Raising Your Church’s Spiritual Temperature

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, explains how ministry leaders can raise their church’s spiritual temperature by deepening their own spiritual disciplines, teaching basic practices like prayer and Bible reading, and building regular corporate prayer into the life of the church.

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:01

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. Sometimes ministry can feel like you're running a machine or you're operating a company or you're, leading an organization and we forget that ministry leadership is at its core spiritual leadership. So I wanna talk today on the podcast about raising the spiritual temperature or enhancing the spiritual vitality of your church. How do you focus on enriching people spiritually so that they have a greater sense of dependence on God, of God's presence in their lives, and of accessing God's power for ministry?

Jeff Iorg: 00:55

Now at the centerpiece of this is enhancing, increasing,

Jeff Iorg: 01:01

improving a church's capacity to pray in various ways and in different methods, but simply coming to have more prayer as a part

Jeff Iorg: 01:14

of the ministry of a church. So how do you do that? Practically speaking, what can you do to facilitate raising the level of spiritual vitality or spiritual focus in a church?

Jeff Iorg: 01:27

Well, let's start with the hardest point, and that is the beginning point is evaluating your spiritual devotion. Are you committed to the spiritual disciplines of prayer and bible reading and scripture memory and perhaps fasting and rest? I'm not trying to

Jeff Iorg: 01:48

give you an exhaustive list here. I'm just asking, are you

Jeff Iorg: 01:51

committed, and are you practicing disciplines like these? You know, these disciplines are sometimes overlooked by leaders who claim to be too busy or too harried or too involved to maintain them. Listen. These are devilish excuses. They're lies, really.

Jeff Iorg: 02:13

They keep you from experiencing God's best, and in the context of this podcast, keep you from modeling spiritual vitality for your church. Before you are going to be able to lead people into an enhanced experience of prayer, devotion, spiritual vitality, raising the spiritual temperature of your church, before you're going to be able to lead people to do this, you're going to have to model it for them.

Jeff Iorg: 02:42

Your spiritual fervor expressed in these disciplines is

Jeff Iorg: 02:48

essential essential to the spiritual well-being of your church and is foundational to you leading the people of your church into deeper expressions of their spiritual devotion.

Jeff Iorg: 03:00

I heard a guy say it this way, you will never lead your church to rise, to stay above the level of your spiritual devotion.

Jeff Iorg: 03:12

Now, it's possible that a church can have an occasional revival service or a prayer meeting or go off on a spiritual retreat or have some kind of a spurt, if you will, spiritually,

Jeff Iorg: 03:25

but they're not going to rise to stay above where you are leading them. So modeling and teaching the disciplines is foundational to prolong sustained spiritual vitality and growth in a church. So as

Jeff Iorg: 03:45

it is with most things in Christian leadership, it starts with you modeling, showing the way, demonstrating devotion, learning how to do things yourself experientially so that you can then teach others to follow in your path. Well, once you've started down that path, then that leads us to the next strategy. You have to develop a way to consistently teach basic spiritual disciplines to church members.

Jeff Iorg: 04:15

Now I'm

Jeff Iorg: 04:17

not sure that this is best done in a class, although there's certainly nothing wrong with a class. I was fortunate enough that when I came to faith in Jesus Christ, I came to the Lord in a church that was a strong disciple making church. And it had classes for different things, and not only did it have Sunday school classes that were general purpose bible study, but it had Sunday evening classes that were electives and specific issues related to theology, evangelism, money management, and other practices of the Christian faith. But beyond those classes, I came to faith in a church that practiced one on one discipleship, particularly of new converts to get them started in the disciplines of living the Christian life. In fact, this church was so committed to this that by the time I came along, they had, adults who were working with younger adults and younger adults who were working with older teenagers and older teenagers who would work with younger teenagers or even older children.

Jeff Iorg: 05:22

So when I came to faith in Jesus, I had a young adult that helped me as a teenager to understand what it meant to read my Bible and pray and practice some other spiritual disciplines like giving and and some spiritual practices like baptism and the Lord's Supper. These things were taught to me one on one in a in a prescribed program of one on one discipleship to help me establish and stabilize my personal devotions to Jesus. Now the particular church that I was in had a curriculum. It was a thirteen week, I think it was, workbook. It was a fill in the blank type thing.

Jeff Iorg: 05:58

It was very simple. You simply read the question, looked up scripture, wrote in your answer. And there were six or eight or 10 of these for each week with a little bit of narration between the questions, though not much. And it was so simple that really anyone who who could read the Bible and could read the questions could figure out the answers and sort out what it was teaching. But more than working on this for the information, we had a one on one meeting for about forty five minutes each week where my mentor would work through it with me, make sure I got the answers right, answer my questions about it, and encourage me by telling me his story of how he was applying this in his life.

Jeff Iorg: 06:37

So when I came to faith in Jesus and as a teenager, I went through this one on one discipleship program where I was taught the basics of these spiritual disciplines and the basics of living the Christian life and discussed it weekly with someone and help heard their stories of how they were implementing it and how they had grown in their early years of their faith to where they were at this particular point. And this was something that we carried on for years in that church. I was a teenager when I went through it the first time. But by the time I got into high school and early into college, I was challenged to start working with younger students. And so I remember a middle schooler I had named David, and he and I met weekly for about three or four months.

Jeff Iorg: 07:17

And we went through this curriculum together when he had an interest in developing a deeper devotion of his life to Jesus. You get the idea. Now I know what you're you're thinking. Well, tell us the curriculum. Tell us what you did.

Jeff Iorg: 07:28

Tell us how to do it. Well, I can't do that anymore because quite frankly, these things change over time, there's lots of different and better methodologies that are available today. There's electronic tools. There's Bible study apps. There's different kinds of things that are available to you, and it's important for your church to select something and then stay with it

Jeff Iorg: 07:46

for a while. Now this is one of the

Jeff Iorg: 07:48

things I learned in pastoral ministry, and that is if you want something to really settle down into the soul of your church, so to speak, or down into the psyche of your culture of your church, it can't be something that you do just once and move on from. It can't be like a conference or a seminar or an event. It's gotta become something that's ingrained in the pattern of the church's life. And so this may be kind of surprising to you, but the particular process that I went through, we used in our church for over a decade. It was over a decade.

Jeff Iorg: 08:20

And it became so commonplace in our church that dozens, if not hundreds of people had been through this one on one training, and we all had the same vocabulary and the same experiences and the same basic understandings. And so as the pastor preached on these themes or they were talked about it in Sunday school or other kinds of bible study, we had a commonality of understanding of what we could be doing even though we weren't all applying it all the time. No one ever does that. But at least we had this commonality of information and commonality of purpose and goal that had been taught to us across the church family for year after year after year after year. Now there's some assumptions built into that.

Jeff Iorg: 08:55

We had longtime pastor. He was there twenty seven years. We had a very stable approach to ministry that was designed to build people over time, not just have event after event after

Jeff Iorg: 09:04

event. Those are some convictions that you have to work through as you're thinking about establishing something like this. But if you wanna raise the spiritual vitality of your church, first, set the pace yourself. Then second,

Jeff Iorg: 09:19

find a way to teach people the basic disciplines of the Christian faith and to do that over and over and over and over again with every new person and every new convert that comes into your church. When you do this, you will establish a foundation for spiritual life and vitality that is common to many people across a congregation.

Jeff Iorg: 09:42

Now a third strategy is to launch some kind of prayer meeting in your church. Now a prayer meeting. You may say, well, we used to have those. Not anymore. Yeah.

Jeff Iorg: 09:58

I know. And they're hard in many ways to get people to engage. But I wanna

Jeff Iorg: 10:04

give you a couple of thoughts about this. First of all, it doesn't have

Jeff Iorg: 10:09

to be on a weeknight. It doesn't have to be at a traditional time. Korean churches, for example, across North America have a 6AM prayer time every morning. They have what amounts to a brief worship service every day. There might be some singing, some scripture reading,

Jeff Iorg: 10:31

but the main focus of the experience is prayer. And many Korean leaders have told me, and Korean church members have told me that because of their culture, because of the communal nature of their church families, and the sense of needing to be together even more often than maybe some other groups would be when they're in our country, away from home, all of that, that they prefer to gather for devotion together rather than doing them individually. And so they come together for scripture reading and prayer as a group from say six to six forty five in the morning as an opportunity for prayer meeting. Now you can do it on a weeknight. You can do it at a time like this.

Jeff Iorg: 11:10

You can also do it by different groups having this. In other words, instead of one big prayer meeting, you might say, well, we're gonna have a senior adult prayer meeting that meets at 10:00 in the morning when people can drive and get out of their homes and be more comfortable on the road. We're gonna do that at that particular time. So when I say a prayer meeting, I don't mean it has to be only one prayer meeting. I don't mean it has to be on a Wednesday night or a weeknight.

Jeff Iorg: 11:33

I mean, could be at an alternative time like 6AM. It could be at an alternative time like 10AM. It could be for a special group like Koreans who gather earlier or for like senior adults who

Jeff Iorg: 11:42

can gather midmorning. It can be at different times in different ways. Prayer meeting. But in terms of thinking about a prayer meeting, I wanna go back

Jeff Iorg: 11:50

to COVID and tell you a story that really was amazing, honestly. So I was a member of a church when COVID happened where the pastor had a strong commitment to leading a prayer meeting himself, and he had done this for years. He had been at the church for more than two decades when COVID hit. He had led a prayer meeting of some kind for many of those years. And when COVID happened, he was leading a Monday night prayer meeting.

Jeff Iorg: 12:16

So on Monday nights at 7PM, anyone that wanted to pray would gather with him at the church, and they would spend time praying together. And at the time of COVID hitting, the church probably had an attendance of about 800, and the prayer meeting probably had about 20 that came to it on Monday night. And then COVID happened. And the pastor had to suspend the in person prayer meeting for a while, but he thought there's gotta be a way. And so he decided that he would launch the Monday night prayer meeting, 7PM, on Zoom.

Jeff Iorg: 12:50

And he informed the people that, they were no longer to come to the church. They couldn't meet in person for a while, but they were shifting the prayer meeting to Zoom. And anyone who wanted to pray was to log in at 07:00. The pastor would do a brief devotion, and then they

Jeff Iorg: 13:03

would go into these prayer groups through the Zoom technology. Well, a 125 people showed up the first week. And while that went down a little bit,

Jeff Iorg: 13:17

it didn't go down that much and stayed three to four times the size of the previous in person prayer meeting. Now as he started talking to people and paying attention to why this was happening, he discovered that it was not because of COVID, but COVID had prompted something to happen that opened up some reasons people weren't coming to a prayer meeting he hadn't thought of. For example, some people said, well, our commute's just too far. We commute on Sunday to church, but on Monday after work, we just can't commute back across, you know, Los Angeles to get to a Monday night prayer meeting, so we just didn't come. Other person said, well, you know, I'm I'm a caregiver for some of my family members, and and I just can't be out that often away from them, and so I need to be in the

Jeff Iorg: 14:07

home on Monday evening to take care of my responsibilities. Another person said, Well, you

Jeff Iorg: 14:12

know, 07:00, you know, you're crowding into my kid's bedtime and bedtime routines, and I've got to be home for that. We need to do all that needs to be done with homework and etcetera, etcetera, so it's just hard for me to get away for that. But if you're gonna have it on Zoom and I can log in,

Jeff Iorg: 14:29

I wanna come to prayer meeting. And so the pastor told me when COVID was over, we're not going back. We're gonna keep having a Zoom prayer meeting. And they've been

Jeff Iorg: 14:40

doing that continuing after COVID ended to keep the larger numbers of people praying and connecting by using this technology. So when I say that one of the ways to raise the spiritual level of your church, this enhances spiritual vitality is to start a prayer meeting, I don't necessarily mean the old idea of a Wednesday night prayer meeting at your church. Now if you're still doing that or you wanna do that, that is fine. That is great. But think about other alternatives.

Jeff Iorg: 15:08

Could you do an early morning prayer meeting? Could you do a midday prayer meeting? Could you do a Zoom prayer meeting? But could you find a way to ask people to commit to pray in some kind of prayer meeting experience weekly on behalf of your church? Now a kind of a subset of that or something I would call prayer groups.

Jeff Iorg: 15:30

Prayer groups are a little different in that they're not nearly as large. They don't appeal to everyone. They're perhaps more targeted to certain individuals or people. And so prayer groups can be, for example, saying, we're going to have a prayer group for young mothers, or we're going to have a prayer group for professional men in the community, or we're gonna have a prayer group for people who work the third shift, something like that. Where there's a targeted group of people that may only be two, three, five, seven, 10, something like that, but it's a small group that really has a commonality of schedule or a commonality of need that gets people together.

Jeff Iorg: 16:06

My wife was a member of a prayer group like this for twelve years. It was at the seminary. It was a women's prayer group that met at lunchtime, and it was open to students and employees. It met from twelve to one in the prayer room of the seminary once a week, and my wife would go every time that we were in town. She would come to the seminary on that day, and five after twelve, those women would be in there, and they'd be praying away, and then they'd go for their forty five minutes or so and then back to work.

Jeff Iorg: 16:35

And this was a regular occurrence that went on, I think Anne told me, for about twelve years. Now she wasn't there every week, but the women's prayer meeting, went on every week and two or three different people shared the leadership. And when one couldn't be there, they just carried on. And, you know, vacations, work schedules, travel events, other kinds of sicknesses, things like that kept it where no one participated every time, but someone participated all the time. This is what I mean by prayer group, finding a way to pull those kind of people together for those kinds of purposes.

Jeff Iorg: 17:08

Well, here's another model for you, and that is to organize something periodically called a prayer summit. Now that phrase prayer summit is an interesting one because it actually replaced a different title that our church used back in the day. So this was back in Oregon when my oldest son was in high school. Our church announced that they were going to have a prayer vigil, a prayer vigil. And my son said, what is a vigil?

Jeff Iorg: 17:39

And I said, well, it's a serious time of coming together and really reflecting on God and and, having sort sort of, you know, a somber approach. He said, who would wanna go to that? Well, that was my rather outspoken high school son of course. And I said, Well, you know, son, what we're trying to do is is call people together to pray, to to come together to meet with God. And he said, well, why don't you guys call it something else that sounds like it's really uplifting and inspiring instead of a vigil?

Jeff Iorg: 18:11

That sounds like somebody died. So I told our pastor, hey, have you

Jeff Iorg: 18:16

ever thought about calling this something else? And I gave him this story that I've just told you and I made some light of it and humor out of it, you know? But the pastor said, man, that's actually a really good point. So the next time that they announced that they were doing this, they changed the name from prayer vigil to prayer summit. We're going to the mountain to meet with God.

Jeff Iorg: 18:40

We're going up to an inspiring moment to meet with God. We're having a summit experience, a high watermark in

Jeff Iorg: 18:45

the life of our church. Now in our church called a prayer summit, pastor would typically do these three or four times a year,

Jeff Iorg: 18:54

and it would be organized on a twenty four hour cycle. So they would typically start on Friday afternoon at five or seven and go for twenty four hours and end on Saturday afternoon around the same time. Sometimes they started on Saturday morning and ended on Sunday morning, different schedules, but typically it was the Friday night, Saturday, twenty four hours of prayer. And the way they organized these was really quite simple. They would recruit 24 people for the twenty four hours, and the pastor would develop a prayer guide, which included some scripture readings, some guided prayer needs, some focus issues that they wanted to for the church to be praying about.

Jeff Iorg: 19:33

This was a couple of pages of notes that he would put together to guide a person through the hour of praying. As I said, scripture reading, prayer prompts, prayer lists of things that we're bringing before the Lord. Some of these things would have been about our church. Some of these things would have been about requests that were submitted by individuals and by, people in the community. And some of the things were global in nature where we prayed for missionaries and mission boards and for church planting and things like that.

Jeff Iorg: 20:01

So the pastor would put together this prayer guide, recruit 24 people to lead it. And these leaders would be both men and women, and it would be, deacons or Sunday school teachers or others that he was cultivating into leadership. You get the idea. He would have a simple thirty, forty five minute training session where he said, here's the handout for the prayer summit. This will take you through an hour of scripture reading and guided prayer.

Jeff Iorg: 20:25

And if two people come, that's all you need. And if 200 people come, then you're ready to go. Now, of course, that many people weren't coming because people were coming throughout the time. But the pastor would then say, come any hour in the twenty four and we're going to pray together. And then they would publicize who was leading at each time, and sometimes people say, oh, I wanna go with my friend or so and so's leading.

Jeff Iorg: 20:49

I wanna be there for them. And and pastor would say, and and those of you who can, we need some three and 04:00 in the morning people who don't mind getting up early or staying up late because we're gonna pray for twenty four hours. We're going to the mountain. We're going to meet God. We're having a summit experience.

Jeff Iorg: 21:05

We're going to be inspired. We're gonna connect with him at the one who's at

Jeff Iorg: 21:08

the most high. All these things would be tied to the idea of a summit. Twenty four hours of focused prayer. Now you're saying, well, our little church can't do twenty four hours.

Jeff Iorg: 21:21

Okay, then do twelve. So I'm not even sure we can do twelve.

Jeff Iorg: 21:24

How about six? It's simply a way to call people to prayer

Jeff Iorg: 21:29

and they come on the hour and spend an hour in a guided prayer experience, and you do that for six, twelve, twenty four hours. And you put together a prayer guide that helps people to know that they can lead this experience. And you don't have to lead every one of them, but you do have

Jeff Iorg: 21:44

to train people in how to do it. So a prayer summit, coming together to pray. And when you do this, you can do it in a in a in

Jeff Iorg: 21:54

a sanctuary or a worship center. You can also do it in a smaller group setting. You know, you can if you have flexible seating, you can rearrange your chairs into circles and be prepared for people to sit in multiple circles and to work together through their prayer handout. Just think creatively about how you can do it to really connect the people of your church into these prayer experiences. And maybe you'll only do one a year, maybe two a year, but have the opportunity to call people to the moment of prayer through this experience called a prayer summit.

Jeff Iorg: 22:23

Well, one last idea, and that is to enhance the praying that takes place in your public worship services. Now I know that churches have prayers in their services, and and sometimes I wonder how much thought and preparation has really gone into that part

Jeff Iorg: 22:43

of the service. It seems like we use prayer for a filler or a transition point so people can walk on and off a stage. Well,

Jeff Iorg: 22:53

I'm not saying those things are wrong. I'm just

Jeff Iorg: 22:55

saying if that's all we're thinking about with prayer, we we've got work to do. Now wanna give you two ideas. First, involve more people in leading prayers in your services. Do this intentionally. Number of years ago when I

Jeff Iorg: 23:10

was a pastor, I wanted to get more people involved in praying in our services. Now back then, we had two Sunday morning services and a Sunday night service, and I figured I had a morning an opening prayer, an operatory prayer, and a closing prayer at least in the service. So that was nine prayers every Sunday. So I made a list of all the men. And in that church, in that day, it was just gonna be the men praying.

Jeff Iorg: 23:31

That's all I'm gonna say about that. That that's the way it was in that context. But I I made a list of all the men and I started calling the list. All the men who are members of our church.

Jeff Iorg: 23:40

You say, all the men? All the men who are members of our church. I would call them and say, hey, Bob. This is pastor Jeff. I'd like

Jeff Iorg: 23:48

to know if you'd lead the offering prayer on Sunday in the first

Jeff Iorg: 23:51

service. I got several responses. Of course, some said,

Jeff Iorg: 23:56

I would be honored to do that. Thank you for calling. Others said, pastor, I've never prayed out loud in front of anybody in my life. I I'm I'm terrified of the idea. And I would say, you know what?

Jeff Iorg: 24:07

Unless you and me get together and talk about this because I wanna help you learn to do this, and it became a discipleship moment.

Jeff Iorg: 24:13

And then there was the third group, and that's guys who said, no. I I can't I can't do that. Well, why not? Well, pastor, there's there's things about my life that I don't need to be on

Jeff Iorg: 24:27

a platform leading in prayer. Well, you wanna get together and talk about that? So to my great surprise, my desire to motivate men, in this case, to pray and to lead our church into more meaningful prayer turned into discipleship opportunities for men who were spiritually willing but not ready, and also some discipleship opportunities for men who had to honestly admit their spiritual lives weren't where they needed to be. And one of the victories of that was helping those two groups of men, some of them come to the point where they led a public prayer. Now, I know it's a different day, but one of the things that surprised me about this was when I would ask a man to pray, and it was his first time or he had not done it often, they would often show up on

Jeff Iorg: 25:06

that Sunday to pray wearing at least a tie, sometimes a full suit. Now I didn't ask them to do that, but they came prepared to pray because they took it so seriously. So I'm not telling you how to do it.

Jeff Iorg: 25:20

This is just one way I did it back in

Jeff Iorg: 25:22

the day, but I wanna challenge you to give more intentional thought to leading the prayers in your worship service.

Jeff Iorg: 25:30

Who's doing it and how you're using that as a moment of discipleship and opportunity for people to deepen their spiritual devotion and for the church to see that devotion being deepened by more and

Jeff Iorg: 25:39

more people participating in prayer. And then a second way in public worship is to have

Jeff Iorg: 25:45

a prayer altar call and to include calling people to pray as a part

Jeff Iorg: 25:50

of your worship service. I've seen this done

Jeff Iorg: 25:52

a couple of different ways. It can be their standalone experience earlier in a service or it can be as a part of the response at the end of a service. But the point is you have intentional time planned for people to come for prayer, and you have people prepared to lead in prayer. The greatest example of this I've seen was a church that had 40 to 50 people trained to lead in prayer. Now this church would have had on a typical Sunday in two or three services a couple of thousand people, so I realize it's a big big, model for a lot of you, but scale it down to your situation.

Jeff Iorg: 26:24

But this church had 30 or 40 people that were their prayer partners. And when the pastor got to the invitation every Sunday, he would say, standing across the front are are our prayer partners. And when he said that, people just stand up and start walking forward from the congregation that were their prayer partners, and they just turn and face the audience. He'd say, coming forward now are our prayer partners. These are your church member friends who will pray for you this morning.

Jeff Iorg: 26:46

Do you have a need? Do you need rent money this week? Do you need do you need a job? One of your kids sick? Are you struggling with a a rebellious child or a aging family member?

Jeff Iorg: 26:57

What is it today that you need to have prayer regarding?

Jeff Iorg: 27:01

We are a praying church.

Jeff Iorg: 27:02

I want you to come for prayer just now. And as the people would stand and start to sing, the first time I saw this happen, my jaw dropped. Because here's 30 or 40 people standing at the front, and they just people just start pouring down the aisles to have somebody pray with them. Now because it's all in public, all in front of people, there's no worrying about matching people up or anything like that. First person down, first prayer partner the first prayer partner took them by the hand and said, how can I pray for you?

Jeff Iorg: 27:25

Man, woman, boy, girl, age, differences, racial differences, none

Jeff Iorg: 27:29

of that mattered. All in public, all down in front, totally good. Prayer. Now,

Jeff Iorg: 27:37

if you're gonna do something like this, the most important thing is to make sure you have planned time in the service for it to happen. If you preach up to 10:59 and you've gotta be out of that room by eleven so the next service can start 11:15, you're not going to have any response. But if you build a culture of prayer in your worship services where people know, part of what we do in our public services at our church is we pray. And one way we do that is we have prayer partners who will pray with you about any need in your life. Step into the aisle and come right now and come for prayer.

Jeff Iorg: 28:13

And then you see people standing all across the front praying. Hey, you have to train and prepare and help with people to be willing to do this, but it's a beautiful moment to watch happen. So the theme of this podcast is enhancing the spiritual vitality of your church or raising the level of its spiritual temperature. Start with you. Set the pace.

Jeff Iorg: 28:32

Second, find a way to teach the spiritual disciplines, especially prayer and bible reading and personal devotion in some kind of intense capacity one on one if you can so that there's a continued curriculum of this being taught across your church with every new Christian and every member of your congregation. And then find ways to call people to prayer. Whether it's a prayer meeting or prayer groups or prayer experiences like this prayer summit or more prayer in your worship worship services, be intentional, strategic in leading people to pray as a visible expression of their dependence on God and as an access point to raise the spiritual vitality of your church. Look, ministry is spiritual work. And at the core of who we are, we are spiritual beings in connection with God.

Jeff Iorg: 29:24

And facilitating that in our ministry organizations and in church is so vital. Put it into practice this week as you lead on.