Lead On Podcast

On this episode of the Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, discusses the dual nature of leadership, emphasizing that while leaders can be developed, some possess innate leadership qualities. He shares personal anecdotes illustrating how his early experiences shaped his understanding of leadership and the necessity of humility and dependence on God. He also highlights two key dangers for natural-born leaders.


Creators & Guests

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. Thank you for joining me again on the podcast. One of the most encouraging things about doing this podcast and being in my present role is how many of you come up to me and say that you heard something on the podcast or you have a question about something from the podcast, and I'm grateful for that. In fact, I just had lunch today with a podcast listener who happens to live in the Nashville area, and he said that one of the ideas I talked about on the podcast was something that he really wanted to try to implement in his church.

Jeff Iorg:

Wanted to know if I had time for a quick lunch to talk about how that might work out more effectively. It was a really enjoyable lunchtime together, and I'm grateful that I was able to make that personal connection.

Jeff Iorg:

So if you're listening

Jeff Iorg:

to the podcast and you see me speaking in a conference or a church or at some convention and you have a chance, come up and talk with me about it. I'd love to get to know you even more personally. As I said at the beginning, we talk about practical issues on this podcast. And in a recent podcast, I focused the entire time on, the idea that leaders can be made. In fact, I referenced a book from my early ministry years, Leaders Are Made Not Born, which emphasizes this important reality.

Jeff Iorg:

That is our responsibility as leaders to intentionally, purposefully work with people to develop them into leaders and to enhance their leadership capacity they might serve in various capacities in our churches, our organizations. Well, I want to bring the balance to that today. I did say leaders are made, not born. But the hard reality is some leaders are born to lead, and you may be one of those. You may be a person who's had, a sense of leadership and a capacity for leadership and a unique ability to influence others as a leader from even childhood.

Jeff Iorg:

One prominent leader who's a friend of mine tells his story

Jeff Iorg:

of how he discovered, really early on in life that he was cut out

Jeff Iorg:

to lead. And as he

Jeff Iorg:

was telling his story, I reflected on some of my examples, and I'll just give one. When I was about 12 years old, I was in the 6th grade and was a part of an elementary school choir. And all the elementary schools in our community were putting on a citywide choir festival. So that meant there were about, I think, 6 or 8 choirs with about 50 to a 100 kids in each one, which meant that when you took all of those to the high school auditorium, there were gonna be a lot of people there, probably around 12 to 1500. So as we were preparing for that event, one day, my teacher called me in and said, hey, Jeff.

Jeff Iorg:

I wonder if you'd be willing to not sing in the choir. Now, let's don't go there on why she was saying that because I think it had something to do with my musical ability, but that's another story. She said, I wonder if you would be willing to not sing in the choir and instead would serve as the master of ceremonies for the concert.

Jeff Iorg:

I said, well, what's that mean? She said, well, you would walk out on

Jeff Iorg:

the stage and introduce each choir, tell a little bit about their school, the name of the director, the songs they had selected to sing, and then welcome them to the stage, and usually, there'll be applause as people, prepare for that next, presentation. I said, sure. Be glad to do that. So they developed a script for me, and I worked on it, practically memorized it, but learned a good bit of it, and then got ready for the production. We went to the choir festival.

Jeff Iorg:

The auditorium is full with all of these people, 100 of them. The first choir is getting ready to go on the stage. I'm about to walk out and start my MC responsibilities, when my teacher looked down at me and said, are you nervous? And I remember looking up

Jeff Iorg:

at her and thinking, now why would I be nervous? What is about to happen here that would make a person nervous?

Jeff Iorg:

And I started being nervous about not knowing why I was supposed to be nervous.

Jeff Iorg:

But I said to her, no, not not really. Why should I be nervous? And she

Jeff Iorg:

said, well, because you're you're going out there and speaking in front of all

Jeff Iorg:

of those people. And I remember thinking very clearly, why would that make anyone nervous? You see, since I was a little boy, God has made me with the capacity to stand up in front of people and talk, and by doing that, to

Jeff Iorg:

provide leadership and influence to groups of people who are trying to go forward and do something together. Now I'm really not bragging about that or taking any credit for it, and the older I've become, the the more I've been aware that God wired me up this way. It wasn't anything I did or deserved. It didn't make me better than anyone else. It's just who I am.

Jeff Iorg:

God, in that sense, made me a leader, and I'm grateful for it. So you may be one of those natural born leaders. You have natural born capacity for influencing people through communication, for organizing people, to accomplish projects, for moving people in a particular direction by your charisma or by your reasoning or by your intellect, natural born leader. But if you are, there are 2 dangers I want you to look out for. The first one is this.

Jeff Iorg:

A natural born leader has a tendency to trust his or her abilities rather than trust God to work through them.

Jeff Iorg:

Now if you're a natural born leader, you may have reached, the something called a breaking experience, and you may have lived through the pain of a breaking experience, which brings you to the end of trusting

Jeff Iorg:

yourself and fresh submission of your leadership abilities to God for His purposes.

Jeff Iorg:

In fact, I don't think I'm overstating the case when I say that every natural born leader must go through this breaking process

Jeff Iorg:

in order to be useful to God. You see, God does not use strength. God uses weakness, and in order for our strengths to become weaknesses that He can empower, we have to go through a process of spiritual brokenness

Jeff Iorg:

that makes us useful in the hands of God. I've been meditating a good deal on a passage of scripture from 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 which teaches this. Paul was writing and said to the Corinthian church in verse 8, we don't want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction

Jeff Iorg:

that took place in Asia. That word affliction is a strong word. Affliction that took place in Asia. Now he does not enumerate

Jeff Iorg:

what he means by the word affliction in this context, but we know from the book of Acts the kinds of experiences Paul had, which he would have labeled

Jeff Iorg:

affliction. Now rather than cataloging those, let me just pick out a common theme of all of Paul's afflictions. They all happened to Paul while he was doing good. These are not bad things that happened to him because he was sinning or outside

Jeff Iorg:

the will of God or running from God. No. The afflictions he's referencing were all things that happened to him while he was doing good, while he was being obedient, while he

Jeff Iorg:

was on mission. These afflictions happen.

Jeff Iorg:

How serious were they? Well, keep reading. We were completely overwhelmed. You know, if you're one of those people who believes that, God will never give you more than you can handle, well, you need to read this verse because he certainly will give you more than you can handle. It says here, we were completely overwhelmed beyond our strength, and then it's even worse.

Jeff Iorg:

So that we even despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death.

Jeff Iorg:

And this is heavy stuff. Afflictions, which felt overwhelming, which crushed us in our strength to the point that we felt like we were going to die or that we even wanted to die. That's what Paul is describing in 2 Corinthians 1 89. This process of doing what's right, making good choices, living in obedience, being on mission, and in the context of that, facing affliction.

Jeff Iorg:

And why? Why does God allow this to happen to us? Well, let's keep reading. We don't want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed beyond our strength so that we even despaired of life itself.

Jeff Iorg:

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, here it is, So that we would not trust in ourselves,

Jeff Iorg:

but in God. God allows afflictions,

Jeff Iorg:

difficulty, challenge, turmoil, heartbreak to happen to us when we're doing right, doing good, being obedient, working on mission for the purpose of bringing us to the end of ourselves so that we

Jeff Iorg:

might put all of our trust

Jeff Iorg:

in God. Over the years of ministry leadership, there have been several of these moments in my life that crystallized

Jeff Iorg:

as these breaking moments. The first one happened in my very first public ministry opportunities. I was invited to preach, and I preached in my home church and did a really good job. And the response was very gratifying. Public responses, people came and knelt and prayed, and, God seemed to be ministering to and moving and working among the people of the congregation.

Jeff Iorg:

What a great first sermon it was.

Jeff Iorg:

And to be honest, I felt pretty good about it. I mean, after all, I had been communicating in front of large numbers of

Jeff Iorg:

people since I was a

Jeff Iorg:

child, and this preaching thing, it really wasn't gonna be that difficult. And obviously, I was, how

Jeff Iorg:

do we say this, God's gift to the ministry.

Jeff Iorg:

That's how I was feeling about right then. And then I came to my second sermon.

Jeff Iorg:

I went to preach at

Jeff Iorg:

a neighboring church. I had my 2nd sermon ready. I stood up, and I preached it. I preached the entire sermon in about 10 to 12 minutes, and I was out of gas, Out of information and out of inspiration. But I had a lot more time to fill.

Jeff Iorg:

So what did I do? I re preached it. In that time, it took about 6 minutes. And now I'm still not up to 20, and I've got more time to fill, and I don't know what to do. So I preached it again.

Jeff Iorg:

Made it through that time in about 2 to 3 minutes. Well, after preaching the same material three times, not even filling up 20 minutes, I was humiliated. So I led a prayer and sat down.

Jeff Iorg:

I couldn't wait to leave that service, get away

Jeff Iorg:

from those people, hide my embarrassment. And then God did something amazing, really.

Jeff Iorg:

He cut off all speaking invitations. I wasn't asked to preach in any more churches. I wasn't asked to teach any more bible studies. I don't think I was even asked to lead the opening prayer. I mean, it was just nothing, and that went on

Jeff Iorg:

for almost a year. And during that time, I had a lot of time to reflect on what had happened in my 2nd sermon. 1st sermon,

Jeff Iorg:

I went into that message wholly dependent on God. The second time,

Jeff Iorg:

I got up full of myself to show everybody how great I was at preaching, and God humbled me.

Jeff Iorg:

Now in the in terms of

Jeff Iorg:

an affliction, looking back on it,

Jeff Iorg:

a year of not having any public speaking opportunities may not be the worst affliction that ever happened. But remember, I was a young minister and a relatively young believer,

Jeff Iorg:

and that's all it took at that point to get my attention. I was crushed,

Jeff Iorg:

but I also found myself on

Jeff Iorg:

my knees repenting of my pride, confessing my sin, and asking God to give me another opportunity. Now I'm

Jeff Iorg:

not telling you that in the last 40 plus years, every message I've preached has been great or spirit filled or God anointed. I would never be so arrogant as to make those claims. But I will tell you this. I've never again stood up full of myself thinking I got

Jeff Iorg:

this. Every single time, still, as recently as this week, before I stand up and speak again, I've bowed my head and said, lord, excuse me. Fill me. Empower me. Lord, I need you today just to stand up and speak in front of people.

Jeff Iorg:

The thing I know God made me to do, he had to break something inside of me so that I never would make the mistake again of trusting in my natural born leadership ability, my ability as a speaker,

Jeff Iorg:

but instead, I find myself praying and asking God to help me. Well, that's just one breaking moment. Another one was in my first pastorate.

Jeff Iorg:

I went there thinking that I knew how to pastor a church. I had had wonderful mentors and guides, and I had been a member of a very healthy church. And so I went to my first church thinking I got this. And unfortunately, I ran into a tremendous amount of relational conflict, which revealed, ultimately after several years of struggle, how deficient I was in relational encounters and in interpersonal engagement. And finally, after resisting for some years, really, I had to come to grips with the fact that I needed help in the area of interpersonal relationships and found myself on my knees saying, God, help me.

Jeff Iorg:

Help me learn how to work with people. Help me learn how to be patient with people. Help me learn how to dialogue with and have communication with people. Lord, help me, and he did. But the painful process of living through that in that first pastorate

Jeff Iorg:

was an affliction. Well, one more. I thought I was really past a lot of that and was at a point in life when I had surrendered everything and and and had a purity of motive that had come into my life in ministry and in leadership. And and then

Jeff Iorg:

the seminary relocation at Gateway happened. Now no time to tell that long story on the podcast, but we set out to redevelop our campus. That plan imploded. The community exploded, and we were faced with a crisis, and it was an affliction in my life. I remember the darkest day, December 19, 2012.

Jeff Iorg:

I found myself that night

Jeff Iorg:

after a humiliating public hearing, which destroyed finally any hope of redeveloping our campus, I found myself on my knees crying out to God, confessing that I was undone,

Jeff Iorg:

that I had no answers, that I didn't know how

Jeff Iorg:

to go forward, and wondering if I

Jeff Iorg:

could even get up the next day and put one foot in front of another. It was a dark, dark day,

Jeff Iorg:

but a fresh breaking, a fresh dependence on God emerged out

Jeff Iorg:

of that. And I look back on that experience now and know that at least one of the reasons that I was allowed to live through

Jeff Iorg:

it was here summarized in 2nd Corinthians 1 verse 9. So that so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. So the first danger to a natural born leader, a gifted leader, is the tendency to trust themselves and their abilities rather than God. A second danger for natural born leaders is neglecting the training and leadership development needed to hone those natural tendencies, those inborn talents, into a real force that God can use for good. Some natural born leaders trust too much in their innate abilities, and they think that because they had those abilities at some point in life that they're going to sustain them over a lifetime.

Jeff Iorg:

That's just

Jeff Iorg:

simply not true. If you are a natural born leader, you still need to work to hone those abilities to shape those talents so that they might have maximum impact as God uses them through your life. That's why, despite the fact that I've been speaking to at least a 1000 people since I

Jeff Iorg:

was 12 years old, I

Jeff Iorg:

have made a studious effort at becoming a better communicator over the years. I have worked at my craft of learning to be a better communicator. Just because you have natural born administrative abilities or natural born speaking abilities or natural born charisma and influence capacity, doesn't mean you don't still have to work on shaping those capacities so that they might be maximized for God's use as you submit them to him. So what should you do? Well, the first thing I would say is if you're younger, enroll in a college or a seminary.

Jeff Iorg:

Now, there may be a point in life where that's not practically possible as you get older and life takes different forms, but if you're in the early phase of your leadership life, you need formal education. You say, well, no. I don't need that. I just I'll just go to a seminar or something, or, well, I've got a really good pastor and he's teaching me everything I need. No.

Jeff Iorg:

Here's why you need formal training, why college and seminary can be very helpful to you. Because these programs are designed to give you a comprehensive view of ministry leadership and to force you to grow in ways that you might not even realize you needed to grow. And so a formal training program puts up some guidelines, some barriers, and some guardrails, if you will, that gets you moving and keeps you moving in a direction of personal improvement and forces you, quite frankly, forces you to grow in some areas that you either don't think you need to or you're blind to, these are the these are some of the good results that come from a structured formal program of training. Then beyond that, leaders, natural born leaders, also need to be lifelong learners through self motivated or self directed processes like, for example, developing a reading

Jeff Iorg:

plan. Now, I've done another podcast in, about developing a reading plan as a leader, and I won't repeat that today. But one

Jeff Iorg:

of the ways that you can continue to shape your inborn or natural born leadership talents is by reading, and you say, well, I'm not much of a reader. Well, then video or audio or by some other means, intaking information on a regular basis so that you have leadership input flowing into you that keeps you invigorated and interested and moving forward. Now, as I've told you before on the podcast, I really like reading biography for accomplishing this purpose in my life, But I also like reading, leadership books and books that challenge me in areas that are specifically tuned into my role, in leading, in the nonprofit area. And so I'm always looking for interesting things to read that will motivate me either by reading someone's story biography or by reading pertinent leadership books that speak to the kinds of issues I deal with on a regular basis. Lifelong learner means that you are intaking by reading or video or audio, but you are intaking material that shapes you, directs you, and keeps you going in the right direction.

Jeff Iorg:

Of personal growth, shaping and honing those natural inborn talents that you have.

Jeff Iorg:

And then the third thing,

Jeff Iorg:

of course, you can do is develop a mentoring relationship with someone who will coach you along and prod you along in these areas. So on the podcast today, we've talked about the fact that some people really are natural born leaders. And while I've advocated on a previous podcast that leaders are made, not born, and I think that's true most of the time, there are some who are just born

Jeff Iorg:

to lead. If you're one of

Jeff Iorg:

those, your first danger is trusting yourself and your abilities rather than trusting God to work through the talents He

Jeff Iorg:

has given you. And a second danger is resting on your laurels, so to speak. No. Don't do that. Instead,

Jeff Iorg:

purposefully, intentionally work to sharpen, to hone, to improve the natural born leadership capacities that you have. This can be through formal education, through developing a lifelong learning program, through having a mentor who speaks into your life.

Jeff Iorg:

Now there is a third problem, and that is held by some of you who would simply listen

Jeff Iorg:

to this podcast and say, well, it doesn't apply to me because I'm not a natural born leader. Well, in a sense, yes, you are. No matter how gifted you are, and if you rank yourself on a scale of, like, 1 to 10 and you said, well, I'm only a number 4 leader. You know, I'm not a 7 leader. I'm not a 10 leader.

Jeff Iorg:

I'm just a 4 leader. Well, if you're a 4 leader, you're still a leader, and you were born with some leadership capacity even though you might not see you as a 10, a natural born leader that everyone recognizes and everyone wants to follow, but you're

Jeff Iorg:

still a leader. So, I want you to embrace. Embrace the gifting God has given you and recognize that every one of us is, in some sense, in some sense, a natural born leader.

Jeff Iorg:

You know, the Bible has many examples of people that were unlikely leaders, like David, for example, or Gideon. That's just 2 that come to mind from the old testament. And then you can look at that collection of keystone cops type fellows that made up the 12 disciples, and you can see some people in there that just are not people you would have expected to emerge as the key leaders in the early Christian movement. And yet, God used all of these people

Jeff Iorg:

I'm describing significantly. So limited

Jeff Iorg:

leadership capacity or ability or natural born talent, if you wanna say it that way, is no excuse to deny the fact that God has given you some leadership capacity, and he wants you to use it for his glory and for the advance of his kingdom. Don't give into the temptation to avoid taking on leadership responsibilities by using the excuse, well, I'm not a natural born leader. Recognize that in some sense you are, and at whatever level you are gifted to lead, you should lead and exercise those capacities to lead and not use this as an excuse just because if you're ranking them on a scale, you don't see yourself as a number 10 leader who's got all the natural born capacities that other people seem to have. You know, I thank God that he makes some people with significant leadership abilities. I've known a few of these people over my lifetime, and it has been a privilege to be around them.

Jeff Iorg:

I think of one man who was a former naval officer who went into ministry leadership and profoundly impacted me because he was born to lead, and it was enjoyable just to be around him because not only was he born to lead, but he had been shaped for leadership through his experience in the navy, and then he had honed that in his experience as a ministry leader, and he was motivating and inspiring to me because I

Jeff Iorg:

saw how a person who was born to lead was shaped for leadership and used in leadership. Think of another person that

Jeff Iorg:

I know, met him through, my time as the chaplain of the San Francisco Giants. One particular player that I've often said is the finest leader under age 25 that I've I've ever met, When he walked in the room,

Jeff Iorg:

everyone knew at age 23, the leader had arrived. He was quiet, but he had a presence. He was not, boisterous, but when he spoke, everyone listened. He had

Jeff Iorg:

a presence about him that caused a calm to come over other people and a sense that as long as he was there, everything was gonna be okay. And under his leadership, the team won 3 world series in 5 years. It was amazing to watch this happen. I one time asked this player's wife, who'd known him since they were in grade school together. I said, how long has he been the leader?

Jeff Iorg:

And she said, every day that I've known him, he's been the leader. So there are people like this, like my friend, the naval officer, former ministry leader that I watched lead and heard his stories of being in leadership from childhood, and then this ball player whose wife told me the same thing about him. I'm grateful to God that I've met people like this over my lifetime. And, quite frankly, I find myself being one of those that I would say was a natural born leader. From early on in my life, I've been looked to to provide leadership, to be the spokesperson, to step to the front, and I've been willing and grateful to do that.

Jeff Iorg:

But along the way, along the way, I'm also grateful that I've watched God bring natural born leaders to the end of themselves, and in doing so, teach them how to trust in Him and not their inboard ability. And I'm thankful that God has taught me and others I've observed the importance of being lifelong learners so that we can hone and shape and develop this inbred ability God has given us so that we can move forward in leadership in the most effective ways possible. Well, these 2 podcasts that I've done recently kind of go together. Leaders are made, not born. And I gave you an entire podcast on some specific strategies you can do to help make more leaders.

Jeff Iorg:

But what about the ones that are born to lead? Well, let's help them come to the end of them themselves, or have a fresh dependence on God, and a commitment to being lifelong learners, so that they might shape what they've been given from God into being effective tools that he can use in ways we could have never imagined or accomplished on our own. Whether you're a leader who's been made, or a leader who's been born, put into practice all that you are as you lead on.