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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses how ministry leaders can respond to complaints without becoming defensive. He shares practical steps to listen well, discern valid concerns, and decide when to make changes and when to move on.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on this podcast. We talk about the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the daily life of what it means to lead a church or a ministry organization and deal with the challenges that come our way. Today, I wanna talk about something that I'm not even sure why I'm bringing it up because this isn't a problem for anybody else out there probably but me.
Jeff Iorg:But I'm going take a chance. I want to talk today about responding to complainers, Dealing with complaints. If you have been in ministry leadership more than five minutes, someone has complained to you about something.
Jeff Iorg:So today, let's talk about how to respond. Now, I know what I'd like
Jeff Iorg:to do when someone complains to me about something. I'd like to say something back to them like, what is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how hard this is? Do you know how much time we've put into this project or this problem or this issue? Do you have anything productive to say other than whine and complain and gripe and moan about what's not happening?
Jeff Iorg:Well, that's what I'd like to say. But I've learned
Jeff Iorg:to respond in healthier ways. So let's see if I can lay out some things today that will help you to respond to complaints or complainers in healthier ways. The first thing I want to challenge you to do is when someone complains, to practice your best pastoral care skills. To not automatically be defensive, but to be a non anxious presence in the moment, and to recognize that there's an issue to be addressed or resolved, not a person to be opposed or attacked. Practicing your best pastoral care skills in the moment though can be very difficult because when someone complains, they often are doing so in such a way that it cuts to the core of who we are, our calls into question, our commitments or our motives, or challenges the legitimacy of some
Jeff Iorg:of our actions. It's hard. It's hard to practice good pastoral care skills, to be
Jeff Iorg:a non anxious presence that focuses on issues rather than people, and that focuses in an objective way on a situation rather than internalizing what's being said to us and feeling the pain of the moment and responding with anger or some kind of resentment based response. Man, this is hard to do. But it's part of the discipline of leadership that when someone complains,
Jeff Iorg:we practice our best pastoral care skills in the moment. We work hard at not being defensive, but instead dealing with the issues at hand. Now, what kind of complaints am I talking about? Well, you know, pastor, your preaching is just so dry. It just doesn't really feed me like I need it to.
Jeff Iorg:This music is just not worshipful.
Jeff Iorg:It just doesn't really connect with me. It it isn't honoring to God.
Jeff Iorg:Your attitude is prideful. You seem to think it's all about you. Your motives are selfish. You're only doing
Jeff Iorg:this to make more money or to make a name for yourself or to draw attention to yourself. You're only doing this because of what you hope you'll get out of it. You know, the youth pastor of our church is just not connecting with my teenagers. The children's ministry of our church is just not developing the right kind of depth in our children about their understanding of the Bible. Does any of
Jeff Iorg:this sound familiar? These are
Jeff Iorg:the kinds of things that people have said to me over the years when I was in pastoral ministry. And then as I moved into leading the seminary and then on to the executive committee, the complaints took on different forms about you're not teaching this at the seminary. You're not teaching this in theology. You're not teaching students to do this in evangelism. And oftentimes, that was coupled with a question of why aren't you doing this?
Jeff Iorg:When the assumption was, of course, we weren't, when in reality, we probably were. But that day, the student chose to be absent or to not pay attention or to be resistant. And then, of course, here at the executive committee, I I I get some kind of complaint, pretty much every day and sometimes many times a day from somebody out there in the Southern Baptist world that has something to say about particularly the conventions work, but more frequently what's happening in their church that they want me to somehow take responsibility for. We do hear complaints like these, don't we? And when we're hearing these things,
Jeff Iorg:it's hard to not take them personally. It's hard not to internalize them. It's hard not to
Jeff Iorg:be defensive in the moment.
Jeff Iorg:But I'm challenging you that your first step in responding well to complainers is to practice your best pastoral care skills, to be a non anxious presence in the moment, to focus on issues, not people, on problems, not personnel, to think in terms of solving an issue rather than winning a fight.
Jeff Iorg:That's step one. A second skill for dealing with complainers is to learn to listen for understanding and to try to sort out what's really being said in the moment. Now one way to listen for understanding is to learn to ask open ended questions. Not yes or no questions, but questions that allow the person to express themselves more fully, to express more issues or more background to the issues that are at hand, and to give you a broader scope of information about the issue or the question, or in this case, the complaint that's being brought to you. Open ended questions like, what part of my preaching is not that helpful to you?
Jeff Iorg:Or what kind of what aspects of our worship service are really not connecting with you? Or you are questioning my motives or my attitudes. Can you give me some description of what you see in me that causes you to conclude that? These are open ended questions to help you gain more information to give the other person the opportunity to flesh out, if you will, what they're seeing and why. Another reason to ask good open ended questions is it allows you to probe for deeper issues or to look at what might really be happening in the situation.
Jeff Iorg:For example, when that person came to me once and said, you know, I our youth minister is just not connecting with my teenage children. It's just not connecting at all, and I'm really frustrated about it. I want
Jeff Iorg:you to do something about it. Well, in that moment, I said, it sounds like that your children are really struggling to connect spiritually with what's happening in our youth ministry. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Alright.
Jeff Iorg:And then I said, how do you
Jeff Iorg:feel that they're connecting with you and in your relationship with them spiritually? Well, it's it's not that great either. Why won't we sit down and talk about that for a few minutes? Let's sit down and talk about this larger issue of how to help your teenagers connect spiritually with you and perhaps with our church. Let's see if we can talk about that.
Jeff Iorg:And in that particular instance, we were able to do that. Now, another time a person came to me and said, I just can't believe you're you're making this decision because of it's it's really harmful to me and to my and to our church. And I said, alright. Let let's talk about that. How how are you feeling harmed by this decision?
Jeff Iorg:What what do you think it's doing that's hurtful to you? And as he started expressing himself, I realized that he was telling me about some pain in his life that really was coming out because of the decision I was making, but it really wasn't a cause effect relationship like he
Jeff Iorg:was wanting it to be. We were able
Jeff Iorg:to talk that through that day and help to resolve his complaint, really not by addressing the complaint, but addressing the deeper hurt that he was feeling by the loss he was experiencing through this change I was proposing for our church. So asking open ended questions about the complaint allows the person to perhaps express themselves more fully, but it also allows them to express some deeper issues that might be going on in the situation and then gives you the opportunity to address perhaps the complaint, not saying you don't, but maybe perhaps the broader issues that are underlying the complaint, which are motivating them to come to you in the first place. Now I realize that this is like a counseling triage in a sense because you're you're in the moment trying to help a person to think more broadly about what they're saying to you, but it also might lead you to understand that their complaint might have some legitimacy, and there may need to be something about it that truly is addressed. We're gonna talk about that more in just
Jeff Iorg:a moment. So here's what we've
Jeff Iorg:said so far. When someone comes to you with a complaint, it's a moment to practice your best pastoral care skills, to not immediately go on the defensive, but to be a nonanxious presence that focuses on the problem at hand, not the person who's standing in front of you, and focuses more broadly on the issues that might need to be raised rather than the isolated incident that they're complaining about. Then ask open ended questions about the complaint and look for deeper issues and probe about what might be happening that's motivating them to come to talk to you about this issue. Now as you're doing that, you wanna clarify the complaint and the nature of the complaint itself. You can do this by asking for more information.
Jeff Iorg:You can also do this by summarizing the issue as you understand it. And so you ask for more information, and then as you're getting that, you say, so is this what you're saying to me that you're really upset about? You summarize the information. Is this the concern that you're trying to raise with me? Is this the specific issue that you're wanting me to address?
Jeff Iorg:It's a it's about moving beyond a general complaint like, you know, your preaching doesn't feed me. The music isn't connecting with me. Your attitude is selfish. And saying, alright. I understand that you're not pleased with my preaching.
Jeff Iorg:Can you help me understand what more specifically I could do to really connect you with the word of God or what I could change about my approach that would cause you to really feel connected and fed by the scriptures as I'm teaching them to you. You're asking for more information. You're summarizing the issue and helping the person to think through it with you. You're really trying to demonstrate that you really do wanna understand the complaint and what you might possibly be able to do about it. Now a part of this is confirming the issue that needs to be resolved.
Jeff Iorg:What is it that you're really asking me to do? For example, I recently received a a a letter of complaint here at the executive committee from a person who was asking me to do something about the way their pastor was behaving in their church. And he started out his complaint by describing how Southern Baptists were failing in their seminary education to prepare pastors adequately for ministry. That was his initial complaint. But as we worked down through it just a bit, it became evident that really his complaint was about his specific pastor and his specific situation with something that he had specifically failed to do or to communicate or to accomplish in their church.
Jeff Iorg:So I was able to analyze the the real issue that needed to be resolved, which was not this grand complaint about the failure of Southern Baptist Seminaries, but was more an issue about this pastor's failure to meet this person's need in his life or at least his perception of that failure. So we're gonna practice our best pastoral care skills. We're gonna listen for understanding by asking open ended questions and looking for deeper issues, and we're gonna clarify, once we do that, the complaint the person is really making by asking for more information and summarizing the issue as we understand it, and then trying to confirm what issue is it really that you're asking me to resolve. Now once you've done that, then you have to make a choice.
Jeff Iorg:You have to make a choice of whether you're going to now go down one of two paths with a complaint. The first path is to validate the complaint and make a response to it. The second path is to reject the complaint and therefore make no further response to it. Now, one thing
Jeff Iorg:I wanna mention before I go down those two paths is that in this process that I've just outlined for you, practicing your best pastoral skills, listening for understanding, and clarifying what exactly it is the person is really complaining about, one of the things that you may have to do in the process of this conversation is ask for more time. In other words, once you've worked through this of practicing your best skills and listening for understanding and identifying the issue that calls for response, it's appropriate sometimes to say, you know, I think I understand what you're saying. Could I have some time to think about it? If a person is genuinely concerned about a situation, they will give you an affirmative response. Well, yes.
Jeff Iorg:If you're taking this that seriously, sure. Think about it. Sometimes I simply say, I I need some time on this. I I wanna think about what you're saying. I wanna think about the implications of what you're asking me to do.
Jeff Iorg:I wanna think about the legitimacy of what you're suggesting needs to change. I just need some time to think about it before I make a response back to you. Now if you ask for time let's be clear now. If you ask for time to respond to a complaint, you're indicating that you're going to give them a a response at some point, that you're not just going to dismiss it, forget about it, let it drift away, or hope it goes away. You've practiced your best pastoral care skills.
Jeff Iorg:You've listened for understanding. You've identified the issue that you're being asked to respond regarding, and you say, but I have some time now to really think about this. Now you still may come back and decide to reject the complaint and not respond to it in a positive way, but you're still going to communicate that back if you've asked for more time to make your formal response or to make your defined response. So now you've practiced your best skills. You've listened for understanding.
Jeff Iorg:You've clarified the nature of the complaint. You've asked for time if you've needed it, but now it's decision time. You have to
Jeff Iorg:make a choice of how to respond. Will you validate or will you reject? So let's walk down those two paths now for a few minutes. If you validate the complaint, you essentially agree something needs to be done.
Jeff Iorg:That doesn't mean that you do what the person wants done, but you agree that something needs to be done. For example, a person comes to you and complains, this staff member is not doing their job, and I want them fired. Well, after working through the process I've just outlined on the podcast, you may conclude, you know, in this case, the staff member did not do their job, And they may need corrective guidance. They may need some disciplinary action, but they don't need to be fired over this incident. They don't need to, as the complainer said, lose their job.
Jeff Iorg:So validation of a complaint doesn't always mean that you do what the complainer wants done to resolve the issue. So to validate means that you say to the complainer, you have raised a good point, or you've raised a valid point, or you've raised an issue that I really do feel like I need to address. Now if there's been a mistake or a failure or an oversight on your part, apologize for it. Some of the most powerful words in the English language are I was wrong or I am sorry. To say your complaint resonates with me.
Jeff Iorg:And if it's something that I've done that was a failure or a mistake or an oversight, I'll own it. And I apologize for it. I'm sorry that it happened, and I will make a decision to behave differently or to do things differently in the future. So validation is you've raised a good point. If it's my responsibility, I apologize for it.
Jeff Iorg:I admit my mistake, and I'm going to do better next time. But if it's a complaint about something for which I'm responsible, like a staff member or something like that, but not something I personally have done or failed to do, then my response may be, you've raised a good point. I am taking responsibility for resolving it or for working on it, and I commit to you that I'm going to follow through on your complaint in the way that I deem most appropriate or the way that I deem the best. Now this is important because when people complain to you, you don't wanna promise to them that you're gonna do for them what they've said that you should do in response to their complaint. So back to my illustration.
Jeff Iorg:This staff person did not do an appropriate job on this project or in their relationship with me in some way, and I want them fired. Well, you may validate and say, this person did not do what they should have done, And I hear what you're saying, and I'm going to respond to it in what I think is the best way possible or the best way in this particular situation. So for example, you may call a staff member in and say, hey. I had a complaint about the way you handled yourself in this last meeting or the way you you failed to perform in this project or about the way you mishandled this situation interpersonally. And I think the complaint is valid based on what I've been able to gather in terms of information.
Jeff Iorg:And now we need to talk about how you can do better next time. I need to talk with you about accountability structures or about responding in different ways or about how you can grow through this situation. I need to help you to do better next time. So that's an appropriate response. You can validate a complaint, hear it and understand it, and then make your own determination about how to respond to it.
Jeff Iorg:You don't have to always do what the complainer says. So if someone comes to you and says, you know, your preaching just doesn't really feed me. It just doesn't really connect with me. And you say, well, let me understand that more fully. What is it about my preaching that's really not connecting?
Jeff Iorg:Well, you do a good job explaining the Bible, but you don't really apply it to me very well. Alright. That's a legitimate concern. Let me see if I can work on that and do better in the future as I'm preaching these messages. And then you go back and say, well, the complaint was that I wasn't feeding them, but really the issue was, my applications weren't connecting.
Jeff Iorg:And quite frankly, I do probably need to work more on my applications so that I am making my applications much more clear to people and that I can improve that part of my sermon preparation. So while the person who gave the youth a complaint may have demanded a certain response, you may hear the complaint and understand that while it had some legitimacy, maybe the response they're asking you for wasn't what needs to happen, and you make a better response. So to validate simply means to say, you've raised a good point. You you've raised an issue that deserves a response. You've pointed out something that needs improvement.
Jeff Iorg:And then if you've done something yourself that's simply wrong, apologize for it, or admit that you were wrong and agree to move on from it. But if it's something else that you weren't necessarily personally responsible for, but you are accountable to address, like example, again, the staff member's performance, you may be able to say, I validate the complaint. I understand the legitimacy of it. And now, I'm going to address it in a way that I think is the most helpful or the healthiest going forward. I recently had a situation like this in my work here.
Jeff Iorg:A person complained to me about something that was done in the name of the executive committee, but not by an employee of the executive committee or even a member of the executive committee. But we had asked someone to do something on our behalf, and they did that. And it was done in a way that was perceived to be offensive. I listened to the complaint. I came back and reported that to some of the people involved and said, I I don't really think there's anything more to be done about this other than to learn from it and perhaps go about it differently in the future and to be be careful about who we use to represent us in these kinds of situations.
Jeff Iorg:So again, you can hear a complaint, you can validate it, and you can make a response that's proportional based on all the information you have at hand, not just the response the complainer may suggest or, in some cases, even demand. That's the validation response. But when you decide that a complaint really isn't appropriate and you decide simply to reject it, that's also a viable option. That's when you say, I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with your assessment, and we're going to simply move on.
Jeff Iorg:I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with your assessment or your complaint or your perspective or your opinion. I understand it. I don't agree with it, and we're just simply going to need to move on.
Jeff Iorg:Now, the time when I learned how
Jeff Iorg:to do this best was when I was parenting teenagers. Now without going into any specifics that embarrass any of my three children, there were times with each one of them when they would complain about my parenting or gripe about my decision making or object to something that I was doing as their father. And they would make it very clear to me, like only a teenager can, complaining about my my decision or my perspective or my opinion, they didn't like it. And when I was on my best days as a father, I practiced my best pastoral care slash parenting skills, and I listened for understanding, and I clarified the concern or the complaint that the person was making. And if I heard them and I simply reached the conclusion that we weren't going a new direction, I wasn't changing my mind, that their complaint really wasn't valid, then I would say, listen, I hear where you're coming from.
Jeff Iorg:I understand what you're saying,
Jeff Iorg:but I just don't agree with you. And now we're moving on. Now I would like to say that that was always a really clean process. Who are we kidding?
Jeff Iorg:It's not always a clean process with teenage children to say that, and it is definitely not always a clean process with employees, church members, or other constituents who come to
Jeff Iorg:you with complaints. But sometimes,
Jeff Iorg:when you've practiced your best pastoral skills and you've listened for understanding, you've clarified the issue, and you all agree that what's on
Jeff Iorg:the table is really what's on the table, You just simply have to say, I hear you. I don't agree with you. And now we just need to move on.
Jeff Iorg:Not every complaint deserves an affirmative response or an actionable response. Sometimes, you simply have to say, I hear you. I don't agree with you. And now we're moving on. Sometimes, I've also said, I hear you.
Jeff Iorg:I don't agree with you. I'll think about it some more, but until I have some new information or something changes my opinion or my perspective, we just need to
Jeff Iorg:move on. I will admit sometimes that I'll give it more thought, but in the meantime, we're just going to need to move on. Now this last part, moving on, is so difficult.
Jeff Iorg:Some ministry leaders have a difficulty moving on because they want to resolve every situation. They just believe we should be able to work it all out. We've got to come to a conclusion. We've got to come to an ending,
Jeff Iorg:and it's very difficult when that's not possible. But I've had to accept a hard reality that some situations are going to have to be left open ended, and we're going to have to move on from them with not everyone agreeing with the conclusions are the solution. And just like I sometimes had to say to my
Jeff Iorg:family, listen, we don't always have to agree, but I'm the father here, it's my responsibility to make
Jeff Iorg:the call. I've made the call, now we're moving on. Sometimes I've had
Jeff Iorg:to do the same thing in leadership. Listen. I know we don't agree on this, but I'm the pastor or I'm the president. And I'm the one responsible to make the final call on this one, and I'm making it, and now we're moving on. Moving forward with open ended, unresolved issues is very difficult, but sometimes has to be done.
Jeff Iorg:Another reason this is hard for ministry leaders is because we wanna please everyone. We want everyone to be happy with us. We want everyone to be satisfied with and affirming of our decisions, and we wanna keep working on an issue until we get there. But you just can't always get there. You can't please everyone, and not everyone will always agree with all of your decisions.
Jeff Iorg:You have to make some sometimes that people just simply will not accept and then move on. Another hard reality is that when you have a complaint or a series of complaints or a person who is really caught up in a lot of complaining, that when you've practiced your best pastoral care skills and you've listened for understanding and you've clarified issues and you've validated some but rejected others, when you've said we just simply have to move on, we know it's unresolved, we know we don't agree, but
Jeff Iorg:we have to move on, the hard reality is sometimes this means people will leave your church or your organization. They will move on and leave over the complaints.
Jeff Iorg:This is hard, and I don't wanna minimize the difficulty of it today. But I will tell you that in almost fifty years now of ministry leadership, the people who've actually left over this kind of complaining have not been that many. And when they have, while it's usually caused a short term pain in the church or the organization, it's usually not caused long term damage. So have confidence that God can see you through these situations. And when complainers do leave, oftentimes, while it's painful in
Jeff Iorg:the short run, you'll find it might be beneficial to both the church, the organization, and to you as a leader in the long run. Hearing complaints is part of leadership, and it's certainly part of ministry leadership. Leadership. People are going to complain to us about all kinds of things. When they do, practice your best pastoral care skills, be a non anxious presence, focus on issues, not people, and then listen for understanding.
Jeff Iorg:Clarify the complaint.
Jeff Iorg:Once you feel like you really understand what's happening and why, then make a choice. Validate by saying, I hear you and we need to respond. If you've done something wrong, own it, apologize for it, move on. If it's something that someone else has done that's under your supervision, validate the complaint and say, I hear what you're saying and now I'm going to take it under advisement and make the best response necessary in this situation. And if you need to, you might also sometimes have to say, I hear you, I don't agree and now we're just moving on.
Jeff Iorg:When you do that, there may be some times when you have to accept the hard reality that unresolved issues just have to be left unresolved, that disagreement means you can't please everyone, and sometimes, sometimes, people may even leave over the inability that you have to resolve their complaint successfully at least in their eyes. Well, this is heavy stuff dealing with complaints and complainers. Remember what I said today about how to do this and in the context of all of it, pray and ask God for supernatural wisdom to bring about the best response possible and the best resolution available in these sometimes very trying situations. Respond to complaints well. It's a part of your challenge as a leader and as a ministry leader.
Jeff Iorg:Put these principles into practice today as you lead on.