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On this episode of the Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg discusses the concept of institutional grief, which occurs when a grief-inducing event impacts a large portion of an organization simultaneously. Iorg emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexities of institutional grief and providing appropriate leadership during these challenging times.
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Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Orridge, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, welcoming you once again to our continuing dialogue about practical issues related to ministry leadership. I know some of you that dial into this podcast because of my ministry responsibility these days might think, oh, this will be about denominational politics or about Southern Baptist Convention practices or even a promotional podcast for all that we're doing all around the world. Well, I really like talking about those things, especially the last part, what we're doing all around the world. But remember, this podcast is about practical issues related to ministry leadership.
Jeff Iorg:We talk here about the ebb and flow, the daily work, the the grind it out challenges, if you will, of what it means to be in ministry leadership today. Today's theme for the podcast is something I call institutional grief, or
Jeff Iorg:you might call it organizational grief. This happens when an event, a grief inducing event, impacts a large portion of your organization or your institution or in many of your cases, your church simultaneously.
Jeff Iorg:Now this isn't when you have one death in your church family at a memorial service. That that's a grief inducing event, but it doesn't produce what I call institutional organizational grief.
Jeff Iorg:This is when something happens that impacts large numbers of people simultaneously. So
Jeff Iorg:for example, it could be the death of 1 person, if a beloved deacon or an elder or a mother of the church, if you will, someone like that passes away, then it could be an institutional or organizational grief inducing event. But typically, these events have a broader reach or a broader, impact or cause, if you will, than one person's death. For example, I was involved in a church ministry situation a number of years ago as a pastor when there was a school bus accident in our community and multiple, children were killed simultaneously. This was a particularly gruesome accident. I won't go into the details here on the podcast, but it was a particularly gruesome event.
Jeff Iorg:And because of that, it produced significant grief across our church family and really even broader than that across our community. Another one of these could be as or or another example of this could be a series of events happening close together in a church family. For example, I was recently, called by a church and I, that had scheduled me to come for a speaking event, and they called and say, we have to cancel. And they
Jeff Iorg:were very apologetic. They said, listen. We we you may not understand, but we've had a series,
Jeff Iorg:of deaths and some of them untimely deaths in our church family. And we are emotionally and spiritually exhausted right now from dealing with a series of these death events in our church. And because of that, we're just gonna have to step back from some events and work on the grief process. And I just stopped the guy and said, hey, you don't have to apologize.
Jeff Iorg:I know exactly what you're talking about. Institutional grief, organizational grief,
Jeff Iorg:as an event or a series of events that happens that causes, a number of people who are invested emotionally in your organization or in your ministry or in your church or in your institution to all be grieving simultaneously. Let me give you a couple of examples. Another one of these could be a natural disaster that comes along or perhaps, that flattens your facilities or devastates your community in some way so that many people are all experiencing loss
Jeff Iorg:at the same time. Another example of a cause for one of these events, might be something like a moral failure of
Jeff Iorg:a prominent leader, where there are 100, if not thousands, of people who are simultaneously disappointed and experience the grief that comes with the loss of following this beloved leader. These are all the kinds of things I'm talking about
Jeff Iorg:today. When a when an event happens that is grief inducing and not just something that brings grief to 1 family or one portion or pocket of your ministry or your organization, but something that spreads across the institution. Something, whether it's the death of
Jeff Iorg:a person, the tragic death of a group of people, whether it's a natural disaster or perhaps a moral failure, any situation like this where large numbers of people experience simultaneous loss, which then leads to this response called grief. That's what I mean by institutional grief. And I wanna talk today about some strategies for managing this when it happens in your church or your institution or your organization. The first thing I want you to remember is to recognize that the grief process is happening simultaneously, but not all in the same way to a lot of people at the same time. This means that many people simultaneously are living through shock, anger, denial, bargaining, exploration, and adjustment.
Jeff Iorg:Now this is a 6 fold model for understanding grief that I've used for years in organizations where I've led. Now you might say, well, I thought that there were 8 phases or stages of grief, or I thought there were 13, or some other number. Well, different psychologists who studied grief, write about this and put it in different forms or different stages or different phases. But really, it doesn't matter what model you adopt as long as you recognize that that's what's happening when you have simultaneous grief taking place across an institution or an organization. You have large numbers of people
Jeff Iorg:who are going through shock, anger, denial, bargaining, exploration, and adjustment all at the same time. But they're not all going through it in the same way or at the same pace. People respond differently
Jeff Iorg:and at different paces and in different ways based on many different factors about how they have encountered grief in the past, how they've been trained to deal with it, how close they may have been, to the person involved or the people involved. There are lots of different reasons why people may be going through these experiences simultaneously, but not in lockstep fashion. So that some person may be in shock, some person may be experiencing anger, some denial, some bargaining, some maybe have even moved on to exploration or adjustment, while others are still getting started back at the beginning of the process. And one of the challenges of managing institutional organizational grief is this timing aspect, where you can't just have one service and know that everyone has had the opportunity to grieve and now we all move on. It just doesn't happen that way because you have people dealing with all these different stages or phases of grief in different ways and at different paces.
Jeff Iorg:And as a part of this, you also have to recognize that, some people are being profoundly impacted by what's occurring and some people maybe very casually impacted by what's occurring. And this may cause some difficulty in you trying to administer to all of the people at the same time or in the same way. So for example, here's what I mean. A number of years ago, we had a beloved faculty member pass away, while I was president of Gateway Seminary, and this person died, in her early fifties tragically as the result of a blood clot that, moved through her body after a routine knee surgery. So when this happened, it was a devastating experience for many people at the
Jeff Iorg:seminary. When the announcement was made, the first response,
Jeff Iorg:of course, for many was shock and some for anger. It was an emotionally devastating morning when this news was first announced. I remember walking through, the seminary campus very intentionally trying to provide pastoral ministry to people that were hurting, and some people were sitting at their desk in, like, almost a catatonic trance. They were deeply in shock. Others had were were moving out of that and into some of the emotional response or reaction to what had occurred.
Jeff Iorg:They were sitting at their desk weeping openly. There was some that expressed anger. What happened? How could this have happened? How could God have allowed this to happen?
Jeff Iorg:Some were in denial. This can't be real. This is just a sick joke. What what's happening here? How can this be?
Jeff Iorg:All of this was going on. And so as the week unfolded, the grief continued to be expressed in various ways and various by various people. We, of course, were getting moving toward a memorial service for the person who had passed away and then another service that was held in conjunction with the seminary community to, to commemorate this person's life, and all of
Jeff Iorg:this was going on. Well, in the middle of it, a person, asked to see me, and he came to my office and said, I'm sorry to bother you, doctor Orch, but, I just don't understand why everyone is so broken, and can you please tell me what's happening? Well, I realized that this was a newer employee who had never even met the person who had passed away. Now they were not being insensitive. They they made an appointment to come and say, what's happening?
Jeff Iorg:And and what what do I need to know? Because there's an emotional
Jeff Iorg:brokenness about our organization that's been going on for days that I just I just don't know how to interface with it. I was able to help this brother understand the kind of person who had passed away, the impact they had made over the years, the long standing, appreciation that many people in the organization had for the outstanding service this faculty member had provided. And I was able to give some, some some counsel about how to understand the situation and how to interface with it. But I also walked away from that conversation realizing that people in organizations process grief very differently at varying stages and in various ways. And some, who are relatively new to the organization may not even understand fully all that's happening and may need to have help to process what's going on around them.
Jeff Iorg:So recognize the grief process is happening simultaneously to a lot of people, but also recognize that these these phases or stages, shock, anger, denial, bargaining, exploration, and adjustment, are not steps that people move through and that the entire group will not go through at the same pace, at the same way, or at the same time, and that some people in an organizational or institutional context may be even newer to the organization and may not even understand all that's happening to everyone else. The second suggestion I would make for you is to manage information carefully and wisely. So when something like this happens in your organization, announce what you know and only what you know, avoiding all speculation. So you wanna say, this is what happened. This is what we know.
Jeff Iorg:This is the situation as it is, but avoid speculating about what you don't know or sharing information beyond the facts that are at hand. During this kind of crisis situation in an institution or an organization, you have to remember that people are hanging on every word. They are craving information. They want to know what happened and why, and they're looking to you as a leader to give them that information. This means you have to avoid the temptation to over speak in the moment and to say more than you know or to say things in addition to what you're sure that you know and to avoid any kind of speculation.
Jeff Iorg:People are hanging on your words. They're listening very carefully to what you say. So announce what you know and only what you know. So if you're dealing with a situation, there's been a moral failure of some kind, don't speculate about it or go beyond what you know or share information past that which is important or pertinent to the situation. If there's been a natural disaster, don't make promises you can't keep or make explanation statements about God's providence or God's leadership or God's allowance beyond what you know to be theologically true.
Jeff Iorg:Just be careful about what you say in these contexts. When that situation in my community happened where many children were killed simultaneously in this bus accident, I had to be careful not to speculate about the driver who hit them or the results of the accident and what caused it or to speculate any about the negligence or the responsibility of the bus driver and all these kinds of things that everyone else in our community was speculating about and talking about and postulating, I had to keep very careful that I didn't say anything about any of those issues because I didn't know for sure the facts
Jeff Iorg:of the situation. So manage information carefully. Share what you know and only what you
Jeff Iorg:know. Realize that people are hanging on your every word that they really do depend on you for accurate information in a time of grief and loss and pain, and be sure that you limit yourself to what you can factually share in the moment. Now while you're doing this though, managing information carefully and wisely also means that you have to be willing to repeat yourself over and over and over, clarifying what you might consider the obvious about the situation and sharing this information repeatedly because grieving people process information poorly. Now, every pastor who's ever dealt with a grief situation knows this is true. Let me give you this example.
Jeff Iorg:A person in your church dies, let's say, it's a beloved deacon, and you go out to the house and you see the widow and you say, your husband's passed away and and as we plan the funeral service, the memorial service, I wonder if he ever mentioned to you who who he wanted for his pallbearers. And you and she says, oh, pastor, he did. In fact, he wrote it in his Bible. So she goes and gets her Bible and she brings or go goes and gets his Bible and brings it in and shows you right here in the flyleaf. It says, these are the 6 men that I want to
Jeff Iorg:be my pallbearers. Well, thank you very much. Can I hold
Jeff Iorg:on to this Bible just so I can get that till I can get those names copied and and get it back to you? Yes. That'll be fine. So other people are coming and going, and she's greeting different ones, and there's other family members gathered. And so you're in the kitchen having a ham sandwich, which is what is always available in a Baptist situation because somebody's always gonna bring a sandwich.
Jeff Iorg:You know what I mean? So you're in the kitchen having a ham sandwich and this widow comes in and says, oh, pastor, I'm so glad you're still here. I need to talk to you about pallbearers. Now, you're a wise pastor. You don't say, what's wrong with
Jeff Iorg:you woman? You already told
Jeff Iorg:me about that. In fact, you gave
Jeff Iorg:me this Bible. You don't say anything like that because you know that grieving people process information poorly. And so even though just 15 minutes ago, you were talking about this, you
Jeff Iorg:say something like, alright. I'm so glad I'm still here so we can talk about this. What did you need to tell me about Paul Beers? Well, my husband wrote him in the Bible if I can find that Bible. Well, hang on.
Jeff Iorg:Is this his Bible right here?
Jeff Iorg:Yes, it is. Let's look
Jeff Iorg:at it together. And she opens and says, here's those pallbearers, pastor. I just wanna be
Jeff Iorg:sure you knew about it. Now, you might think, well, that's
Jeff Iorg:kind of a silly illustration. It's not silly if you've ever been a pastor and helped a person through a grieving moment. You know that people process information poorly when they're grieving. They have to hear it over and over and over again. Now, when you're managing information about an institutional grief setting or a situation where many people in your organization are all experiencing a simultaneous loss that is causing many to grieve all at the same time, Manage information carefully by sharing what you know and only what you know, recognizing people are hanging on your every word.
Jeff Iorg:They wanna hear from you because you will have good information that they need. But when you're sharing that information, don't be upset if you have to repeat yourself, Maybe over and over and over to clarify what may seem obvious or already communicated or what already needs to be known because grieving people process information poorly. May I also say that that's an important thing to remember when you're speaking at memorial services or other context when there are large numbers of grieving people. You may say, well, I need to I need to to to come up with something that will be earth shaking. It's gonna be never heard before.
Jeff Iorg:It's gonna be the greatest message that's ever been shared. No. You don't.
Jeff Iorg:You need, the 23rd Psalm and John chapter 14 and John 3 16. You need familiar passages of scripture that communicate the obvious truths of God's word, that reinforce God's providence, God's care, God's presence, that reinforce the reality of heaven and of eternal life and of God's love. These are
Jeff Iorg:the things that need to be reinforced during times of institutional organizational grief. You don't have to be glib or creative or insightful or share something that's never been done before. Instead, you'd be much wiser to share over and over and over again those core foundational truths
Jeff Iorg:which sustain people through grieving process. Alright.
Jeff Iorg:A third suggestion in managing organizational or institutional grief is to create time and space for expressing grief. 2 or 3 suggestions on how to do this. First of all, give people, work time or church time to process their loss. Now when I say work time, if you're in a situation like I was in at the seminary or like I'm here at the executive committee, it would mean allowing for some time at work for people to come together and express their grief. Now this could involve a memorial service, but it could also involve providing counseling for people who may need it.
Jeff Iorg:It could also involve just simply getting people together in prayer groups or in organized ways to share memories and to celebrate the life of the person whose past are to talk about the the situation as it is that's producing such grief. So for example, when we were moving Gateway Seminary from the Bay Area to Southern California, picking up the 10th largest seminary in North America and moving at 400 miles, we were leaving behind a campus that had many positive memories for many people, and leaving the campus was a grief experience for many people. And so in order to process that grief, we organized, many different events, but we organized times for people to come together and talk about what the old campus had meant to them. And as one person said to me, I came to the seminary here, and in this chapel, God called me to international missions. And on that parking lot, I met my wife.
Jeff Iorg:And in that, apartment, our first child was conceived. Every important thing that happened in my young adult life happened on this piece of ground. And he said leaving it is really hard for me because I'm leaving behind all these important memories of my spiritual heritage. Now, this brother wasn't saying he wouldn't leave and that it was the wrong decision. He was just simply saying that making this decision and leaving this location is grievous to me.
Jeff Iorg:It's a great loss for me, and I'm gonna have to process through that. So we gave people time to process. We gave them work time. We organized times while people were at work to for employees to process the grief they were experiencing through worship services, through dialogue opportunities, and even through some counseling that was offered. You could also do this in, church where you offer what I might call church time for this very same thing, where you set aside time not just in one memorial service, but in some worship services following up from that, in small group bible studies, in other kinds of meetings where people gather, that you set aside opportunity for people to grieve, by creating time and space for it to be expressed in that context.
Jeff Iorg:You can also create an electronic space for people to share memories, where people can go on a website, or on some social media site and put photographs and memories and stories about the situation that you're grieving. You can also, particularly if it's a a person that you're grieving or a location that you're grieving, create physical space for people to create public memorials or in other ways to signify their grief. I'm fascinated when a public figure dies in American culture, how spontaneous memorials are created to them very often. I lived in Los Angeles area, for example, when Kobe Bryant was killed, in a helicopter crash. And simultaneously across the Los Angeles area, multiple places were generated that were people offering memorials, to Kobe Bryant and to his daughter and then in support of their family.
Jeff Iorg:No one organized these. They just spontaneously started happening at the arena where he played basketball in the neighborhood where he lived in the location where the the helicopter crashed. People brought, flowers. They brought cards. They brought photographs.
Jeff Iorg:They did things to symbolize the grief they were experiencing and to crystalize the memory that was so important to them of Kobe Bryant's basketball career. Now, you might say, well, you know, these memorials, they they're they're just physical things. They're not really spiritual, you know, blah blah blah. I get all that, but you're missing it completely. People want to memorialize.
Jeff Iorg:They need a physical tangible expression of their grief, and they need the opportunity, to be able to present that and to say, that's my memory, that's important to me, and really to come together with other people who are having the same similar experience. So create time and space for expressing this kind of grief. A 4 suggestion is this, manage your own grief well. If you're involved in an organization like, I've been describing here today, you you have to manage your own grief well. That pastor of that church that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that had to cancel me from coming to an event at their church because of the series of losses they've experienced with repeated memorial services over the period of the past few weeks, That pastor needs to pull away and get some grief care himself as he's dealing with so much loss in his congregation.
Jeff Iorg:And when I moved to the seminary, I also grieved the loss of that facility and of the, of the memories I had there, And I had to process those with conversations with other spiritual mentors and guides that helped me along the way. Manage your own grief. But remember, you're the leader and people are expecting you to lead them, so you may not be able to process all of your grief with your members or your employees. You may have to instead process your grief with peers or your ministry support team or some colleagues outside your organization instead of with your followers. And I wanna caution you to avoid what I call personal catharsis and keep the focus on meeting the needs of others who are grieving.
Jeff Iorg:It's not helpful for you to publicly go through some kind of catharsis or some kind of emotional moment that reflects the fact that you're not able to deal with your grief well in the moment. That doesn't mean you can't express your grief publicly. It means that it's not about you. It's about the people you're ministering to, And whatever expressions that you do make need to be focused on the on the needs of others and meeting their needs, not just a cathartic moment for yourself. That's why it's important to have a team of people, some colleagues, peers, and friends that you can go to and talk with and pray with and work through your own grief with in terms of how it's impacting you personally, but keeping your focus as a ministry leader on the organization and on helping people through the grieving process.
Jeff Iorg:I know when our faculty member at Gateway passed away, it was hard for me, and it was even harder for my wife who was very close to this particular woman who served on our faculty.
Jeff Iorg:It was hard to set aside our own grief, but we had to do that because we
Jeff Iorg:had to first lead the seminary community through a grieving process and then, with our pastor and others, swing back around and get the kind of personal care we needed to move our move through our own grief in the situation. Well, finally, let me conclude with a few other thoughts about the memorial service or memorial services that you may have to help bring the grief in your community, to a point where you all are addressing it in a public fashion. I've already said that when you're speaking at a memorial service, you wanna use the most common and familiar passages of scripture and really hammer away on those themes of God's providence, God's care, God's protection, God's provision, God's companionship, our partnership through the moment, and certainly focusing on the love of God and heaven as our reality, especially if it's a death of a person in a situation. If it's not that, if it's something related to, like, the seminary's relocation and grieving the loss of the property and other things, you wanna focus on this the mission that we have and the focus that we have for the future and how God can work through us to take us forward even from situations like that.
Jeff Iorg:So in your messages, focus on these grand themes of God's love and care and provision or God's mission and the future. 2nd, resist the temptation when planning the memorial service that more is always better. A 1 hour service that's well planned and executed appropriately and really taps into helping people resolve their grief is better than a 3 hour service that doesn't accomplish the same purpose. Now I'm not saying that the timing is magic. I'm just saying longer is not always necessarily better.
Jeff Iorg:Plan a quality expression of worship, of word, of prayer, and of fellowship or community. Plan an intentional service that accomplishes those four things, and trust that God will work through the pointedness of your planning, not just the length
Jeff Iorg:of the service that you plan. Another thing to remember in a public gathering to grieve is to choose the participants carefully. Make sure that the people who are leading in the service are there to lead others to grieve, not to publicly grieve and to use it
Jeff Iorg:as a moment for self, focus or self, aggrandizement or some kind of or something like that. No. Make sure that the the leaders are there for the people and that there's they see their role as leading the grieving process of others to a suitable expression and conclusion. And if there is someone that you feel like you just must include or who's insisting that they be included, I suggest this is a good time for the use of good technology. Ask if you can video their presentation or their input and then show the video rather than have them speak in public.
Jeff Iorg:Listen. Most people, most people are not good public speakers and they don't enjoy it, and they don't do well when called upon to do it, and they need help to do it well. So why not just let them make their video of their presentation If they have a particular poem to read, a story to tell, a scripture they wanna share, no problem. Get that on video. Capture it that way and show it as a part of the service rather than asking the person to speak in public.
Jeff Iorg:And then finally, when you are in one of these services, and you do decide to allow multiple participants, make sure that they share memories that are good, that are focused on God and on the future and on what he's doing in the moment, and help everyone who's going to share in the service remember that the purpose of the gathering is to crystallize grief, to help people process through what they're feeling, and to come to a place of hope and moving forward, together. Well, I have unfortunately been in ministry long enough that I have lived through many, many situations of institution or organizational grief. When an event happens, whether it's the death of someone, or a natural disaster, or a moral failure, or even a relocation from one property to another, when something happens that causes a sense of loss to come over tens, if not hundreds of people simultaneously. And then as a leader, having to step into that situation and lead through a process of organizational or institutional greed. You, I pray, are not in that situation today.
Jeff Iorg:But if you are in ministry leadership grief. Using the insights of this podcast, you can do it more effectively, and I pray you will as you lead on.