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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the power of institutional memories and how they can be a valuable tool for building a strong organizational culture. Learn how commemorating positive experiences, preserving victorious moments, and celebrating "God moments" can create a common culture and motivate future success.
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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.
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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.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. If you're new to the podcast, that's what we do on this podcast. We talk about the daily grind of ministry leadership and practical things we can do to be more effective in that path. Today, I wanna talk about this theme, the power of institutional memories.
Jeff Iorg:R, you don't like the word institutional, the power of organizational memories. And if you don't like the word organizational, then how about the power of communal or community memories? You pick which word you like. I'm gonna talk about the concept, meaning the power of creating memories that are shared by people in an institution or an organization or a community.
Jeff Iorg:Now you may be thinking, well, it finally happened. Jeff has officially become old. He's gonna now talk to
Jeff Iorg:us on the podcast about old people sitting around telling stories. Well, that's not exactly what I wanna do today. Instead, I wanna help you understand that one
Jeff Iorg:of the most valuable tools you have for building culture is
Jeff Iorg:organizational or institutional or community memories. It's one of the most powerful tools you have for building culture, and we all know that old saying is true, culture eats strategy for lunch. And so, building the right culture in an organization is vital to being able to have a sustained pursuit of strategy
Jeff Iorg:in the context of who we are as a community. Now the power of institutional memories, they're important for several reasons. Let me give you a few. Number one, they commemorate positive experiences and what we might call in Christian context the God moments of our past. They commemorate positive experiences.
Jeff Iorg:You know, it's true in every ministry organization that there are ups and downs, highs and lows, good days and bad days.
Jeff Iorg:Creating institutional memories that build culture is about capturing some of those positive experiences, highlighting them, remembering them, commemorating them, as a reminder of moments in the past when God has worked uniquely, powerfully, remarkably
Jeff Iorg:in an organization or an institution. Another
Jeff Iorg:reason this is important is it preserves memories of victorious times, of times when people came together and did something remarkable or significant. It it preserves that and becomes a part of the culture of who you are. Let me just give you one example about it. So a few years ago, of course, I was the president of Gateway Seminary, and we went through this remarkable relocation where we sold the campus in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Southern California. Dozens and dozens of families and students and faculty, staff, everybody, the whole seminary moved.
Jeff Iorg:What an an endeavor that was. And during that whole process, we develop an awareness of ourselves and an image of ourselves that we handle this big change really well. We talked a lot about that, and we we preserved the memory of the relocation, and we we we memorialized it with video and with photographs and with stories. And it became part of the culture of who we were as a seminary that we handle change. We take on big change.
Jeff Iorg:We know what it means to make a change. Well, that was a part of who we were, and we built that into the culture as that experience. And how that helped us was that COVID happened. And when COVID happened, I remember a a Thursday when I stood up and announced to the seminary that we were closing face to face instruction and moving our entire seminary to online instruction before Monday. Alright.
Jeff Iorg:Three days. Now we were ready to do that because we were equipped with the technology, because we moved into our new campus, because we were an early adopter as a school of online education. So we had the framework already built. But when I announced that we were going to do this, I was also able to say, I know this is a major change, but remember, we handle change well. Hey, we moved to seminary 400 miles.
Jeff Iorg:We can get ready to do online delivery by Monday. And you know what our seminary did? They pulled it off. People just said, yes, we can because we handle change well around here.
Jeff Iorg:It doesn't put us off our game. We're not overwhelmed by it. We don't get upset when it happens. Jane? Nah.
Jeff Iorg:We moved to seminary 400 miles. We can surely get ready to go by Monday in an online learning environment. So, that's what I mean when I say that creating an institutional memory or an organizational memory, creating a memory of a communal experience that you talk about often and build into your culture so that it becomes this is who we are, can have practical effect as you then draw upon that when you're making a leadership decision or trying to move your organization in a new direction. Now, I've already said this is a a primary method of culture building, and I would just simply say that it's really foundational, if you will, for having a common culture where everybody can buy into something or can share some experience even if they weren't there and didn't live through it. They learn about it.
Jeff Iorg:They see it. They experience it. They watch the video, see the pictures, hear the stories, and it causes them to buy into this kind of a cultural awareness. So the power of creating institutional or organizational or community memories, they commemorate positive experiences, they build on memories of victorious times, They celebrate these God moments, if you will. They become the foundation for a common culture of coming together around something.
Jeff Iorg:They also can become a motivation for future success. As I already said, this example that I
Jeff Iorg:gave at the seminary really motivated us to get something done that we knew we could do because of our past experience and the culture that we shared around that. And then finally, they are visible reminders of the mission. They help us to see in a in a concrete fashion what that what it looks like that we had this experience in our past, that we shared it together, and that we can move forward based on that. They are visible reminders of the mission. Now, having laid out those five different ways that building this kind of institutional memory or this kind of organizational memory or this kind of community memory, is important.
Jeff Iorg:Let me talk to you now for the rest of the podcast about some examples that I've seen over the years and how leaders have used this principle of building memories to really grow culture, bring motivation, create commonality, and motivate people to go forward in really significant and dramatic ways.
Jeff Iorg:So let me tell you about a church that I know. This is not a
Jeff Iorg:large church, a couple of hundred, maybe 300 at the most. It's been a healthy church for a number of years, and it's had a long standing commitment to missions. It gives a significant portion of its income away to missions through the cooperative program and through the special mission offerings of Southern Baptist. It also sends out mission teams regularly, usually two or three a year that go either domestically or internationally in partnership with either North American or the International Mission Boards. It has built up this this pattern of this missionary involvement and missionary investment over time, but one of the cool things they do is preserve the memories of these trips in banners that hang in their worship center.
Jeff Iorg:The first time I went there, I walked into the worship center and there were eight eight or 10 of these banners hanging from the ceiling, and I noticed a couple things about them. First of all, they were every one unique. There was no cookie cutter formula for how they were done. Second, they were all about the same size, but they were all different in their design and in their appearance. And then another thing I noticed about them is that they had symbols sewn onto them that really needed some explanation or or needed someone to help me understand what what do those mean.
Jeff Iorg:For example, one had an airplane put on it. Another one had some pill bottles, that were, you know, made out of a a material and sewn onto it. Another one, of course, had a had a a baptist a baptistry pool and and and a a silhouette of someone in that. You you get
Jeff Iorg:the idea. As I walked into the worship center,
Jeff Iorg:I looked up and saw these banners. I I commented to the person that was hosting me, man, that's really cool that
Jeff Iorg:you have these banners, and and he said, yes. That's who we are. Now think about that phrase, that's who we are.
Jeff Iorg:I said, well, what do what do you mean that's who we are? And he said, that's who we are. We we're a church that does missions. That's what we believe in. That's what we give to.
Jeff Iorg:That's what we support. That's who we are. And he said, every one of these banners is
Jeff Iorg:the story of a trip, And then
Jeff Iorg:he started telling me some of the stories, and he said, yeah, that banner there, and I said, what's the deal with the airplane? He said, oh, that's the trip where they got stuck in the airport for two days. What a story that is, and he starts telling me this story. He wasn't there. He didn't go on the trip, but he knew the story.
Jeff Iorg:I said, what about this baptist one with the baptistery on it? He said, oh, that one. Well, God moved in a remarkable way on that trip. That's the trip that we probably had the most people come to faith in Jesus and get baptized as a result of our efforts. So that's what that one was all about.
Jeff Iorg:So what about these pill bottles that are sewn onto this? He said, you don't know about that one. Yeah. That's the one that a couple of people got sick. That was a pretty scary time for them and for our churches.
Jeff Iorg:We prayed that God would preserve their lives and send them back home to us, which he did, but it was a pretty scary experience. As we walked through the sanctuary, he told me about different trips by pointing out the different manners, and he said, yeah. You know, we're gonna finish filling up this section, and then we'll just start slowly maybe taking them down and replacing them, over the years with the more contemporary trips that are maybe a little bit more recent. But he said this has become a great way for us to remind ourselves what really matters to us and to think about how God has worked through us and how our church, even though it's not a huge church, has really been used to
Jeff Iorg:touch people all around the world. Man,
Jeff Iorg:this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about today. Here's a church that found a way with some women in the church who are seamstresses and are creative to listen to the stories of what happens on these mission trips and these mission trip reports and create a commemorative banner that says, here's this trip and here's what it was about and here's what happened while we were there. These mission banners in this worship service are a visual reminder of what that brother said to me, This
Jeff Iorg:is who we are. Wow. That is so remarkable. Here's another example.
Jeff Iorg:I I was a part of a church a number of years ago that had a remarkable offering day. This particular church was, again, not an overly large church, only about 300 people. It had a $300,000 or so budget, was a relatively new church, and it needed to raise significant money to build its first building. Needed to raise about $2,000,000 It didn't seem possible, but the church went to work on it, and they spent weeks praying and talking and learning and and, working on the on this, giving campaign. And then finally, on the Giving Sunday,
Jeff Iorg:I won't go into it all
Jeff Iorg:in the podcast. There's just not enough time, but what happened in the service was a visitation from from God. In the midst of testimonies and of sharing about the giving, God just moved emotionally and powerfully in the lives of many people, and you could hear commitment cards being torn up around the room. It was a it was a powerful and holy moment, and then then there was the giving. And then the following Sunday, there was the announcement of the results of the giving, and they exceeded the $2,000,000 that were needed in that Giving Sunday.
Jeff Iorg:And so the church later put together a video that encompassed both the Giving Sunday and the Announcement Sunday to help people understand what had happened in that moment, and they made that available for people to see as a part of new member training for years to come after that. So that when people walked in the building and they saw this remarkable facility that had been constructed and they saw that video, they realized just how powerful the moment was when God intervened and gave the resources to provide these facilities. Now what's come out of that is this church has a reputation now. We're a giving church. We we know how to give, and we know God can provide, and we can give in ways that most people can't even imagine.
Jeff Iorg:We saw it happen here. That's who we are. That's what we do. We can keep doing that. It's a part of their institutional memory which guides them and motivates them and helps them move forward into the future.
Jeff Iorg:Let me give you another example. Now this one was not so much about preserving what had been done, although that is part of the story. This was really about helping people to feel a sense of common culture as a church made a dramatic change. That common culture idea is so valuable when it comes to institutional memories. Here's what happened.
Jeff Iorg:Church was relocating. It was moving from a a pretty small building, into a much larger building, and it was moving from kind of a back road, a small country type church atmosphere, really moving up to the intersection of two major four lanes with a much larger facility that was gonna, accommodate quite a bit of growth. And as you can imagine, the people that had been in the church a long time and and really saw it as their little church, they were anxious about this and a little concerned about how it was gonna go forward and wondering if there'd be anything in the in the future that would really be about them and about what they had contributed, about what they had experienced, and the memories they had about the church's history and path. Well, of course, the church is moving from an older building into a brand new building, and so in the new building, of course, there needed to be all new furnishings, not only because the furnishings in the small building were too few to go into the larger building, but also they just wouldn't fit by the decor. So a group of people in the church were tasked with deciding all these decor issues and making all of these decisions, and one woman on the committee had a really good idea.
Jeff Iorg:She was listening to some of the lament of older members from the smaller, church and who'd been there for years and about wondering what would be for them in the new facility, and would they feel comfortable there, and would they feel any connection there? So here's what she did. The pulpit in the old building was really kind of oversized, honestly, for that small building. It was a big thing. So she took it out and she took a couple of other pieces of the pulpit furniture.
Jeff Iorg:He went to a local furniture maker and and craftsman and said, look, I need you to preserve this, but I need you to turn it into a much larger counter type desk that we can use as a reception or a guest registration area in the lobby of our church. He said, certainly, I can do that, and so he came up with a design. They approved it. They got it done, and the old pulpit was very clearly there, but it had been expanded and turned into a larger piece of furniture, actually two or three pieces that had to be bolted together when they finally got it into the new place. They put that in, and when they opened the first Sunday and people walked in, one of the first things they saw in the in the foyer was this beautiful reception area, welcome desk, and in the center of that, the pulpit from the old building.
Jeff Iorg:What that said to people walking in who knew what it was, there's a place for you here. Your your contribution matters. What we used to have, we still have. We're carrying forward your memories with us. We want you to know you're still part of what we're trying to get done
Jeff Iorg:here. That's what I'm talking about when I say it also builds common culture in a sense of we're all in this together. Now, I
Jeff Iorg:tried to do something similar when the seminary moved from Northern California to Southern California. We had, of course, in Northern California, just all kinds of commemoratives on our old campus, and so I asked the director of facilities to take down everything on our campus that had a nameplate attached to it or anything that was commemorative in any way, and he found almost 50 items. I said, let's photograph all of those and give them to our interior designers for our new facility, and I want at least a couple of the lobbies in the new facility to be designed with these, artifacts in them so that we can tell our story to people who come to our school. You know, schools really value longevity and and the longer you've been around in some ways, the more credibility you have. We were moving the seminary into a twenty first century facility.
Jeff Iorg:A six story high rise doesn't look anything at all like a campus, but it was going to be very functional and very useful for us going into the future. So these lobbies became touch points where when people would come to visit the campus, we would be able to say, let us tell you about where we came from and who we are and some of our history and some of what made us to be the seminary we've become today. And we brought things with us like the cornerstone from the old building. We brought that with us, and we brought with us like a display of the flag that flew over the building on the first day, which only had 48 stars. That's a little bit of a trivia question we ask people when they see that flag.
Jeff Iorg:You get the idea. You say, well, yeah, you just hauled a bunch of old stuff. No. We didn't. We carefully curated and brought with us things that mattered and said, this is the culture of who we are.
Jeff Iorg:This is the heritage of where we've been. This gives us a sense of of of commonality, with the generations who've been before us. It recognizes, you know, God was at work a long time before we got here, and because of that, we want to remember it, commemorate it, and show it by these kinds of things we're doing. Well, these are some suggestions, some ideas. Now let's talk about how these things can also be useful to spur you on into the future and to spur your organization forward into the future.
Jeff Iorg:You know, when we launched our church in Oregon, there were two or three things that, that really we wanted to be a part of us from the very beginning. One thing we wanted to be part of us in the very beginning was that we would always be a portable, flexible, malleable church that was ready to move and go and do what God wanted for us. Now in the early days of our church, we were portable. We were portable for about the first eight or nine years. We've met in rented facilities.
Jeff Iorg:We moved in every weekend. We had trucks of stuff that had to be brought in, unloaded, set up, taken down, hauled away. We did that for
Jeff Iorg:years. You might look back
Jeff Iorg:at that and say, oh, that must have been awful.
Jeff Iorg:No. It really wasn't. It was hard work. Yes.
Jeff Iorg:But it built something into our church. And even as the church got older and finally got a facility and moved into a different era of its ministry, it often would think back on its history and its and celebrate where it had come from by showing photographs of those early years and talking about the fact that we wanted to always be a church that was willing to be on the move. And while we might not be on the move geographically, going from building to building like we once had to do, We never wanted to lose that that mentality, that mindset of it of it being a church that was flexible and wanted to do things and move with with God in whatever way he directed. So, this is how reaching all the way back to something like that in your past can be useful in your future as you challenge and motivate and show people where you can go based on who you are. Another aspect of that was when I, started the church, I I wanted missions to be built into our DNA.
Jeff Iorg:And so one of the things we did early on was planned our first mission trip, and within the first year that our church was open, we took our first mission trip. We went to Tammany View Baptist Church in Lewiston, Idaho and helped to plant that church. I will not say it was the greatest mission trip in the history of American Christianity. There was a small group of us, about 12, mostly teenagers, a few adults that went over to Idaho and did backyard bible clubs and other outreach activities. We helped to get that church planted, but I don't wanna overblow how magnificent our trip might have been.
Jeff Iorg:But you know what? We did it, and from that day forward, we were always able to say, in the very first year our church opened, our church has been a church committed to missions. Now how has that played out in in working out into the future? Well, we keep referencing that story and then talking about the future, talking about reaching in people with the gospel, talking about being involved in missions. So the church went on from there to have international mission partnerships, send teams all over the world, send members out to be full time missionaries in different locations, and the pastor who followed me is now the chairman of the board of the International Mission Board.
Jeff Iorg:Because that church had built into its DNA, we do missions. That's who we are and could always go back and tell that story of what it was like in the very first year the church has had this heritage of missions that it continues to carry on into the future. Here's another one, a commemorative about, institutional memory that has made a difference at Gateway Seminary. When I went to be the president at Gateway, I knew that an important part of my job was asking people to support the seminary financially, And so I made a decision before I ever got there that I wanted to be a regular donor to the seminary and a sacrificial donor to the seminary so that I could set the pace in giving and then challenge others to follow my example. So my wife and I decided that we would commit to giving 5% of our salary back to the seminary from the very beginning.
Jeff Iorg:Now that was a challenge in the beginning, but we were committed to doing it. So on my very first day of employment, on the first Monday morning, I went to the went downstairs to the office where contributions were received, and I said, I wanna make this gift today, and I I want it noted that on my very first day, I gave this gift, 5% of my salary for this month back to the seminary, and I'm gonna do this every month that I'm president. And I wanna be able to tell people, that I'm giving sacrificially and that I want you to join me in making sacrificial gifts to our school. You know, that became a part of our culture. The part of the culture was the leaders give, and they give sacrificially, and therefore, we're not embarrassed to go and ask other people to give to support us as well.
Jeff Iorg:Now we didn't always talk about the percentage or the amount or anything like that, but I made it known and let the leaders of our school know and our board of trustees know and others who were responsible for fundraising that this was who we are. This is what our leaders represent. This is what the president stands for and not to be afraid to tell people that as a part of our giving story. And for twenty years, I stood up in front of people and said, I'm a generous giver to Gateway Seminary. I'm a consistent giver to the school, and so I have no reluctance to ask you to join me in doing this very same thing.
Jeff Iorg:That's where I'm talking about something that's a part of your institutional memory or your institutional culture, your organizational, your communal experience and memories drives you forward and gives you a framework or a foundation upon which you can make appeals for, you can make challenges to, you can talk about how
Jeff Iorg:to go forward together in ministry. Look,
Jeff Iorg:building these memories is more than just old people sitting around telling stories. Building these memories is a leadership strategy, whereby you say there are certain memories that are so vital to our organization, our church, our institution, our company. These things are so vital because it was in these moments that we defined ourselves. It was in these moments that God did something that was so dramatic we cannot ever forget it. It was in these moments that we commemorate something that was so substantial that it shaped us forever.
Jeff Iorg:It was in these moments that something happened that gives us the communal culture that we need, a sense of commonality that spans even generations. That's what I'm talking about today, and as a leader, you have this tool available to you to use to spur people forward in the work that you're doing. These stories are a part of every organization that God has been using and working through and moving in over these generations.
Jeff Iorg:I'm challenging you today to do one of two things. First of
Jeff Iorg:all, to go back in your organization's history, archives, photographs, videos, stories, and identify some of these things that really do preserve institutional memory in such a way that you can use it as a leadership tool going forward. And then second, I wanna challenge you to think about how you today can do things that preserve these institutional memories and remind people of who you are or what you wanna be even today. Ideas like that, banner idea that I told you from the church or video idea that I told you from the giving service. These are the kinds of things I'm talking about where you see something and you capitalize on it in the moment and realize that needs to be added to the repertoire of our institutional memories. By doing this, you will be taking advantage of a tremendous leadership resource, and that is shared institutional, shared organizational, shared community memory, and the power that has to shape organization and to help you move forward more confidently and more unified into the future.
Jeff Iorg:Well, today on the podcast, we've been talking about building institutional memories, the power of these things and what they can mean in our lives. As I said at the beginning, this is not just Jeff getting old. Just wanted to sit around and talk about old stories. This is about what I've learned as a leader over the years, that these memories do matter, and that using them appropriately has powerful impact in our organizations, in our churches, in our institutions. So I want to challenge you today to think about the power of institutional memories.
Jeff Iorg:Think about the ways that institutional memories help organizations move forward, and then think about some ways that you can either reach back into your past and crystallize these so that you can use them for the future. Or second, you can look at ways that you can create now, and more institutional memories about things that are currently happening that become a part of driving the culture forward in the organization you're trying to lead. Culture matters. This is one tool that you can use to really enhance the culture of your institution, organization, church, or company. Put it into practice as you lead on.