Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses why pastors and churches should engage in SBC and state convention annual meetings. He explains how these gatherings refocus leaders on mission, deepen worship and fellowship, provide training, and generate resources for their churches.
Creators and Guests
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!
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. Now this week is a unique week for me because I'll be working at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting providing the leadership that I'm responsible to do and also participating in the meeting itself as well as a lot of additional things that go on around the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. And so if you're listening to this podcast for the first time because you picked up on it as a part of the annual meeting promotion, this is not the normal tone or the normal subject matter for our podcast. We typically talk about practical issues that are a part of daily leadership in a church or ministry organization, but this week doing something special.
Jeff Iorg:However, I do wanna tie this week's podcast to a practical issue or practical question. And so let's answer the question, why should you engage with the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, meaning the big meeting every summer, or more possibly for many of you, why should you engage with your state convention's annual meeting, which is typically much closer to home to those of you in ministry leadership all across The United States? Why engage with these major meetings? Well, let me talk about some reasons and some ways that they impact me personally and then even maybe some challenges about them. And then I wanna talk to you specifically about how you can leverage these meetings, the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting and your state convention meeting, for the benefit of your local church.
Jeff Iorg:So why should you engage these national meetings or statewide meetings that happen in the summer for this SBC and in the fall typically for your state? Well, first of all, because of the opportunity to reset your focus on our mission. There are so many demands of ministry and so many challenges of life that it's good occasionally to pull back and recalibrate. These major meetings help you do that. They are typically focused on God's mission, on what God is doing in the world through us as Southern Baptist, and how we can work together to get more done.
Jeff Iorg:They typically get our eyes off the minutiae of the challenges of daily life in ministry and onto the grand plan of God for getting the gospel to the nations. So this opportunity to reset our focus is perhaps the most important reason to go to these meetings. It gives you the opportunity to take your eyes off the small things that you're having to deal with day by day and put your eyes and your focus and your attention on the grand plan of God to get the gospel to the whole world. So the opportunity to reset our focus on our mission, that's the first reason you should engage. A second one is just because of the experience itself.
Jeff Iorg:A lot of you are in small churches and and in places where there are limited resources and limited people. But when you go to one of these large events, it gives you the opportunity to experience, for example, the music and the prayer together with hundreds or thousands or in the case of the Southern Baptist Convention, tens of thousands of people coming together. You know, if you're in a small church of 50 to 70 people and, you're working as hard as you can to have a quality worship service every Sunday, and you are having a quality service because it's a genuine expression of your heart's devotion to God. Nothing wrong with that. But when you walk into a room and there's a few 100 or a few thousand people on their feet singing, praising, adoring God together, it is powerfully moving.
Jeff Iorg:Now, I I'm not a musician and I'm not even really a very good singer, But when I walk into one of those situations where I'm immersed in the praise of God and I hear hundreds, if not thousands of people singing, adoring, honoring God with their voices, I'm telling you, it moves me deeply. I'm no musician and I'm not much of a singer, but I still appreciate the power of people coming together in those kinds of moments. And the same thing for the prayer. When in these large meetings, we're called to prayer, moments of prayer where we find ourselves bowing together, holding hands together, circling up and praying together, or even all in agreement praying as someone comes to a microphone and voices a prayer on behalf of all of us, These prayers move me. You know, I'm sad to say that sometimes prayer has been reduced to the transition moment in a worship service where we get the band off the stage or where we get to the next thing.
Jeff Iorg:Oh, God, deliver us from that. And I am glad that in these large group meetings, we tend to have these prayer experiences where we come together just simply for the focus of prayer. So the opportunity to reset and focus on our mission, the experience itself of worship through music and prayer. Another reason to engage with these large meetings is the fellowship or the reconnection with people that you don't see that often. Coming together in these large meetings gives you the opportunity to see people maybe from a different church where you served before or maybe where you went to school for college or seminary or perhaps, to be a part of something where you've been involved in a training conference like a youth conference or a collegiate conference, or maybe where you've done some ministry together with others, like a disaster relief response or maybe an international mission trip.
Jeff Iorg:These opportunities, as you come together in these big events, are those opportunities to to reconnect. And it's also the opportunity to connect perhaps for the first time with people who are particularly interested in your area of ministry. So for example, at the Southern Baptist Convention this year, there are specialized events for youth ministers, for children's ministers, for music ministers. There are specialized events for people who are leading out in sexual abuse prevention and response, for various kinds of things like ethnic leadership fellowships and African American leadership fellowships. And then there are also other kinds of events that are geared for states like the people from the state of Tennessee getting together for a reception or the state of Mississippi.
Jeff Iorg:All these kinds of groups are going on as a part of the bigger meeting. And when you go to a statewide meeting like this, the same kinds of things happen as niche groups from within your state network at these meetings. So attending these large meetings is also an opportunity for fellowship or for connection networking with people who you either shared a ministry relationship with, who you befriended while you were in school, or who you work in some kind of niche ministry with in your location. And it gives you the opportunity to connect and have these kind of relational fellowship networking moments. And then the last reason to connect is for the training or the inspiration that comes out of these meetings.
Jeff Iorg:In these meetings, there are typically outstanding sermons preached where you hear inspiring exposition of God's word and you're challenged to live it out in fresh ways. And beyond that, there's training offered. As I said at the Southern Baptist Convention, there's these training opportunities for these various kinds of ministry leaders that will be participating. And this same kind of thing happens at the statewide meetings as well. So when I challenge you today to consider engaging with the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting or engaging with your state convention at its annual meeting, I'm not just trying to get you to go to a meeting to try to drum up attendance.
Jeff Iorg:What point would there be in that? But I've been attending these meetings both in the state and national level for about thirty years, and I can tell you that going to these meetings is an opportunity to reset your focus on our mission. It's an opportunity to participate in worship experiences that you may not be able to have in the same way in your local church, to experience the music and prayer in ways that are grand and expansive and with a quality that just calls you into God's presence. And then the fellowship or networking or connecting opportunities with people you went to school with, people you've on mission trips with, people you've been to other conferences with. And also, the training and inspiration opportunities where you're both inspired by the messages that you hear in the large group sessions and then trained perhaps in smaller group sessions where you're able to learn about something that's really more in the niche of the ministry where you serve.
Jeff Iorg:So these are the reasons today that I wanna challenge you to engage with these large meetings. Now I realize that there's some expense involved, but there's expense involved in everything in our culture that matters. And some of you don't have a bit of a problem spending money to go off to a ball game or to a tournament or to a dance recital or to some other kind of show. You don't have any difficulty traveling to find a way to take vacation with your family and to do recreational things, and I'm not opposed to any of those things. In fact, I do all of those things.
Jeff Iorg:But I also make a way to invest some resource in this kind of experience because of the spiritual impact it has in my life. Now specifically, going to the Southern Baptist Convention has a number of things that are highlights for me. First of all, the Southern Baptist Convention is a place to focus on the global impact that we're making through the International Mission Board. One of my favorite parts of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting is the missionary commissioning service that typically takes place where we send out new people to the nations. And then even beyond that, it's the opportunity to hear the International Mission Board report as a part of the annual meeting.
Jeff Iorg:And then even beyond that, to attend the International Mission Board banquet where they give even a more in-depth report about what they're doing and challenge people to support that and pray for that and to go on mission trips together. And then even beyond all of that is the opportunity to connect with leaders from the mission boards by going to their booth that they have in the Exhibit hall and meeting the president, our vice presidents, our missionaries, and others who are there working in the booth, getting to shake hands with them and know who they are and connect with them personally. Man, listen. Southern Baptist leaders don't hide away somewhere. We plunge in, and we wanna connect with people, shake hands, be around people, be available for questions and for dialogue and for input.
Jeff Iorg:And getting that with the IMB is so important to me. And then corresponding to that is the same kind of relationship with the North American Mission Board, getting to hear their report, and then participate in their massive luncheon that they host on Monday just before the annual meeting where they have, several thousand people come for a box lunch experience, and they have a program that features church planters and evangelism success stories. And, they are able to usually highlight someone that in the nation that's had some remarkable experience this last year and stand with that person in some remarkable way. All of this reminds me of my church planting days and my days of working in the Northwest Baptist Convention and my commitment to getting the gospel into every place in this nation, including Portland, Oregon, where I went to plant a church many years ago. So the global impact through the IMB, the national impact through NAM, and then, of course, hearing the strategic impact of our seminaries, all six of them reporting to Southern Baptist and telling about the progress they're making in enrollment, in innovative programs, in new locations, and, trying to find better ways to train people for ministry leadership.
Jeff Iorg:All of this is a part of what happens at the annual meeting. And then even beyond that, it's the overall impact of the rest of our integrated strategies like GuideStone and LifeWay and ERLC. All of these things flowing together along with Women's Missionary Union that undergirds so much of what we do, all of this gets reported at the Southern Baptist Convention. Our leaders stand up and tell us what they're doing, tell us new initiatives they're taking. They tell us about problems that they're solving.
Jeff Iorg:They report to us about their financial stewardship of the gifts they've received from us. So much of this inspires me and motivates me, and then they stand before us all and take questions from the floor, if you will, not, because we're leaders that hide, but because we're leaders that are transparent, that are open, and try to give information when it's asked of us. All of those things are highlights for me at the Southern Baptist Convention. And this year, we'll celebrating some new leaders among us. Evan Lenow, the new president of the ERLC, and Scott Pace, the new president at Southeastern Seminary, and Ryan Blackwell, the new president at LifeWay.
Jeff Iorg:These are people that God has called out, that have been placed in responsible positions by their boards of trustees, that we now look to for leadership in these crucial areas of ministry. All of this happens at the SBC Annual Meeting, and I'm glad that I go to it because I get firsthand experience with all of these people and all of these things that I'm describing. Now once all this happens, you may wonder, well, well, what does this mean for me personally, or how can I interface with it personally? Well, let me give you some suggestions. The first thing you can do is pray for this meeting and pray for the state convention meeting that you have in the fall.
Jeff Iorg:Pour out your heart in prayer to God on our behalf. These meetings are huge undertakings. They have so many behind the scenes moving parts that it's almost difficult for me to describe. Everything from childcare to first aid and emergency medical response to security and to making sure that we have safe meetings to the logistics of the technology that is needed to power up such a large meeting, to the health of all the people who are involved in putting on the meeting. On and on, I could go.
Jeff Iorg:It is absolutely astounding when you're behind the scenes like I am watching all of this be put together, to see all of the orchestration of the hundreds of people it takes being integrated and coordinated and brought together to make this happen. And here's the most amazing thing, except for just two or three people that are working on this full time year round, almost everything that I'm describing to you right now is either led by a volunteer or by some kind of part time contractor person who comes in to just give a little leadership in the moment. Wow. Pray. Pray.
Jeff Iorg:Pray. Pray for wisdom, for guidance, for direction, for health, for safety. Pray over the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, and in the same way, for your state conventions meeting when it comes later this year. A second thing you can do is come personally and experience these meetings. Make the effort to be there.
Jeff Iorg:You say, well, I I can't come every time. Well, come at least sometime. Say, well, I've never been. Well, set a goal to come at least once in your lifetime. But if you're not able to do that this year, then third, watch the meeting online.
Jeff Iorg:Engage it fully in an online capacity. You can view the entire thing. It's all webcast. Now because of the legal requirements to be in the room when you're voting, you can't participate fully in the meeting as a voting participant, but you can still hear the sermons, experience a lot of the training, and be a part of the worship, hear the prayers, and in those ways, enter into what takes place. You can also hear the reports, hear the questions, hear the responses, and all of that that goes on in the annual meeting.
Jeff Iorg:And then, not only can you pray for and attend or observe the meeting, but last, use the resources of this meeting in your church to further inform people about what it means to be a Southern Baptist or what it means to work in your particular state convention as you attend that meeting or participate in it or use its resources later on this year. Now when I say use the resources, what do I mean? Well, this meeting is made available in video format, and everything that's shown on the screen is available to you for use in your local congregation. So let's say that you want your church to hear the report of the international mission board. It's available after the meeting.
Jeff Iorg:You can download that video and show it to your church. You say, well, you want your church family to hear a report about the seminary that's closest to your church building. You can download and listen to that report. You want your church to hear the president's sermon preached by the president, you can download and play that sermon, or the convention sermon delivered by someone who's selected each year to preach to Southern Baptists. Usually, it's a pastor that's asked to do that.
Jeff Iorg:You can play that message as well. It's all free, and it's all available to you to be used. And the same thing could be said of your state convention. Most of those conventions are either shown on a webcast in some capacity, or if not, they're recorded in the moment and then made available at a later time. And whatever reports are given, whatever videos are shown, whatever sermons are preached, all of that is also available.
Jeff Iorg:So if you want to introduce your church to the Southern Baptist Convention and help them have a feel for what's happening at the convention, this is a good way for it to happen. Alright. Well, let's, talk now just for a moment about some of the challenges of these meetings, and particularly, I wanna ask you to pray for me because I'm faced with responding to and meeting those challenges this year. The first challenge for me at these meetings is just the physical challenge of having the stamina to participate in these multiday meetings that usually require for me a twelve to fifteen hour day. I normally start at all of these meetings at 07:00 with some kind of meeting or breakfast or a speaking engagement or something.
Jeff Iorg:Then I go hard all day long, and then there's always in the evening dinners and receptions and other events. And I wanna try to get to as many of them as possible to connect with as many Southern Baptists as possible to answer as many questions as possible, make as many speeches and sermons and presentations as possible. So the meeting for me is a very physically demanding experience. And so pray for me that I will have the stamina to hold up during these meetings. And then not only is the Southern Baptist Convention challenging in that regard, but in the fall, there's about 41 state convention meetings, and I will usually attend at least a third of those.
Jeff Iorg:It's not uncommon for me to go to 12 to 15. One year, I went to 17 of them. That's a lot of travel, lot of miles, a lot of meetings, a lot of speeches, a lot of questions, a lot of dialogue. Pray for me and for the other leaders who are involved in this meeting to have the physical stamina to carry through and accomplish the purposes that we need to do. Also pray that we have the spiritual maturity and wisdom and the spiritual vitality we need for these meetings.
Jeff Iorg:These meetings are draining for those of us in leadership. Not just me, but your other presidents and other people who are on the platform. These are long draining days, and most of us spend some time before the meeting trying to get ourselves spiritually ready to go into this kind of work. I know I do. I usually take some days off prior to, and I spend extra time in prayer and Bible reading and reflection on my life and my relationship with God just to spiritually prepare myself for the demands of the meeting.
Jeff Iorg:So as you pray, pray for your leaders to have the physical stamina, but pray for me and others in leadership to have the spiritual wisdom, maturity, vitality that we need to give the right kind of leadership in the meeting. And then just pray for the emotional demands as well. It's just draining to meet hundreds of people and to answer hundreds of questions and to deal with countless situations. And it's, again, not just me. It's the president of the convention or of your state convention.
Jeff Iorg:It's your state executive directors. It's the presidents of our entities, and it's all of us who are involved in leadership. These are emotionally draining days. It just to put it in a phrase, takes it out of you. And so pray for us that we will be able to be sustained physically and spiritually and emotionally through the challenges of leading these meetings.
Jeff Iorg:And then a second thing that you can pray for is to pray that we manage the business sessions well. You know, the Southern Baptist Convention and your state convention every fall, these are business meetings. These are legally mandated gatherings where we have to do certain important things. We have to adopt budgets and approve bylaws and adopt recommendations and motions and actions that are a part of the business of our work. And then as a part of this also, we are obligated to give certain kinds of reports, and we do give those reports.
Jeff Iorg:We provide all kinds of information, financial information, attendance information, church based information, and all of that is what's also reported. Now these business sessions are sometimes quite complex. We typically have professional parliamentarians that help us, and these are people who work at the highest levels of the parliamentary world, helping advise political parties and major organizations and groups that use parliamentary procedure. And so it's challenging to be able to manage these business sessions and to to take care of all of this business that has to be done in the right way, properly in order, legally right, and also spiritually motivated. So pray for us that we will manage the business sessions well.
Jeff Iorg:I often am asked, well, what do you think is gonna happen? And my answer is, I don't need you to even fill in the rest of that blank. I don't know what's going to happen, and that's what makes some of these meetings so challenging. Yes. We try to anticipate the kinds of needs and issues and concerns that may come up, but there's no way of knowing those.
Jeff Iorg:And so pray that in the moment, the president of the convention and of your state convention and the parliamentarians who advise him and the administrators like me who work behind the scenes to try to make this happen, that we will be able to, in the moment, know how to respond when issues are raised. And then there are all kinds of time constraints about this that are both legal and parliamentary as we try to work together to have an efficient meeting that gets everything done that needs to be done, without rushing or feeling like that we're not properly hearing or doing what needs to happen, while at the same time recognizing that the clock is ticking and much has to be done and we have to keep moving forward. So these are things to pray about. Pray for the physical and spiritual and emotional demands on the leaders, not only me, but on the president of our convention and of your state convention and on other people that are involved in leading these meetings. And pray that we manage the business sessions well, recognizing that these are business meetings that have legal mandates attached to them and that there are certain things that have to be done and that we wanna do well and and that we wanna accomplish in a right and beautiful and a and a and wholesome kind of way.
Jeff Iorg:And then there's one more challenge of these meetings that, you can pray about and also be alert to, and that is the challenge of responding to media reports that come out of these meetings. You know, last year, for example, at the end of the Southern Baptist Convention, there was a a a news story that was published by a secular reporter who was describing what happened at the meeting. Well, what he described was accurate. It was true, But it was about five to seven minutes of a two day meeting that he wrote about, and that was the only news story that came out of this major media source about the SBC. It was so disappointing.
Jeff Iorg:A person called me, the next day and said, hey. I read this article. Did he attend the meeting, the same meeting I went to? He said the person who called me said, I was at the Southern Baptist Convention for two days, and what happened that they reported, it really happened, but it was like five minutes of the meeting. Why is that the news?
Jeff Iorg:Well, it was the news because it was a controversial moment, at least for some in the meeting. I say for some because even the motion that resulted from that action was voted down by about 80% to 20%. Now, again, the news report was not inaccurate. It was accurate, but it wasn't proportional. It didn't really tell you the whole story.
Jeff Iorg:So that's why it's important for you to experience the convention or to at least watch it online and to understand the grand scope of what's happening, and that what mostly Southern Baptists when they come together every summer and what mostly your state convention does when it comes together every fall is to focus on God's mission, on our application of God's mission to our work as Southern Baptist and and in your state, the Southern Baptist in your state, and then how we've accomplished that and how we're reporting on what we've done over the previous year. That's really what most of the meeting is all about. And so it's important to manage the reports that come out of the convention and to put those up against what really happened at the convention, not saying that these reports aren't accurate or true, they are, but they just lack proportion or scope or scale. They don't always help us to understand the fullness of what really happened in the meeting. Well, you may be listening to this podcast during the week of the Southern Baptist Convention, and if you are, I hope you're here participating with us.
Jeff Iorg:Or if not, I hope you'll tune in and watch it online. I hope you'll pray for those of us who are in leadership. I hope you'll pray that we have the stamina, the spiritual and emotional strength to carry on, that we will do well in managing the business of the convention and the program of the convention. And I hope that you will not only pray for and participate in these ways, but that you will make a decision, about how you can use the convention's information by using the videos that are produced, by using the messages that are preached, by using the information that is shared to further educate people in your congregation about the Southern Baptist Convention, who we are, what we do, and the difference we're making all around the world. And as I said repeatedly throughout this podcast, so much of what I'm saying about the national meeting of Southern Baptist can also be said about your state convention meeting that's going to happen later this year as you learn more about how these things are being played out in your more local region in your state or in your multistate area.
Jeff Iorg:So it's a good time to be a Southern Baptist. We are seeing God work through us in remarkable ways. We have some problems. Are you kidding me? Of course, have problems.
Jeff Iorg:There's millions of us and tens of thousands of churches and of course, there's going to be problems. We'll always be addressing something that needs to be improved in the Southern Baptist Convention. But overall, we are preaching the gospel, we are making disciples, we are building healthy churches. We are making sure that people not only hear the name of Jesus, but hear the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a way that they can make a good response. We are supporting several thousand missionaries and church planters.
Jeff Iorg:We have 20,000 or more seminary students doing work today getting ready for ministry leadership. We are publishing curriculum and caring for the aged and working to support pastors and providing financial resources, and we are doing all these things together because we really believe we can get more done together than we can on our own. We really believe in cooperation. And so as we celebrate all of that together this week at Southern Baptist, I hope you'll take advantage of these large meetings, the Southern Baptist Convention, and your state convention later this year, and use the resources that come out of that and the inspiration and momentum that emerges from these major meetings. Make it a part of your ministry leadership as you lead on.