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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, tackles why ministry leadership feels so relentlessly challenging, outlining three key reasons: pervasive sin in the world, followers, and leaders themselves; the inevitable complications of success like more people, needs, and quirky characters; and God's purposeful use of trials for personal sanctification. He encourages embracing these pressures as a divine laboratory for character growth, turning inevitable hardships into opportunities to become more like Jesus Christ.
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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.
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.
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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, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. If you're new to the podcast, the purpose of this podcast is to talk about the ebbs and flows, the ins and outs, the ups and downs of ministry leadership in local churches and ministry organizations. So today, I wanna talk about, a question that I often muse about myself. Why is ministry so challenging?
Jeff Iorg:You know, I sometimes come to work
Jeff Iorg:and think,
Jeff Iorg:this should not be this hard. I mean, God loves me. He called me into ministry. He gave me good people to work with. He gives me meaningful tasks to do.
Jeff Iorg:Why is this work of ministry so challenging? Well, I've talked about this before, obviously, in different contexts on the podcast, but recently, I was asked to speak on this issue, and God gave me a fresh prompting, if you will, of how to answer this question. And so I wanna share it on the podcast. And I know that it's from God because my outline is alliterated. Now, those of you who know me very well, can get the humor of that.
Jeff Iorg:I am not really very keen on alliteration. I don't necessarily mind it. It's not necessarily wrong, but I also don't like it when it forces the issue, if you will. But I was so enthusiastic when I came to this understanding of the answer to the question, why is ministry so challenging? With an alliterated outline, which of course means it came directly from the Lord.
Jeff Iorg:Okay. Enough of that. Why is ministry so challenging? First, because of sin.
Jeff Iorg:Now I'm talking, of course, first of all, about the curse of sin in our world.
Jeff Iorg:The world is broken. You don't have to be a very astute observer of what's happening around us to be able to affirm that statement. The world we live in is broken. Systems are broken. Institutions are broken.
Jeff Iorg:Organizations are broken. People are broken.
Jeff Iorg:And the curse of sin just rests on us. So that's why you may have to deal with the devastation of a tornado. You may have to deal with some of your followers or supporters getting ill or even terminally ill. You may have to deal with all kinds of accidents and other kinds of, calamities that affect your ministry organization. Listen, ministry is challenging, first of all, because of sin, and in that category, it's challenging because of the curse of sin that just rests on us.
Jeff Iorg:But second, more
Jeff Iorg:specifically and closer to home, your followers and all of
Jeff Iorg:the people you work with are also sinners. And this means they're going to do some devastating things, some interesting things,
Jeff Iorg:and certainly some colorful things along the way.
Jeff Iorg:People are sinful, and because of their choices, they're going to create difficulty for us in ministry. Now
Jeff Iorg:we've talked about sin being a source of the challenges of ministry, and that's because of the curse
Jeff Iorg:of sin and the fact that our followers are sinners. But now, the closest to home, you, as a leader, are also still a center. You are imperfect. You are flawed. You are broken.
Jeff Iorg:You are never perfect. You are always a person who will struggle. You are a sinner. You know, it's hard to own that, to recognize that we are both failable and fallible,
Jeff Iorg:that we have all kinds of deficiencies and shortcomings. That's who we are. And it doesn't matter as a leader how spiritual you, try to be, how devoted that you are, how disciplined in your study you've become.
Jeff Iorg:It doesn't matter any of that. You cannot overcome the reality that there's always going to be something flawed about you. You're a sinner.
Jeff Iorg:So the first reason that ministry is challenging is because of sin. The curse of sin that rests on all of us, the personal sinfulness of your followers, and even closer to home,
Jeff Iorg:the fact that you also are a sinner. So the first reason is sin.
Jeff Iorg:But now let's move to some that are perhaps more positive, but also equally true. A second reason why ministry is challenging is because of ministry success.
Jeff Iorg:Success. What I mean by that is
Jeff Iorg:the more people that you reach, the more people that you teach, the more people who come under the direction of your ministry, the more people who join your organization, the more people who become part of your church, the more people you have, the more problems
Jeff Iorg:you're gonna have to deal with.
Jeff Iorg:You know, this came home one time in a humorous way while I was still a pastor. We concluded a Sunday morning service, and we introduced our our new members who had come into our church, recently. And we had that particular morning, a a family, a husband,
Jeff Iorg:a wife, and a couple of children that were introduced as part of the group. And at the conclusion of the service, one of
Jeff Iorg:our leaders, one of our men that was really at the core of our church and one of our finest Christians and one of our my strongest supporters, he, came up to me and said, well, man, it was so great to see a normal family join our church this morning. And I turned to him and said, what what do
Jeff Iorg:you mean a normal family? He said, well, there was a there was a husband and a wife both married to each other and in their first marriage to each other, and a couple of children, their own children that they're raising in their home, a normal family.
Jeff Iorg:I said, well, yeah, I I guess, but why would that why would you notice something like that? He said, well, pastor, have you have you paid any attention to who's been joining our church over the past several months? I said, well, just people. He said, yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Iorg:People. And he started clicking off some of the people who had joined and some of the problems they brought with them, Broken marriages, children in rebellion, health crises, lost jobs, dysfunctional families. On and on he went, just kind
Jeff Iorg:of listing off who had come into our church and the baggage they brought with them. The longer he talked, the more depressed I became. And then he smiled at the
Jeff Iorg:end and said, yeah, but that's who we're all about, pastor, so just keep it up.
Jeff Iorg:Well, more people, more problems.
Jeff Iorg:You know, when I was at the seminary for all those years, every year we tried to grow enrollment. Every year. And as the enrollment grew over the years, we had more and more problems, more and more challenges, more and more issues that had to
Jeff Iorg:be addressed because we had more and more people. More people means more problems. So ministry success is one of the reasons that ministry is challenging. And then not only more people,
Jeff Iorg:more problems, but more ministry, more needs. You know, when I went to my first church and it started growing, very soon into the process, we had to have some additional space. And so now we had to raise the money and and buy some portable buildings and move them onto the location. And then after that went on for a while, we had to move to two worship services and all the organizational changes that required for that to happen and the programs that had to be adjusted to accommodate that. We had to have then more people in terms of staff, even volunteers and paid in order to operate or run this growing expanding ministry.
Jeff Iorg:More ministry meant more needs. We needed more staff, we needed more buildings, we needed more programs, we needed more, which made ministry more challenging. You get the idea.
Jeff Iorg:So success in ministry means more people, more problems. More ministry, more needs. Here's another one. Success brings more notoriety, which brings more crazies.
Jeff Iorg:Now, did I actually say that out loud on
Jeff Iorg:the podcast? I think I did. More crazies. Now, you know what I mean? I'm not
Jeff Iorg:talking pejoratively about people today. I'm just saying sometimes the more notoriety you get in ministry, the better you're known, the more people that
Jeff Iorg:are connected to you, the more people that come that frankly, sometimes you just back off and say, those people are crazy. Now you know what
Jeff Iorg:I mean. I'm not speaking here about mental illness or poking fun at anyone. I'm just talking about the fact that people are unique, they're quirky, they're difficult, and they seem to be attracted to ministry organizations that are succeeding or growing or moving along more rapidly. Again, when I moved to Oregon to plant the church, I had never done that before, of course, and so I was, busy getting my church launched when a veteran pastor said to me one day, hey, listen. As you get started, just be aware that you're probably gonna attract some crazy people.
Jeff Iorg:Just be alert to that and just be on guard for it when it happens. I thought, that's the weirdest counsel I've ever received. What why would he say that to me? And then while I'm thinking that, he added this sentence. He said, just remember, Jeff, bright lights attract a lot of bugs.
Jeff Iorg:And I thought, man, what in the world is this man talking to me about?
Jeff Iorg:Well, we launched the church, and I'm not sure why, but when we launched our church and we started having a little bit of notoriety and a little bit of notice in our community, we started attracting some people that were, to put it mildly, were interesting. People that came with agendas and ideas, and it was interesting to me that I was attracting these people when I didn't really want to, but here they came. The more notoriety, the more you attract some people that, well, bring some agendas, bring
Jeff Iorg:some challenges, bring some difficulty with them.
Jeff Iorg:So success brings ministry challenges. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to succeed.
Jeff Iorg:It just means that if you do succeed in reaching more people and accomplishing more ministry and doing more work that's more well known in your community, you can expect it to bring with it additional challenges. You're going to need more buildings, more program, more staff, more volunteers, more money, and you're going to need discipline to deal with more and more people who come with different agendas, different ideas, different perspectives, or trying to impact you in ways that may not be to your best in the long run. And while my friend made the joke about a normal family joining our church, what you're going to find out, especially those of you in local church ministry, there are very few normal people in the sense that they are emotionally healthy, spiritually growing, and mature, and
Jeff Iorg:ready to contribute as leaders in your congregation. That is very rare that someone like that walks through the door. No. You're gonna reach people who bring problems with them. Broken marriages, rebellious children, dysfunctional families, health crises, vocational struggles, relational breakdowns, you're going to be reaching people who bring all of that with them when they come to your church.
Jeff Iorg:So success is the second reason why ministry is challenging. So sin and success. Now the third one, the third reason or the third category of reasons has been something that I've talked a lot about in different contexts on
Jeff Iorg:the podcast because I even wrote a book about it, the character of leadership and how God shapes character in our lives as leaders. But the theological word for this is sanctification. Sanctification.
Jeff Iorg:This is the third significant category of why God allows challenges to us in leadership. Challenges. Challenges come for our sanctification in order for God to use them to shape us into the image of Jesus Christ. It is true that life is curriculum. Life is curriculum, meaning that life itself is supposed to be teaching you insights about God, insights about yourself, and revealing to you ways in which you can grow to be more like Jesus Christ.
Jeff Iorg:Life is curriculum. And as a corollary to that, leadership is a laboratory in which God teaches life curriculum to people like you and me who have these roles. Leadership is a laboratory. Now I wrote about this in
Jeff Iorg:the character of leadership, and I described in that book the processes by which God uses to shape us, but I'll just summarize it here today. God is at work through our leadership circumstances to accomplish in our lives his ultimate personal objective for every person who knows him, and that is that they will come to be like Jesus Christ, That they will be shaped into the image of Jesus, that they will be sanctified by having their character remade, reformed, if you will, to emulate or to represent that of Jesus Christ. God is at work in your life as curriculum, but then in your leadership laboratory to accomplish this purpose. This has been so enriching to me over the years to bring
Jeff Iorg:sense to some of the challenging circumstances of ministry leadership that I've encountered. For example,
Jeff Iorg:one of the challenges that I've dealt with for all of my ministry is never having enough money. I have never worked in a ministry organization that had additional resources or had a surplus of resources. That's just never been where I've been assigned. Whether I was planting a church in Portland or leading a small state convention in the West or taking on the leadership of our seminary on the West Coast. Because we were in the West where resources are more more sparse and where the need is still great, but the resources are often not quite up to the need, There's always attention there.
Jeff Iorg:God placed me in that situation to teach me how to trust him, and it's been a lifelong process of learning to trust God for the resources to do ministry.
Jeff Iorg:Now early on, I groused about it, complained about it, argued with God about it. But over the years, I
Jeff Iorg:came to embrace that this was part of God's disciplining, growing structure of my life to keep me in situations where I had to depend on him and ask him regularly
Jeff Iorg:for the provision needed to keep doing ministry.
Jeff Iorg:God has shaped my faith, my dependence on him, and humility into my life through this laboratory he's given me of always ministering in a place where there was significant need, and God had to be trusted to sustain the ministry. I think about a larger example for me, and that is when I first went to my first church, and I had such leadership relational deficiencies. I came to early adulthood with just so many challenges in know in knowing how to relate to people and and not knowing how to do that very well. And what did God do? He sent me to my first church, which was entirely relationally driven.
Jeff Iorg:He put me in the perfect laboratory to show my deficiencies and to to help me to understand how I needed to grow. And in those very, very challenging circumstances, very challenging circumstances, my character was remade as my relational skills were enhanced, and I learned how to connect with and work with people in a whole different way than I had ever experienced prior to being placed in that context. You know, I look back now all these years later at my first pastorate. If you had asked me when I went there, why does God have you here? I would have said, to reach the lost, disciple saved, send people on missions, strengthen families, meet community needs.
Jeff Iorg:That's why God has me here. But I look back on it now, and I realize that God had me in that context, not so much for
Jeff Iorg:what he could do through me, but instead what he could do in me in those circumstances to reshape me into the image of Jesus. And those circumstances, by
Jeff Iorg:the way, were very challenging. It was hard growth to learn how to work with people, to face up to their deficiencies in my relational skills, and to come to grips with how those things needed to change. But God used those challenges to develop my character, shape my skills. He used those challenges as a means of sanctification to make me more like Jesus Christ. I think about more recent experiences.
Jeff Iorg:I came to the executive committee about two years ago. And when I arrived here, one of my strong concerns was that I would lack the endurance to do this job. I was concerned that I had the spiritual and emotional strength to to bear up to the constant daily grind of it and, frankly, the daily criticism that comes with being a Southern Baptist leader these days. I I wondered also if I had the physical stamina. I take a lot of medications.
Jeff Iorg:I've got different medical conditions and things I have to manage. And I wondered, Lord, can I can I even do this? And so I I I found myself casting myself in prayer onto the Lord and saying, I I don't have the strength to do this, and I'm asking you to give me your strength. I I don't have what it takes to be sustained in this work, and I'm asking you to sustain me. And I will tell you that over these last two years, this has been a significant growing place for me, a significant growing edge of really learning to to trust God for the capacity to endure, to stay strong daily in ministry leadership, and to get the the the the work done of being shaped into the image of Jesus in that important area of endurance and being an enduring leader
Jeff Iorg:for him. You know, these are just some ways that God has used my life as curriculum
Jeff Iorg:and my leadership laboratory specifically to shape me into Jesus Christ and to shape me into the character of Jesus Christ.
Jeff Iorg:God allows leadership challenges. God allows leadership challenges to sanctify us as a means of entering into the process of being sanctified in Jesus Christ. So these are the big three. Why is ministry so challenging? Well, sin, success, and sanctification.
Jeff Iorg:You know, continuing in the sanctification idea, just one more thought. The Bible says that there are some lessons that can only be learned the hard way. In James, it says that when you endure trials, you come out of those and it says you lack nothing. When you endure trials and you move through them, the
Jeff Iorg:Bible says, you learn and you grow and develop until it says very clearly you lack nothing.
Jeff Iorg:Man, that is such such a humbling and challenging conclusion. God puts you through some things because there's no other way that you can learn what you need to know about Him, about yourself, about ministry. There's no other way you can learn those things except through going through the process you're living through in the challenge of a ministry assignment. Some lessons really only can be learned through hard
Jeff Iorg:experiences. You know, as I've taught this over the years in different contexts, I've always been interested in how people responded to me saying this last thing that some things can only be learned through hard experiences. I've had multiple I I'm talking dozens of people come up to me after a similar sermon or a similar teaching as this and say, you know, what you said today was really true. When I had my heart attack, it was the worst day, but it also was the best thing that ever happened to me. I've had people say things like, when my wife walked out on me, took my kids,
Jeff Iorg:and left me with nothing. It was the worst day, but it turned out to be the best thing. I had a fellow tell me one time, I had a
Jeff Iorg:business partner stab me in
Jeff Iorg:the back and take everything I owned, left me high and dry. I had to start all over. And then he said, best thing that ever happened to me.
Jeff Iorg:Now when I probed around in these stories of, well, what's the best thing about having a heart attack or the best thing about your wife leaving you or the best
Jeff Iorg:thing about your business partner back stabbing you, very quickly
Jeff Iorg:they say, oh, it was that way that God worked in my life. God showed me things about himself I could have never learned any other way. God helped me understand things about my life that needed to change, and it was time for me to make some significant changes. God used those circumstances to redirect me down a path I would have never chosen without that those circumstances being a
Jeff Iorg:part of my life. They tell
Jeff Iorg:me these stories, but they all go back to how God used the circumstances to shape their lives and to change them and to make them into people that could have not had that experience through any other means.
Jeff Iorg:So brothers and sisters, listen to me now. Ministry is challenging. It's challenging because of sin. The world we live in is cursed. You're not gonna get away from that.
Jeff Iorg:Your followers, they're sinners, and own it, so are you. So the first reason that ministry is challenging is because of sin. But now, let's think about some more positive reasons. It's also challenging because of our success. More people, more problems.
Jeff Iorg:More ministry, more needs. More notoriety, more crazy people that you're gonna have to deal with. So
Jeff Iorg:success. You say, well, then I just don't want to have any success. No. Of course, that's
Jeff Iorg:not the way we think. No. We want to reach more people. We want to enlarge our impact.
Jeff Iorg:We wanna have more sites and more services and more studies. We want Vacation Bible School to have a 100 this year and
Jeff Iorg:a 150 next year. We
Jeff Iorg:want our Sunday school to have, 200 this year and 300 the next year. We we we want to have, two services in our church. Now we wanna have three.
Jeff Iorg:Look, we want to have ministry success. We want to reach more people, make more disciples, send more people on missions, raise more money, meet more needs, make a bigger difference. But when you do that, just recognize you're inviting your own trouble into your life because ministry success brings with it additional challenges. And then finally, of course, sanctification. God allows ministry challenges to sanctify us, to change us, to make us more like Jesus, to do in us what can only be done through those challenging circumstances.
Jeff Iorg:You know, I've been at this for about fifty years. I have had ups and downs, highs and lows. I've had incredibly exciting moments, and I've had some of the darkest days ever.
Jeff Iorg:All of it in the context of ministry. Not every day in ministry is challenging. Some days are good days,
Jeff Iorg:but the challenges are inevitable. Now, this week on the podcast, I've talked about the three big categories of reasons why ministry challenges come at us. We are challenged because of sin and success and sanctification. Now, next week on the podcast, I wanna talk more specifically about what you can do about it. I want to talk about some of the big principles you can put into place so that when these ministry challenges, they are an ever present reality.
Jeff Iorg:They are not something to dread. They are certainly not something to shine. They are instead something that we welcome because they remind us that sometimes the world we live in is broken and because of that, it's just gonna be challenging. But other times, we'll welcome these challenges because they're an evidence of our success, our effectiveness, our progress that we're making and we especially welcome them as agents or vehicles of our sanctification that make us more like Jesus Christ. That is God's ultimate goal in your life.
Jeff Iorg:He wants to remake you so that you look just like Jesus. And if you're a leader, he'll put you in a laboratory where your challenging circumstances become a vehicle by which or a means by which he remakes your character. Ministry is challenging because of sin, success, and sanctification. Think about it, work on it as you lead on.