Lead On Podcast

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses why Spirit-empowered self-restraint is an essential leadership discipline when everything in you wants to react rather than respond.

Creators and 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, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Well, today, I wanna talk with you about a leadership principle that comes out of a little side story, if you will, that's tucked into one of the most serious and quite frankly, you know, heartbreaking parts of the scripture. But tucked into that larger sad story is a smaller story that is not humorous, but it almost is, if you will, because of how it stands out in contrast to what's happening around it. So let's go into the last days of Jesus' life.

Jeff Iorg:

He's having various experiences culminating in an all night prayer meeting.

Jeff Iorg:

And after that prayer meeting, or really in the middle of it, a mob arrives. And they arrest Jesus and take him into custody. Peter was there. He was outraged and panicked. He drew a sword and slashed at the crowd, cutting off the right ear of a fellow named Malchus, who the Bible tells us was the high priest's servant.

Jeff Iorg:

And this is typical of Peter. Impetuous action, trying to solve the wrong problem in the wrong way at the wrong time

Jeff Iorg:

and the wrong place. He was tired, having slept fitfully, if at all, the previous night. He was probably hungry. Remember this mob arrived near daybreak after this all night prayer meeting. And certainly, given all of the circumstances, he would have been intimidated by what was happening.

Jeff Iorg:

Jesus had recently predicted his own death and, frankly, also Peter's denials, and these were probably reverberating through Peter's mind as all of

Jeff Iorg:

this was taking place all at once. And his response, it's time to stop all this. Off with their heads. So out comes the sword.

Jeff Iorg:

I wanna talk with you today on

Jeff Iorg:

the podcast about these two words, restrain yourself.

Jeff Iorg:

Restrain yourself.

Jeff Iorg:

It's the challenge of leadership, and particularly the challenge for younger leaders to be able to make the choice to hold back

Jeff Iorg:

when everything inside of you wants to lash out. Now in the story that I've been mentioning from scripture, Jesus then rebuked Peter strongly for whacking off Malchus' ear, picked it up, dusted it off, and restored it to this man while condemning the violence of the act. He told Peter to put his sword away, lest he die by the same means someday. Jesus then asked three rhetorical questions. He said, do you think I cannot call on my father and he will provide me with more than 12 legions of angels?

Jeff Iorg:

And then, how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen that way? And then he finally concluded, am I

Jeff Iorg:

not to drink the cup the father has given me?

Jeff Iorg:

Jesus then reminded the mob that he had taught openly in the temple many times and was never arrested because his capture events had to unfold in such a way as to fulfill the prophecies about him. You know what happened next. Peter, along with the remaining 11 disciples, made a second rash spur of

Jeff Iorg:

the moment decision related to Jesus's arrest. They deserted. Ran away into the night. Now, impetuosity is a common quality of younger leaders. Many have not yet learned the discipline of self restraint.

Jeff Iorg:

It's difficult when God seems slow to act, to wait for his purpose and his timing to be revealed. Peter saw Jesus' situation as desperate. Jesus had a different perspective. He understood God's plan, timing, and purpose in the events. Peter's limited perspective, physical fatigue, spiritual dullness, and impulsive personality all contributed to his choice to whip out his sword and start fighting.

Jeff Iorg:

Now think about those four categories that help us understand why we make impetuous choices. Limited perspective, physical fatigue, spiritual dullness, impulsive personality. You likely have one or all of these qualities. But no matter the reason,

Jeff Iorg:

impulsive actions almost always end badly. Now while Peter's dilemma in the Yosemite was unique, the principle of practicing self restraint in the face of troubling circumstances when God seems slow to act applies in many leadership situations. Self restraint is not about you having more personal discipline or you counting to 10 in the moment or you resisting the temptation. No. Self control or self discipline or self restraint is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Jeff Iorg:

Practicing self restraint, self control, self discipline requires spiritual motivation and personal choices,

Jeff Iorg:

often under pressure. What kind of pressure?

Jeff Iorg:

The pressure of limited perspective, physical fatigue, spiritual dullness, and impulsive personality. In the midst of those things, the pressure mounts.

Jeff Iorg:

I've got

Jeff Iorg:

to do something. It's hard to hold back when everything within you wants to lash out or move forward. Learning to take charge of your emotions and measure your response in heated moments is an essential

Jeff Iorg:

leadership skill. And you'll find that you have to express this principle in several areas of life. First of all, you have to learn how to show self restraint and how you express yourself. Now it may seem cathartic in

Jeff Iorg:

the moment to give somebody a piece of your mind, but the collateral damage will diminish your satisfaction. Back in the day when I started out of ministry, this usually involved being careful with what you said or maybe what you wrote in a letter. These days, the problem is exacerbated by email, text messaging, social media, voicemail. It's so tempting to reply to a hostile email or a post with a boldness or even a brashness beyond what you would ever do in a face to face encounter.

Jeff Iorg:

This is almost never productive. So a few years ago, a person wrote a presumptive email to me critical of my leadership.

Jeff Iorg:

His message to me was based on misinformation, outright lies, and conclusions from his own delusional thinking. And that email made me mad. I mean, if I had

Jeff Iorg:

been a cartoon character, I would have had smoke puffing out of my ears and fire coming off of my head. I was hot. So I wrote him back. And in very plain terms, I corrected the record and confronted his pompous attitude. I felt pretty good about myself.

Jeff Iorg:

Then he replied, and it said something like this, thank you. I will now post both my email and your reply on my website. Gotcha.

Jeff Iorg:

Like an animal lured to a trap,

Jeff Iorg:

I had fallen for his gambit and responded in a way that he could use to further attack me. Look, it would

Jeff Iorg:

have been better to have practiced self restraint with this irrational critic. A limited response or no response at all would have been more appropriate. Now it would

Jeff Iorg:

have been less satisfying in the moment, but also less damaging over the long haul. And it's not just me. Even my sweet darling, kind wife, Anne, fell prey to this some years ago. Someone was doing something in our community and she was particularly upset about it and decided to write a letter to the editor. So she fired off this letter and I'll just say that ended badly.

Jeff Iorg:

And she

Jeff Iorg:

came away from that experience and said, man, what was I thinking?

Jeff Iorg:

Well, what she was thinking was that she wanted to make things right, even the score, settle with a critic. And yet, in doing that, made the problem only worse.

Jeff Iorg:

You must learn self restraint in leadership and how you express yourself. And with almost no exception that I can think of,

Jeff Iorg:

when I have responded to critical commentary with like minded response, trying to justify myself, explain myself, correct the record, fix the errors, or otherwise attack the person who's attacking me, it has always ended badly. One of the hardest things to do in leadership is to put into practice what Jesus said about turning the other cheek, about enduring some abuse, and about moving forward doing the right thing the right way, and trusting that over time, the right perspective will prevail. A second

Jeff Iorg:

area you have to learn self restraint is decision making. You know, it's tempting to plow ahead. When God puts up a stop sign or a yield sign, it's tempting to plow ahead anyway. We believe we've gotta make progress. We've gotta conquer the next hill.

Jeff Iorg:

We've gotta accomplish more and more. In fact, we do this to our detriment because we plow over obstacles that God has put in our path to slow us or redirect us or to put us on his timetable. I see one major area for this where ministries really struggle today, and that's on borrowing money to build facilities. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that all borrowing is wrong.

Jeff Iorg:

It's not. I'm not saying that there's not some wisdom in using resources this way. I'm not trying to make an overly conclusive absolute statement, but I will will go this far and say that you need to be extremely careful and show some restraint when it comes to borrowing. Rather than wait on God's provision, oftentimes today, the prevailing counsel is to borrow and build and let the people attracted by the building or let the people reached by the building pay for it. Now that sounds like a good strategy.

Jeff Iorg:

And it is a a reasonable strategy until something happens. Economic downturn in the middle of the project, key donors leaving for whatever reason. One church I worked with had a moral scandal among its pastors immediately after borrowing several million dollars. Another school, Christian school that I was working with had a significant scandal just before it went into a major project and had to dismiss their headmaster. All of this happened

Jeff Iorg:

in the context of decisions being made about major ministry financial commitments. Some were left stranded, strapped because of the impact of what happened after the borrowing took place. Now when you are thinking about making a decision, practice self restraint especially as it relates to debt and financial obligation.

Jeff Iorg:

You might be thinking, well, don't you ever take a risk? Don't you ever go forward? Don't you

Jeff Iorg:

ever borrow? Well, of course

Jeff Iorg:

you do. I'm not saying today you take no risk, but I'm asking you this hard question. Have you really thought about restraining yourself and being careful and wise and being pushed forward rather than moving forward at such a breakneck pace that you make a decision that has long ranging negative consequences. There's also other areas of self restraint in decision making. Areas like supervising an assistant, firm boundaries between you and an assistant about what's appropriate and what's inappropriate in the relationship.

Jeff Iorg:

Self restraint in managing your expense account, self restraint in managing ministry finances, a self restraint in managing the boundaries of a dual gender work environment.

Jeff Iorg:

You know, leaders have privileges and it's so easy to manipulate circumstances to our advantage. And making self limiting choices is difficult. Self limiting choices. That's what I'm talking about when I say that you practice self restraint, self control, self discipline. It's self limiting choices.

Jeff Iorg:

Someone has said, rank has its privileges. Wise leaders know that rank has more responsibilities than privileges.

Jeff Iorg:

So I want you to practice self restraint in some of these areas. Now, in doing so, let me end up with three big suggestions on how you can enhance self restraint. How you can make the choice to be self limiting in your behaviors, especially in how you express yourself in decision making and in other areas like supervision of people and money and relationships. Number one, learning self restraint begins by recognizing self control as a holy spirit produced character quality. You know, entitlement is not a fruit of the spirit or a special purview of leaders.

Jeff Iorg:

The opposite is actually true. We're supposed to be models not of entitlement,

Jeff Iorg:

but of self control, self discipline, self restraint. And we model self control in the face of peer pressure often tempting us to do otherwise. We are tempted that our leadership will not demonstrate the consistent discipline of being spirit controlled. We are tempted that our leadership evidence entitlement or evidence self actualization rather than self control.

Jeff Iorg:

When I say that self control or self discipline or self restraint is a spirit produced character quality, I draw that, of course, from Galatians chapter five. Isn't this a bit of a paradoxical statement that something that starts with the word self is actually spiritually produced? When I talk about having self control or self discipline or self restraint, I'm not talking about you just manning up or you just bowing your back or you just stiffening your neck or you just doing something to be tougher. No. Actually, opposite.

Jeff Iorg:

I'm talking about you coming to the end of

Jeff Iorg:

yourself, finding yourself on your knees with a prayer like this. Lord, I don't have the strength of will to make the right choices. I don't have the discipline or the control

Jeff Iorg:

or the restraint within myself

Jeff Iorg:

to do these things appropriately. But, Lord, I'm asking you to empower me that my self control might rest on you. My self discipline might grow out of you, and my self restraint will be

Jeff Iorg:

a reflection of your discipline in my life. It sounds like a contradiction. When the Bible says that self discipline or self control or self restraint is a fruit of the spirit, it doesn't mean that self meaning you have to be strong. It means self meaning you come to the end of yourself and ask that God would empower yourself with his control, his discipline, and his restraint. A second step.

Jeff Iorg:

A second step towards self restraint really comes out of the book of Proverbs

Jeff Iorg:

where it says over and over again that self restraint is evidenced by talking less and speaking more carefully. Self restraint is evidenced, demonstrated, shown publicly by talking less and speaking more carefully.

Jeff Iorg:

There really is a direct correlation between the amount of self restraint you have and the words that come out of your mouth. You know, leaders seldom have to apologize or clean up damage for what they did not say. It's especially important to learn to measure your words when you're tired or angry or frustrated. You know, as parents, we knew that our children were prone to behaving badly when they were tired, angry, or frustrated.

Jeff Iorg:

Every parent knows that these emotions often produce actions and words that are not only unhealthy but often out of character. Leaders are human. We are susceptible to poor choices when life has worn us down, when we're tired, when we're angry, when we're frustrated. So when these things are a part of your experience, you have to double down on the discipline to keep from saying, writing, or

Jeff Iorg:

venting something in that moment that will come back to haunt you. You know, harsh words may vent emotions, but they seldom produce lasting leadership results. I'm thinking about an incident that I had once with a young man. I lashed out at him with just a couple of sentences,

Jeff Iorg:

and I physically saw him cringing

Jeff Iorg:

at my words and wilting under their influence. I still remember that as an ugly moment of leadership failure in my experience of leading him and in his life.

Jeff Iorg:

Took me a while to repair that relationship and to undo the damage I did that day. Harsh words. They vented my emotions, but they did not produce the leadership results I want. You may even intimidate someone into immediate action. You may shame someone into doing something you want done in the moment, but you will not motivate people to sustained excellence with harsh words.

Jeff Iorg:

You you may win an argument. You may win the moment, but you may lose a follower. You may answer a critic,

Jeff Iorg:

but you may only inflame them more for a future attack. It's hard because most leaders many leaders are gifted speakers. You're able to use words in influential ways. Words are really, in some ways, the currency of your leadership capacity. And these gifts, when used positively, make such an important difference.

Jeff Iorg:

But the same gifts when used negatively, when you're tired and angry and frustrated and you use your speaking gifts, your verbal gifts to inflict damage, it can be very difficult to overcome. So listen, getting control of your words. According to the book of Proverbs, multiple places, getting control of your words is one of the most important ways to model self restraint and has some of

Jeff Iorg:

the most important outcomes in prohibiting the problems or limiting the problems that come from a lack of self restraint. Okay. Third. A third area which requires self restraint is controlling your emotions during decision making. Now the two most troublesome emotions for leaders are anger and fear.

Jeff Iorg:

Fear makes you timid, afraid to do the

Jeff Iorg:

right thing the right way at the right time, Making decisions or even not making decisions based on fear leads to shortsighted, least common denominator results rather than bold, innovative, visionary decisions. And angry decisions have the same results only from different motives. Anger prompts rash decisions also producing immediate relief, but without long range profitability. When a leader responds in anger, the result usually damages relationships, which is the hard currency of Christian leadership. This is almost never positive for the individuals and certainly not for the organization or the church that's involved.

Jeff Iorg:

When you're in the midst of making decisions, you cannot make those decisions driven by emotions, especially the negative emotions of fear and anger. Now, self restraint with emotions doesn't mean you deny them or ignore them. It means you own them. You admit when you're angry or afraid and you own that emotion, but you don't let it control you. You're like an old time cowboy.

Jeff Iorg:

You brand the emotion for what it is and then pin it up until you get the decision made. You're able to say, you know, I'm really angry about this situation and I'm gonna label that, and I'm gonna walk it over here, and I'm gonna put it in this pin, or I'm gonna tie it to this post. I'm gonna leave it right there, and I'm gonna come back to making my decision without the anger involved. Same thing with fear. I'm really fearful about this and about what it might mean or what it might do, but I'm not gonna make the decision based on that.

Jeff Iorg:

I'll remove the fear from the equation. Like an old time cowboy, I'm gonna label it, pin it up, and get back to it. I'm gonna come back and resolve my anger or my fear in the situation, but I'm not gonna let either one of those things define me or drive me as I make my decisions. You know, it's tough to do. Continuing the cowboy analogy, you know, emotions kinda buck and jump like a like a Brock trying to throw off a rider.

Jeff Iorg:

They buck and they jump. They're trying to get your attention, but decisions are made outside the corral, not inside where the emotion is brewing or the emotion is bucking or the emotion is jumping. Self restraint acknowledges, hey, look, there's a lot of emotion around this decision, but we gotta separate the fear and the anger from the decision, and we gotta make the decision based on the mission and on what matters in the moment to accomplish God's purpose in our church or organization or family. Now, self restraint acknowledges that emotions are at play in decisions, but decides based on mission and vision and values, not based on emotional impulse. We make mission disciplined decisions, not those driven by fear or by anger.

Jeff Iorg:

Well, self restraint. It's needed in multiple areas as we've said, and it can involve these three big steps. First, look to the Holy Spirit and to God himself to produce self control, self discipline, self restraint in your life. Second, focus on controlling your words as a primary, if you will, laboratory for demonstrating self restraint and a primary area in which self restraint makes a significant difference. And then third, practice self restraint in decision making, particularly restraining yourself from emotionally driven decisions driven by fear or anger, setting those aside and coming to the decision making process apart from being controlled or dominated by those feelings.

Jeff Iorg:

Well, Peter, he whipped out a sword and he whacked off an ear.

Jeff Iorg:

I bet that felt good in the moment. I don't wanna lie about it. I'll bet it did. I'll bet he felt a sense of relief that he

Jeff Iorg:

had finally done something proactive, that he had done something purposeful, that he had done something that reacted against and attacked those who were harming Jesus. I just don't think it's inappropriate speculation to imagine in that moment, felt pretty good about it. And then Jesus said, put up that sword. Where is that ear? Come here, Malchus.

Jeff Iorg:

Let me put this back on. You go you're gonna be okay. And then Jesus, of course, saying to everyone, there's a better way. There's a higher purpose. This is not how I want things done.

Jeff Iorg:

Self restraint. You may want to do something that will feel good in the moment. You may want to fire off an email, make a social media post, publish something on a blog. You may decide something in the heat of anger or even plagued by your fear. But when you do these things, you will find the results are never what you hoped.

Jeff Iorg:

Because in the absence of self restraint, the wrong reasons, the wrong motives, and the wrong outcomes typically result. Leaders practice self restraint. They keep the sword in the sheath and in doing so, allow God's purposes to really be accomplished. It is hard to do but essential that you learn this discipline. Practice self restraint as you lead on.