The Value of Pastoral Ministry

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the vital role that pastors play in leading churches, sharing personal stories of how pastors have shaped his own life, and honoring their frontline ministry. He explores new research on the challenges pastors face while emphasizing their steadfast commitment and the importance of supporting pastors both now and for future generations.

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:54

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. Today and next week on the podcast, I wanna talk about the role of pastors, the vital role they play in leading churches. I wanna talk about some of the challenges pastors are facing, and then I wanna talk about the importance of the call to pastoral ministry and how essential it is that we clearly issue that challenge to a rising generation of men who need to take on this pastoral responsibility. But let's start today by me saying something I've said many, many times over the past decades.

Jeff Iorg: 01:38

Pastors are my heroes. They are the frontline ministry leaders who make the eternal difference in communities, and I have a profound respect for them. Now, my journey as a ministry leader started with a passion to be one and only thing, and that is to be a pastor. I started out in ministry leadership as a pastor of a, smaller but established church in the Midwest that grew while I was leading it and developed some strength and influence in its community. Then I left there and went to the Pacific Northwest to plant a church.

Jeff Iorg: 02:19

And when I did that, I really thought that being the founding pastor of that church was my last job. I intended to go there and stay thirty years and see a great church grow up in that community, spawning other churches that we would plant across that community and in our region. I, of course, had a zeal for missions, for global missions coming out of that church as well. And so I found myself immersed completely in that responsibility when I moved to Portland, believing that I would be a pastor for the rest of my life. Well, you know my story.

Jeff Iorg: 02:54

That didn't happen. After about twelve or thirteen years of being a pastor, one day, God tapped me on the shoulder and said, you're going a different direction, son. And I will tell you, that was a traumatic time in my life. When I first sensed that God was leading me out of pastoral ministry, I felt like I was leaving the ministry. Now, I know it seems in hindsight to be a bit foolish, but that's exactly how I felt in the moment.

Jeff Iorg: 03:23

I felt like I was leaving the ministry.

Jeff Iorg: 03:27

When God called me to ministry, I didn't

Jeff Iorg: 03:30

make it a commitment to ministry leadership as I now teach people to do. I made it a commitment to being a pastor. I remember telling my pastor at the time that God was calling me to be a pastor, and he even counseled me then. Jeff, you may be a pastor, but God may have other things for you as well, so be open to whatever he may lead you to do. I remember thinking, what's wrong with this poor man?

Jeff Iorg: 03:52

He doesn't understand English language. God has called me to be a pastor. And I was so clear with him. And again, for the next, say, fifteen to seventeen years in my life and thirteen years of that actively serving as a pastor, that's really what I thought I was going to be and what I was pursuing with every bit of every fiber of my being. But then God gave me a new direction.

Jeff Iorg: 04:14

And quite honestly, even after all these years, I still some days lament that because of my high regard for pastors, for the high value I place on what they do, and for the impact they've made in my life. So as a part of my tribute to pastors today, I wanna tell you about four men who've served as my pastors over the years and some of the difference they've made in my life. My first pastor was t c Melton. He was the pastor of Elmcrest Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas where I became a Christian when I was 13. And over the next ten years, he and the good leaders of that church and the church itself mentored me from convert to associate pastor.

Jeff Iorg: 04:54

It was quite a journey. It was during his twenty seven year pastorate in the middle of that where I was privileged to be a part of his church. He took a special interest in me and guided me and shaped me and motivated me and gave me opportunities, first in volunteer service, and then as a paid intern, and then as a part time associate pastor, and then ultimately as an associate pastor on his staff. Brother Melton was a pastor at heart. He had a remarkable capacity for caring for people, for reaching people with the gospel, and particularly for ministering to men and equipping and training men for leadership.

Jeff Iorg: 05:33

I learned so much about everything that I do in ministry today from this good and godly man who influenced me and was my first pastor. Then, of course, I went on to become a pastor and then a church planter, but, there came a time in my life when I moved out of that role, and so a new person came to pastor our church. His name was Keith Evans. Now Keith had the difficult responsibility of coming to our church and following me as the church planter. It's often very difficult for the person who follows a church planter, especially if there's been a successful church plant, but Keith came and did a remarkable and good job.

Jeff Iorg: 06:12

Keith stayed at our church for more than twenty years and was really the influential pastor in our family's life, over much of that time. He was the pastor who influenced my children and who was their pastor through their formative years and through their launching into adulthood. He was the pastor who led our church to do remarkably different things than when I was the pastor, including build our own campus. That's a remarkable story of how God spoke to him about leading us to build a campus when we had said, under my leadership, campus, that we would always be a portable church. And then, of course, pastor Keith sat down with me, explained how God was leading our church, and it was very evident that he was right and that I could see the circumstances coming together to illustrate how God was taking us in a new direction.

Jeff Iorg: 06:59

And then pastor Keith asked me to do what many people thought was unbelievable. He asked me, the founding pastor who had said our church would never have a building, to chair the facilities task force and build a new campus. I did that. And under his direction, we were able to build a new campus and continue the ministry of our church and expand it in very significant ways. As I said, Keith was our pastor for many years and was the pastor of the church for more than twenty.

Jeff Iorg: 07:27

He went on then to a ministry of itinerant work training and shaping and mentoring other pastors, and then became a trustee at the International Mission Board and has most recently been their chairman of their board, which typifies and speaks to the kind of leader that he is. I really admired Keith's capacity to work with people, to have a gentle touch, but yet a focused, commitment to mission and to vision and to leading a church forward with really a gentle pastor's touch. Well, eventually, we moved to San Francisco, and a man named Ryan Blackwell became our pastor. Ryan became the pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Francisco when he was a younger man. In fact, when he was asked to be the pastor, the pastor search committee called me and said, Are you sure that this is the person we should get?

Jeff Iorg: 08:15

Because I'd actually recommended him to the church. I said, I absolutely am sure, and boy, was it ever a good choice. Pastor Ryan has the wonderful capacity to preach and teach the word of God in such a wonderfully engaging manner. He also has the capacity to lead people, to build coalition, and to help a very diverse church like First San Francisco to come together and get things done. And also, he's convictional without being mean spirited about it.

Jeff Iorg: 08:41

And so even in that context in San Francisco, when he was working in such a hostile environment toward, conservative Christianity and toward people who hold to the Bible and its standards, He was able to do that with grace and dignity and was a pleasure to follow him as he pastored our church. And then, of course, we then ultimately moved to Southern California, and I met, my most recent pastor, Brian Kennedy. It's hard to

Jeff Iorg: 09:07

put into words what Brian means to me. He

Jeff Iorg: 09:10

is, as I've said before, Brian Kennedy with a bible in his hand is an exquisite pleasure. When he stands up and opens the scripture and starts to give an exposition of a text, it's riveting and it's so engaging and it's so it's so spiritually nourishing. Now part of the reason that I fell in love with him so much was that when we moved to Southern California, I was spiritually drained, completely completely done in by moving the seminary and all the stress that that had put in my life for about the previous five years. I was running on spiritual fumes. I was drained completely.

Jeff Iorg: 09:46

We got to Southern California. I went to his to Mount Zion Church the first time. Brian Kennedy opened the word of God, and it was as if as it was if a pipeline of spiritual strength started flowing into my heart. Over those next few months, I just was rejuvenated by the word of God coming through this dear brother. Of course, Mount Zion was a prominently African American church, and so we were joining a church that was very cross cultural and very different than what we had experienced in our past.

Jeff Iorg: 10:16

And Brian welcomed us and integrated us into leadership and then gave me the privilege of being the first, Anglo elder in the church's one hundred year history. But I won't go into the details of this, but I will just tell you this much. There was a particular time, in my leadership at Gateway when I was taking a public stand on something that really had national implications, and it was a controversial stand. And I remember telling pastor Brian, I'm sorry that I've brought this controversy to you and to our church, and and if you want me to leave, just say the word and I'll step aside because I would never do anything to harm our church or to harm you as a pastor. And he chuckled a little bit and smiled and said, oh, Jeff, do you think this is the first time an African American pastor's ever had to deal with a little trouble in the community based on a position that he or his members took?

Jeff Iorg: 11:07

He said, you're

Jeff Iorg: 11:07

not going anywhere. He said, you're our brother. We know your heart. We stand with you. And he did.

Jeff Iorg: 11:16

That's what pastors are like.

Jeff Iorg: 11:18

Man, I've had some of the finest men in the world serve me as a pastor. TC Melton that facilitated my conversion through the ministry of his church and then discipled me from convert to associate pastor and taught me the foundations that have served me for now almost fifty years of ministry leadership. And then these good and godly men, Keith Evans, who was the pastor who followed me in the church plant, stabilized us in so many ways, led us to do new things that and involved me in that process, and was the pastor to my family, especially during my children's emerging and formative years as teenagers. Then, of course, Ryan Blackwell being an example to me of pastoral excellence in a difficult challenging city in San Francisco and seeing a person who was wise beyond his years exercise tremendous leadership in that context. And then, doctor Brian Kennedy, a man who infused me with spiritual energy, gave me the strength that only the word of God can provide, befriended me and brought me into leadership in a multicultural context, and trusted me and trusted me to help break down some of the barriers that are going to lead Mount Zion to become even a more multicultural church in the future.

Jeff Iorg: 12:33

Listen. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a pastor, thank God for you. You're in the lineage of the kind of men I'm describing right now. And just thinking about these men and thinking about the thousands of pastors who are out there every day doing the same kind of work these men did for me in the lives of countless millions of other people, it just makes my heart sing. Puts tears in my eyes right now and a little bit of a catch in my throat because I know what pastors have meant to me and I know what pastors mean to the lives of thousands, if not millions of people across this country.

Jeff Iorg: 13:09

I thank God for pastors. If you are a pastor, thank God for you. If you have a pastor, go give him a pat on the back today and tell him personally what he means to you and how he's transformed your life and the difference he's making for you. If you have a pastor that's in your past

Jeff Iorg: 13:26

who made a big difference in your life, before it's too late, make a note to give them

Jeff Iorg: 13:32

a call or write them

Jeff Iorg: 13:33

a little letter or in

Jeff Iorg: 13:34

some way say to them, you made a difference. You changed my life and I want you to know how. Thank God for pastors. Now I said on these podcasts I want to talk not only about my appreciation for pastors, but about some of the challenges that pastors are facing today. You know, LifeWay Research has recently done a major study about pastors.

Jeff Iorg: 13:56

They were asking questions about pastoral tenure, about the challenges pastors face, about some of the challenges and issues that they're gonna need to resolve in the future to continue in effective ministry. So I wanna talk for a few minutes about some of the things that came out

Jeff Iorg: 14:11

of that study and comment about some

Jeff Iorg: 14:14

of those issues in terms of trying to perhaps help some of you who are pastors to be better equipped today. So the first thing the study showed is something that is really remarkable, and that is all these myths about how many people are leaving the ministry, they're really myths. Most pastors are not leaving the ministry. In fact, LifeWay shows research showed that only about one out of every 100 pastors leaves the ministry each year. That's not very many.

Jeff Iorg: 14:44

Now, of course, when you expand that out over how many thousands of pastors there are, yes, that number gets up there a bit. But when you look at the ratio of it, really most pastors are not leaving the ministry. Most pastors are staying with it, staying focused, and doing everything they can to accomplish their ministry and very contentedly doing so. Now in the context of asking those pastors that are remaining in pastoral ministry what some of their challenges were, one of the first ones that emerged was how many pastors feel like they're on call twenty four hours a day. Eighty four percent of the pastors surveyed felt that way.

Jeff Iorg: 15:22

Now, as a former pastor, can tell you that when I was a pastor, I felt the same way. I also recognized even back then that that was

Jeff Iorg: 15:31

an unrealistic expectation. So

Jeff Iorg: 15:34

I talked with my church leaders about this, and they all agreed, no one can be on call 247365. That's an impossibility. And so in both my churches and then later on in other ministries, we developed some strategies so that someone was always on call, but it wasn't always the pastor. So pastors, I wanna encourage you. If you're one of these people that feels like you're on call twenty four hours a day, and that's one of the greatest challenges you face in pastoral ministry, you need to train some other people to help you with that.

Jeff Iorg: 16:06

That's why God gave you elders, and God gave you deacons, and God gave some of you in larger churches staffs of pastors. And that's why it's important for churches to be trained that when you have a crisis need, call this number and someone will answer it, but it may not always be the, quote, lead pastor or the pastor. You may get a deacon or an elder or a staff pastor. They may be able to help you with your situation, but if not, they'll know how to get ahold of the pastor who does need to be reached. It gives that pastor that sense of things being cared for without him being constantly on the clock.

Jeff Iorg: 16:43

So 84% say they're always on call, and that's one of the primary struggle points they have in pastoral ministry. Another key number was that 80% of pastors say they expect some future conflict in their church. Now, I've been teaching pastors for a long time, and it's core to my curriculum that I teach about conflict, biblical conflict, biblical conflict management, all

Jeff Iorg: 17:07

those kinds of things. What can you do about it though? Well, let

Jeff Iorg: 17:11

me encourage you. If you're if you're in a church, make the decision that you're gonna do everything you can to mitigate conflict, to keep it from happening, and when it does happen, to address it appropriately so that pastors aren't overwhelmed by conflict that comes in a church. Here's a hard reality. Most church members are pretty happy, but a few are not. And quite typically, it's the few that create the most of the conflict for pastors.

Jeff Iorg: 17:43

So if you're a member of a church and you're in that majority that's pretty content, be on the lookout for potential conflict and do everything you can to mitigate it, to prevent it, and when it does occur, to support your pastor in helping him to resolve it appropriately. Well, those are two of the big concerns that pastors addressed in their in the survey. But now, let let's talk about another issue that came up in the survey, and that is they asked pastors who were actively pastoring churches, why did you leave your last church and come to this one? Now, it's also interesting. The survey showed that the typical tenure for the pastors that were surveyed was eight years.

Jeff Iorg: 18:21

So these pastors were not changing churches every eighteen months or anything like that. But most pastors pastor more than one church in their lifetime. So the question was asked, you're in a good church, you're healthy in ministry there, why did you leave the last one? Which also speaks to us about why pastors might leave the one they're currently serving. Here are the answers.

Jeff Iorg: 18:44

The number one reason why pastors said they left their church

Jeff Iorg: 18:49

was they felt they had taken the church as far as they could. They had taken the church as far as they could. Now this is a very interesting dynamic because it recognizes that pastors have an arc of leadership when they're in

Jeff Iorg: 19:06

a church, and churches have an arc of accomplishment while the pastor's in the church. Every pastor, no matter if you stay two years or fifty years, every pastor has a beginning and an ending of their ministry. I call that the arc. If you think of it as an ark, you'll see that the ark has a rising time and then a waning time. The wisest leaders lead until the ark is at the top, and then before it starts declining down the other side and they start coasting into what is often frustration and stagnation, they have the courage to step aside.

Jeff Iorg: 19:48

You know, when I went to my first church, I pastored it for six and a half years, and after about five years, it was really becoming a very enjoyable and workable relationship. But I was also having a sense that I had come to that church and done for it what I was supposed to do, and that there were some other things God had for me in my future. That's when I left and went to plant the church in Portland. It wasn't that I had done everything that could be done. It wasn't that the church had reached the endpoint of its ministry.

Jeff Iorg: 20:19

I just felt that I had come there and been on an arc of accomplishment that had now reached a point where it was time for me to step aside and for someone else to step in. Now this is a different context, but I've just recently gone through the same thing at the seminary. I left Gateway Seminary not because anything was wrong, but because after twenty years of leadership, I realized that the next wave of the seminary's ministry was going to take another five to ten years to accomplish, and I simply wasn't the right person to lead that. And so while the seminary was at a relatively high point in a lot of its accomplishments and what it was what it was being able to do, I felt that it was time to transition that to a new leader who could take it to the next twenty years, and another long arc of accomplishment and progress. So I think that this is a very insightful comment when pastors were asked, why did you leave your last church?

Jeff Iorg: 21:09

They didn't leave the ministry. They weren't forced out. They didn't get fired. They left because they simply felt, I've brought this church about as far as I can. With my gifts, my abilities, my visions, my passions, I've about brought it to where I think I can take it.

Jeff Iorg: 21:24

And now, it's just simply time for a new wave of leadership, maybe a new generation, maybe a new perspective. It's time for someone to come in and take where we are and take us to another level. Now, if that's happening for you in your context, maybe you're the person who needs to go and do that somewhere else. Now, here's a second reason why pastors said they've changed churches. Second reason was because my family needed a

Jeff Iorg: 21:53

change. Now that is a very significant issue. My family needed a change.

Jeff Iorg: 22:03

You know, as I've reflected back over watching pastors change churches over the years, I came up with several illustrations very quickly that I thought about for this podcast of pastors who made the decision to change churches really to better meet the needs of their family. Give you a few examples. We had a situation in the Pacific Northwest when I was there. A church planter came. I was very effective.

Jeff Iorg: 22:30

They planted the church. The church grew. Things seemed well. After a couple of years though, he told me that his wife was really struggling. Now, if you've never lived in the Pacific Northwest, you may not understand this, but in the Pacific Northwest, because it's a basically rainforest, it stays cloudy there about two hundred or more days a year.

Jeff Iorg: 22:53

And when I say cloudy, I just mean it's overcast. It's not necessarily raining every day, although it does rain quite a bit, but it's just cloudy. It's kind of a different environment really to live in if you're used to a lot of sun.

Jeff Iorg: 23:06

Well, some people really struggle with this,

Jeff Iorg: 23:10

and this particular pastor's wife did. She tried everything. She tried taking trips to find places where it was sunnier. She tried using heat lamps and sun lamps. She she worked really hard at trying to stay because she loved her husband.

Jeff Iorg: 23:27

She loved the church plant. She was very vigorously trying to be involved in ministry. But this perpetual gloom had a significant impact on her mental health and she was struggling with it daily. And eventually, the pastor made the decision for the well-being of my family, we've gotta change to a different climate. And they did.

Jeff Iorg: 23:47

I had another situation that I'm very familiar with where a pastor's, again, wife developed some respiratory ailments. And those ailments were pretty significant. And after multiple attempts at treatment, finally, the doctor said, you're never going to get rid of this until you move to a warm, dry, low humidity climate and do ministry there. And you just need to you need to find a way to get your family to that kind of an environment. And so a few months later, opportunity came and they moved to Tucson, Arizona.

Jeff Iorg: 24:22

When they

Jeff Iorg: 24:22

got there, his wife thrived in that context.

Jeff Iorg: 24:27

I had another situation. This wasn't a pastoral situation, but another situation I was involved with. I had some friends that were serving internationally in a country that had a lot of pollution. They had their first child, and within a few months after that child was born, it started developing a lot of skin allergies and skin rashes. They started trying to treat them with all the different ways that you do that kind of thing, medicines, ointments, clothing changes, detergent changes, just all the things you think of to try

Jeff Iorg: 24:53

to fix a skin ailment. Finally, they realized this is being caused by the environment we're living in. Now, they were working in a particular country,

Jeff Iorg: 25:03

but that country has a lot of immigrants that go to other countries, and so they went back to their supervisors and said, can we move to a different country and climate and keep working with these same people that are now immigrants to a different part

Jeff Iorg: 25:14

of the world? And they did that. They actually moved to Europe to a totally different climate. Within six weeks, this little two year old child, his skin was perfectly healthy. Again,

Jeff Iorg: 25:26

a family had to make the decision to change ministry locations because of family needs. I could go on and on. I have a story of a family that had two teenagers. They moved to a new community, and frankly, it just didn't work for their family. After a couple of years of pastoral ministry, the pastor just finally had to say, you know, it it just isn't working for us, for lots of different reasons, we're gonna need to make a change, and they did.

Jeff Iorg: 25:53

What I'm trying to tell you is this, when when it says that the second leading reason that pastors leave a church, the first one is they took the church as far as they could, but

Jeff Iorg: 26:01

the second one was their family needed a change. Well,

Jeff Iorg: 26:07

that's not always because families are doing anything wrong or because there's something wrong with the church. There's just sometimes a need to prioritize family. In all the cases I've worked with, there haven't been these quick decisions. Oh, we're having a bad day in our family.

Jeff Iorg: 26:22

We're leaving. No. These have

Jeff Iorg: 26:24

gone on for months, sometimes even years, of a family trying to make the adjustment or trying to make the situation work, and it just couldn't happen. And when that came about, pastors made the call, family has to come first, and I'm gonna have to find a way to do ministry in a different context. Well, a third reason that pastors gave for leaving their church, I've already addressed earlier in the podcast, and that is because of conflict. But it was a distant third to these other two issues. So yes, there are examples when conflict comes up that cause church churches and pastors to part ways.

Jeff Iorg: 27:05

But I want you to see that it wasn't the first reason. It wasn't even the most prominent choice when given the survey options, but it is a present and difficult reality. So again, as I would say, if you're in a church and you're having conflict, listen, do all you can to mitigate that conflict, do all you can to address the conflict, do all you can to help resolve the conflict, and recognize that unresolved conflict that goes on and on and on may have the catastrophic effect of costing you a pastor who may have been able to do you a really good job if you could have just gotten past some particular issue. Well, today on the podcast, I've tried to

Jeff Iorg: 27:48

do two or three things. First, I wanted to again raise the bar and give the, accolade to the people that serve us as pastors. They are our heroes. They're the

Jeff Iorg: 28:01

frontline warriors who are making a difference in leading the most important group in the world, and that is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to accomplish its mission of expanding his kingdom here on earth. Pastors are at the forefront of this spiritual battle that we're in to expand the gospel's reach all around the world. Pastors are the, are the crossroads, if you will. They're the they're the fulcrum point. They're the key leaders that make so much of all else happens.

Jeff Iorg: 28:28

And as I said, I have a profound appreciation for pastors in general, but more specifically, for pastors who've impacted my life like I've already mentioned earlier on the podcast. So I am grateful to God for pastors and for the impact they make. And the good news is most pastors are happily and contentedly doing their work. They are vigorously involved in pastoral ministry and they're not looking to go anywhere. The average pastoral tenure right now is about eight years and the pastors who were surveyed by this extensive research project by LifeWay Research are staying put.

Jeff Iorg: 29:05

Only about one in a hundred will leave, in any given year and be forced out of ministry in any way. The rest of them are either gonna stay where they are or in some cases move on to someplace else. And I've talked about why they move on. And you might think, well, move on because they're unhappy or they're disgruntled or they don't make enough money. It's none of those things.

Jeff Iorg: 29:22

They move on because they feel like they've led the church as far as they can take it. They feel like their family has needs that they just have to prioritize or they feel like they've had a point of conflict that's gotten to the place where it's no longer productive to stay, but they just simply need to move on. Well, today, find a pastor, pat him on the back, tell him thank you for what he does. And if it's one that's made an impact in your life, even in the past, take time to say thank you, write a note, send a card, make a call. Let's express appreciation to pastors for the profound impact they have in our lives.

Jeff Iorg: 29:59

And if you are a pastor out there today listening to this podcast, brother, lead on.