Lead On Podcast

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses seven biblical principles for guiding healthy, productive conversations about politics, patriotism, and public life.

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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 Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. As I've mentioned on a few podcasts recently, I sent out a survey to a group of pastors, big churches, small churches, East Coast, West Coast, some in the Midwest, different ethnicities, different ages, asking a couple of questions. First, what is really pressing you right now in pastoral ministry? And second, when other people come to you because these guys I sent out this survey to were all leaders.

Jeff Iorg:

When other pastors come to you, what are the questions they ask you to help them resolve? And I've compiled the responses I got back, which were quite substantive, and I've put them together into some podcasts that I'm trying to take care of over these next weeks.

Jeff Iorg:

Well, one of the issues that came back was talking with people about political concerns or political issues. Specifically,

Jeff Iorg:

pastors, are pressed about things like Christian nationalism, appropriate levels of patriotism, and then moving beyond those things into election issues coming this fall and other things like that. So the question I wanna talk about today on the podcast is how do you carry on meaningful conversations as a pastor with church members and people in your community about political issues like these? Now I'm not going to walk you through specific issues and tell you the dos and the don'ts or tell you the what the pros and the cons or the rights and the wrongs, that's really not the approach I wanna take. Instead, I wanna give you seven principles. Seven principles that have helped me, in these kind of conversations.

Jeff Iorg:

And if I keep these principles in focus and then bring these principles to bear on my conversations, I found that they're more productive. So here they are. Number one. The first principle is in a conversation about politics or political issues, things like elections or Christian nationalism, these kinds of issues. Number one, affirm that our ultimate allegiance is to God.

Jeff Iorg:

Our ultimate allegiance is not to a political party or even to a political figure. Our ultimate allegiance is to God. Now a pastor talked with me about this a few years ago in a pretty dramatic way. He was in a church that was going through some remodeling, and they moved into a temporary facility for a short time. And while they were in the temporary facility, they were in a worship area that had a cross on the wall.

Jeff Iorg:

But it was an oversight. They did not move the flags from the worship area into the temporary worship area, the American flag and the Christian flag. Well, after a couple of weeks, one of his leaders asked him, hey, where are the flags? And he said, oh, you know, we we just forgot to move them. And the church leader said, well, look.

Jeff Iorg:

I I want that American flag in here on this on the stage next Sunday. And the pastor replied, sure.

Jeff Iorg:

We can we can get on that. We just it's an oversight. You know? And then the pastor said in telling me the story,

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he said, then I I just felt a prompting or an urging.

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And I said, but wait a second. You know, when we come to

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worship, the the cross is there prominently displayed, and that's the really centerpiece of our worship.

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And the church leader said, well,

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I still want the flag in here because the cross and the flag, they mean the same thing to me. Now when the church leader said that, the pastor took a step back and realized I need a larger conversation here. Look. The cross and the flag are both

Jeff Iorg:

powerful symbols. They're both appropriate symbols. They're both deeply meaningful to many of us. But brothers and sisters, they're not the same thing. And our ultimate allegiance is to the cross and what it represents to God our father and his kingdom made possible by what his son did for us on that cross.

Jeff Iorg:

So

Jeff Iorg:

this conversation that this pastor had with his

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leader helped to crystallize a significant issue for a lot of people, and

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that is they conflate what it means to be

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a Christian and what it means to be a Christian citizen and make those the same thing. Listen, we're citizens of heaven. That's our ultimate citizenship and we have

Jeff Iorg:

to always keep that in focus. So in every conversation, help people to remember that our ultimate allegiance is to God, that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, and that the cross is the ultimate symbol of what we stand for and where our allegiance lies. A second principle that helps me in these conversations is to point to the Bible as the truth or the final authority on all issues, particularly on issues of public life. So when someone comes to me and they say, hey, I've heard this on the news, or I saw this on a blog, or I read a report about this, or a person that I follow on social media has been saying, or I talked to my friend at the barber shop and he his opinion is when someone comes to me and leads with news reports, blogs, or podcasts, or public opinion, or social media, I wanna acknowledge that, and then I wanna steer them in a different direction. And where I'd like to steer them is to discussing what the Bible says about whatever subject they're raising.

Jeff Iorg:

So if they come to me and say, I wanna talk about immigration or I wanna talk about, abortion or I wanna talk about the economy or I wanna talk about taxation, I don't wanna know what these other sources say about those things.

Jeff Iorg:

I wanna ask a more fundamental question. What does the Bible say about this issue? It's very interesting about this.

Jeff Iorg:

How oftentimes when someone has come to me with a particular issue or particular perspective and said, you know, this is what I'm hearing, reading, or learning, I wanna know what you think about it. My answer is usually, well, I think what I'd

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like to know is what the Bible says about this particular issue. Have you given that any thought?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, why don't you go and do some Bible study on this topic,

Jeff Iorg:

and let's get together and talk about it? Well, pastor, what what do you what do you think?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, I don't know because I I really haven't studied the bible on that particular subject lately. But if you'd like to work on it and bring me what you find, then I'd be more than glad to talk through it with you. Now you say, well, wouldn't you just offer to do the study for them? No, I would not. Because if they don't have the motivation to go and at least look in their Bible and try to find some answers about the subject, that tells me what they're really looking for me to provide is validation, not true spiritual direction.

Jeff Iorg:

But if they come back to me and say, hey, I did look up the Bible what it says about taxes or what it says about immigration or I did look up in the Bible what it has to say about this particular issue or that particular issue, and here's three or four things I found. Now I'm more than willing to have that conversation because now we're talking about something that is our final authority, something that really speaks to us about these issues in ways that these other media are simply not able to do. So I wanna affirm that our ultimate allegiance is to God and then direct people to the Bible as our final authority and get them to consider what it has to say as the foundation of any conversation we're gonna have going forward. Now, a third aspect of these conversations is that conversations about political political life life or or national issues are also opportunities to underscore the value of public service and the value of national allegiance. It is appropriate to pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America.

Jeff Iorg:

It is appropriate to sing the national anthem and to participate in other public ceremonies that honor our country. It's also important to to communicate the value of public service to our country and to the things that make it stronger, like, for example, military, first responders, working in the intelligence community, or in some other kind of law enforcement. This is all part of what it means in the Bible to serve others and to sacrifice yourself in serving others. Jesus said the greatest among you is the servant of all, and he said the greatest love is the one who sacrifices his life for another. The theme of sacrifice and placing others first and giving yourself up for the good of the community, that's a biblical theme.

Jeff Iorg:

And so when people talk about, is it valuable to be a a part of our country and should we sacrifice for our country and should we give our lives and service in these ways? The answer of course is

Jeff Iorg:

yes. Yes.

Jeff Iorg:

All of these things that I've just mentioned underscore the value of public service and illustrate these biblical principles that I've just

Jeff Iorg:

described. So in these conversations about political issues, use those moments to elevate public service,

Jeff Iorg:

to remind people it's good to serve our country, that it's perfectly acceptable to pledge allegiance to our country in the context of knowing that we have a greater allegiance, but that doesn't mean we can't have this allegiance as well. And to underscore the value of all of this is a good part of these kind of conversations. Alright. So affirm our allegiance to God, direct people to the Bible as a source of truth, and out of that, have conversations with people about the importance of service and the importance of allegiance and the importance of developing this kind of value of public service and contributing to public life. Now, number four.

Jeff Iorg:

I want you to also recognize in these conversations the importance of something called Christian patriotism, but help people to understand this is larger or broader than just an American concept. Now this is hard for some people to get their mind around, but there are Christians living in many countries around the world, and they love their country

Jeff Iorg:

as much as we love ours. They don't want to be Americans. They they they don't want to leave their country. They don't want to lose their culture. They don't want to move away from their heritage.

Jeff Iorg:

They don't wanna be Americans, but they are strong Christians. So that means that Christian patriotism, that

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how Christians express themselves in patriotic fashion that's biblical and honorable and in the context of truth and under the ultimate allegiance to

Jeff Iorg:

God, that Christian patriotism is not just an American perspective. Think of it this way. Suppose I gave

Jeff Iorg:

you this assignment. I want you to develop a thirty minute bible study on Christian patriotism, And I want you to be prepared to present

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that in a Bible believing church in Bogota, Colombia, Arbahn,

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Germany.

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Would your perspective be a bit different if you were teaching Colombians or Germans how to be patriotic Christians?

Jeff Iorg:

I think you begin to see the challenge here. So when people come to me and have conversation with me about things that I would put under the umbrella of Christian patriotism and what that looks like, I I affirm it. I believe that it is possible and it is actually even desirable to have a patriotic perspective on the country of where where you reside and to have some allegiance and devotion to it and to serving in it. But it's not just an American perspective. You see, on this topic, like every other topic, the Bible is a global book with a message for everyone.

Jeff Iorg:

As I've said on other occasions, on other topics, if it's if it's true in Seattle, it's gotta also be true in Singapore and Sydney. If if it's true in Moscow, Idaho, it's also gotta be true in Moscow, Russia.

Jeff Iorg:

My point is that biblical truth is not culturally bound. Now it's culturally expressed, no doubt about that. That's why African churches look very different than Korean churches. But the truth the truth from scripture cannot be bound by culture. It has to be universally true everywhere, all the time for it to be biblical truth.

Jeff Iorg:

So when you think about

Jeff Iorg:

my ultimate allegiance is to God, the Bible is my authority, but public life and service and national patriotism is a good thing, then that fourth principle becomes very important. And that is you recognize that Christian patriotism is not an American perspective. It has to be a biblical one and it has to take form and express itself in the cultural contexts around the world. Man, this is hard for some people

Jeff Iorg:

to get their mind around, but we have

Jeff Iorg:

to help American Christians have a global perspective. One of the ways that we can do this, of course, is through missionary travel and even tourist travel, helping people to see that the world is a big place and that there are literally billions of people who live in other places besides The United States that are very content where they are, love their country as much as we do, appreciate their way of life as much as we appreciate ours, and want to preserve their culture in the same way we wanna preserve ours. So as you're having these conversations, one of the responsibilities I think you have as a Christian leader is to help people recognize that Christian patriotism is not the same thing as American patriotism and that whatever they're going to teach or believe about this has to have a universally true foundation that does take different cultural expressions but isn't tied completely to one culture or perspective. Well, that's four principles. Here's number five.

Jeff Iorg:

Number five is to help people to gain perspective on what matters for eternity in the context of these conversations.

Jeff Iorg:

It's so easy to get caught up in the here and now,

Jeff Iorg:

to believe that the pressing issues of this generation are the most pressing issues of all time. And that every single thing we're dealing with and every single problem we're we're grappling with today is the ultimate problems that must be solved for us to have any future of any kind. I I remember being alive back in the nineteen seventies as a very young adult. And during that era, there was a tremendous emphasis in the American church on the end times, the second coming, the rapture, all of that. It was constantly being talked about.

Jeff Iorg:

There were video series that were produced about it. There were movies that were produced about it. There were countless books that were produced about it. And then moving into the nineties, there were a whole series of fictional books that were produced that were resting on this

Jeff Iorg:

theology. People were were were fascinated by the fact that everything about that era meant that the world was coming to an end. Only problem was it wasn't. We're fifty years from that time. We're still going strong.

Jeff Iorg:

Now,

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what that taught me in reflection is that it's so easy to get caught up in thinking that the problems of today are the worst that have ever been, that the signs of the times are upon us, that that every issue that we're living through right now is, is like the ultimate issue that has to be resolved. What I'm learning is that's just simply not true. That there are some things that really do matter for eternity and most of what we're all caught up in on a daily basis these days

Jeff Iorg:

just doesn't. You know, a few years ago, I was involved in one of these conversations. Man, I was all stirred

Jeff Iorg:

up about something, and I was the one who was worked up about it, I was on my soapbox, if you will, and carrying on about it and just really caught up in it. A wise friend said when I finally took a breath, he said, I know you're really caught up in this and you're really worked up about it, but I just just have a simple question. After you're in heaven for five seconds,

Jeff Iorg:

will this have mattered? And I thought, well, yeah. No. It won't.

Jeff Iorg:

I so wanted to make my case. Yes. This is the most important issue in the history of the world. Yes. We have to solve this today.

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Yes. If we don't fix this,

Jeff Iorg:

our country's going to fall apart. But honestly, five seconds after I'm in heaven, this won't have seemed like that big of a deal. So if that's true, then why am I making it such a big deal now? Now that that doesn't mean that I don't care some about these issues. You know, one of

Jeff Iorg:

the hardest disciplines of leadership as I've taught you on other podcasts is the discipline of giving appropriate attention to challenges and problems and difficulties. We don't give the same weight to everything. Doesn't mean that we don't give some weight to many things. So there are many political issues today, many public life issues today, many challenges today that deserve some of our attention. But we

Jeff Iorg:

have to always ask ourselves the question, how much does this matter for eternity? And when I get to heaven, how much will this really mean

Jeff Iorg:

to me? So when you're having these kind of political conversations about these kind of controversial issues, sometimes it's good to just ask a person, you know, really, I get how fired up you are about this or how important this seems to you right now, but in the grand scheme of things, in the in the big picture of eternity,

Jeff Iorg:

when we all get to heaven, how much do you think this is really gonna matter? Well, if it's only gonna matter a little

Jeff Iorg:

bit then, let's only let it matter a little bit now and let's keep our focus on things that really are going

Jeff Iorg:

to make a difference for all time.

Jeff Iorg:

Then number six, when I'm having these kind of conversations, it's also a good opportunity to model and teach the need for deference among believers on many issues. Deference among believers. You know, we live in an age of outrage where everyone wants to convince everyone else to believe exactly what they believe and if they don't, then they are then they're marginalized in some way and there's there's no real capacity, it seems, for meaningful conversation that leads to some disagreement and even difference of opinion, but that is acceptable among believers. But this kind of deference is necessary to being able to work together. Let me give you some examples.

Jeff Iorg:

Many years ago, when I was in my first pastorate, I lived in a town that really had fallen far behind on its infrastructure and really needed to do something to improve its street system. I was living in a town at that time, about 75, 80,000 people that still had many dirt streets. And so there was some movement in the community to start addressing this issue and a task force of community members were selected to work with some city council people and some state some city staff people to develop a strategy to bring to the voters to see if they could not significantly upgrade the infrastructure of this community. And this was going to involve local taxation plus resources from state and federal sources. Well, you can imagine, this was controversial.

Jeff Iorg:

Now on that task force was one of the strongest Christians in our community and a member of our church. He he was highly regarded, smart guy, capable man, visionary, clear thinker, the kind of person you want on a task force like this for a community. He, of course, was advocating strongly that this needed to happen for the betterment of the community on many levels, economic betterment, health improvement, safety improvement, just a whole range of reasons. But this won't surprise you. There were some members of our church that were very much against this kind of taxation and this kind of progress and this kind of change which was going to forever alter the nature of the community.

Jeff Iorg:

So on the one hand, I had one of the strongest Christians that I knew favoring this project and working hard on it day by day and some other strong Christians in my church who were

Jeff Iorg:

resistant to the whole idea. This was not an either or right or wrong, doctrinally divisive issue or at least it shouldn't have been. This is one

Jeff Iorg:

of those things you show deference. It's alright for Christians to have different perspectives on some public policy issues like this. I saw this another time, early on in my ministry as well. I lived in a community, believe it or not, that did not allow the sale of alcoholic beverages. And yet in the next community over, they did allow the sale of alcoholic beverages.

Jeff Iorg:

And so what happened? People drove from the one community to the other community to buy their alcohol and that meant that the money that went into those stores went from one community to the other, and it meant the taxation on all those sales stayed in the second community, never back in the first. And after many years of this, the people in the first community, especially the business people in the first community said, this is ridiculous. People are driving 10 miles to buy their alcohol when they could buy it right here. And we're deceiving and fooling ourselves if we think that by not selling it in our community, we're keeping alcohol out of our community.

Jeff Iorg:

And so there was quite a movement that was sponsored to change the law and start selling alcohol in this community. And this might surprise you, but there were prominent Christians, pastors even, who wanted that alcohol sales the alcohol sales to start. And it was because in some of their churches, they really didn't have any strong convictions against alcoholism or against alcohol. They did against drunkenness, but not alcohol. And they also saw the economic benefit and wanted the town to enjoy the economic benefit of that, hoping that it would also provide economic benefit eventually to their not only community, but even into their churches.

Jeff Iorg:

And so there was a division. And some Christian leaders call initiative and some Christian leaders were opposed to it. But once again, an issue of deference. Yes. I have strong feelings about this issue, but I also am willing to say that this is one of those areas where we're not going to divide over something like this issue.

Jeff Iorg:

Tell you another one that I ran into just a few years ago and that was, on the issue of how important it is to evaluate a person's character when you decide if you're gonna vote for them for public office. And a good friend of mine and I had a pretty spirited debate about this, and I took one side and he took the other. One side was that, you know, character matters the most and you decide who you're gonna vote for based on their character. And the other argument was, no character is important, but it's not as important as policy. And you have to decide what the person's policies are gonna be because quite frankly, you don't ever really know what the character is, but the policies are more public and more available to what they're gonna actually do.

Jeff Iorg:

You make your decision based on that. And my friend and I had

Jeff Iorg:

a pretty spirited discussion about this. But at the end, we agreed to disagree. We don't we don't see it the same way,

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but we also weren't willing to divide up over it because it's one of those issues that you can show deference. We don't have to vote for the same people in order to be, quote, Christian in our voting. And so this principle of modeling and teaching deference can really be done well in these conversations about public issues and politics and things related. I've experienced it in several occasions in my lifetime of ministry where there were issues that arose in a community, issues that arose in a nation, issues that came to bear where Christians simply didn't see it the same way. Rather than divide over that, we can show deference to each other and give each other a little room to maneuver recognizing that there's not a specific Christian position on every single issue that comes along.

Jeff Iorg:

And then the last thing I

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would say is in these conversations is to remember yourself and to remind people in conversation with you that

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church leaders are really the conscience of a community.

Jeff Iorg:

Our role is to speak up with moral authority, not with partisan persuasion. We we speak truth to power. We say what God says about situations, and we call people to higher commitments and higher values than just political engagement. Yes. It's important to talk about these issues and I certainly think it's important for Christian leaders to be willing to talk about them,

Jeff Iorg:

but never to the point where we compromise our position of being able to stand up and say, thus says the Lord. This is what God says. And somehow we have to all get in line with that. Well, talking about political issues, political challenges, elections, Christian nationalism, all these things that people come to us about, How can you have more helpful and more healthy conversations on these issues? Well, affirm that our ultimate allegiance is to God, point to the Bible as our final authority, Underscore the value of public service and national allegiance, but recognize Christian patriotism applies in other countries and cultures as well and must have some kind of universal foundational understanding.

Jeff Iorg:

When you're having these conversations, help people gain or regain perspective on what matters for eternity. Model and teach deference among believers, especially on public issues. And finally, remind yourself and others that as a church leader, you're the conscience of a community. Your role is to speak with moral authority, not partisan persuasion. That you are mostly concerned with representing God and what he has to say about a situation and to holding firm on that.

Jeff Iorg:

These are hard conversations and quite honestly, given this age of outrage we're living in and the political turmoil that seems to mark our daily lives and the coming election season in this country, these are going to be challenging conversations in hallways and in classrooms and in other contexts for ministry leaders. But if you keep some of these principles in mind, you can keep yourself from being bogged down in conversation that becomes divisive or difficult or unproductive. And instead, you can lead people to talk in healthy, productive, meaningful ways about these challenging issues. Think about these principles and put them into practice as you lead on.