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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the essential role of the Holy Spirit in effective ministry leadership. Using Barnabas as a biblical example, Iorg explores how being filled with the Holy Spirit produces practical, observable results—from transformed character and greater faith to evangelistic effectiveness, wise personnel decisions, and strategic leadership.
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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.
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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, carrying on our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Well, as you know, on this podcast, I don't do any preaching. I don't record my messages or my sermons and play them back to you. And I also don't do a lot of what I would call Bible study, where we simply look into scripture and think, deeply about texts.
Jeff Iorg:There's a lot of other people doing great work on both of those. And in different contexts, I like doing both of those as well. But on this podcast, we typically focus on more specifically the practical issues of leadership. Well, today I wanna converge one of those practical issues with some Bible study material. I want us to take a look at scripture and consider an important concept, which frankly I'm becoming more and more convinced needs more and more emphasis in leadership development, particularly among those of us who are in the Baptist family.
Jeff Iorg:I want to talk to you today about the role of
Jeff Iorg:the Holy Spirit in leadership. Specifically, I want
Jeff Iorg:to talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit and how leaders need to experience that as a part of their leadership practice. And then I wanna talk also about the work of the Holy Spirit in worship services and in public demonstration of His power in our churches. And I hope to do this over the next two weeks on the podcast, so today I'd like for you to join me in Acts chapter
Jeff Iorg:11 just for a verse to get us started on this idea of the importance of the filling of the Holy Spirit for leaders.
Jeff Iorg:You know, I said, I I see a need for more emphasis of this. I've had this said to me so many times. When I teach on this in different contexts, someone will usually come up to me and say, man, I'm not used to a Baptist preacher talking about the Holy Spirit, or man, I didn't know I was in a Baptist meeting there for a minute because all you were talking about was the Holy Spirit. When people say that to me, I know that usually they're making light or they're trying to a joke,
Jeff Iorg:and I I understand that. But on the other hand, those comments are often really sad to me. I mean, what's wrong with us? What's wrong with us
Jeff Iorg:in the Baptist community that we're not talking openly and often about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and working hard, if you will, to depend on the Holy Spirit, to give strenuous focus and effort, to abandoning our own strength and trusting in Him to accomplish through us what only can be done supernaturally. So I hope you don't find this conversation unusual, and I I certainly hope you don't find it, extraneous to what we're talking about when we talk about the importance of leadership and of leading in the right way. So to help us get started, I just want to introduce you to one leader in the New Testament who was described as being full of the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 11, we read the story of the founding of the church at Antioch. Now, the church started when some preachers arrived and started sharing the gospel in this very secular city.
Jeff Iorg:Remember, Antioch had no Christians, not a one. These preachers arrived and started sharing the gospel, and the Bible says that it took root and started bearing fruit in the Gentile community. And so they started preaching the gospel broadly among the Gentiles, and the Bible says that large numbers of them were coming to faith in Jesus. When this happened and news reached the church at Jerusalem, they were not pleased
Jeff Iorg:with the report. You see, the
Jeff Iorg:church at Jerusalem had focused mostly its ministry on evangelizing Jews, and there was even a movement already in the early church that said some people needed to become Jews before they could become Christians, and these preachers in Antioch were confounding all of that. So when word got to Jerusalem, they dispatched someone to go check out what was happening. His name was Barnabas. Now later, he's known as an encourager, but in this context, he's not an encourager, he's what I would call an inquisitor.
Jeff Iorg:He was sent to Antioch to check out this movement, see if it was real, and if he had concerns, put a stop to it. Well, the opposite actually happened. The Barnabas arrives in Antioch, sees what's happening, is moved profoundly, and encourages it to continue.
Jeff Iorg:We read that in Acts eleven twenty three when the Bible says, Barnabas arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts. And then after doing that, his motivation and a description of his spiritual life and character follows. The next verse, for he was a good man,
Jeff Iorg:full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.
Jeff Iorg:Now that's a threefold description of
Jeff Iorg:Barnabas. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith.
Jeff Iorg:You know, in leadership development, I've tended over the years to talk a lot about the first and third parts of that description. He's a good man. I have spent a good deal of time writing about and teaching about the importance of character development among leaders. I even wrote a book called The Character of Leadership and have another book coming out next year called Endurance Leading for the Long Haul, which is also about character and the importance of developing the right kind of characters to sustain us over fifty years of ministry leadership. So I have focused a good bit of my attention in leadership development over the years on being a good man or a good woman, a good person.
Jeff Iorg:And then the last part, and of faith. That speaks of vision, the capacity to see the future and to have confidence in God that He can use you to lead people to accomplish something that's never been done before, to go into a future that seems perhaps uncertain, that requires boldness and creativity in order to achieve. That's what
Jeff Iorg:it means to be a man of faith. So Barnabas was a good man, a man whose character demonstrated a relationship to God. He was a man of faith whose passion and vision communicated confidence in God. But
Jeff Iorg:right in the
Jeff Iorg:middle, the centerpiece of this trifold description of this good and godly man, he was a good man, he was full of faith, but in the middle, he's described as being full of the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:Now, I think this is more than just happenstance. I think this is carefully constructed scripture under inspiration and also with Luke making a point as he writes this history. That yes, Barnabas was a good man, his character was exemplary, and he was full of faith. He did have capacity to believe, to see the future, and to lead people to trust God to get them to it, but in
Jeff Iorg:the middle of it, in the middle, is this succinct and powerful description of his spirituality, his spiritual focus, and his spiritual power. He was full of the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:Now, some years ago, I postulated in a chapel message at Gateway Seminary, the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in our school, and I asked this question, is a spirit filled seminary
Jeff Iorg:possible?
Jeff Iorg:When I finished the chapel message to my surprise, two faculty members came up to me immediately and said, Doctor. Iorg, would you consider coming to the faculty retreat next summer and speaking to all of us and answering that question? We really want to know if a Spirit filled seminary is possible, and if so, what the faculty can do to facilitate that. What a tremendous opportunity that was for me, and also quite frankly, a little bit intimidating to walk into a room of Bible scholars and say something as important as the answer to the question of how to have a spirit filled seminary. Well, we learned fairly quickly that a spirit filled seminary isn't really possible because God doesn't these days fill buildings or places, God fills people.
Jeff Iorg:So in the sense that we wanted the seminary, if we meant the facilities or the programs or the organization to somehow be spirit filled, that that wasn't going to happen. But if we meant by that, that the Holy Spirit could fill many of us in leadership and in doing so, create a fresh movement of the spirit both through us and among us, then yes, we discovered that a spirit filled seminary was definitely possible. And so that sent me into a pretty detailed study in the New Testament of what it means to be spirit filled. One of the first things I learned
Jeff Iorg:is that there is no formula
Jeff Iorg:in the New Testament for being spirit filled.
Jeff Iorg:Now that's a really good thing, because if there was a
Jeff Iorg:formula, Southern Baptist would have made an acronym out of it and figured out a way to measure it on our annual church profile and reduced it to some kind of mathematical or numerical analysis. So there is no formula. There's no checklist. There's no set of steps. There's no guaranteed recipe for the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:Another thing I learned is that there is no person in the New Testament who claims to have been filled with the spirit. You say, but wait, wait, wait, there's several people.
Jeff Iorg:No. Now listen carefully. There's no person in
Jeff Iorg:the New Testament who says, I am Spirit filled. Spirit filling was always a third party attribution. So that Luke, in writing this letter or this history of acts to us, said of Barnabas, he was full of the Holy Spirit, but Barnabas never made that claim for himself. And you can find several examples in the New Testament of people who were described as being full
Jeff Iorg:of the Holy Spirit, but they were always described that way by someone else. Man, that ought to speak to us about our humility and our need for, submission to God that is observable by others, not trumpeted by ourselves. So for example, it would
Jeff Iorg:be very appropriate, and I hope someday it happens that people would say of me, man, Jeff, when you were leading that meeting or you were preaching that message or you were teaching that class or you were counseling that troubled person, or you were sharing the gospel with that lost person, I could see the Holy Spirit at work through you. I could sense the spiritual power that was taking place through your life. Thank you for that. Now that would be very appropriate. What would not be appropriate would be for me or you or anyone else to stand up and say, I'm full of the Holy Spirit today.
Jeff Iorg:I feel the spirit in me today. I know the spirit is working through me today because I'm full of the Holy Spirit. You can't make that claim for yourself, but it ought to be so evident as a part of your life that other people could make that claim on your behalf. So there's no biblical formula, and there's no personal attribution, only third party attribution of the filling of the Spirit. Another thing I observed in my study is that the filling of the Holy Spirit produces one of two kinds of results.
Jeff Iorg:First, it produces what I'll call spiritual fruit, our personal transformation. It it produces in us life change that's evident through us. And a good example of this, of course, is Galatians five twenty two twenty three, where the fruit of the spirit are listed or at least some of them are listed. And that speaks about our character development, our way of relating to others, our our demonstrated capacity for being different kind of people than the secular world around us or than that we were prior to our conversion. We are different people, and we're different because the Holy Spirit is bearing fruit through us as he builds us and uses us.
Jeff Iorg:But the second kind of results are what I'll call supernatural results, and these are external corporate expressions of the filling of the Holy Spirit. There are several of these mentioned, for example, in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter two verse four, the church spoke the gospel in various languages. In Acts chapter four beginning in verse eight, Peter preached courageously after being filled with the spirit. In Acts chapter four verse 31, the church witnessed with boldness because Spirit was filling them.
Jeff Iorg:In Acts chapter seven, Stephen is sustained through his death by the power of the Spirit. Paul was delivered from blindness in Acts chapter nine. You you get the idea. The Holy Spirit's filling produces supernatural results. In other words, observable phenomena that cannot be explained any other way than the Holy Spirit being at work in the moment.
Jeff Iorg:So there is no biblical formula for being filled. There is no personal claim of filling in the New Testament, only third party attribution. And when the Holy Spirit does fill a person, there's either spiritual fruit or supernatural results.
Jeff Iorg:This is how we know a person is filled with the Holy Spirit. But now, let's go back
Jeff Iorg:to Barnabas for a few minutes. This is the podcast on the practical aspects of ministry leadership, and so a good question would be asked is, does the Holy Spirit's filling produce tangible and practical results in ministry leadership As he works through us to bear fruit and produce supernatural results, are any of these demonstrably practically useful in the day to day work we're doing as leaders? In other words, does the Holy Spirit fill us to do the day to day work that we're assigned, or is it just some special ethereal, almost, you know, out of character or out of the moment experience that we should expect to have? Well, let's go back to Barnabas for a minute. What is it that was demonstrably different about Barnabas and that he was able to do that we can observe in terms of the kind of leader that he was and the kind of task that he performed that were growing out of this centerpiece description of him as being full of the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:Well, first of all,
Jeff Iorg:the filling of the Holy Spirit produced character transformation in him. It says he was a good man and that he was full of faith. His character was changing and his capacities were enlarging because that centerpiece description was true, he was full of the holy spirit. Now, beyond that, he was also effective in evangelizing people with the gospel. It says, at the end of verse 24, he was full of
Jeff Iorg:the Holy Spirit and large numbers of people were added to the Lord. Evangelistic success. You know, recently I was speaking at a conference and it was on specifically about taking the gospel into communities and sharing the gospel, and
Jeff Iorg:I started telling stories of having done that in Portland, Oregon and in other places along the way while I was working on the West Coast. And as I was telling those stories, the response of the students that were hearing them was moving and meaningful,
Jeff Iorg:but it was even more powerful inside me as I reflected on what caused all of those things to happen. Certainly wasn't my smooth personality or my glib words or my, you know, unique, capacity for building connections or relationships. None of those
Jeff Iorg:things are my strengths. No.
Jeff Iorg:When I look back over the evangelistic success that I've had,
Jeff Iorg:so much of it is simply beyond what anyone can explain.
Jeff Iorg:It was simply the Holy Spirit working through me in making connections and knowing the words to say and knowing how to share gospel, in knowing when to ask people to make commitment, the Holy Spirit at work through me produced evangelistic results. I look back on those stories that I was telling in this conference and I marvel, I marvel that the Holy Spirit was at work using me to be a conduit for sharing the gospel and for seeing evangelistic success. So being full of the spirit means it transforms you personally, shapes your character and your capacity for faith and vision and leadership. Being full of spirit makes you more evangelistically effective as you share the gospel and you see the supernatural work God through you to communicate the gospel and bring people into a faith relationship with Jesus. Another aspect of this part of the story is the whole filling of the holy spirit also made Barnabas into the encouraging leader that he was later known to be.
Jeff Iorg:Remember, when Barnabas arrived and saw the grace of God, the Bible says, he was moved by that. And what did he do at the end of verse 23? He encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord. Now it's hard to really understand this unless you can just deep dive into the background just a bit, but you got to understand how deeply rooted this prejudice was against these Gentile Christians. I mean, by this time this is happening in the book of acts, the Jerusalem church was six, eight years old at least.
Jeff Iorg:For six to eight years, the Jerusalem church had been, in essence, disobeying the great commission. They had not taken the gospel to the whole world. They were very much focused on taking the gospel into Jewish communities. And when an occasional Gentile came to faith, it was scandalous at best and questionable at worst. And then the gospel arrives in Antioch and all these Gentiles start coming to faith in Jesus and Barnabas goes there.
Jeff Iorg:Barnabas goes there, as I've said, as an inquisitor, he went there to check it out. And if he followed the pattern of what had happened up until now,
Jeff Iorg:significantly question or even curtail this gospel spreading among the Gentiles. But that is not what he did. When he got there,
Jeff Iorg:he saw what was happening and the Holy Spirit at work through him, producing this life change that I've already described and this passion for and effectiveness and evangelism that I've already described,
Jeff Iorg:the Holy Spirit working in him, shifted him from
Jeff Iorg:inquisitor to encourager and moved him from being a person who was critical or skeptical or suspicious to being an encourager. What a great word that is and how transformational it was that he went through that experience. Well, the Holy Spirit not only did that, but he also filled Barnabas for something else, which
Jeff Iorg:was called personnel selection. What happens next? It says, then Barnabas went to Tarsus to search for Saul. Man, I'd like to have been in that
Jeff Iorg:meeting when, Barnabas walked 90 miles one way to Tarsus before there were cell phones or telegraphs and hoped he would still be there and then walked all the way back with him. Got to the church at Antioch and said, I wanna introduce you to my friend Saul. Sometimes we call him Paul.
Jeff Iorg:Now don't get nervous, but this is the
Jeff Iorg:guy you've heard about that used
Jeff Iorg:to kill Christians, but he's okay, he's okay. He's gonna be your teaching pastor. That's what Barnabas did. I'd like to have been in that meeting. Barnabas had the wisdom to know who was needed in that moment to be the right person to serve in the right way, in the right role, to do the right thing, to
Jeff Iorg:communicate the gospel and translate it out of its Jewish roots into a Gentile mindset, and he knew he had the right guy. Now this is very significant to me because over the years, I've been charged with a responsibility of making personnel selections on behalf of the organizations I've led. I selected faculty members for Gateway Seminary. I selected vice presidents along the way. And it just so happens, I'm not sure when you'll be hearing this exact version of this podcast, but I'm in the process of searching for a vice president right now at the executive committee.
Jeff Iorg:And I am asking God to fill me with the Holy Spirit for leadership selection, for personnel selection. You say, well, yeah, the Lord
Jeff Iorg:will guide you, the Lord will lead you, and and yeah, I know,
Jeff Iorg:but I'm I'm wanting even more than that. I'm asking for the filling of the Holy Spirit to be so powerful in my life that He would make it completely clear to me who He compels me to select for this position. I want this kind of experience just like Barnabas had with Saul. You don't get any more practical than that, friends. When I
Jeff Iorg:talk about the Holy Spirit filling us for leadership, yeah, personal transformation, evangelistic success, transitioning our hearts and turning us into encouragers instead of skeptics and critics, but He also fills us for leadership selection for deciding who's gonna be deacon or who's gonna be elder, who's gonna be associate pastor, who's gonna be youth minister, who's gonna be faculty member, who's going to be on the team.
Jeff Iorg:The Holy Spirit filling us produces that result. And then I
Jeff Iorg:would also say he fills us for strategic leadership decisions. Barnabas went on. It says that when he found Saul, he
Jeff Iorg:brought him to Antioch, and for a whole year, they met with the church and taught large numbers. You know,
Jeff Iorg:the Bible often summarizes in a verse what takes a year to live out, and that's what happens here. For a whole year, it says, they taught the church. The Holy Spirit energizing Saul,
Jeff Iorg:energizing Barnabas, using them to implement this strategic year long teaching ministry that was transformational in the church in Antioch. So what I'm trying to emphasize
Jeff Iorg:is that the feeling of
Jeff Iorg:the Holy Spirit is not a it's not
Jeff Iorg:a feeling you get during a certain song. It's not a, it's not an emotional experience that has to produce a certain kind
Jeff Iorg:of feelings or a certain kind of outward expressions. The
Jeff Iorg:feeling of the Holy Spirit is not a an ethereal moment where you're having almost like an out of body spiritual experience of some weird kind. Filling of the Holy Spirit isn't about doing something ridiculous and, you know, bark like a dog or jump over a pew. It's none of that. The filling of the Holy Spirit as Barnabas experienced it and as Luke describes it
Jeff Iorg:is so practical and so specific in how it impacts us in ministry leadership. When the Holy Spirit fills a leader,
Jeff Iorg:their character is changed, their capacity for faith is increased. Their attitude shifts from skeptic and inquisitor to encourager. They are more productive in evangelism, they are wiser in personnel selection, and they are more strategic in their decision making and in their longevity of implementing those decisions over time. When Barnabas is described as being full of the Holy
Jeff Iorg:Spirit, these are the results that were evident in his life. Listen.
Jeff Iorg:Being a spiritual leader is more than mastering biblical content or even, learning leadership principles. Being a spiritual leader is about dialing in on the filling of the Holy Spirit and allowing the Holy Spirit to be at work through us in ways that are
Jeff Iorg:practical and observable and make
Jeff Iorg:a genuine difference in the leadership we're providing, in the organizations we've been assigned, in the churches we're trying to lead. I want you to move away from thinking of the filling of the Holy Spirit as something that happens to you emotionally or something that happens to you during a certain song or something that has to be related to a certain feeling. There's not anything wrong with emotions and songs and feelings. Man, I love to celebrate all of that and experience it when it's good and rich and beautiful in my life. But I need the Holy Spirit to fill me to help me to know who to pick to be on my team.
Jeff Iorg:I need the Holy Spirit to fill me to make me more effective in sharing the gospel with lost people. I need the Holy Spirit to fill me to give me strategic insight and the discipline to implement it over a year's time like described in this, story with Barnabas. I need the filling of
Jeff Iorg:the Holy Spirit for the practical, daily responsibilities of leadership that have been given to me.
Jeff Iorg:You need the Holy Spirit the same way to fill you in those ways. Well, we're running out of time on this week's podcast, but next week, I'm gonna talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit, what that looks like for you personally. I've said there's no checklist, and there is no checklist in the Bible. There's no formula, but that doesn't mean the Bible doesn't give us some instructions or some help on how to understand how we can be more open to and how we can access this filling by the Holy Spirit. And then I wanna talk about what it looks like when the Holy Spirit intervenes in and works through worship services.
Jeff Iorg:There's at least two worship services in the New Testament that are described where the Holy Spirit is specifically mentioned as being the centerpiece of the activity that was taking place in those services. We're gonna look at both of those next week as well. The practical issue of being filled with the Holy Spirit for leadership, that's what we've talked about today. I pray that you will find yourself praying something like this to God on a regular basis. Heavenly father, thank you for indwelling me by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jeff Iorg:Now fill me, control me, use me, change me, work through me in spiritual ways to produce fruit and produce results that cannot be explained any other way than by the power of the Holy Spirit at work through me. Pray for that and then stand up and move out believing that what you've asked for, that is according to the will of God, He will answer in due time. And then stand back in awe as you see the power of the Holy Spirit demonstrated through your life. The filling of the Holy Spirit, it's essential for leaders. Put it into practice as you lead on.