past 6 months, been saying goodbye to other leaders who were lead leaving Gateway Seminary.
Jeff Iorg:For example, we had an employee who'd been with us for more than 20 years. He was there when I arrived as president, was an outstanding employee, highly regarded for his skill set, the kind of mature Christian it was a pleasure to work with every day, brought a level of expertise to our team that was sorely needed in his particular area. 20 plus year employee retired during my last few months at Gateway. And then beyond that, we had another couple where the husband and wife had both worked for the seminary. And believe it or not, the 2 of them together had worked for the seminary for over 50 years.
Jeff Iorg:That was a significant loss for us as we saw that couple also step into, retirement and move on to new things. But even beyond that, during these past few months, we've had employees leave for other reasons. Some have, gotten promotions to better ministry positions in other organizations. Some have left to go to work in churches and to take on ministry roles more directly related to the calling they have and to the education they're getting here at the seminary. And others, left for personal reasons, having a baby or something like that.
Jeff Iorg:And so over the past several months, I've been experiencing what happens when people leave a ministry organization, and I wanna talk about that today. Particularly, I wanna talk about it from a leadership perspective of how you and I and the leadership seats that we've been assigned can lead an organization when people are stepping out for one reason or the other. Now the first thing I wanna say is that I'm talking today about both positive and negative leavings. So for example, a retirement would typically be a positive, leaving, but a termination would be a negative leaving. A positive resignation would be a person leaving to take up another position in another organization or particularly in our context going to be a pastor or some other staff pastor of a church, we would see that as a positive resignation and a promotion for them to go into those kind of ministry roles.
Jeff Iorg:But then on the negative side, you have these forced resignations where you sometimes have to say, we're laying off everyone in your position, or who has your similar role. We're closing a department. We're we're ending this function as our as our organization, and we have to move on. So these are hard moments in an organization, whether they're positive or negative. Whether it's a positive resignation or a forced resignation, whether it's a retirement or a termination, all of these leavings produce some disruption.
Jeff Iorg:So I wanna talk for a few minutes about what happens when people leave and then I wanna give you some thoughts about how you as a leader can make the most out of this time of refocusing and adjustment in your organization when someone does leave. So when people leave, and remember, we're talking about whether they leave positively or negatively. When people leave, it disrupts relationships. It disrupts relationships. Organizations are not charts on a wall.
Jeff Iorg:They're people relating to one another. And so when someone leaves, it disrupts all the relationships they were connected with in their organization. And all of us have these relational ways of understanding how we work and what our work is and how we get our work done and how we work with other people. It doesn't take long for any one of us to learn the idiosyncrasies of the people we work with and how to connect with them the best or get information from them the most helpful way or to have a conversation with them that's mostly that's the most productive. We know these things.
Jeff Iorg:And so when someone leaves for any reason, these kinds of relationships are disrupted. Now as I'll say in a few minutes, that does not necessarily mean it's always bad, but it does mean that there's never a person who leaves that doesn't put some disruption into the organization. A second thing when people leave is it upsets the emotional equilibrium. We tend to think that if someone is underperforming in an organization or a department is underperforming and we have to step in and end that or move them on to a different work, that everyone will understand that and be positive about that. Well, I learned many years ago that in every organization, there are multiple layers of constituency, and there are multiple ways of relating to people in an organization that are oftentimes more healthy than I would have imagined and certainly have a greater depth than I've ever than I would have ever experienced.
Jeff Iorg:I remember, for example, many years ago when I became the executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention, There was one particular employee that, really saw the world differently than I did. Now he wasn't a bad person. He wasn't an immoral person or an unethical person. He just had a very different way of viewing ministry than I did as the new leader. And so the the difference was quite striking, quite honestly.
Jeff Iorg:And it was so striking that one of the officers of the convention actually pulled me aside and said, hey. If if this person needs to leave, we don't want you to start your tenure with a termination. We will we will encourage him to leave even before you get here. And I said, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing that.
Jeff Iorg:I said, because in a big convention like this, there's a bunch of churches out there that see the world the same way he does, and I need him to service those churches. And he did that. And, again, he was not an unethical person or an immoral person or a person with a bad work ethic or anything like that. He was a good man. We just saw ministry very differently, but I had the insight to understand that there were a significant number of churches in the Northwest Baptist Convention who saw the work of the ministry the same way he did, and I needed him to service those churches.
Jeff Iorg:And in fact, asking him to step aside would have been a an an emotional disruption that would have been damaging to my leadership, not in not the facilitating or encouraging of it. So when people leave, it upsets emotional equilibrium because believe it or not believe it or not, people do have constituencies. They do have people that they enjoy working with, people that enjoy working with them, and there's an emotional connection and an emotional stability that comes about through that happening in an organization. We often take a very, you know, one dimensional view of ministry, of organizational leadership. We think if we like the person, everyone likes them.
Jeff Iorg:If we don't like them, no one likes them. If they're doing a good job from our point of view, they must be doing a good job. If they're not doing a good job from our point of view, they must be doing a bad job. Well, our point of view does matter because we are the person who's been given the leadership responsibility. I'm just simply saying that anytime you make those decisions, you need to come to grips with the fact that you are introducing significant emotional disruption, that the emotional equilibrium, the emotional balancing of your organization is about to be knocked off its pins, so to speak, when people leave.
Jeff Iorg:A third thing I've learned is that when people leave, it always impacts morale. It always impacts morale and it can impact morale positively or negatively. Let's talk about both sides of that, the positive side. Sometimes, as the leader, you're the person who is the last one to know that a change really does need to be made. And when you make that change, other employees will quietly say thank you.
Jeff Iorg:It really was getting more and more difficult to make this function with their with that person's work ethic or that person's work style or that person's, lack of performance. And your willingness to make a change really has improved the morale of our of our department or of our organization, because we saw that a change really did need to be made. So when someone leaves, it it can be positive. Now another way it can be positive is, a person who's in a job that especially is in it for a long time has their certain ways of doing things and they become, really connected to and entrenched in those ways, and those ways may be fine, but they may not be what's needed for the future. And so it may not be a negative leaving, it may not be something that you even want to happen, but when a long term employee leaves, there's this positive sense of, hey.
Jeff Iorg:Here's an opportunity. Here's an opportunity to do something new or different and to really upgrade ourselves in this particular area in terms of how the functionality has been done. So those are some positive ways that a person's leaving can impact morale. Let me give you some negative ways. The first one is when a person is let go or a person is terminated or a person is forced out, there can be questions raised about was that done fairly?
Jeff Iorg:Were they treated honorably? Will I be treated the same way someday? People are watching and internalizing for their own experience or future experience. Here's another way it can be negative. Wow.
Jeff Iorg:If that happened to him or to her, this organization must really be in trouble if they're cutting people like that. I'm probably next. And nothing really that I can think of destroys morale more than a person thinking that they're gonna lose their job. They start looking for a different job. They start defending their own position.
Jeff Iorg:And rather than focusing on the mission of the organization, They start, being distracted rather than focus on what needs to be done every day. Another negative. So when someone leaves, it always impacts morale. It can be positive. It can also be negative.
Jeff Iorg:Number 4, when people leave shifting a little bit more toward the positive, it creates an organizational learning opportunity. Now I have made this a leadership practice for probably at least 30 years now, and that is I never replace a person who's leaving without first going back and completely thinking through it all again what this person's job needs to be, what it needs to look like for the future, and what we need to do in terms of shaping the organization for for the next steps, a learning opportunity. Some people think, well, these jobs are just plug and place. You know, you have someone leave, you automatically wanna get somebody to replace them. Not so.
Jeff Iorg:In fact, that's a very inefficient way to lead your organization. Instead, when someone leaves positively or negatively, make it a organizational learning opportunity. Say, let's all take a giant step back. Let's look at this person's job description. Let's interview them if possible and find out what they really did every day and how much time they spent on the different tasks.
Jeff Iorg:Let's think about what they were doing that really wasn't all that productive, but they only did it because it was the habitual way they'd always done it before. And let's also ask what needs to be done that may be a higher priority for our organization going forward than has been done by this person up until now in the organization. Now this requires some work because you're going to be delayed a few days or maybe even a few weeks while you're rethinking your organizational design before you just post a position and start hiring someone. This is what happens when a person leaves and you use it as an organizational learning opportunity. And then finally, when people leave, it creates an opportunity for meaningful change.
Jeff Iorg:Now I've been leading change a long time. I wrote a book on it. I I am amazed at people's resistance to change, including my own. We like things to stay the same. We will make changes when we believe that they are really essential for our mission or for our lives, but, mostly, most of us want things to stay the same.
Jeff Iorg:And organizations are certainly an expression of this. So when someone leaves, it creates an creates an opportunity for meaningful change. It's an opportunity to reformat a position. It's an opportunity to rethink the compensation for that position and what it needs to be going forward. It's an opportunity to reformat the entire budget perhaps of a department or an area of work in your organization.
Jeff Iorg:It's an opportunity to rethink the placement of the offices, the organizational chart design. It's a it's an opportunity to think about all these things that are so hard to change when you're talking about people who may have been in those jobs for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. But now you've got a blank slate that's been handed to you and you get to recreate something new for the future. Don't miss the opportunity to create meaningful change. So when people leave positively or negatively, it disrupts relationships, upsets emotional equilibrium, impacts morale positively or negatively, creates a organizational learning opportunity, and creates an opportunity for meaningful change.
Jeff Iorg:So I wanna challenge you today to not think only in terms of loss, but think in terms of hope and opportunity when organization change comes to your to where you work. That's certainly what's been happening here at Gateway. The people that I've just described that we're leaving, in every case, they did what I've just described. They went back to the beginning, looked at their job descriptions, looked at their functionality, made adjustments, made plans to go different to go in a different direction in the future, then finally posted some new positions and hired people into those roles. And it was an opportunity for the seminary and some key areas to take steps into the future, and to build on what had already been done, not to replicate it, but to build on it as they plan to go forward.
Jeff Iorg:Now, in order to do that, I wanna give you some keys to a leader's response when someone leaves your organization that will help you to do these things that I've just described, especially creating an organizational learning opportunity and creating an opportunity for meaningful change. Number 1, learn to function above your emotional engagement. When I was preparing to leave, the seminary, I found it to be a very emotional experience. And when I was watching these long term employees that were also leaving at the same time I was, it was a similarly emotionally moving moment for me. And then as younger employees with bright shining eyes would tell me about new opportunities they were pursuing and that they were leaving to go into those ministry or mission roles that they came here to train for originally.
Jeff Iorg:My heart sang, but yet still emotionally draining. Leaders are not exempt from emotional engagement. We care about people. We we've worked with people for many years in some cases. We've prayed for their children and their grandchildren.
Jeff Iorg:We've been to their weddings, sometimes to the funerals of their family members. We have seen them through health crises, and we've stood together through organizational difficulty that we all made it through together. Look. We are emotionally engaged with people that we work with on a regular basis, but you have to make a decision to function above your emotional engagement and to make good decisions based on the long term health of your organization, not just the satisfaction or the amelioration of your emotional struggles. To put it bluntly, it's not about you.
Jeff Iorg:It's about the mission, and it's about your organization's health and its overall vitality. And so while you do need to take time to express your emotion and the feelings that you have toward these employees that are leaving, and you do need to acknowledge the, the, just personal loss that you may be experiencing in the moment. You may need to, if it's a negative leaving, acknowledge the difficulty of that happening. But then you have to take that giant step back and say, I'm also the leader here, and I have to make some decisions based on the needs of our organization, the mission we've been assigned, the work that needs to be done. I've got to create a learning opportunity and an opportunity for meaningful change, and I've got to use these circumstances to push us forward into the future.
Jeff Iorg:And in order to do that, you're going to have to rise above your emotional engagement, move beyond your own grief, move beyond the inner turmoil you may feel, even move beyond some of the negative feelings if it's a negative situation, and make intentional decisions. Now you say, well, but I need to talk to somebody about these emotions. I'm I'm feeling some pretty strong feelings right now. I understand that. That's why you need a mentor or friend or a counselor or a colleague.
Jeff Iorg:That's why you need someone in your life that you can talk to about these things. But projecting your emotional struggles on your organization is not good leadership. So, yes, you need to go to a pastor or a colleague or a mentor or a friend, debrief the emotional experience you're having and talk about the loss you're feeling and discuss the the emotional engagement you have with the people who are leaving or yourself if you're leaving. But recognize that you then have to make some good decisions to move beyond all of that emotion and to focus on healthy actions healthy actions that will move your organization forward. Now I've already mentioned some of these healthy actions on the podcast, but let me just kind of enumerate them again.
Jeff Iorg:When someone leaves, you should do a full assessment of their position. Meaning that you, of course, look at their job description, but if possible, you should also debrief or interview the person who's leaving and say, I know what your job description says, but what did you really do every day? What did you really do every day? So one first step in this is to do this kind of, auditing of the position and debriefing of the person who's had the position. A second thing is to ask yourself, what's this person been doing that really doesn't need to be done anymore in our organization?
Jeff Iorg:You know, the there's an old joke that says the hardest thing, the second hardest thing in a Baptist church is to start something new, and the hardest thing is to stop something old. And I think that's true about all organizations. It's always easier to start something new than it is to end something that's no longer effective. And so as you're doing this assessment of the person's responsibilities and what they actually were doing, you have to ask yourself the question, what have they been spending time on that quite frankly is just not that helpful anymore to our organization? And this would be the natural time to stop those activities.
Jeff Iorg:And then a corresponding question to that one is, what does our organization need to do that it's not doing that would enable us to go forward into the future? In other words, in this particular area of responsibility where this person is leaving, what are some gaps, some things that just aren't being done that we need to hire someone to come in with a high priority of doing these new things? For example, in our recent transition year at Gateway, we lost a long term financial leader of our school. And for more than 20 years, he had operated a set of systems that served us well. But a few years ago, even he admitted, these systems are are are getting a little old and a little cumbersome.
Jeff Iorg:But he knew them so well, it would have been counterproductive to try to change them. But now with a new person coming on board with newer training, more recent schooling, we said this is the moment. This is the moment. So we didn't hire someone who could run the old systems. We hired someone who could create the new systems.
Jeff Iorg:That's what I'm talking about. Something as practical and specific as that. So the first thing I counsel you to do is learn to function above your emotional engagement, Admit your struggles, debrief your emotional responses with someone and that's outside your organization, don't project your emotional challenges or your emotional struggles on your organization. Instead, choose healthy actions even when emotions are in turmoil. And then 2nd and last, make a good faith effort to bring closure to every relationship.
Jeff Iorg:Now some of these are more challenging than others. And depending on how long the person has been with your organization or what they've done for your organization, there may be, especially if you're in a large organization, even policies that dictate what you're going to do for employees who leave. I'm talking now, first of all, about people who leave more positively. When that happens, initiate a pastoral conversation with them to talk with them about their life, their processing of their leaving, the grief they may be feeling, and your appreciation for them and for the work they've done for for for the organization. When you're doing this pastoral conversation, remember, it's not an exit interview, and it's not a performance review.
Jeff Iorg:It's a pastoral conversation to say, I understand you're leaving, you're retiring, you're resigning, you're moving on to another responsibility, whatever it is. And I affirm you in that, but I just wanna say how much it's been how how how much I've enjoyed working with you and the contribution you've made to our organization. I wanna ask you, is it hard for you to leave? Are you feeling any emotions? Is there anything that we need to talk about related to your separation emotionally from us?
Jeff Iorg:We want you to leave in the healthiest way possible. Now notice that I keep saying good faith effort and healthiest way possible. There is no way if you lead an organization of any size or even a small organization for very long that you're going to end positively with every person who separates from your organization, even the ones who separate positively or voluntarily or willingly. These are tricky moments because there's so many layers of emotion, identity, job security and performance, financial preparation. So many layers of what's happening in a person's life when you have these conversations.
Jeff Iorg:So don't put too much pressure on yourself. You're not going to end every relationship in the most positive way possible. But I do challenge you to make a good faith effort to end every relationship in the healthiest way possible. And then if it's a negative situation, a termination, a layoff, maybe the closure of a department, something like that. Recognize that handling that situation honorably is a high, high goal for you as a leader.
Jeff Iorg:I understand the person has to go. I understand the layoffs have to happen. I understand the department has to close. I get that. But we're supposed to be a Christian organization.
Jeff Iorg:And even when we have to make these hard decisions, we can make them honorably, where we treat people with kindness and respect, and we show some restraint, perhaps even, in what we say to them or about them as they're moving away from us, recognizing that their emotions are raw, their words are not their best, and their choices may not even reflect the character that we know is deep is really within them. So be patient, be kind, do the honorable thing in bringing about this kind of separation. Again, recognizing you're not gonna make every one of these perfect, not everyone's gonna leave happy, Not everything's gonna end in a good way with everyone satisfied and holding hands and praying as they walk out the door. That's just unrealistic to expect that. But it is not unrealistic to expect that you're gonna be honorable in the situation.
Jeff Iorg:I remember a few years ago, doctor William o Cruz was the president of Gateway Seminary, and I was just coming in to be the president and a faculty member had been forced into retirement the year before. He was still around finishing up some responsibilities for the seminary. And so when I came to campus, he asked to meet with me, and he said, I'd like to tell you that I left because I was asked to leave. I said, I understand that. He said, but I also wanna tell you that through the entire process, Bill Crews treated me with honor, and he was a Christian gentleman all the way through.
Jeff Iorg:And while I don't necessarily like what happened or even agree with it, I have to say that how I was treated, really demonstrated the best of what this seminary is about. That was a profound conversation for me because I realized that sometimes when you have to make a hard decision, that people won't like it, people won't accept it, people will go along only because they're forced to. But if you treat people with honor and respect, and maintain their, a kind perspective on them, and help them maintain their dignity as they walk out the door, it goes a long way toward demonstrating the kind of commitment to Jesus that we wanna have even as organizational leaders. Well, thank you for joining on the podcast today. It's It's been a challenging last few months for me, separating from one organization and starting up with another one, separating in a way I never imagined.
Jeff Iorg:I thought I was headed to retirement. Instead, found myself taking on a new position. And then saying goodbye to a lot of people at Gateway that I'd worked with for a number of years, and then in the context of that, saying goodbye to a few people who actually made the decision to leave the seminary's employment the same year I did. People leave organizations, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. When they do, we have a responsibility as leaders to use the situation, to advance our mission, and to improve the work that we're doing.
Jeff Iorg:I've outlined for you today on the podcast, some ways to get that done. I I challenge you to put it into practice as you lead on.