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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the importance of service and ministry as a core function of the church. Drawing from biblical passages in Matthew, Mark, and John, Iorg emphasizes that serving others is a fundamental Christian value, highlighting Jesus' teachings about servanthood and the call to love God and serve people.
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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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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.
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Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. On this podcast, we talk about the ongoing work of ministry leadership and how to meet some of the challenges today. Over the past few weeks, I've been working through a mini series, if you will, on the podcast under this general theme, ministry is hard, but it's not that complicated. Ministry is difficult.
Jeff Iorg:There is no question about that, but it shouldn't be this complicated. And so we've been looking at what many people consider the 5 functions of the church, for example, evangelism or mission, depending on which word you prefer, and then discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and worship. And each week in this podcast, we've been looking at one of these areas and thinking about how to make it a little simpler to eliminate some of the complexity and boil it down to the core things we're supposed to be doing. Now, again, these things are hard. There's no question that in our world today, ministry is difficult.
Jeff Iorg:There are a lot of reasons for that. I talked about those earlier in the podcast series, but, nevertheless, it is hard to do ministry today. But that doesn't mean it has to be all that complex. So today, I wanna talk about one of these five functions, one of these simple things churches are supposed to be doing. I wanna talk about ministry or service in the name of Jesus.
Jeff Iorg:You know, service is a high value for Christians. There are many passages of scripture which communicate this and which establish a theology of servanthood, if you will. Let me just mention 2 or 3. First of all, in Matthew chapter 22 verses 34 to 40, Jesus talks about the greatest commandment and the second commandment in response to a question that he was raised about these issues. Jesus said, of course, that the greatest commandment was to love God, but the second he said, which was very close to it, was serve people.
Jeff Iorg:So that phrase, love God, serve people, is a good recipe for leadership effectiveness and for ministry effectiveness. Love God, serve people. So we see that service is elevated in this conversation Jesus had about these core commandments. Another passage which is a favorite of mine, partly because it's almost absurd in some aspects of the discussion, is a passage in Mark chapter 10 beginning in verse 35. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approached Jesus and said, teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask you.
Jeff Iorg:Now that's a loaded statement. I'm a little surprised that Jesus didn't didn't call them on it, but instead, he said, sure.
Jeff Iorg:What do you want me to do for you?
Jeff Iorg:He asked them. They answered him, allow us to sit at your right and your left in your glory. Jesus said to them, you don't know what you're asking.
Jeff Iorg:In other words, fellas, you don't know what you're talking about. Are you able to
Jeff Iorg:drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? In other words, are you able to take on what I'm about to endure and go through what I'm about to go through? We are able, they told him. Jesus said to them, alright. You will drink the cup I drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with.
Jeff Iorg:But to sit at my right or left is not mine to give, instead it's for whom it has been prepared. Now when the 10 disciples heard this, they began to be indignant with James and John. Now I've often wondered about the cause of that indignancy. Was it because they didn't think to ask the question, because they felt like that James and John were getting some special privileged information, or were they really just frustrated with James and John for asking such ridiculous questions? Well, we don't know.
Jeff Iorg:We just know they were indignant. Jesus then called them over, all of them, and said to them, you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them,
Jeff Iorg:and those in high positions act as tyrants over them, but it is not so among you. On the contrary,
Jeff Iorg:whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. For even the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. This passage of Scripture is Jesus saying to his disciples, there's a better way. You've been accustomed to secular perspectives on power, on influence.
Jeff Iorg:You've had it ingrained in you to value ambition, getting ahead, overcoming others. But Jesus said, the greatest among you is really the one who serves, the servant of all.
Jeff Iorg:This passage lifts up service, exalts it really, reveals and underscores how important it is to have a service heart and have a ministry perspective and to do practical things to meet the needs of other people. Another passage of scripture which really speaks to this is John 13 verses 1 to 11. This is a story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. You may remember the story that Peter was aghast that Jesus would wash his feet, and he he objected vehemently. Why was Peter so upset?
Jeff Iorg:He he had had his feet washed countless times by lower level servants over his lifetime, so having his feet washed was not the problem. Peter objected because it was Jesus washing his feet. Peter objected to the person
Jeff Iorg:performing the task, not the task itself. He objected to the attitude demonstrated, not the act accomplished. Peter simply couldn't fathom a leader abasing himself in this way, and so Peter reacted negatively to this service act by Jesus.
Jeff Iorg:These three passages of Scripture, Matthew 22, Mark 10, John 13, lay for us a foundation for understanding the value of service. Jesus said, love God. Serve people. Jesus said, the greatest among you is the servant of all. Jesus modeled servanthood by washing the feet of his disciples.
Jeff Iorg:You know, Paul later summarized all of this in Philippians chapter 2 verse 5 when he said, Have this attitude in yourselves that was also in Christ Jesus. You know, it's impossible for us as Christians to emulate every action of Jesus, but it is possible for us to emulate the attitude of Jesus and to take on the role of a servant and to do it willingly and voluntarily and with humility, just as Jesus did for us. And so we value service. We exalt, lift up ministry. We care deeply about meeting the needs of people in the name of Jesus, and we recognize that ministry can be directed toward believers or unbelievers and has the same powerful impact, for both groups.
Jeff Iorg:You see, there's not anything that quite validates our faith and demonstrates the legitimacy of what we believe to a watching world, like serving others in the name of Jesus, like meeting practical needs, taking care of people who are hurting, doing things that alleviate human pain, taking concrete steps to make a real difference in the here and now and the struggles that people are facing. That's ministry. That's service. That's one of the core functions of the church. It's what we're about, and we highly value it because of how much Jesus valued it in his teachings that I've outlined for you today.
Jeff Iorg:Now what are some reasons that churches or Christians are not involved in ministry are are reluctant to give themselves over to this kind of service approach to meeting the needs of people? Well, here are some things I've heard. 1st of all, well, it's it's someone else's job. You know, the government should be taking care of that. You know, the school should be seeing to that need.
Jeff Iorg:You know, someone in the community ought to step forward and do something about that. In my world, the denomination should step in and do something. It's someone else's job. We don't need to get our hands dirty on that or waste our time or invest our money or put out any effort because someone else should take care of this for us. Another reason is some churches, especially small churches and some Christians, especially those who struggle with their own esteem, say, I don't have much to offer.
Jeff Iorg:There's really not much that I can do. Well, let's talk about that for a moment. You may be in a smaller church, and there may not be a lot that you can do, but you can do something. Your church can make a difference in someone's life, and so rather than focus on what you can't do, I think it's important to focus on what you can do. To say I don't have much to offer can be an excuse, or it can be the first part of a sentence that then concludes, but I'm going to do what I can.
Jeff Iorg:And so if you're in a smaller church or you're a Christian that maybe has what you consider limited capacity or or limited ability or limited opportunity, That may all be true, but it doesn't mean you can't do something that demonstrates the attitude of service and participates in what Jesus valued so highly, which is serving, caring for, providing ministry to others.
Jeff Iorg:Here's another reason people avoid this. It's too messy. It's just too messy. We just don't wanna get involved in all that. Listen.
Jeff Iorg:When people are divorced, when children are abandoned,
Jeff Iorg:when violence is taking place in community, when natural disaster happens, it's messy.
Jeff Iorg:No doubt about it. And if you're going to
Jeff Iorg:get involved in ministry to hurting people, you're going to get involved in some things that are messy. I remember this came home to me once on a Sunday morning. I gave the invitation, and a family joined our church. It was a husband, a wife, a couple of children. He had a job.
Jeff Iorg:I think she also had a part time job, and it was a homemaker. The children looked relatively normal as they were standing there in front of us. After the service, one of our deacons came up and said, man, that was great to have a normal family join our church. And I said, do what? He said, it was great to have a normal family.
Jeff Iorg:A a a guy that, has, like, a job and and and he's married to, like, one wife, and they got a they've got a couple of kids, and and they they they just seem relatively normal. And I I thought, wow, that's such a weird observation. I said, yeah. I I I guess so. And then he said, pastor, do you not understand that almost everyone our church reaches has unbelievable problems and all kinds of needs?
Jeff Iorg:And I'm glad we're doing it, but, man, every now and then, it's nice to just reach somebody who could help us to get this work done. Man, that that conversation has stuck with me all these years because as I reflected maybe on the 20 or 30 people who had joined our church previous to that family, he was right. Man, we were attracting all kinds of broken people, hurting people, people that were going through divorces, people that had lost jobs, people that had experienced health crises and, setbacks in significant ways. We had reached people who were drug addicts and alcoholics and all kinds of things
Jeff Iorg:that were going on in their lives. It was messy. Messy.
Jeff Iorg:But that's what ministry is about. It's about rolling your sleeves up and getting
Jeff Iorg:your hands into the dirt of people's lives. Man. So some churches,
Jeff Iorg:some Christians say, well, it's someone else's job, or I don't have much to offer, or it's too messy. Here's another reason that we avoid this. People say, well, it costs too much. It it it's a never ending cycle. It takes money and time and energy and effort, and it doesn't matter what we do.
Jeff Iorg:There's always more people who have need. Man, that's all true. That's all true, and it will cost you time, energy, money. It'll cost you. That doesn't mean you don't pay the price, that the price isn't worth paying because you're serving
Jeff Iorg:in the name of Jesus and making a difference.
Jeff Iorg:I remember a few years ago, I was preaching at a building dedication. Congregation had built a new facility, and it was beautiful.
Jeff Iorg:I stood up and said, this morning, I'd like for us
Jeff Iorg:to hand out crayons and invite the children to go ahead and just make the first marks on the walls, and there was a gasp in the auditorium, like, 2, what? I said, no, seriously. I said, have you erected a monument to past success, or have you erected a tool for future ministry?
Jeff Iorg:And if this is a tool, it's gonna get broken, bent, It's gonna get damaged and used, but
Jeff Iorg:it's going to make a difference in the lives of people. And I'd like to just go ahead and get past the first marks on
Jeff Iorg:the walls, and let's just get on with it. Well, of
Jeff Iorg:course, I was being a bit facetious, and the congregation grasped that, but afterwards, multiple people came up to me and said, man, you nailed us
Jeff Iorg:today. We had built a monument. We put
Jeff Iorg:this thing up as a trophy, and you reminded us it's a tool, and we're supposed to use it up. And, yes, it costs a lot to build it, and it's gonna cost more to maintain it, but that's okay because we're supposed to use it up in ministry. And then finally, some people don't wanna get involved in ministry because they say, well, needy people are just too draining. They just too take too much out of us. We're they're emotionally messy and angry and mean and broken and hurting, and just leaves us sapped, and it just takes too much.
Jeff Iorg:Well, I wanna again underscore that that may very well be true, but people are worth it, and hurting people need what we can offer in the name of Jesus. So today on the podcast so far, we've talked about ministry or service as one of the functions of the church. We've talked about it not being all that complicated, but certainly being difficult. I've given you sort of a theological foundation to erect a life of ministry and service, and then we've talked about some reasons why people don't wanna do this. But now let's shift to the positive.
Jeff Iorg:What are some things you can do that will raise the commitment to ministry and the involvement in meeting the needs of people doing service as a church, as individual believers in your congregation and through your congregation in your community, what are some things you as a leader can do to facilitate this?
Jeff Iorg:Well, number 1, preach, model, and speak highly of service.
Jeff Iorg:You may wanna preach a message or a series of messages on the passages of this in scripture that highlight service and the value of it. You may be one of those people who's made some derogatory remarks about service and made some negative comments about meeting the practical needs of people. You may be more focused on the, quote, spiritual needs or the real needs, and not so much on the pressing needs or the presenting needs. You may have said some things you need to take a step back from and really let the Bible speak to your church family about the importance of service using these passages I've outlined today and certainly others that may also inform what you have to say about this. And then, as a part of this, you wanna be careful to maximize, not minimize, the importance of ministry as a church and to talk about it in positive and equal terms with other things like evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, worship, these other core functions of the church.
Jeff Iorg:Don't denigrate ministry or put it down. Help people understand that it's vital and an important part of what you do. So preach and model and speak positively about this, and part of that is making heroes out of those who do ministry in and for or through your church. Making heroes out of these people by giving them recognition, by, pointing out their achievements or their accomplishments, by letting it be known what they've done or what they've accomplished. Now there are lots of ways you can do this.
Jeff Iorg:Sometimes simple recognitions like sending a handwritten note or public recognitions, like handing out certificates or plaques or just calling people forward and recognizing them publicly in a service. But one church,
Jeff Iorg:a larger church, had a much more,
Jeff Iorg:intentional plan about this, and that is once a year, they had what they called their point of light banquet in which they brought together every ministry in their church and through their church into their community for a banquet, and they recognized each one of these ministries, had the participant stand, showed maybe some photographs or some video of the ministry in action, highlighted what they had accomplished and the good they had done, and why they were making such a difference, on behalf of the church or in or in the church or through the church. And that this banquet really crystallized, celebrated the contributions to ministry that the different organizations or different functions of the church had accomplished. Now I'm not suggesting that you have to do something that elaborate, but in some context, it can be done, and doing so really elevated what ministry looked like and the commitment people had
Jeff Iorg:to ministry through that church. So you
Jeff Iorg:speak, teach, and model positively about service or about ministry by what you say, by what you teach, and by what you celebrate. A second thing you can do is to equip members for ministry. Equip them. In other words, train people to do ministry and to meet the needs of others. You may say, well, isn't this something that's sort of spontaneous that people just know how to do?
Jeff Iorg:Not at all. Not at all. People may be motivated, and they may have a sense of urgency or passion, but they still need training, a direction, guidance to know what to do. I'll give you a couple of examples. When I first became a pastor, I didn't really know very much about benevolence ministry.
Jeff Iorg:I'd I'd never been involved in it. I didn't really know how to
Jeff Iorg:do it, and yet I went to
Jeff Iorg:a church that had a fairly robust ministry, of benevolence in their community, especially for a small church. The deacons were responsible for it. People gave financially to assist it, and they had a prescribed way of doing, their intake interviews, making decisions about who and how to help, the kinds of things they did, and they were very skilled at interviewing and helping to understand their true needs that people had and to sorting out the people who were just begging for money or trying to milk us for some kind of contribution and the ones who really needed it, and that we could really help by doing something financially for them. These, deacons were really good at what they did, and they trained me in how to do it. They they taught me principles of benevolence ministry that I've carried with me all these years.
Jeff Iorg:Principles about how to work with people, how to interview people, how to make decisions about how to help people, and about how to help people in ways that really did produce true help, and not just a handout that alleviated our guilt, but something that actually made a difference in the lives of the recipient. So that's one area, where we can do intentional training and bring about some organizational structure that really the work of a church. Here's another example. This one just happened recently. I received a fairly, hot letter, a a negative critical letter from someone who, had reached out to volunteer to work in disaster relief, and they were told, while we appreciate your interest, please don't show up at this disaster site because you've not been through our training.
Jeff Iorg:You're not prepared to work in our ministry, but we'd like to get you trained so that the next time we have one of these, you'll be able to assist us, and we'll be able to put you on the team.
Jeff Iorg:Well, this person was livid. Wrote me
Jeff Iorg:a hot letter saying, I can't believe, that I offered to help and no one would let me. I was told that I wasn't qualified because I hadn't been through the training. You know, I don't see why it takes any training to show up and do this or that or the other, and he made a list of things that he was planning to do in this disaster context. Well, the hard reality is disaster relief, is a ministry that requires some specific training to know how and when and why to do certain things in certain context. And so while I was sympathetic to the brother who really had a passion and an urgency about trying to help in the moment, I also recognized that Southern Baptist have built the largest disaster relief response program among any denomination in North America because we require people to be trained.
Jeff Iorg:Before they get that yellow hat, before they get that special colored t shirt that sends them out on a team, they've gotta go through some basic training so that they understand the systems and the approaches and how to work within the relationships that we have with things like FEMA and Red Cross and other governmental, agencies to coordinate and work together to actually make a real difference in the lives of people. You know, I've known multiple people who were very much involved in disaster relief, and the training, while it slowed their initial participation, made a tremendous impact in their lives over time as they were able to serve much more effectively because they had been trained. So don't make the assumption that you just preaching a sermon, or you making a speech, or you giving a talk on the importance of service or the value of ministry in and through a church, is just gonna spontaneously cause everybody to know what to do. You need to offer some training. And so if you're thinking about launching something like a food kitchen or a food pantry, or you're thinking about getting people involved in disaster relief, or opening a counseling service, or a counseling center, or an after school mentoring program, or any other thing that would provide this kind of need meeting ministry into a community, don't avoid or don't sidestep the importance of training people to get this done.
Jeff Iorg:Okay. A third thing you can do, besides speak, preach, and, model and then train, third thing you can do is organize your church to meet practical needs, and let's start by organizing them to meet the needs of members. Now you may say, well, we're a small church. You don't need all that much organization. No.
Jeff Iorg:You really don't. An organization can be as something as simple as a phone tree, where people know who to call to get something done or who to call to access information. It can be much more elaborate than that, but it can be something that's just that simple. So how are you going to organize your church to meet practical needs? Really, there there are a couple of ways to do this, a couple of big categories of ways.
Jeff Iorg:1st, organize through some kind of small group strategy or small group structure. You may have Sunday school, you may have home groups, you may have life groups, or something like that, and one of the ways to organize to meet needs is simply to say, we're going to meet the basic needs of our church members, the basic service needs of people through the small group structure. And certainly nothing wrong with that, but in doing so, you're going to have to be intentional to make sure that you have someone that works in that structure who's tasked with that responsibility, because this structure typically may also have some other functions. It may have the function of being a Bible teaching group. It may have the function of being an outreach group.
Jeff Iorg:It may also have the function of being a ministry providing group. And so someone has to be responsible for coordinating that capacity or that aspect of these small groups. Another way you can do it is to organize by function for these needs to be met. One way that some churches do this is by organizing their deacons to meet these kinds of needs, where they have assignments, to them of the need meeting ministries of the church, and they take on those assignments, and they share as a group the responsibility and perhaps recruit some people to help them with the
Jeff Iorg:task. Another way to
Jeff Iorg:do it, those to create stand alone ministries, where you say, you know, we have these ministries. We have this ministry to people who are bereaved. We have a ministry to people who are hospitalized. We have a ministry to people who need food provided. We have a ministry to people who need shelter or who need clothing.
Jeff Iorg:We have ministry groups organized, whether you call them committees or task forces or ministry teams, whatever you call them. You have people who've come together around that particular need and are uniquely passionate about that need and wanna devote themselves to meeting that particular need. I am familiar with one church in California, for example, that has had, for many years, a community based food bank, and they, open the food bank twice a week. They have been doing this for so long that this is quite an operation. They actually own 2 or 3 trucks where they are able to retrieve and bring foodstuffs back to their, their warehouse for distribution.
Jeff Iorg:This is a significant ministry, and they don't do it through their Sunday school, and they don't do it through their deacons. They do it through a group of people in their church who are organized to do just this function, and they are passionately committed to it and spend hours and hours making sure that these foodstuffs are gathered, sorted, collected, and made available in a good way to their community. So 3 ways to organize your church. 1, through a small group structure or 2, through an organizational structure designed to meet needs, or 3, around a particular need and how people want to do that. But then I would go on to say that this organization is not just to meet the needs of your church members, but the organization also needs to be created to meet the needs of your community.
Jeff Iorg:You know, no church can meet every need in their community, but every church can meet some need, and that's why we have associations or fellowship of churches that can come together to meet more needs or to share with each other and say, if your church will take that need, our church will take this need, and we'll cover our community by each one doing different things, but by doing things that are compatible with each other as we try to meet the needs in our community. So while no church can meet every need, every church can meet some needs, and we can work together with fellow churches to meet more needs in our community. Things like after school tutoring, after school care, English as a second language opportunities, citizenship classes, literacy classes, job training classes, sports programs, gang intervention. There are all kinds of ministries that churches can provide that communities really need. You say, well, I wouldn't even know where to get started.
Jeff Iorg:Well, here's the simplest place. Go to your closest public school and ask the principal, what do you need? And then whatever you hear, start delivering. Now it may not be in the beginning something very dramatic or something that you think is all that important, but if it's important enough to the principal to tell you about it, it's a good starting point for you to start building a relationship. I could tell you story, after story, after story of churches that took this simple approach of going to a school and saying, what do you need?
Jeff Iorg:And out of that growing multiple need meeting ministries. First of all, starting with meeting the needs in the school, expanding to meet the needs of families in the school, expanding to meet the needs of the community represented by the school. And over the years, ministry just blooming across the community because it started at a school with a principal who said, I've got this one need. Well, today, we've talked about elevating ministry. Service is one of the core functions of a church.
Jeff Iorg:It's hard. No doubt about it. It is difficult. It's not that complicated. Jesus said service is important.
Jeff Iorg:Yes, there are reasons why we try to avoid doing it, but none of those reasons overcome the biblical responsibility and mandate that we have. How do you do it? Well, preach, teach, and model service, lift it up, Let people know how important it is and celebrate people who do it. And then train, train, train, train. Teach people how to serve and train them in specific ways to serve so that they can be enhanced.
Jeff Iorg:And it'll be more than just a passion they have, it'll be something that's enhanced by training along the way. And then organize. Organize to meet the needs of your members. Organize to meet the needs in your community. Organize in the simplest way possible, but pull together an organizational plan that says, we do ministry and here's how we do it in our community.
Jeff Iorg:Well, ministry's hard, but it's not complicated. We do ministry. We serve in the name of Jesus. And, we do it as we lead on.