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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the transformative concept that "life is curriculum," exploring how God uses life's circumstances to shape leaders into the image of Jesus Christ. Jeff shares personal experiences and insights on how understanding this principle can revolutionize your approach to leadership and life, shifting focus from what you do to who you are becoming.
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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.
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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, welcoming you once again to our continuing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. I had a meaningful thing happen recently when preaching at a church. After the service, a young man about 30, 30 five years old came up to me and introduced himself and said, I had no idea that you were preaching at our church today. Thank you for coming.
Jeff Iorg:And then he said, I read your book, The Character of Leadership, a few years ago, and it changed my life. Now quite honestly, that felt pretty good. That felt good to hear someone say something positive had happened for them because of some ministry that I had provided in this case, writing the book The Character of Leadership. After he said that to me and I just, felt good about it for
Jeff Iorg:a minute, I said, what exactly
Jeff Iorg:did the book do for you? How did it help you? And he said, it helped me to understand how God is using the circumstances of my life to make me more like Jesus and helped me to cooperate with him or to learn from him how to do that. Man, that was a really good summary of what I tried to communicate, especially in
Jeff Iorg:the early part of that book. So I wanna talk to
Jeff Iorg:you today about this theme, life is curriculum, and I wanna share with you some ideas that will help you to think through how God is using your current leadership laboratory, the life he's given you, to shape you more into the image of Jesus. Now I first heard the phrase life is curriculum in a seminary classroom back in about 1982. I had a professor, doctor Jack McGorman. The chapel at Southwestern Seminary is named for him. I had a professor named doctor McGorman who taught Greek, and during the semester that he was teaching us, his family was going through a very, very serious health crisis, And I remember even once that he was in the middle of class when his, assistant came and tapped on the door and just signaled to him, and he said, I'm so sorry, class.
Jeff Iorg:I have to go right now. And he left immediately and rushed to the hospital to care for his family in the midst of this crisis they were living through. And in the context of all
Jeff Iorg:of that, one day in class, he gave
Jeff Iorg:us a a snapshot into the details of his life and what he was experiencing, and then he used that phrase. Life is curriculum. And he talked about how God was using the circumstances of his life to teach him so many new things about God, about having a relationship with God, and frankly, he said also about himself and about how he needed to grow and change and mature in his relationship to God through Jesus Christ, otherwise known as sanctification. Well, that class probably impacted me intellectually. I probably learned some Greek along the way.
Jeff Iorg:But more importantly, it impacted me spiritually because I heard from his testimony, and I learned that phrase that he used, life is curriculum, and it caused me to start doing a lot of reflecting about that for me and what it might mean for me. Now, unfortunately, I'm a slow learner. It took me about a decade of hammering my head against the wall before I started really understanding what he meant by that phrase, life is curriculum, and starting to put my own framework together of how to understand that in my context. Now, I started out in life and ministry a driven, legalistic, perfectionistic workaholic. I, because I have high energy and usually a lot of stamina, worked long and hard in ministry in my early years, and I did that out of a false sense of devotion, a false sense of sacrifice, and really a false sense of duty.
Jeff Iorg:What it really what it really boiled down to, I was trying to prove myself to
Jeff Iorg:God, And I hit a brick wall doing that as every one of us does, and had to take
Jeff Iorg:a giant step back at one point in my life and ask a larger question. Why am I here in this particular ministry role, and what is God doing through and in me right now, and why? Those are important questions for me. Now I'm summarizing today, and I, of course, wrote the book about this, and that's even more of a summary of what really took me more than a decade to think through and work through. These bad patterns were deeply ingrained in my life.
Jeff Iorg:Patterns of legalism, perfectionism, judgmentalism, workaholism, these patterns were deeply ingrained in my life, and they they emerged out of my insecurities and my controlling nature and a lot of other things that happened to me because of my upbringing and an alcoholic family. I understand all that now, but at the time, I didn't. I just knew I was struggling. That was the only way I could describe it. I was struggling.
Jeff Iorg:And then, I found a a Bible verse, a verse that's often only used in crisis or, negative circumstances, but one that has come to mean much to me in much more positive ways. It's Romans eight twenty eight and twenty nine. The Bible says we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, those who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew, he also predestined, and here's the key phrase, to be conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers.
Jeff Iorg:I almost
Jeff Iorg:saw those words glowing on the page one day, conformed to the image of his son. And I realized that this passage of scripture was speaking clearly to me that God had an overarching purpose for my life, and it wasn't to do things. It was to become to become someone, and the becoming was to be conformed to the image of his son. Now that led me to some phraseology that I've used over the years that I wanna remind you about today on the podcast, and that is, how do you answer the question, why does God have me here in this particular leadership role, in this particular marriage, in this particular family, in this particular time in in, in human history, why does God have me here? Well, here's the phrases.
Jeff Iorg:Many people give what I call the doing answer, the doing answer, and that is God has me here to do things. God has me here to preach. God has me here to teach. God has me here to write. God has me here to lead.
Jeff Iorg:God has me here to be a mother, to provide food, to provide shelter, to take care of my children's needs. God has me here as a father to invest myself in my children, make sure that they have the food, clothing, and shelter they need, blah blah blah. You get the idea. The doing answer. Okay?
Jeff Iorg:Well, I've always given the doing answer when asked the question, why does God have me here? I would say, God has me here to lead the church. God has me here to lead the seminary. God has me here to lead the convention. God has me here to reach the lost, disciple the saved, care for the hurting.
Jeff Iorg:God has me here to create organizational structure. God has me here to manage organizational process. God has me here to do things.
Jeff Iorg:But then I'm confronted by Romans eight twenty nine, which says that God is mainly at work to conform me to the image of his son, which led me then to what I call the being answer. The being answer.
Jeff Iorg:And that is that God has me here not primarily to do things for him, but God has me here in these unique circumstances of my life as I find them today so that he can use all of them to shape me into the image of Jesus Christ, to conform me to the image of his son, life becomes
Jeff Iorg:the curriculum. Life becomes the means by which I learn what I have to change, who I have to become in order to be more like Jesus Christ. Life is curriculum.
Jeff Iorg:Now let me hasten to say that this doing answer and being answer are not polar opposites. They're not either or. They are instead two sides of a coin or two aspects of a life process. It's not so much that one eclipses the other, it's that one has to always come before the other. So when you answer the question, why does God have
Jeff Iorg:me here? Start with the being answer. God has me here to shape me, conform me into the image of Jesus Christ,
Jeff Iorg:and and God has me here to do certain things he's assigned as the laboratory in which we're he's working on me personally. So, for example, in in my current life, I do a lot of things. I preach and teach and write and do this podcast, and I go to meetings and make administrative decisions and employ staff and evaluate their work and give them direction on how to go forward in more effective ways. I try to represent Southern Baptists in public forums and speak about what we're doing around the world and why it matters. I do a lot of things, but the doing is secondary to the being.
Jeff Iorg:The overarching reason why God has assigned me to lead the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention right now is he wanted a set of life circumstances and leadership responsibilities that are his perfect laboratory for shaping me into the image of Jesus Christ. He is shaping me and using me to do things for him, but the shaping always precedes the doing. Now just to underscore this, here's a couple thoughts. I know that being is more important than doing because God doesn't need me to do anything. In fact, I'm an impediment to God getting his work done
Jeff Iorg:in the world. That's how I feel about it. God spoke,
Jeff Iorg:and the universe came into existence. Does he really need you to do
Jeff Iorg:anything? God has the capacity to create life and overcome death.
Jeff Iorg:Does he really need you to do
Jeff Iorg:anything? But in the mystery of his purposes, he has decided to do his work in the world through us. So, therefore, our work has meaning, but not because God is depending on us, but instead because God is using us in the context of what we do to create a laboratory that he might shape us into the people he wants us to be.
Jeff Iorg:You know, it's also important to remember that being precedes doing because God's ultimate purpose in the universe is to create a companion people for his eternal
Jeff Iorg:relationship and fellowship. God's ultimate purpose in
Jeff Iorg:the universe is not to get projects done. It's to create a people for his eternal companionship. So, because God doesn't need me to get anything done, and because God's ultimate purpose is creating a companion people that look like Jesus for his eternal relationship, I know that God has placed me in my leadership laboratory, in my family where I live, in the community where I'm housed, in this in the era or the century in which I was born. God has placed me here because my life circumstances are the perfect curriculum he can use to shape me into the image of Jesus Christ.
Jeff Iorg:Now, this has so many implications,
Jeff Iorg:but one of the most important ones is this. When you're thinking about a major life change, rather than just evaluating the doing aspect of that change,
Jeff Iorg:start first with the being. I'll never forget the first time this happened for me. Now as I
Jeff Iorg:told you, it took me almost a decade to hammer out what I've just shared with you
Jeff Iorg:in the last five minutes on this podcast, But after I got
Jeff Iorg:it hammered out and started trying to live this way, the first real opportunity I had to significantly change my leadership laboratory was when a search committee member called me and asked me if I would consider becoming the president of Gateway Seminary. After that initial conversation, I hung up the phone and leaned back in my chair, and I prayed out loud a prayer very similar to this to God. I said,
Jeff Iorg:father, do you want me to go to the seminary? Because those are the best circumstances you can possibly use to make me more like Jesus? Lord, if that's why you want me to go, I'm ready.
Jeff Iorg:That was the first time in my life that an opportunity was presented to me of any kind, really, that I didn't first go to the doing. Lord, do you want me to go there and lead the faculty? Lord, do you want me to go there because I'm good at planning? Lord, do you want me to go there because I need to administrate the budget? Lord, do you want me to go there for this reason, this reason, this reason?
Jeff Iorg:I would have always given some doing reasons why God was leading me to consider something until that moment, and that was the first time, the first time in my life when I really considered making a major life change
Jeff Iorg:on the being rather than the doing. It was interesting when I was preparing to retire a year or so ago, one of
Jeff Iorg:the dilemmas that I was praying about and talking with God about on a regular basis was, what does retirement look like as a shaping experience for me? I said, Lord, I feel that you're leading me to step out of the seminary's day to day leadership, but I I don't really know what that means going forward because I know you want to put me in circumstances where you're gonna shape me into the image of Jesus, And so how will you do that in retirement? That was one of my questions I was asking in prayer as I was thinking about my future. Lord, how will you use these circumstances? And I had actually started identifying a couple of ideas.
Jeff Iorg:Well, you know, I think this will happen to me, and and I'll have to grow and change in that area, or this will happen to me, and I'll have to grow and change in that area. I I was seeing these different things, and I was considering that those might be the ways. And of course then God. God reached out of heaven on 01/23/2024 and said, no, no. I have a different leadership laboratory for you,
Jeff Iorg:not retirement. Son, you're going
Jeff Iorg:to the executive committee, and we're going to go to work on some areas of your character that need development
Jeff Iorg:and some growth points that are not yet satisfied. We're gonna see some change through this circumstance that only could happen if you took this on. So I came here
Jeff Iorg:to this current role to do some things, but mostly, I came here because God is going to use this life curriculum to shape me into the image of Jesus Christ. Now let's talk about some other implications of this for you. First of all, this will help you to understand why God has allowed some of the conflict points that you have in your life. You're wondering, why do I have these conflicts, these issues, these places where people are always pushing back on me? What's happening here?
Jeff Iorg:Now, for example, when I went to my first church, I got a lot of criticism in my first church because I wasn't relationally sensitive. I wasn't relationally gifted. I wasn't good with people. My people skills were not strong. And I was hearing this repeatedly from different members of the church, including, by the way, some of my strongest supporters.
Jeff Iorg:Now what each one of these people probably didn't know was how many of them were speaking to me the very same things. But what they also didn't know was this was the same thing that my wife would frequently say to me. Now she was nicer about it, but she would say, you know, Jeff, you're you're really good at speaking, and and, you know, you have a lot of passion and vision, but, you know, people need to know that you care for them. I'm like, well, I do care. And she's like, well, you know, we gotta work on that a little bit.
Jeff Iorg:But what people also didn't know was that not only were many church members saying the same thing to me and my wife was saying the same thing to me, but so was my family, particularly my mother who loved me and cared for me and was pretty direct with me on several occasions about my lack of capacity for working with people effectively. And this all came to
Jeff Iorg:a head when I finally turned to God and said, why are you allowing all
Jeff Iorg:of these people to keep coming after me when I'm doing my best? I'm serving them, I'm preaching, I'm care, I'm I'm administrating, I'm leading, I'm doing things that are for their best interest. I'm actually sacrificing my own best intentions for their good, and yet all they do is complain that I don't care. And it was as if God, you know, spoke to me in that moment and said,
Jeff Iorg:well, they can't all be wrong. Maybe you are.
Jeff Iorg:Man, that was a tough moment. When I first started facing up to the reality that maybe I was the one out of step, and the rest of the parade was moving along just fine,
Jeff Iorg:and I had to start admitting that I needed to
Jeff Iorg:go to work on people skills, and so I did. And it was a multiyear process of learning better ways to relate, to communicate care, to communicate awareness of people's needs and other perspectives and opinions. Now today, I would not tell you that this is my great strength, but I would tell you I've grown a lot a lot in those areas,
Jeff Iorg:and I would also say that I would not have grown if God had not put me in a leadership laboratory
Jeff Iorg:where this was an area that many people saw as
Jeff Iorg:a deficiency and were willing to confront me. And because I saw that, I
Jeff Iorg:knew I had to change. Same things happen to me in marriage. You know, Anne and I couldn't be two more different people. We share same commitments, but we are totally different in our personality and our perspective on life. In fact, it's hard to describe how different we really are, and in the early years, this was a source of conflict for the both of us.
Jeff Iorg:And then we both started realizing that
Jeff Iorg:we were in this marriage to stay, and that we had to understand that life is curriculum, and that these friction points that we were having, and these conflicts that were occurring, and these differences of perspective were perhaps perhaps God's way of changing the both of us. And that's what's happened over these years. My wife has incredible strengths, and I've tried to learn from those and pay attention to them and become more like her in those ways. And I have some strengths as well, and Anne would tell you if she were on the podcast today, You know, I've tried to learn from Jeff and and tried to grow and change and develop so that I could become more of the person that Jesus wants me to be as well. You know, this is the sad reality about a
Jeff Iorg:lot of marriages. Couples get married, start having conflict, and immediately assume that that means they've made a mistake or they need to go their separate ways. But in reality, life is curriculum.
Jeff Iorg:Maybe the person you married is exactly the person you need to show you the areas that you need to change to become more like Jesus. And I'll press this out a little bit further, and that is to your children,
Jeff Iorg:to your extended family. If you have multiple children, you've probably discovered that some
Jeff Iorg:of them you relate to pretty naturally and easily, and others, oh man, it's a
Jeff Iorg:challenge. When my oldest son was born,
Jeff Iorg:he and I got along great. Why wouldn't we? He was just like me, but he was the unpolished version of me. So, of course, Anne and my oldest son, from the very beginning, had this personality clash of how do we even understand each other, communicate with each other, and work with each other. Now, I wanna underscore this.
Jeff Iorg:My oldest son is a great guy, and he loves his mother. So this wasn't like some evil thing that was going on in our family, but it was just the reality that these were two very different people, and they had to learn to love each other, learn to relate to each other, and I like to think that my son became a better man by having his mother shape him over the years, and my wife will tell you that her oldest son shaped her too and made her into a better mom and a better Christian because of what she did in learning how to relate to him. Listen, friends. Life is curriculum. Your leadership laboratory, your family, your marriage, these are life circumstances that God allows and that he uses toward his overarching purpose of shaping you into the image of Jesus Christ.
Jeff Iorg:Understanding these things are what I also call in my book, the character of leadership, disciplined discernment. Now choose those words carefully. Discernment is discerning how God is at work in your life and changing you to be more like Jesus. What's the disciplined part? Well, the disciplined part came out of my experience as a pastor of having people come up and tell me, quote, what God told them.
Jeff Iorg:And I heard some of the craziest things over the years, what God told people supposedly
Jeff Iorg:in my church. Discernment
Jeff Iorg:is not about figuring out some weird thing and coming up with what God is saying to you. Now get this. Disciplined discernment is about disciplining your discernment to understanding what the Bible says and how its standards will be worked into your life. If you could imagine the Bible as something like a plumb bob. If you're not into construction, you may not know what that is, but a plumb bob is a heavyweight, usually with a triangular tip on the end.
Jeff Iorg:You tie a string on it. You put that string up, tap it to a wall or tap it to a board. You let the string hang down, and gravity will do the rest. That point at the end of that plumb bob will always be pointing straight down, and that string will always be a perfectly straight line. The bible is our plumb bob.
Jeff Iorg:It is the perfectly straight line that we want to emulate or that we wanna structure our lives to align with. But your life's not a perfectly straight line. It's a squiggly line. It goes back and forth, back and forth, back
Jeff Iorg:and forth. Discipline discernment is asking this question, God, how are
Jeff Iorg:you using life circumstances, how are
Jeff Iorg:you using my life curriculum to align me with the character of Jesus,
Jeff Iorg:the life of a Christian as described in the Bible. It's not about you discerning something out of thin air. It's about you coming into alignment and how God is using your circumstances to bring you into that alignment. So for me, for example, reading the passages of scripture about care and comfort and about loving one another and relating to one another with kindness and humility and gentleness, Those passages of scripture were the plumb bob. They're the line.
Jeff Iorg:My squiggly mess was all over the place, and I had to bring my relational skills into alignment with what the Bible says about how we're supposed to treat people. That's a lifelong process, isn't it? So in whatever area that you feel like you're you're needing to grow, it's not about you making up some way to grow or some definition of Christian Christian maturity or or some speculative idea of what God is doing in my life. No. It's none of that.
Jeff Iorg:It's simply saying, God, how are you using my life
Jeff Iorg:and the circumstances of it as curriculum to shape me into the image of Jesus by aligning me with your word. Alignment,
Jeff Iorg:that's disciplined discernment. That's disciplining our discernment to a standard and making sure that we come to that standard. Now one question that's helped me over the years in doing this is this very simple one. Father, why are you allowing this to happen to me? Now I said this once in a conference, and a person came up to me and said, you you can't ask God that.
Jeff Iorg:And I said, what do you mean?
Jeff Iorg:He said, you you don't ask God. Father, why are you allowing this to happen to me? I said, oh, no. It's in the inflection, brother. It's in the inflection.
Jeff Iorg:I agree you can't ask you can't ask that question, but that's not my question. My question is this, father,
Jeff Iorg:why are you allowing this
Jeff Iorg:to happen to me?
Jeff Iorg:Why are you allowing this? Why this church? Why these deacons? Why these elders? God, why this financial set book?
Jeff Iorg:God, setback. God, why this disease? God, why this struggle in my marriage? God, why this difficulty with one of my children? God, why are you allowing
Jeff Iorg:this to happen to me? The overarching answer to that question is to shape you into the image of Jesus Christ. That's what the great promise of Romans eight twenty nine is, that God will conform you to the
Jeff Iorg:image of Jesus. But disciplined discernment is then saying, God, in this area where you're working, what does your word say, and how can I bring my life into alignment with it? Because as I understand what your word says on this issue that I'm struggling with in my life circumstances right now, and I bring my life into alignment with your word, I will know that the conforming work is taking place and that I'm actually passing the class in this part of the curriculum in my life. Well, when a man walked up to me a few days ago and said that my book changed his life, it felt pretty good. I'll just tell you.
Jeff Iorg:But, it didn't feel good in an arrogant kind of way, like, man, look what I did. It felt good because I realized that God had worked in my life to teach me something important. That he had humbled me, shaped me, changed me, and that through that process and some of the stories I've shared with you today, he had taught me this very important principle. God's overarching purpose for me is to shape me into the image of Jesus. He's using my life as curriculum to get that done.
Jeff Iorg:He wants me to do some things, but that always is secondary to the being answer of what he wants me to become in Jesus Christ. And then and then it gives me a great satisfaction to know that because of all of this, my life, its circumstances, and all I'm experiencing has real purpose. Because God is at work in all of it. So think about it today. Why does God have you where you are?
Jeff Iorg:To do some things, yes. But more importantly, so that you might become someone else. And that is, that you might be shaped into the image of Jesus Christ. Think about it today, as you lead on.