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Jeff Iorg, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, discusses the importance of contentment and community engagement in ministry leadership. Iorg reflects on his experiences in various regions, noting that many ministers fail to assimilate into their new environments, often making negative comparisons to their previous homes or resisting local customs. The key takeaway is the necessity of embracing one's community through genuine love and commitment, which fosters meaningful connections and enhances ministry effectiveness.
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Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Ords, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on this podcast. We carry on a conversation about the ebb and flow, the daily grind, the work of ministry leadership. Recently, I was speaking on a conference program.
Jeff Iorg:And as a part of that, there was a panel discussion. And during that panel discussion, the question was asked, what is, the key or what are some keys or something like that to being able to revitalize a church in a community? Well, the answer was not so much about revitalization, but the answer was about a crucial issue for all of us in ministry leadership.
Jeff Iorg:I wanna talk to you today about what it means to be content and to embrace where you serve. Being content, embracing where you serve. Now on
Jeff Iorg:that panel, there were 2 younger pastors that were working hard in revitalization and both had had some success and were, because of that, invited to be on this panel. When they asked this question, what has made you successful or what's the key to your success or what are some keys to your effectiveness? When they asked the question,
Jeff Iorg:the first pastor said, well, I
Jeff Iorg:know that most people would say it's prayer or it's preaching or it's the gospel, and it's all of that, but then he said, the most important factor for me has been really loving my community,
Jeff Iorg:really wanting to be there. It's the only place I wanna be in the world, and it's my privilege to to love them and care for them and be with them in the community.
Jeff Iorg:And then, the other pastor
Jeff Iorg:said, well, there's 4 words that I think make the difference. He said, preach, pray, love, and stay, and he said, I wanna just focus on stay. I wanna be there because I I love my community. I I love my my city where I'm working, and I I I love the people there and and everything about it,
Jeff Iorg:and I just wanna stay and make a difference and build something that lasts in our ministry. But when I heard these 2 young brothers talking about loving your community, embracing your community, staying in your community, it made my heart sing because that really is a crucial part of effectiveness in ministry leadership, being content where you are, really loving your community, and communicating that in meaningful ways. Now having worked in the West for a long time, 35 years on the West Coast, I've seen many, many people move to the West either in the Northwest, the Northern California, or Southern California areas with all good intentions about coming there to plant themselves and to stay for a long time and make
Jeff Iorg:a big difference. But the hard reality is most of the people who do that within 5 years are gone. They just don't stay. And part of the
Jeff Iorg:reason they don't stay is they're never really able to assimilate into their new communities and to come to the point of really learning to love, to embrace the new community where they're living. Now, when you are moving into a new community like this,
Jeff Iorg:what are some things that reveal that
Jeff Iorg:you're not assimilating or you're not content or you're not able to settle where you are? Well, let me give you some examples of things I've heard and frankly some things I've done in making some mistakes along the way myself. First of all, you know you're not really assimilating or content or settled when you continually make negative comparisons with back home
Jeff Iorg:or with where you're from. You make negative comparisons about the food, negative comparisons about the friendliness or the of the community or of people that you're meeting, negative comparisons about the weather, a negative comparisons about the spiritual climate
Jeff Iorg:or about the church's effectiveness. You're always making negative comparisons about where you are to where you've come from. That reveals you're really not content and you're really not assimilating where you are. You're still trying to perhaps, understand where you are in context of where you've come from or try to turn where you are into where you've come from, but it reveals that you're just really not settled where you are. A second problem is the failure to adopt what I call cultural mores or the way that people do things in the culture.
Jeff Iorg:Several examples of this. One is the way people dress. This was a big thing for me when I moved to the Pacific Northwest. I left the Midwest where, as a pastor, I wore a suit to church every Sunday. That was standard operating procedure.
Jeff Iorg:I got to the Pacific Northwest, and I discovered that people were much, much more casual. And in the early days, I stayed with my practice of really dressing up for church, but over time, I came to realize how disconnected that made me from the culture where we were working.
Jeff Iorg:In the Pacific Northwest, people dress much more casually, and learning to do that and to be a part of the culture in that regard was a big step. Another cultural more is often food. Food is different in different parts of
Jeff Iorg:the country, and learning to appreciate that and to enjoy it and to develop a taste for it and to really embrace it is a good indication that you're really learning to fit in, where you are. Now here's another one. This one's sometimes kind of funny, honestly, until it's not funny. It's funny for a while, but people expect you to learn and assimilate after a while. It's learning to speak the language, which what
Jeff Iorg:I mean by that is learning to pronounce words, particularly place names, in new context where you find yourself. When I first arrived in Portland many years ago, I made a comment to a friend that
Jeff Iorg:I was going, down near the Willamette River, and he cringed when I said that. And if you're from the Pacific Northwest and you just heard me say that on this podcast, you probably just cringed yourself. I was going to drive down by the Willamette River. It's not the Willamette. It's the Willamette.
Jeff Iorg:I didn't know that. He corrected me, and I learned in that moment. Wow. I need to I need to get accustomed to these place names. If you're from the northwest, you know how to say the word Puyallup, Washington.
Jeff Iorg:Took a while to learn to say that one. I could go on and on with these. But in every place I've ever lived, there are place names that are pronounced, in unusual ways, at least to my ears, and I needed to learn how to fit in to the culture where I was and embrace it by learning to say the words the right way. When I moved to Nashville, I am living near a street that looks like it ought to be pronounced Demonbrun or Demonbrun. But I was here just a few weeks, and I was watching the local news, and the newscaster who was doing an on the street interview said, I'm here on DeMunbrun, and I thought, you're where?
Jeff Iorg:And I listened again to him as he pronounced that word, and I realized I'd been saying it wrong ever since I got here. But now I know how to say it, Dumondrian. And I'm fitting in and learning the language. That caused me to come to work and say to some
Jeff Iorg:of my colleagues, hey, what
Jeff Iorg:are some of the place names around here that everyone says incorrectly when they first move here that when I keep saying them that way will reveal that I'm an outsider? They gave me about 5 or 6 immediately that they laughed said, these are the common ones. We can always tell if you're from here or not by how you say these words. Well, I wanna love my community. I wanna embrace my community.
Jeff Iorg:I wanna be content here, and so I don't wanna make fun of these things. I wanna learn how to pronounce the words the way everyone else does.
Jeff Iorg:Here's another one. This also reveals you're
Jeff Iorg:not assimilating and that is when you're not when you can't shift your allegiances to a new area. And I'll give you a couple of examples of this. One is quite often frankly, sports teams. I remember when I first moved to, the northwest, right after I got there, a fellow said to me, who's your favorite NFL team? And I said, well, that would be the Seattle Seahawks.
Jeff Iorg:And he smiled and said, you may make it yet.
Jeff Iorg:I thought you'd say Dallas Cowboys. Well, that was an easy one to switch over for me. I knew I was in the Northwest.
Jeff Iorg:I knew people there loved and appreciated their local team, and so I became a Seahawks fan, and that's how I became an Oregon Ducks fan. I wanted to embrace local and shift my allegiances from my previous places of living and my previous places of of cheering to the Pacific Northwest. When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was asked, to be the chaplain of the San Francisco Giants. And when I was interviewed there, I'd only been in the Bay Area for a few weeks. And when I interviewed for that position, the person asked me, are you a big San Francisco Giants fan?
Jeff Iorg:And I said, not really. I've just moved here. And before I moved here, I rooted for the Seattle Mariners, and that was kinda my team. Turned out that was the right answer because big sports fans are not who they're looking for to be sports chaplains. They're looking for people who see a ministry opportunity, not a fan opportunity.
Jeff Iorg:But nevertheless, I became a significant fan of Bay Area sports teams while I lived there because those were my teams and those that's where I lived. And I wanted to embrace that area and fit in with the community and the culture and let them know that I valued what they liked and what they supported. Well, another one for me on allegiances is about the weather. When I, moved, away from Southern California, I found myself complaining a lot about the weather in other places. Oh, it's too humid.
Jeff Iorg:Oh, it's too, it it's too unpredictable. Oh, you know, all of these things. I did love living in Southern California where it's summer about 300 plus days a year. I like that a lot quite frankly. And so when I moved away, it was easy for me to constantly be criticizing and be negative about where I was because it didn't measure up to where I'd come from.
Jeff Iorg:And I had to shift my allegiance and say, no. I like it here now. And the beautiful thing about this weather where I'm now living in Nashville is 4 seasons, and I like that opportunity and I like what that means. And then finally, another way that reveals you're really not assimilating or not fitting in is what I call hostile humor. And that is you're always making jokes about where you are and about the people where you live or about the cut the culture or the morays or the sports teams or the food.
Jeff Iorg:You're always making jokes about it that are hostile, meaning that they're put downs, they're cut downs. And because of that, it it reveals to people that you really aren't very happy where you are. Now, what reveals you're not assimilating are these negative comparisons, failure to adapt to mores, can't shift allegiances, and hostile humor about your new
Jeff Iorg:situation? But what does lack of assimilation communicate?
Jeff Iorg:This is where it gets difficult for us. Because what I've just been describing, these these are not just casual things or cultural things, these become spiritual impediments to the work that we're trying to get done. The first one of these, this lack of assimilation, what
Jeff Iorg:it communicates that's detrimental is it communicates a haughtiness or a judgmentalism that we want to avoid. Whether you like it or not, people that are in the community feel that you're acting a little better than them or you're somehow judging them when you don't assimilate to fit in with and embrace their culture and their community, especially if you're trying to minister in that context.
Jeff Iorg:This is one of the most painful stories that I had as a church planter. I moved to Portland, Oregon and started meeting people and trying to share the gospel. And very quickly after we got there, it was it was time for t ball season, and we signed up for that and my, my son was playing t ball and we met a family through that experience, and we liked them and, man, they liked us. We coached that team together. The other father was the head coach,
Jeff Iorg:I was the assistant. And at the end of that season, he said, hey, would you and
Jeff Iorg:your wife like to come over to our house? We we just like to, you know, hang out and celebrate the season and, just have a cookout and and and enjoy some time together. And we thought, man, that sounds great. Of course, I'm thinking, what an opportunity for ministry. I've been building this relationship, and now I get to go to their home, and I get to have a more personal conversation, and I hope I can present the gospel or at least talk about the gospel.
Jeff Iorg:So we go there, and, about halfway through the evening, the guy's wife said to me, so you guys moved here to to, like, plant a church or something or you're like some kind of a pastor. Right?
Jeff Iorg:And I said, yeah. That's that's exactly right. And she said, well, why, why why would you do that? And I said, well, because and
Jeff Iorg:I started just rattling off all these statistics about the spiritual, lostness of the northwest and the fact that so few people went to church and, that there was so much religious and spiritual confusion in the community. And, you know, I just gave her this rapid fire answer about all the reasons why a person would wanna come and plant a church, but I wasn't really paying attention to my audience. I was talking to her like I was talking to some kind of a doctoral missiology seminar. When I finished my little speech there about why I
Jeff Iorg:had come, she looked at me and said, oh, I see. So you just came out here to save us stupid little pagans. My heart sank. I was I was crushed because of my own arrogance, insensitivity, haughtiness, and how it came across as a judgmentalism, and I stopped and said, oh, no. I I'm so sorry.
Jeff Iorg:I I
Jeff Iorg:really didn't mean it like that. I I was just trying to say that, to me, the needs here are pretty significant in the lives of people, and and I just tried
Jeff Iorg:to come to help. And she smiled and said, yeah. That that sounds a lot better, honestly. Tell me more about it.
Jeff Iorg:And so we were able to tell more about why we came and share the gospel and build a relationship. And the good news is that that family did start attending our church regularly, and I went on to have very meaningful ministry in their lives over the years. And and they're still friends with us today. But it got off to a rocky start, in fact, almost a disastrous start because of my attitude that I was demonstrating toward the spiritual, status of people in the Pacific Northwest. A second lack of contentment or assimilation or feeling settled is that you subtly communicate a belittlement and a rejection to the people you're trying to connect with and provide ministry for.
Jeff Iorg:Now this happened to me in in my first pastorate. I I I grew up in Texas and I was a staff pastor there, but I was called to be the lead pastor of a church in the Midwest in Missouri. And now I had come out of a very, very strong, healthy, dynamic church in Texas. It was really the only church I'd ever known. I had been there from the time I was 13 till I was 23.
Jeff Iorg:And while I had moved away from there to go to seminary for a while, even in seminary, I was in a in a much larger church and was working, in that church in the in the children's ministry, but but I was still very much steeped in strong Texas churches. And I moved up to the Midwest to a much smaller church that, in my view, had all kinds of problems, difficulties, shortcomings, things that it needed to change. So I got
Jeff Iorg:there and without knowing it,
Jeff Iorg:I was frequently saying things like, well, you know, in Texas or here's how we did it in Texas or back when I was in Texas or at my Texas church, and I never realized what I was doing fully until one day,
Jeff Iorg:one of the deacons of the church said, pastor, you're not in Texas anymore.
Jeff Iorg:And I realized in that moment, wow, what what have I been doing? Why would he say that to me? I started reflecting on some of my previous comments and I realized that I had spent way too much time talking about how good things were in Texas and not nearly enough time embracing the community where I was living. Because of the constant or constant comparison that I was making, they felt rejected and belittled because they weren't measuring up to my supposed fantastic experience in Texas. And here's a third thing that a lack of assimilation or contentment or being settled communicates and that is I'm not gonna be here long.
Jeff Iorg:Short term time horizon, just not gonna make it. Now this
Jeff Iorg:next part of the podcast, I don't want it to be
Jeff Iorg:misinterpreted, but when I was in the West
Jeff Iorg:and people would come from other parts of the country to the West to do ministry, I could usually tell in a few within a few weeks if the person was gonna make it
Jeff Iorg:or not based on the comments that their wife was making.
Jeff Iorg:Because if their comments were primarily about back home and about what they lost and about what they left and about what they longed for, I knew it was highly unlikely the couple would make it long term in the in the West. Now, I don't wanna sound like I'm criticizing because I I'm really not. I'm just reporting what was reality and that is no matter how good the intentions or maybe even how strong the compelling vision was that the husband may have had that moved his family to the west, if his wife just couldn't make the move in her
Jeff Iorg:heart, they weren't gonna make it long term. And sometimes, sadly,
Jeff Iorg:I could recognize that in the first few weeks and know that within a year or 2, they'd be making the move back to wherever they originated. So short term time horizon is also communicated by a lack of assimilation or contentment or settlement. Now, if you're finding that you're struggling with this, you've either moved into a new context or you've been in a context and you struggled with it or you're preparing to move into a new ministry context.
Jeff Iorg:Here's a couple of things to think about, and then I'm gonna give you some steps that you can put into practice to adjust your approach. If you're struggling with this, first of all, you may need to adjust significantly your expectations, your approach, your methodology. You may need to change the way you've been working in terms of developing a real connection to your community. But second, if you can't do that, you may need to simply move where you're more comfortable. As a missionary that moved across the United States, I
Jeff Iorg:wish every single person in leadership would consider the possibility of moving to places in the northeast or the northwest or the west where the need for the gospel is so overwhelmingly great. But the hard reality is that would be a mistake for a lot of people because they just won't be able to work in a different context like they can work where they're comfortable or where they really feel like
Jeff Iorg:they fit. So if you're in one of
Jeff Iorg:these places where you're just not fitting, where you just don't think you're gonna make it, maybe it's best for you to say, I need to go where I can be effective, where I can be comfortable, where I really understand the culture, and
Jeff Iorg:where I really fit. And if you need to do that, make the move. But let's say you
Jeff Iorg:don't wanna make the move. You really do wanna be successful in a new community or in the community where you've been and you're and you're struggling. You really do wanna embrace that community. You really do wanna be like those pastors I said at the beginning that wanna stay and that wanna love their community and really feel like they are
Jeff Iorg:a part of it. Well, what can you do? Five suggestions. Number 1. Be coachable.
Jeff Iorg:Find a friend who's been there a long time where you are and who understands the culture, who may even be a native to that culture.
Jeff Iorg:Find a friend and ask them how to help you fit in. Do what I did. Ask them. Hey.
Jeff Iorg:How do you say these words of these place names around here? Say, hey, how how do you, what are the main dishes that people like to eat here? What are the regional foods that are really important? What what do people like? And where can you take me to get that and show me how to eat it and how to like it?
Jeff Iorg:And, look at what I'm wearing. Do do I look like I'm from out of town?
Jeff Iorg:Or do I look like I belong here? Help me to know
Jeff Iorg:what that would look like and what I need to change to fit in. So be coachable. Find a friend and have them coach you up about fitting into
Jeff Iorg:the culture where you live. Number 2, stop comparing everything to, quote, back home.
Jeff Iorg:I remember once in the northwest, couple moved from another part of the country and they said to me, people here are
Jeff Iorg:just not friendly. I thought, well, they're friendly to me. I I've lived here for 15 years and I I got a lot of friends. I I
Jeff Iorg:don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean people aren't friendly? So I asked, well, that's interesting. What what do you mean people aren't friendly? Well, nobody will invite us over to their homes or nobody invites us into their house when we're out visiting or trying to evangelize or I'm like, woah.
Jeff Iorg:Woah. Woah. This is the Pacific Northwest. People consider their home their their retreat site or their den or their hideout. They they're they're not gonna invite you over very often, and you're gonna have to become a pretty good friend before that's gonna happen.
Jeff Iorg:That's just normal. They're not unfriendly. You just have a definition of hospitality based on the culture where you used to live, and that definition of hospitality just really doesn't fit here. That's why it was in the Pacific Northwest that the coffee shop was invented, Starbucks and others, because people wanted a place to go and gather and be with their friends. And that's why Starbucks looks like a living room with couches and seating areas and yeah.
Jeff Iorg:That Pacific Northwest thing. You don't do that at my house? I'll meet you for coffee. We'll do
Jeff Iorg:it there. So stop comparing everything to back home.
Jeff Iorg:3rd, adjust your expectations and maybe even your ministry methods to fit into the culture where you're living. I had this, we had this collision right after we started the church in Oregon. We had been going for a little while, and we decided we would have a, like, an all church fellowship and get everybody together, and, we would do that around a potluck.
Jeff Iorg:It was a complete failure. Nobody came. Nobody wanted to come. I backed
Jeff Iorg:up and said, what just happened here? So I asked some people, hey, listen. You know, we had this thing, this potluck. We're gonna have a big fellowship party, get together, but people didn't seem very excited about it. In fact, hardly anybody came.
Jeff Iorg:A couple of the women I asked kinda looked at each other and
Jeff Iorg:looked at me and said, hey, Jeff, I don't even like to cook for my family.
Jeff Iorg:Why would I wanna cook for strangers?
Jeff Iorg:I I don't even know what this potluck thing is. I I don't I don't really get that. So I said, okay.
Jeff Iorg:Would you rather pay $10 and have the food brought in by, like, a catering company or something? We'll pay more than 10. We don't care. We're just not cooking and bringing food to strangers. So the next time we organized one of these, we said, hey.
Jeff Iorg:It's $5 a person, $20 maximum per family, and the food will be catered.
Jeff Iorg:And lots of people came. And we learned something. Potluck, that's not a Northwest thing. Now, does it ever work that way that you can have
Jeff Iorg:a potluck? Sure. If you know the people really well and you're gonna have snacks only, like at a ball game party or something, potluck works fine. But our church moved away from potluck and moved instead to simple catered meals that people could afford at a low price and we had good turnout in response. Shift your methodology to fit your culture.
Jeff Iorg:And then number 4, embrace the cultural markers, the cultural markers in your community. Now these can range from things like
Jeff Iorg:I've already mentioned on the podcast like food and dress and sports teams, but you can also embrace cultural markers like events. For example, there are cultural markers in the Pacific Northwest like the in port in the Portland area, like the Rose Parade. There's cultural markers in, Seattle, like Pike's Market downtown, the fish market. When you when I moved to San Francisco Bay Area, you know, we we you embrace the cultural markers of of community activism and of outdoor life and of and environmentalism. And then when you move to Southern California, you embrace the entertainment and industry and all that goes along with that.
Jeff Iorg:You you don't have to fully buy into any of these things, but you'd have to understand that's the culture where I'm living. And I've gotta embrace it, learn to interface with it, and connect with it, and at least know enough about it to carry on a conversation with people who really are immersed in it in the region where I'm living. Embrace cultural markers. And then, number 5, learn the language. And as I've already said, part of learning the language means learning how to pronounce place names and that's another thing and that is drop the accent.
Jeff Iorg:Wherever you came from, you have an accent. Work hard at minimizing that wherever you are. It's funny about that. I I I grew up in Texas, was in the Midwest for a short time, and then I moved to the West Coast. When I got to Portland, we worked hard, to to drop the southern accent and to drop the southernisms.
Jeff Iorg:We weren't always successful, but we did a pretty good job eliminating a lot of those, from our vocabulary and from our accent. Then, as years went by, I started traveling and speaking more and traveling and speaking more in the South. My children would tease me. When I came home from a trip where I've been in the South for 3 or 4 or 5 days speaking, they would they would say, we can tell you've been to the South. Your accent's back.
Jeff Iorg:And it's still funny today because occasionally, someone will walk up to me and say, you've got a hint of an accent now. Where are you from? And I know I still have
Jeff Iorg:a little bit of it, but nothing like I did when I spoke with that Texas drawl that I grew up with. And so you can learn the language to sound like the community that you're living in and work at it until you feel like you fit.
Jeff Iorg:When I was on that panel, those pastors said, one of the keys to revitalization in our context has been falling in love with our community, staying in our community, embracing our community. The one brother said, I came to stay. He said, this is this is where I wanna be. You know, when you really believe that, it seeps out of you. It bleeds out of you.
Jeff Iorg:People pick up on it, and they wanna be with you, and they wanna be around you, and they wanna embrace you for who you are as well. You can come as an outsider into a community, but you can't stay an outsider and minister to a community.
Jeff Iorg:You have to embrace it. Become part
Jeff Iorg:of it and adopt the aspects of it that don't compromise our faith, but instead make us better at communicating our faith in those contexts.
Jeff Iorg:When we moved to the West Coast in 1989, we bought a house on a cul de sac, and we'd been
Jeff Iorg:there about 3 or 4 weeks. We got in the car, went down the hill off the cul de sac, and stopped at the stop sign. And I looked over to Ann, and I said, you know, I feel like I've been here all my life.
Jeff Iorg:I feel like I'm home. And Anne smiled and said, me too. This is where I feel like we were made to be. Man, we embrace that. Brings tears to
Jeff Iorg:my eyes just to even say it on this podcast.
Jeff Iorg:Then we stayed on the West Coast for 35 years. Recently, I
Jeff Iorg:was having a conversation here in Tennessee and I mentioned to a brother that I had just moved here from California. And he said, man, I'll bet you're glad to be out of there. I know what he meant. He was talking politics or cultural problems or his own frustrations with what he perceives to be on the West Coast. So I didn't confront him in that moment.
Jeff Iorg:That would have been inappropriate. But inside my heart, I thought, not
Jeff Iorg:really. Not really. Because when I went there, that became home. I embraced where I lived. I loved the people I lived with and around.
Jeff Iorg:I acclimated to the culture, And I did all of that because I wanted to be free to share the gospel without encumbrances, without barriers. I'm challenging you today, fall in love with the community where you're working. Embrace the setting where God has placed you. Assimilate to the culture around you. And if you can't do that, then be honest and go where you can, so that you can be the most effective person possible with the gospel.
Jeff Iorg:God sends us places, and then expects us to learn effectively how to work in that context. I've tried to share some details with how you can do that today on the podcast. I want you to embrace where you are. Love your community. And like that pastor said, preach, pray, love, and stay.
Jeff Iorg:Because this is where God put me, and I'm gonna become one with these people, and I'm gonna impact them with the gospel. You can do it today as you lead on.