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In this episode of the Lead On podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, discusses practical aspects of ministry leadership, particularly addressing the challenge of dealing with angry people. Iorg observes that anger is prevalent in today's culture and often spills into churches and ministry contexts. He explains that anger typically arises from feelings of threat, whether physical, relational, personal, or related to one's possessions or identity. He provides various examples and emphasizes that ministry leaders can often become unintended targets of displaced anger. Iorg advises leaders to recognize different expressions of anger, such as hostile humor, nagging, and withdrawal, and to handle these situations with patience and firmness. He underscores the importance of addressing the root causes of anger and using these moments as opportunities for discipleship and spiritual growth. Ultimately, Iorg encourages leaders to maintain a compassionate yet firm stance, sometimes requiring confrontation and containment of destructive behavior to protect the ministry's mission.
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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 ongoing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. On this podcast, we talk about the daily work of ministry leaders, pastors, associate pastors, youth pastors, people who work in institutions like seminaries and colleges and Baptist entities like denominations and state conventions and associations. We entities like denominations and state conventions and associations. We talk about what it means to be involved in the daily work of ministry.
Jeff Iorg:Today, I'd like to talk about dealing with angry people. There is a lot of anger in our culture right now. We see that anger expressed in the political processes, in so much that's publicized in media, in interpersonal relationships. We see it spilling over into violent acts that take place. A lot of anger in the culture right now.
Jeff Iorg:And some of that anger spills over into churches and ministry organizations. And ministry leaders often find themselves the object of people's anger. In other words, as a ministry leader, you find people venting their anger on you or aiming their anger toward you, and you sometimes wonder what you really did to deserve this much anger. Well, many years ago, I heard this described as the kick the cat syndrome. Here's how it works.
Jeff Iorg:A person goes to work and their boss does something that makes them really angry. But they're not able to express it in that context because they fear the consequences. So they leave work, come home, find their spouse, and they vent their anger on that person. So let's say it's the husband who gets upset at work and he comes home and vents his anger on his wife, and the angry wife, fearful of expressing her anger to her husband who's already angry and perhaps even a bit out of control, instead, a few minutes later, barks at one of her children, taking her anger out on someone else. Now the child who's angered by what has just been inflicted on him or her knows, well, I really can't lash back out at my mom because she's, angry at me and I don't wanna aggravate the situation.
Jeff Iorg:So what does the child do? He walks out on the porch and kicks the cat. The poor cat, saving through the air wonders, what did I do wrong? Well, nothing. That's kind of a silly and humorous illustration, but the point is, oftentimes, anger gets handed down.
Jeff Iorg:And so as a ministry leader, you find yourself sometimes in the position of the cat. You get kicked off the porch and you wonder, what did I do to deserve all of this? Frankly, you didn't do anything. You're just the object or the recipient of anger in the culture coursing through the lives of people and being expressed towards someone who's perceived to be either safe or unlikely to re respond or react in a negative way. There's another part of this.
Jeff Iorg:Ministry leaders are also struggling with their own anger. And in the world we're living in today, you're not exempt from that same kind of anger rising up inside of you that's so prevalent in the culture. You may be angry because your church is struggling, you're experiencing financial losses, you're having family stresses, you're going through a health crisis. All kinds of things like this can cause you also to be struggling with your own anger and then bringing that into the ministry context as well. So today, we're gonna talk about this.
Jeff Iorg:Dealing with angry people. How do you deal with people who come to you with some expressions of anger? What do you do about it, and how do you make it a ministry opportunity or a ministry moment in their lives? First of all, answer the question, why do people get angry? Well, it's really this simple.
Jeff Iorg:People get angry when they feel threatened.
Jeff Iorg:Threat leads to anxiety or tension, which then leads to anger. Anger
Jeff Iorg:occurs when you, or anyone, or anything that's important to you is threatened. Anger is rooted in threat. And when that threat occurs, that threat to yourself, if you wanna think of it that way, anxiety, tension, anger are the response. Let me give you a simple illustration. So someone cuts you off in traffic and you shake your fist and yell at them from the front seat of your car.
Jeff Iorg:You don't know the person. You don't know if they did it intentionally or by, accident. You don't know anything about their motive or their distraction or what's going on in their life. You just felt threatened when they swerved into your lane and you reacted with anxiety and then tension and then anger because of the threat that they pose to you. But what was threatened?
Jeff Iorg:Well, your physical well-being was threatened. Your possession that you're driving, maybe even of some value was threatened. Your schedule or your appointment or wherever you're headed was threatened. You were threatened in various ways, and as a result, you felt anxiety and tension and then expressed it in an angry outburst. Threat is the source of anger.
Jeff Iorg:When you or anyone or anything important to you is threatened, you will respond with anger. Let me give you some more examples of this. Let's say it's your physical self that's
Jeff Iorg:threatened. You get cancer. You get a diagnosis that you're very sick. You're going to have to have a
Jeff Iorg:lot of treatments. Your life's gonna change forever. You can find yourself because you feel threatened in yourself, in this case, your physical self, responding with anger and that anger might be expressed toward a doctor, might be expressed toward a family member, might even be expressed toward God who you perceive is the cause of this happening to you or who has allowed it to happen to you. When you feel physically threatened, you can respond with anger. That's why people who do hospital visitation know that it is not uncommon to go into a room and have a person be very angry about what they're experiencing.
Jeff Iorg:Anger with their doctors, angry with their circumstances, angry with their illness. Physical self threatened anger is the result. A relational self can be threatened. For example, I once, had a situation where a woman was incredibly angry with her husband and he she kept saying, I'm really angry with him because he spends all of his time out in the garage working on his car. Well, this guy did have a nice classic car and he did enjoy the work of restoring it and he did spend hour upon hour working, working on this project.
Jeff Iorg:His wife was angry about a car? No. That wasn't the issue. Her relational self was threatened. Her lack of connection with her husband, her lack of time for meaningful conversation with him, her lack of a sense of value because he was investing, failing to invest time in relationship with her.
Jeff Iorg:All of these things made her angry and she expressed that anger by blaming a car, by blaming her husband, when what she was really angry about was her own relational self, her sense of well-being in the relationship was being threatened. Physical self, relational self. Here's another one. Your personal self or your self image or your self esteem or how you see yourself is threatened. When someone, for example, attacks your patriotic values or your political values or even your religious values, They they attack something about what you believe, what defines you, what makes you who you are.
Jeff Iorg:You react with anger. Why? Because your personal self, your self image, if you will, or your self esteem of who you are is threatened. And then it can even be your extended self, your extended self in the people and things that are important to you in your life. You know, for many years, I was involved in youth sports, particularly little league baseball and similar things related to football, basketball, soccer, all of these different sporting activities.
Jeff Iorg:And in the context of that, there's a phrase called a little league parent. And that's a parent who gets really upset when something goes wrong for their child in the context of a sporting event. The child doesn't get as much playing time. The child doesn't, get the right kind of coaching. The child gets denied a certain opportunity or a privilege.
Jeff Iorg:And I have had multiple conversations with parents in these situations where the parents were angry with me because of something that I had done that they perceived to be
Jeff Iorg:a threat because they were too caught up in their children's activity to have even any emotional separation from it. Listen.
Jeff Iorg:You can feel threatened when someone who matters a great deal to you, like one of your children, doesn't get what you perceive they should be getting, why are you angry about that? Because you somehow reflect that as something that's that you're losing in the context as well. And then even your extended self meaning the things, that are important to you. I remember many years ago when we bought our first house, there was something wrong with the the dirt in the front yard. I think there had been a gas leak at one of the gas lights in our neighborhood at one point, and it had killed a bunch of our grass.
Jeff Iorg:And, of course, I didn't know what was causing this, but I was trying to restore it and repair it. And so, at one point, I ultimately, plowed up about a third of my front yard and, replanted it with grass seed and was watering it daily and going through all of this work to try to get grass to grow in my very ugly front yard. We were making a little bit of headway when I looked out there one day and this little girl named Larissa, probably 4, maybe 5 years old, was running through our yard while she was playing with the other kids in our neighborhood. Now, I had the yard taped off with some, caution tape and it was obvious to anyone, I would think, that they were supposed to stay out of the yard while I'm trying to grow the grass. But little Larissa, she ran through my front yard and left her footprints crushing the new the new grass and digging up the places where she stepped because the ground was so soft from all the watering, and I exploded.
Jeff Iorg:I fired up out of my chair, threw open my front door, yet ran out on my front porch, and bellowed her name as loudly as I could. And, of course, she stopped in the middle of the street, terror struck. And I started yelling at her about how she had run through my yard and how she had ruined my grass and how she couldn't why couldn't she see the tape and, few other choice, things I had to say to her. Of course, when I finished yelling at her from my porch, she, ran home in tears devastated that that, I had yelled at her in this way. I was standing on the porch feeling really good about myself because I had put a 5 year old girl in her place for what she had done to my yard.
Jeff Iorg:I turned to look to my left, and my wife had come out on
Jeff Iorg:the porch beside me. And she looked up and said, and I'm quoting now, she said, you know, I thought we were raising children
Jeff Iorg:in this neighborhood, not grass. And then she just turned around and walked in the house. Well, that was a bad moment for me. I walked down the driveway and up the street, knocked on the door, and asked Larissa's parents, who fortunately I knew if I could have just a moment. And I apologized to a 5 year old girl for screaming at her from my porch about her running through my yard.
Jeff Iorg:Well, why was I so angry? Because my front yard was an extension of myself. It was a thing. Yes. But it was a thing that mattered a great deal to me.
Jeff Iorg:Why? Well, because I had put time and money and energy into it. And now here's the killer the clincher. It mattered to me because I thought having a really ugly yard in my neighborhood reflected badly on me as
Jeff Iorg:a neighbor and even as a homeowner.
Jeff Iorg:So I was angry because my extended self, a thing that mattered to me, was threatened. This is where anger comes from. Anger comes from threat. When you or another person feels threatened, whether it's physical self, relational self, personal self, extended self, when you feel threatened, you feel anxious, tension, and then anger often comes out of us. Now how do you recognize anger when it comes at you?
Jeff Iorg:Well, the first and most obvious way is like me on that porch yelling at Larissa, verbal or written outburst. These are the easiest to spot. It's when someone comes at you and really gives you a piece of their mind or when someone sends you an email or post something on social media when there's a verbal or written outburst. That's the obvious and easiest kind of anger to experience. But there's a number of other ways that people express anger that ministry leaders need to pay attention to so they can understand what's really happening in relationship to others as anger is being expressed.
Jeff Iorg:One of these is what I call hostile humor. Hostile humor. This is someone who's always making, biting, or cutting jokes about someone or some other group of people, and they act like they're doing it to be funny. But in reality, they're revealing something much deeper that they are really angry with these people or with this person. I I saw this a number of years ago.
Jeff Iorg:I I had a friend that was a president of a school and this was before I became a seminary president. And so, when I became a seminary president, I reflected on this experience quite a bit in my relationships in my in my own work as a president. But before I became a president, I knew a person who was a president. And I noticed a pattern in that every time, and I mean this, every time he talked about the faculty at his school in a public context, he always had some cutting humorous, remark that had to go along with his comment about the faculty. It was hostile humor.
Jeff Iorg:And the more I listened to this over several months of experiencing it, the more I realized there's something going on here. And then did a little more investigation and discovered that at a particular point in his leadership, the faculty had failed to support him at a moment when he felt it was crucial that they stand up with him. And because his extended self, his projected personal self of how he imaged himself as a president and as a person, and in this case, as a ministry leader, was threatened by their lack of support, he was angry with them. But because they were the faculty and because he depended on them week by week to do the instruction in his school and because some of them were, quite capable of, responding in ways that would be would have been very difficult to manage, rather than expressing his anger by going in a constructive way and saying, this is how you failed me in the moment and I'm angry about it and I feel like we need to talk about it. Rather than doing that, he internalized his anger and expressed it as hostile humor by making cutting, joking remarks about the faculty in every context in which he spoke about them.
Jeff Iorg:Listen. When you're around people who are always making negative jokes about deacons, or always making negative comments about elders, or always making negative comments about women, or about men, or about teenagers, or they're making negative comments about individuals, be they people in public life or even people that they know personally. When there's this repeated pattern of hostile humor going on, as a ministry leader, you need to have the wisdom to step back from that and say, what's really happening here? And and recognize that this is a good sign that there's deeply rooted anger in a person's life that's unresolved and coming out in very unhealthy ways. Another way to recognize anger is through nagging and whining.
Jeff Iorg:Nagging and whining. People who lack the capacity to verbalize what's really going on and what they really need to address will nag and whine whether it's in a relationship between, husband and wife or between a man and a woman in a in a romantic context or whether it's a child to a parent, that whining, annoying, nagging behavior can be a sign of unresolved anger. Silence and withdrawal can also be a sign of this. This kind of passive or aggressive resistance to engagement is a way of expressing real anger in manipulates the relationship rather than addresses the issue at hand. And then another one is people who are always late or disengaged in from, from processes or relationships in that way are signaling to you that they don't really wanna be there.
Jeff Iorg:And that they they're resisting your presence or resisting going into the experience because for whatever reason, they feel threatened by it or have been harmed by it in the past. As a ministry leader, you're going to have people who come to you and express verbal and written outbursts that you can clearly label as anger. But you also have to be wise enough to recognize that hostile humor, nagging, whining, the silent treatment, being late or disengaged or reluctant to participate, these can all be indications of anger in a person's life. Well, we've spent the first part of this podcast trying to understand what this all looks like. Now, let me close out with some suggestions on responding to or dealing with angry people.
Jeff Iorg:Number 1, Diffuse the situation by refusing to react to misplaced anger. Just because someone comes at you in an angry way or is perpetually late for meetings that you're, responsible for or gives you the silent treatment. Just because someone expresses anger toward you, don't automatically assume you're actually the cause of their anger. Recognize that it may be misplaced. Back to that silly illustration at the beginning, you may be the cat.
Jeff Iorg:You may be the one getting kicked, but you may not be the problem. So be careful that you don't react with a fast email or a public dispute or in some way letting yourself be threatened by what's being said to you assuming that you truly are the the cause of the anger. Don't react to misplaced anger. 2nd, when someone is expressing anger toward you, diagnose the threat and direct their attention to the real source of their anger. Say things like this.
Jeff Iorg:You seem really angry with me, or you seem really angry about this situation.
Jeff Iorg:And then ask this question, is this the real problem that is making you angry, or is there something else driving this today? Ask this question, why do you think you are so angry with me?
Jeff Iorg:Or this this angry response that you're making to me, it seems out of proportion to what we're talking about. Is there some other issue that you'd like to talk about that's really driving your anger? Even
Jeff Iorg:more specifically, just ask, what is the real problem here? Refusing to
Jeff Iorg:react to misplaced anger leads you then to helping a person diagnose the real threat and directing their attention to the true source of their anger. By asking these kind of questions, making declarative and simple statements like, you seem really angry about this. What is the real problem at hand? Why are you so agitated or angry or upset about this situation? It doesn't seem to rise to the level of emotion that you're experiencing with it.
Jeff Iorg:What do you why do you think you're so angry, and what can you do about the real problem that's driving this? A third step in responding to angry people is to demonstrate pastoral care in the context of anger. And I wanna give you 2 things that have helped me with this. The first is to practice patience with anger, but firmness but firmness in asking a person to confront why they are really angry, what is the true source of their anger, and how that can be addressed. Patience.
Jeff Iorg:Being willing to endure an angry outburst, to put up with nagging and
Jeff Iorg:whining, to see through hostile humor, patience,
Jeff Iorg:and then firmness. Patience to say, I'm going to allow you to express this. I'm going to fully let you in, put it out there. I'm gonna not cut you off while you're venting or while you're nagging or while you're whining or while you're making your bad jokes about this person or this group of people. I'm a let that
Jeff Iorg:go. And I'm not gonna react
Jeff Iorg:to it emotionally. I'm not going to get angry in response or internalize what you're saying to me. I'm gonna be patient and endure this for a few minutes. And then firmly begin to ask you some probing questions or have a probing dialogue with you to help you understand what's really driving your anger. And then, not only patience and firmness, but following that with spiritual guidance and even prayer to help a person confront the spiritual realities and then pray through them related to their anger.
Jeff Iorg:Now, these first three steps are really part of a 4th step, which is really kind of a summary of the first three. And that is to remember that when you are dealing with an angry person, it is a disciple making moment. A disciple making moment. It is an opportunity in the context of anger to help a person grow in their relationship with God and be shaped to be more like the image of Jesus Christ and to be more, pointed or more capable of them fulfilling the mission and the work that God has given us. When you're in the context of dealing with a person who's expressing a great deal of anger, perhaps your first disciple making moment, as I said, is to diffuse the situation and then diagnose the threat and then demonstrate pastoral care.
Jeff Iorg:But in the doing of all of that, you are also modeling for a person how to respond in the face of anger. And then as you're modeling that, it's important to correct misunderstandings about anger so that people understand that anger is not something that's, legitimate that's legitimized by their own feelings, but is instead a good indication that they are feeling threatened by something. And then to ask those important questions, what's the true source of your anger? Where is this really coming from? And then, what can we really do about that?
Jeff Iorg:Helping a person to understand that anger comes out of threat or perceived threat to theirs to themselves or something that's important to them or someone that's important to them, strikes then at the core of the solution to anger and that is developing greater security and that security comes from relationship with god through Jesus Christ.
Jeff Iorg:So as you're dealing with
Jeff Iorg:a person and their anger, you're thinking of it as a disciple making moment where you are both, doing good pastoral care for them by these first three steps I've mentioned, but then you are following that up with a conversation about how their anger reveals their threat level and the need they have for enhancing their security, developing greater security in Jesus Christ. Another part of disciple making is helping people understand some misunderstandings about anger. Like good Christians don't get angry, or the Bible says anger is bad. Neither one of those things is true. The Bible says Jesus was angry on occasion.
Jeff Iorg:So it is possible to be angry without sin. The Bible also says that there are some instructions about how to handle anger. Like for example, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. In other words, work it out before the end of the day.
Jeff Iorg:And verses like that can be used to help people understand that anger is a symptom and a signpost that points us towards spiritual need and spiritual growth, but it is not necessarily always a sin. It's more often or not more often, but but frequently, it is a signpost. And when it is sinful, it really is sinful because it reflects on other things that are sinful like our own selfishness, our our own lack of capacity to demonstrate love to another person, our lack of forbearance or patience demonstrated in relationship, but not necessarily the anger itself being the sin. And then finally, as you're dealing with angry people and we're talking about it in the context of disciple making, you have to have the courage sometimes to confront and contain destructive anger that's impacting your ministry. Sometimes, you just have to sit down and say, you can't do that anymore here.
Jeff Iorg:You can't say that. You can't attack people this way. Can't demean people with your humor. You can't make comments about different groups, be they ethnic or racial or gender. You can't do that anymore here.
Jeff Iorg:And I wanna help you to understand why you're doing it. But if you refuse that of help and you don't want this kind of discipleship process in this area of your life, then you're just gonna have to step away because you can't be in leadership or even, in some context, in our organization or in our fellowship if you're going to continue to let your anger damage what we're doing here in terms of the mission of God. Well, today on the podcast, we've talked about dealing with angry people. I tried to give you a snapshot of where anger comes from. I tried to help you understand some different ways that people express anger that as a ministry leader, you have to be able to see through, diagnose, and understand.
Jeff Iorg:And then here at the end, I've talked about some practical things you can do to confront people in angry situations, to help them understand that their anger is a signpost to spiritual growth. You can then work with them to develop a better understanding of their anger and what it's revealing about them and how they can address it. And when need be, when the situation is particularly difficult, you may have to stand up to angry people and say, you can't keep doing that here because the impact of your anger being expressed inappropriately is doing damage to our work as we try to advance God's mission. Dealing with angry people is a challenging part of ministry leadership. You can do it, and you can do it well as you put these principles into practice and lead on.