On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, discusses Spirit-empowered ministry in the second part of a two-part podcast. He focuses on how the Holy Spirit works corporately in churches. Iorg emphasizes that when the Holy Spirit is active in worship services, it results in empowered preaching, receptivity to God's word, generous giving, and missional advance.
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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, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. You're joining me today for the second half of a 2 part podcast that I started last week entitled Spirit Empowered Ministry. Let me review just a bit about the background of these 2 podcasts, and then I'll plunge us into the material that will form the second part of the presentation. When I speak about Holy Spirit empowered ministry, I'm often surprised at people who come up afterwards and say, usually in a joking way, wow, it was unusual to hear a Baptist talking about the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:Now I realize they're just joking with me, but quite frankly, sometimes that makes me really sad. Why have we stopped talking about the Holy Spirit as the empowering source of the strength to do ministry or the power to accomplish supernatural results? So talking about Holy Spirit empowered ministry should be normal for those of us in Baptist circles. Another background to this podcast was a number of years ago, I asked the question during a chapel message at Gateway Seminary, is a spirit filled seminary possible? As a result of ask asking that question, the faculty asked me to answer the question by giving a couple of academic presentations to them at the faculty retreat the following year on this theme of being a spirit empowered seminary.
Jeff Iorg:Well, being asked to make a presentation to the faculty motivated me to make a more academic study of this than I had ever previously accomplished, and so I worked through the material, really quite extensively in the new testament on what it means to be filled with the spirit. And I shared some of that last week, and I focused last week on what it means to be filled with the spirit as a as a leader. And in order to do that, we looked at acts chapter 11, verse 22 and following where the bible tells us about Barnabas being introduced to the Antioch church from Jerusalem as a guest, but ultimately becoming the pastoral leader in that congregation. And we learned that Barnabas, in in lack acts 11 24, was described as being a good man, full of the holy spirit and faith. And I find it striking that this threefold description, good man and faith, is around the centerpiece description, full of the holy spirit.
Jeff Iorg:And so last week on the podcast, I talked about, while there is no formula in the new testament for being filled with the spirit, there are ample examples throughout the book of acts of people who were filled with the spirit and actually a command in Ephesians 5 18 for us to be filled with the spirit. So since there's no formula for being filled, my study revealed that there were instead what I call aspects of being filled with the spirit. In other words, aspects of spiritual life that you can put into practice which will facilitate or lead you to be filled with the spirit. These are conversion, surrender of our will, elimination of behaviors and attitudes that restrict the spirit's flow and movement through us, and finally, receiving the Holy Spirit's filling by faith. I wrapped up the podcast last week by talking about the results of being filled with the spirit and, again, enumerated a number of those that are found throughout the book of acts, but they fall into 2 broad categories.
Jeff Iorg:The first one is spiritual fruit being born through the life of an individual, and particularly spiritual fruit in the form of character development or life transformation. And then the second one is supernatural results, meaning particularly, people things happening that cannot be explained by the work of our hands. Things happening that are results beyond anything we could explain by any of our own efforts, ingenuity, or design. So that's a brief overview of what we talked about last week focusing our attention on an individual being filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Now let's shift our gears and our direction and talk about what it means to experience the Holy Spirit, in a church
Jeff Iorg:corporately or congregationally. And again, I want you
Jeff Iorg:to join me back in the book of acts, at this example of the church at Antioch for more information about how the Holy Spirit was
Jeff Iorg:at was active in and through this church. Picking the story up
Jeff Iorg:in Acts chapter 11 in verse 27, we read this. In those days, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 1 of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the spirit that there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world. This took place during the reign of Claudius. Each of the disciples, according to
Jeff Iorg:his ability, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea. They did this, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul. Go back to verse 28 for the key phrase for this teaching time. Agabus stood up and predicted by the spirit. Agabus was preaching in the power of, while being filled with,
Jeff Iorg:and under the control of the Holy Spirit. And as a result of his ministry, as we'll see, several important things happened. But now turn over to Acts chapter 13, where we once again see the Holy Spirit at work during a worship service in the church. It says chapter 13 verse 1. Now in the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
Jeff Iorg:As they were worshiping the lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them. Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off. Once again, look in verse 2 at the key phrase for this teaching time. The Holy Spirit said and so we see these 2 worship service stories. The first one, the church gathered to hear a guest preacher named Agabus, and he preached by the spirit.
Jeff Iorg:The second one, the church gathers in public worship, and the Holy Spirit instructed them specifically with some actions he wanted them to take. Now let's look for a few minutes at each of these two stories more closely.
Jeff Iorg:First of all, Agabus, who was he?
Jeff Iorg:Well, he was a preacher of some renown from the Jerusalem church. He's also mentioned in Acts 2110, if you wanna check that out later. He came from the Jerusalem church to Antioch to preach. Now on the surface, that doesn't seem all that remarkable. Barnabas had already come from Jerusalem and had established himself as a leader in Antioch, and the Jerusalem church considered itself like the mother church of the early Christian movement.
Jeff Iorg:It was not unusual for one of its preachers to go and preach in another location, in this case, Antioch, particularly if he had a special, Spirit prompted, prophetic message to deliver, and that's what happened. Agabus predicted a famine which happened according to Acts 11 28 during the time of Claudius. Now the response of the Antioch believers is, again, on the surface what might be expected. They heard their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem would soon be suffering, so they collected an offering. Not really anything all that remarkable there, and they dispatched Barnabas and Paul to deliver the offering.
Jeff Iorg:It was a relief offering. It was an act of love from 1 church family
Jeff Iorg:to another. This all seems so normal, until you consider the
Jeff Iorg:backstory of the relationship between these two
Jeff Iorg:churches. The launch of the Antioch church had been scandalous
Jeff Iorg:to the Jerusalem church. Imagine,
Jeff Iorg:Gentiles becoming Christians without first becoming Jews. They were neglecting circumcision, the scandal of it all. The Jerusalem church was a Jewish movement. Jesus told them to take the gospel
Jeff Iorg:to the entire world, but they had largely retained it in Jerusalem. It took the persecution of Stephen to cause the Christian Diaspora to scatter the church and initiate a broad movement of the gospel among gentiles. When news about what was happening reached Jerusalem, Barnabas was sent to
Jeff Iorg:investigate, and some probably hoped, terminate this supposed pseudo church in Antioch. I mean, they were letting Gentiles into the church, and the depth of feeling on these matters is shown by the intensity of the conflict described in Acts chapter 15, sometimes called the Jerusalem Council. But
Jeff Iorg:Barnabas, discerning the legitimacy of the Spirit's work in creating the new
Jeff Iorg:church, rather than stymie the effort, he remained in Antioch and fanned the flames of the fire God had ignited. Now against that backdrop,
Jeff Iorg:I want you to consider, fresh the response of these Antioch Christians.
Jeff Iorg:A leader from the church
Jeff Iorg:that hoarded the gospel and questioned their legitimacy,
Jeff Iorg:Agabus had the audacity to ask the Antioch believers for an offering, and remarkably, they gave it generously, willingly, and it appears without any reservation. Now, you just think about that for a minute. What if a church in your community started attacking you, questioning the legitimacy of your faith, challenging the accuracy of your doctrine, and publicly trying to humiliate you for the actions of your members? What if they were posting evil things about you on social media, or buying advertisements to critique your ministry and function? What if they were doing all of that and then their church burned down?
Jeff Iorg:Their building went up in smoke. What would you do? You might say, good riddance. We're not helping them. They opposed us.
Jeff Iorg:They questioned our legitimacy, and now they got what's coming to them. Well, you might say that, but the Antioch church would not. The Antioch church would say, those are our brothers and sisters, and no matter how they treated us, they need our help. And so when Agabus came and told
Jeff Iorg:them that a famine was coming to
Jeff Iorg:the Jerusalem church, the Antioch Christians gave a generous offering.
Jeff Iorg:Now this story reveals two aspects of the Spirit's work in the worship services at Antioch. 1st, the Spirit enabled the preaching by Agabus and the receptivity of the
Jeff Iorg:congregation. And second, the spirit enabled generous giving. Now, you keep those
Jeff Iorg:two things in mind. We'll come back to them. The spirit enabled the preaching and the receptivity to the preaching,
Jeff Iorg:and the spirit motivated or and enabled the generous offering that was received. Well, let's look for
Jeff Iorg:a moment at the other worship service before we draw some general conclusions about both of them. Well, the Acts 13 passage tells us that after some time had passed, several men had emerged as a leadership team in Antioch. Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Minae, and Paul, they're all working together leading the church, and in fact, they were actually participating in leading a worship service that the Bible says involved prayer and fasting when someone, perhaps one of these leaders, perhaps other members were not told who, but someone was prompted with an unusual message. The Holy Spirit said, Acts 13:2,
Jeff Iorg:set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work that I have called them to. And after hearing this message, they fasted and prayed. Acts 13:3, laid hands on them, and sent them off.
Jeff Iorg:Now, these events were unusual for at
Jeff Iorg:least three reasons. 1st, the message came through the church to the missionary team. Now, most often when God gives a directive, He gives it directly to the recipient. Not this time. God spoke to others
Jeff Iorg:to call part Barnabas and Paul to leave Antioch as missionaries.
Jeff Iorg:Now you think about that. The Holy Spirit spoke to the church and called away this missionary team. In the context of a worship service, the Holy Spirit was at work. K. A second way this story is unusual is it was unusual because it had never happened before.
Jeff Iorg:While the mission imperative was established by Jesus in Acts 1:8, you remember that, the Jerusalem church was slow to develop an intentional strategy for kingdom advance. When the gospel, went out from the Jerusalem church, it almost seems like it went out by happenstance or, by circumstance, not by intentional strategy. But this time at Antioch is the first time a church formally set apart workers and sent them on
Jeff Iorg:a mission trip. The Holy Spirit at work prompting this to happen. And 3rd, these were unusual circumstances because the most senior leaders left the church. Unlike Jerusalem where the apostles remained behind, this time, the senior leaders were going on mission.
Jeff Iorg:You know, most of the time, then and now, senior leaders facilitate others to answer God's call, but not this time. This time, the process was reversed. This time, the church told its senior leaders, its most respected leaders, God wanted them to leave. Now let's review what happened in these two worship services. First, the Holy Spirit empowered preaching and a receptivity to preaching among the congregation.
Jeff Iorg:2nd, the Holy Spirit motivated generous
Jeff Iorg:giving,
Jeff Iorg:generous giving by the members. The Bible says, each one according to his ability
Jeff Iorg:made a gift, a sacrificial gift, a generous gift, a spirit produced gift. And then the Spirit directed a congregation with a message for its leaders saying, God is calling you to new responsibility. Look. This tells us
Jeff Iorg:how the Holy Spirit works in a church corporately when we come together. The Holy Spirit still empowers speakers and energizes the preached word of God, and he still enables congregational response, including generous giving. Now, while all these things are not encompassed in this story, I think it's fair to say that the Holy Spirit still directs congregational decision making, calls people to new fields of service, and sustains missionary advance by motivating people to give up their assets, in this case, their money and their people for kingdom advance. This tells us that one of the high and holy spirit empowered moments of a worship service is the offering. Now too many churches think of the offering as a perfunctory moment where we pass the plates.
Jeff Iorg:No. No. An offering is a powerful recognition of the Holy Spirit's transformative work to take selfish, self absorbed, self centered people and motivate them to give away their money.
Jeff Iorg:Do you understand how absurd it is that we, every Sunday, stand up and tell people, give your money away? And they do it. Why?
Jeff Iorg:Because the Holy Spirit has been at work in their lives to transform them from selfishness and self absorption, self focus, into generous people who willingly and voluntarily give away their resources as a result of the Spirit's prompting and working and moving in their lives. Look. The Holy Spirit still empowers speakers and receptivity to the word of God. The Holy Spirit empowers congregational response up to and including giving. The Holy Spirit works in worship services.
Jeff Iorg:When the Holy Spirit works in churches, it's because churches have a healthy expectation. Something special is going to happen every time they gather to worship God. Healthy churches have leaders and members who seek God's power in planning, preparing for, and directing worship services, And because of that, healthy churches experience the spirit's intervention while worshiping. When is the last time that your worship plan was broken up by the Holy Spirit's intervention?
Jeff Iorg:I appreciate good planning. I appreciate people who put together a worship service which has components that fit together, which is appropriately timed for the allotment of time that's available,
Jeff Iorg:which has built into it an expectation of of beauty and of completeness and of quality. I I appreciate all of that. But sometimes,
Jeff Iorg:I wonder if we haven't so over programmed our worship services that we don't even any longer expect or allow for any possibility that God might intervene and start speaking to people in ways we had not programmed or planned, and that there might be a need for response. And I'll go on to say this. I I'm disheartened by how many churches have stopped giving people the opportunity to respond in worship services. You preach, you pray, you sing, and then you don't ask people to respond. Now, I'm not saying that there should be people coming forward in every worship service to be saved every Sunday.
Jeff Iorg:I think that's an unrealistic expectation for most churches, but shouldn't there be some response of some kind as we give people the opportunity to crystallize the moment and to say, the Holy Spirit has worked in my life today, and I need to make this kind of response in this worship service in this moment.
Jeff Iorg:Listen. This is the pattern of the Bible. When the church gathered, the Holy Spirit intervened. Change occurred. Response was
Jeff Iorg:not only anticipated, but facilitated.
Jeff Iorg:When the Holy Spirit moves in a worship service, supernatural things happen. Decisions are made. Life change happens. People give gifts, make commitments, chart new directions. Why?
Jeff Iorg:Because while worshiping, the Holy Spirit has impacted them.
Jeff Iorg:This means things are happening in worship services that cannot be explained by the work of our hands, that they are beyond the sum total of our contribution in the moment. You know, when we look at the story of Antioch, when the Holy Spirit moved in the church, the members did something, and they did something beyond their ability. They did something that was supernaturally directed and supernaturally motivated, and caused them to step far out of their comfort zone. They gave an offering to the Jerusalem church to help them with famine relief, and they sent missionaries across the Mediterranean world to plant the gospel in new places. These were things that in the moment were unthinkable, unimaginable, and yet they did them anyway because they believed the Holy Spirit was prompting it to happen.
Jeff Iorg:The Antioch church responded to preaching, gave money, sent messages to fellow believers, called people to missions, they fasted, they prayed, they laid hands on other believers. They did all these things because the Holy Spirit was active in their worship services. The Holy Spirit was working, yes, privately among them, but also publicly as they gathered together. And in this public work, God was working openly, definitively, and in an open, observable way. Look.
Jeff Iorg:Public response can obviously be manipulated and be too dependent on emotional appeals. I get that. But foregoing all opportunity for public response is not the answer. We have to facilitate people being able to do something as a result of coming to meet with God. People having the opportunity to get up and to say something, to get up and to commit to something, to get up and to give something, to get up and to announce they're going to take a new direction or make a new life course, because God met them in the worship moment.
Jeff Iorg:And I'll go on to say that when we facilitate worship services that give people the opportunity to respond to the Holy Spirit's work in their lives, we need to make it possible for them to do that in such a way that it is
Jeff Iorg:observable, and that it's corporate, and that it's both celebrated and validated by other believers.
Jeff Iorg:Corporate worship and the moving of God in that context is supposed to be something that's observable, that's seen. And while I understand people can put on a show, people can be too emotional, people can be manipulated, eliminating all possibility of public response is not the solution or the answer. Leading worship services with integrity, including having the courage to stop pointless displays that detract from worship in the name of following the spirit, is part of effective church leadership. Healthy church leaders, however, recognize the importance of facilitating response and make it a part of public worship gathering. Healthy leaders and healthy churches have an expectancy that when they gather, the Holy Spirit's going to move.
Jeff Iorg:They seek the filling of the spirit personally and the empowering of the spirit corporately. These healthy churches create opportunities, spiritual, emotional, and even physical for people to respond to the spirit's prompting in worship. They facilitate praying, sharing testimonies, confessing sinful behavior, public repentance and supportive prayer, and expressions of mutual support like in the text, laying on of hands, or today offering a hug or a handshake. Healthy churches that are anticipating the Holy Spirit moving in their worship services plan time and use various methods, but give people an opportunity to follow the Spirit's promptings,
Jeff Iorg:or the urgings, or the instructions that come from meeting God in worship. Healthy churches
Jeff Iorg:expect the Holy Spirit to be an active participant in their worship gathering.
Jeff Iorg:Now healthy churches
Jeff Iorg:and healthy leaders are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Healthy churches have spirit filled leaders, and healthy churches experience Holy Spirit empowerment. When the Holy Spirit is actively working in a church and its leaders, going back to the podcast last week, the results are spiritual fruit and supernatural results. Spiritual fruit means life transformation happens. Spiritual or supernatural results means things are taking place that are beyond what we can explain by the work of our two hands, by the strength that we bring to the table, by our training, our expertise, or intellect.
Jeff Iorg:Something is happening beyond anything. We can cause our control. Now let's bring some balance here. This doesn't mean that every person has a profound life altering experience in every worship service. It does mean, though, that these kind of experiences are happening regularly, and in ways that can't be predicted or controlled, but are serendipitously experienced as the Holy Spirit at our invitation, at our request, at our yielding, moved in us, in our
Jeff Iorg:churches while involved in worship services and worship experience. Now, let me just conclude by saying the outcome of all of this
Jeff Iorg:was missional advance. When the Holy Spirit worked through Barnabas, Agabus, and through these other leaders in the church at Antioch, The result was not some self focused, myopic celebration. It wasn't a sideshow attraction like a circus rolling through town. It wasn't something that caused people to laugh or to think that something unusual was taking place.
Jeff Iorg:It was instead something that produced the advancement of God's mission. It resulted ultimately in more people being saved, more missionaries being sent, and more lives being transformed. That's the result of a spirit filled leader in a spirit empowered church with spirit controlled ministry. I'm appealing to you today as a leader to be open to the filling of the Holy Spirit, to seek it, to ask God to do it, to yield your life in such a way that you become a vessel through which the Holy Spirit works. And I'm appealing to
Jeff Iorg:you as well to plan worship gatherings with the anticipation the Holy Spirit will do what he did in the book of Acts, empower preaching, empower receptivity to hearing the word of God, motivate people to respond, including responding through giving, but not just giving their money, but giving themselves or giving their leaders away in helping others to advance God's mission. When the Holy Spirit is moving in worship services, these are the kinds of things that happen. Well, I talk about Holy Spirit ministry a lot when I preach. I've talked about it for 2 weeks now on the podcast. I hope you're not one of those people that would say how unusual it is for a Baptist leader to be talking about the Holy
Jeff Iorg:Spirit. What we should be saying is how sad it is that we talk so little about this.
Jeff Iorg:Your ministry effectiveness is not going to be based on how many techniques you can master, how many classes you can complete, how many books you can read. It's not going to be measured on your capacity to raise money, so you can have the best programs or the best leaders. No. What really makes a difference? Spiritual fruit, meaning the transforming of lives.
Jeff Iorg:Supernatural results, meaning the coming together of circumstances that no one can explain. Seeing things happen in the lives of people and through the lives of ministries that you cannot explain by the work of your two hands, that's evidence of the Holy Spirit empowering and working in your ministry. And my friends, without that, ministry becomes a dry, dead work. It sucks the life out of us and leaves us discouraged. But when we trust the Holy Spirit, we find ourselves empowered.
Jeff Iorg:We find ourselves enjoying the fruit of that empowerment. And we see God working in ways that we cannot explain, but we certainly can describe. I'm challenging you to put into practice what you've learned on these 2 podcasts, to develop a greater spiritual sensitivity, recognizing that we are spiritual leaders. That you are open to the filling of the Holy Spirit, and you are asking the Holy Spirit to empower the work you're doing, particularly the worship gatherings of your church as described here in the book of Acts. May God make it so, as we lead on.