Lead On Podcast

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses why great leaders must sometimes change their minds—even on deeply held convictions. Iorg unpacks how humility, openness to God's teaching, and the courage to admit mistakes are crucial for leaders to grow, adapt, and serve their ministries more effectively.

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:

Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Orge, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on this podcast. We talk about the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the daily grind of what it means to lead in a church or a missional context or a ministry organization like the one where I work. Practical issues.

Jeff Iorg:

Today, I want to talk about this theme, leaders change their mind. Now we don't do it often because quite frankly, leaders have strong opinions. We long and hard about what we believe and our perspectives are on different issues. And when we make up our mind, we tend to stay settled on that position. For example, in my family, there's a joke,

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I may be wrong, but I'm never in doubt.

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That's the way leaders are. We're convictional people, we're opinionated people, we have a perspective that we've developed on lots of different issues, and we hold to that. For example, I'm absolutely convinced about several issues related to the best barbecue in the world. I also have some pretty strong opinions about college football.

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I am a very opinionated person about ice cream. Now, these are

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some things that if we wanted to take the whole time on the podcast, I could, explain a lot about my opinions, and I'm sure I could convince all of

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you that I'm right on all of these things. Well, I'm

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talking about things a lot more serious than those today. I'm talking about the importance of holding to what you believe until it's time to change your mind and knowing when to do that. You know, leaders cherish timeless truth. We look for proven strategies. We aren't swayed by every wind of doctrine, and we definitely don't want to adopt every web driven fad that comes along.

Jeff Iorg:

But despite how firm we hold to our positions, leaders are also learners, meaning we're open to new ideas, and when it's important to do so, we will change our minds. When we discover new insights, we're humble enough to admit that we were wrong, or to admit that we've learned something new or better, and that we need

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to move forward in another direction. Now, one of the

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most interesting stories in the Bible that illustrates this is the story of Peter that's contained in Acts chapter 10 and his progression in his understanding of the doctrine of salvation. Now,

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at the end of chapter nine, we see that Peter's travels had taken him to a place called Joppa, where he was staying in the

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home of Simon the tanner. That's a important foreshadowing of coming events in his life. For Peter was a Jewish man, and to stay with a person who practiced an unclean occupation, leather tanning, indicated his openness to relate to people individually and not according to the law or the tradition. So we see in Peter's lodging choice some progress in his understanding of how to

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relate to people and who the gospel would ultimately be for.

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Now, at the same time Peter was staying at the house of Simon the tanner, another man, Cornelius, lived in Caesarea, and this was about a day's walk away from where Peter was staying. Now, Cornelius was a Roman centurion, and the bible says a devout God fearer. And one afternoon, Cornelius had a vision of an angel that told him to send to Joppa for a man named Peter. So he sent two servants and a soldier to get him. The next day, about noon, Peter was waiting for his lunch and he also had a vision.

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He saw a large sheet descending from heaven filled with all kinds of animals, and a voice told him to kill something and eat. But Peter reverted to an old pattern, an old belief system. No, Lord, he replied, and then he gave the reason. I have never eaten anything common or unclean.

Jeff Iorg:

Now remember, he was staying at this moment in the home of Simon the Tanner, so he was willing to relate to someone who handled things that were common or unclean, but he still hadn't crossed fully over in his understanding. He said, I've never eaten anything common or unclean. And during his vision, the voice spoke again, what God has made clean, you must not call common. And this sequence was repeated three times. Now this would be a whole another podcast, but it's so interesting to me how many times Peter had to hear something three times or experience something three times before the full impact of it settled on him.

Jeff Iorg:

For example, we know about his threefold denial of the Lord, but remember also his threefold affirmation of his love for Jesus at the end of the gospel of John. And now we see him here having this threefold pattern of the sheet lowering and being raised back up into heaven. Three times this happened, reminding Peter of his threefold experiences with the Lord in

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the past. Now, when this was happening, Peter was perplexed, wondering what this vision might mean, and then these three messengers arrived.

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The three messengers, again, a group of three, and they arrived at Simon's house looking for Peter, and the spirit prompted Peter to receive the men, hear their message, and go with them to Caesarea. And when they arrived, Cornelius had assembled his family and friends to hear from Peter. Peter then preached, if you will, or shared with them and told them that it was forbidden for a Jewish man to visit a foreigner's home,

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but God had changed his mind. And this gets to the meat of what we're talking about on the podcast today. Peter said, God has shown me. God has shown me that I

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must not call any person common or unclean. Then he asked Cornelius why why he had sent for him. And Cornelius recounted his vision and the steps he had taken to follow the instructions he had received, culminating in a request for Peter to teach them whatever God had revealed to him.

Jeff Iorg:

Finally, Peter grasped the full meaning of the events over the past three days. Get that three again. He said, now I really understand that God doesn't show favoritism. He is Lord of all. Peter, then preached the gospel message to Cornelius and his household, but even before he could finish, the Bible says the Holy Spirit intervened.

Jeff Iorg:

The Gentiles that were gathered there in Cornelius' home began speaking in other languages, this is similar to Pentecost, and praising God. And when this happened, Peter recognized the legitimizing work being done by the Spirit and baptized all of those present who believed in Jesus. Man, what a powerful and beautiful story.

Jeff Iorg:

Peter had changed his mind about the most crucial issue facing the early church, the doctrine of salvation, meaning the gospel was now for everyone. It was not only for Jews or our Samaritans,

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it was also for Gentiles.

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Now, these days, for most of

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you hearing this podcast, that's old news. You're likely a Gentile. The gospel came to you. It wasn't particularly culturally breathtaking when that occurred, but it

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was in the first century. It was when it was happening in the book of Acts.

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The gospel was for the Gentiles.

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The people the Jews had shunned for centuries,

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God was now including as full participants in His kingdom. Now this seems common to us, but it was an incredible dramatic breakthrough in Acts. The gospel, which

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was promised to everyone by Jesus, really was for everyone, even the cursed Gentiles. God moved Peter through this elaborate three day process with a threefold vision in response to three messengers to establish this reality. The gospel is for everyone, even the Gentiles. Peter, who was in many ways the most significant leader in the early church, at least until Paul was introduced and they became almost co equals in that stature, Peter, this very significant leader, had changed his mind.

Jeff Iorg:

The gospel was now for everyone. Peter had changed his mind about the most important doctrinal debate in the history of

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the church. Now he would follow through on this new understanding of the gospel at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. You can go and read that in a few chapters after this story occurred. And you can see that at that watershed event, Peter sided with the delegation from Antioch, which was the first Gentile church, and rejected the Judaizers who insisted that conversion followed circumcision, meaning that you had to become a Jew first than a Christian. And Peter's influence helped win the day for understanding salvation by grace through faith apart from any human agency or any human activity.

Jeff Iorg:

When Peter changed his mind about the scope of the gospel's reach, he stayed with his new conviction, even when it created tension with people who held a position he formally supported. He disagreed with the leaders in Jerusalem, his home church,

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I remind you, to win the day for the gospel. Now, based on that story, that beautiful and gripping and revealing story, what can we learn about changing our minds? Leaders

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change their minds. They learn new things and they grow.

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You need new insights to be more effective at the job you're doing. You

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need to grow in your knowledge and in your capacity for understanding not only the Bible, but life and your situation. When you discover new information like this, you

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have to change your mind. And when you discover some new information, you have

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to admit that you were wrong about something in the past and change your mind. So with all the information that's generated daily and frankly all the biblical interpretations coming along these days, how do you know when to change your mind? How do you know when to stop holding to something that you may have cherished and held to so dearly and release that and move on?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, the first and most obvious answer is when God teaches you something new. That's what happened to Peter. He said, God has shown me. God has shown me. Now today, God speaks primarily through the Bible, and let me remind you, never in contradiction of the Bible.

Jeff Iorg:

Now, ignoring that reality is how cults get started, and how some misleaders confuse people with special or private interpretation. These cautions are real and serious. We have to be on guard about new information that contradicts the biblical standard. But these cautions should not, however,

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keep you from pursuing and expecting new insights from God that come from encountering His word. You know, the Bible is an amazing book. It really is. A child can understand it the first time they read it, and a scholar can't grasp its full meaning with a lifetime of study. No matter how much you know about the Bible, there's always more to learn.

Jeff Iorg:

And as you change, and get this, and as your ministry setting changes, your learning readiness for new insights also changes, and while it may be the same Bible, because of the circumstances of your life, you're going to come to the Bible in a fresh way or in a different way or with a different set of needs or questions, and you're going to learn new things that will lead you to change. I think about the different ministry contexts I've worked in over the years. And as I have changed personally growing as a man over these last fifty years, and then as my ministry settings have changed, moving from a church to a church plant, to a state convention, to a seminary, and now to a national, administrative role, as I as I think about the progression of all of that, I recognize that at different juncture points, God has taught me different things, and I've been willing to learn new things and actually change some things that I formerly believed because

Jeff Iorg:

I was asking different questions of the Bible. Came to

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the Bible with a different perspective. I was asking different questions because of the circumstances in which

Jeff Iorg:

I was ministering at the time. Let me give you just a few examples of this. When I first started out in ministry, if

Jeff Iorg:

you asked me this question, where did future church leaders come from? I would have said, well, from the pews or from the seats or from the membership. And if you asked me, how long does it take to develop a church leader? I would have said, oh, years. It takes a long time.

Jeff Iorg:

I no longer believe either of those things. Because when I moved to Portland, Oregon to plant a church,

Jeff Iorg:

I was faced with a reality. I had no Christians sitting in pews or in chairs or among the membership. I was starting a church with just a handful of believers. I needed a lot more leaders. And so I realized that leaders come from the lost community that your church is trying to reach.

Jeff Iorg:

That's where leaders come from, and when you plant a church, you see this so clearly.

Jeff Iorg:

Now I look back on my experience as a pastor, and I realize that I was spending a huge amount of time trying to develop people into leadership who really lacked the capacity to do much more than they were already doing. And instead I should have been trying to win more lost people to faith in Jesus and in that lost community asking God to give me people who had hardwired within them God's leadership capacity that He had put in their lives that needed to be shaped into Christian leadership through the influence of the gospel. I changed profoundly on where leaders come from. And then I started realizing that I just never really looked honestly at the Bible because in

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the Bible, every biblical leader came from where? The lost community. All of them

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came to faith in Jesus and started leading out in the church, which leads me to the second thing I changed my mind about, and that is how long it takes to develop a leader. Now, I realize that there's gradations of leadership, and so there's definitely gradations of time involved, but nevertheless, leaders in the Bible,

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as I look back at it later, were created relatively quickly. And

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so in the past, I thought that while it took years to develop a leader, in my church planting experience, I realized that leaders could be developed much more quickly. Now, I underscore there are gradations of leadership and gradations of leadership responsibility. So I'm not going to take a brand new convert and put them in charge of a church of 5,000 people. That's not going to happen. But I did realize early on that I could take new converts and very quickly start shaping them into some leadership responsibility and actually growing them by advancing them to more and more leadership responsibility over their first several years of being a Christian.

Jeff Iorg:

So this is one of the ways that my ministry context and my ministry setting showed me something that I once formerly believed and thought even was biblical that really wasn't what I needed to keep believing and definitely wasn't something that was all that biblical. So I changed my mind and I decided that I would teach going forward that leaders come from the harvest and that we can put them into place much quicker than many people believe and shape them for future leadership by giving them some embryonic leadership responsibilities early on in their Christian faith. So that's one aspect of what I learned when my ministry context changed. Another thing that changed was when I left pastoral ministry and moved into first leading the Northwest Baptist Convention and then Gateway Seminary. One of the striking changes in my life that came about in that timeframe was learning to see the world through other lenses, racially, ethnically, culturally.

Jeff Iorg:

You know, I grew up in a white community. I grew up in a white family. I grew up going to white churches. When I planted my church in Oregon, it was largely monocultural with a few exceptions, but then I was thrust into a more multicultural context in the convention and certainly at the seminary. This caused me to grow immensely in my relationship with God and with others, and then more importantly, to see the Bible in fresh and new ways, and to be able to see things in scripture that I had really not seen before.

Jeff Iorg:

And one of the ways that I was helped to do this was particularly when I moved to Southern California and joined a predominantly African American church, just hearing the vocabulary of how people express their relationship with God and how they express their appreciation for the Bible and what they're learning from it was different than I

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had grown up with. And so even that context gave me fresh insight into the Bible and fresh insight into life. And the one of

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the changes for me was the being a member of an African American church was the immediacy of expectation that God is at work in our lives and will work in our worship services. I so appreciated that as a part of my church experience in California. There was a sense when we came on Sunday, God is about to do something in this room right now. And I liked that, and it refreshed me, and it reinvigorated my seeking of the Holy Spirit's guidance and direction in my life, and asking Him to intervene and do things dramatically and instantly, and in the moment of transformation that only He can accomplish. So that wasn't necessarily a changing of my mind about something as much as it was an opening of my mind to some new ways of thinking and new ways of seeing, something that I believed as a theological reality, God is with us.

Jeff Iorg:

But now I had the expectation that God is not only with us, but God is going to actually move among us. So the first time to change your mind is when you learn something new that God is teaching you. And this often happens in the context of your personal growth, the changes in your ministry setting, and the new insights that are that are possible because of that. Now, would simply say that to facilitate this, you need to stay really focused on bible study and bible reading, do everything you can to improve your study skills, and keep on improving them over a lifetime of leading. You know, this last year, for example, I've been sharing this a few places and I think I've done one podcast about it, but this past year, for example, I I went through an incredible learning experience about the word endurance.

Jeff Iorg:

I had never really studied that word before. I dove into it because of some personal experiences I had and some personal challenge that came to me through this change of job that I went through last year and not retiring but staying in the workforce, all of that. But as a result of what was happening to me and some of the impressions and feelings I was going through, I decided to do what I typically always do, that is go to the Bible and look for answers. And that's when I found this word endurance and started studying the concept, and it's really turned into a major study for me now where I've been working on it

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for months. Listen, I never had any interest in studying that word until I got in this current circumstances I'm in

Jeff Iorg:

right now. And that's forced me to go back into the Bible in fresh ways and dig out insight. It's been there all along, but I just had no learning readiness to pursue that particular topic. So the first time, the first circumstance to change your mind is when God teaches something new, and God will teach you something new from His word as you grow personally, as your ministry context changes or evolves, and as you become more open to learning new things in new ways because of the changing circumstances that are causing you

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to encounter the Bible in some fresh ways. A second thing

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you should do though is you should be willing to change your mind when you learn new, what I'll call extra biblical information. Now, this means that when you learn something new, like for me, accounting principles, they changed my mind about corporate financial management, or maybe I started learning some things about employment law, and that made me

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a better personnel administrator and made me different in how I related to employees. Now, one

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of the things that some ministry leaders fall into is the trap of

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thinking that they know the most about everything. Oh,

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we know the Bible and we know God and He's called us to be the leader and so therefore we have the final answer on everything. Well, that's just really not only not true, but it's actually unwise. One of the good things about leading in a team environment is learning to listen to others and the input they bring. I think, for example, about, some of the CFOs I've worked with, particularly back at the convention and at the seminary. Men like Steve and Gary, Tom, Ray, these were good and godly men.

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All of them, Southern Baptist, lay leaders who were very vigorously involved in their churches and very skilled and knowledgeable in business areas, And they taught me so many new things about accounting principles and employment law, and so many insightful things about money management and prioritization of expense and about making good and difficult choices about mission. They also taught me the importance of saying no and just realizing that we can't do everything and that that's part of our responsibility in leadership. I think about these good men and the fact that they knew so much more than I did that when they would teach me something new or challenge me with some new idea, I learned for my default to be, yes, let's take that in and think about it. Not, no, that's not my idea, so

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it can't possibly be right. Look, you're a ministry leader. You do have a

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lot of

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insight. You do have a lot

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of direction from God and you do have a lot of information about how your organization or your church needs to go forward, but you don't know everything. And there are good men and good women in your church or on your team who have skill and expertise and wisdom and insight. And if you'll listen to them, you can change your mind when you learn this new extra biblical

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information. Now you can get this from people like I'm describing.

Jeff Iorg:

You can also get it from formal education, continuing education, from reading, and other forms of personal growth, but extra biblical information that comes to you is very helpful and is one of the reasons that you should change your mind from

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time to time and go a new direction. You'll be

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a better leader when you're able to do this. You know, my oldest son has a funny phrase that he coined once with me. I was talking to him about some church leadership challenges, and I was telling him about some of the perspectives that some of the men, particularly in my church, were sharing with me that were very different than my perspective. They were sharing from a business perspective and from a community perspective and frankly from a very practical perspective. And I was sharing with him, my son, about some of the conversations we'd had, and not really conflict so much, but just difference of opinion about these things.

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And my son turned to me and said, dad, sometimes you got to learn

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to think like a deacon. Well, that phrase stuck in my life and stuck in our family. There are some times you got

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to learn to think

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like a deacon. You gotta learn to think like other people

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think and see some perspectives because quite frankly, they have a much better understanding of it than you do. And in our church at that particular time, it was the deacons who were the men who provided the leadership that I needed and the work that I needed as a pastoral team. Sometimes I needed to learn to think like those guys and realize that they were speaking in ways that were really wise and insightful, and I need to change my mind and go along with what they were telling me. Well, change your mind when God shows you something new from

Jeff Iorg:

His word. Change your mind when you learn new extra biblical information that you need to adopt. And third, change your mind when you're wrong. You know, if I love you are the three most important words in a romantic relationship,

Jeff Iorg:

then I was wrong may be the three most important words in a leadership relationship. And some leaders just simply cannot admit fault. I had a exercise I did in seminary classrooms for years. I required students to work through material I gave them in a lecture on how to handle a mistake. And then they had to write a verbatim of a leadership mistake they had made.

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And then take that verbatim and analyze it by the teaching notes I'd given them and write a plan of how they would have handled the situation differently based on the new information they had gained

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in the seminary classroom. This was one of

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the most, rewarding and, meaningful assignments that I used over years of teaching at the seminary. It was helpful not just to teach the information, but then when students worked through their own case study and wrote their own response plan, they started laying out some new paths of how they would deal with situations like this going forward when they frankly made a mistake and they were wrong.

Jeff Iorg:

You know, did have one student though, just one in all the years, who said, I never made a mistake in ministry. He actually said that. And I said, well, what do you mean you've never made a mistake?

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He said, every time I've ever done anything, I believed in the moment it was the right thing to do, so therefore it could not have

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been a mistake. Well, that's a little bit of a unusual way of twisting things around a bit, I thought. But nevertheless, he was adamant. He had never made mistake. Well, even though I disagreed with him then, I still disagree with

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him today, and I will tell you straight up here on

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the podcast, you have made mistakes. All right? So when you

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make one, what do you do? Well, unfortunately, some leaders try to hide their mistakes, some kind of justify their mistakes, some kind

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of explain them away. The better solution is just to simply say, you know, on this hiring decision, I

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was wrong. On this budgeting decision, I was wrong. On this policy that we wrote, I was wrong. On this decision that I made about what to preach on Sunday or how

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to handle this conflict, I was wrong. When you admit that you were wrong, you may think, oh, that

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will diminish me and cause people to think less of me in leadership, but the opposite is actually true. When you admit fault, when you express that you made a mistake, and when you change your mind, it doesn't lower your esteem among your followers because guess what? They already knew it. Instead, it raises it. Pride keeps you from saying I was wrong, thinking all along, this is elevating my leadership stature, when actually humility and honesty of simply saying I was wrong is what really elevates your leadership stature because people look at you and say, wow, that's a leader with humility and honesty that I really want to follow.

Jeff Iorg:

And I think more highly of a person who's willing to admit they were wrong, not less of that person. So you've heard the old saying, you can't beat a dead horse. Well, I've got a different one. When the horse dies, dismount. In other words, when whatever it was you were riding, you finally have to admit I was riding it in the wrong direction, I was wrong.

Jeff Iorg:

Just dismount, simply say, I was wrong. That was not a good decision on the budget, bad decision on this policy, hiring decision, not a good one. What I said in the meeting, not helpful. I was wrong on these things. And I just want to admit that I was, and I want to ask you to forgive me and I just want to move on.

Jeff Iorg:

And you'll find that most people will respond much more positively to that than you trying to self justify the mistakes that they know you've made. So when do you change your mind? Well, you change your mind when God shows you something new. You change your mind when you learn something new from an extra biblical or extra biblical subject or source and you change your mind when you're wrong, you just own up to it, admit it and move on. I want you to be a convictional leader.

Jeff Iorg:

I want you to have strong feelings about many things, but I also want you to have the courage to change your mind. Do this as you lead on.