NASHVILLE (BP) — When Ann and Jeff Iorg moved to Ontario, Calif., in 2016, so warm and accommodating was the city for the new campus of the newly named Gateway Seminary that Ann wanted to join a local church.

“And Ann actually said,” Jeff recalls, “‘I want to go to church in Ontario. I want my ministry and my money to make a difference in this city as we give and serve through this church.’ So we were looking for a church in Ontario.”

Among nearby Southern Baptist congregations was the 100-year-old Mt. Zion Church, a historically African American congregation of about 600 Sunday worshippers led by Gateway doctoral graduate Brian Kennedy. Jeff had met Kennedy when the alumnus was invited to speak at chapel during the Golden Gate Theological Seminary years, and before Kennedy had earned his doctorate.

In Ontario, Jeff was not only drawn to Kennedy’s preaching, but felt a need to bridge the cultural divide for what has been called the most segregated hour in America.

“I’m tired of the Black/white divide in our country and in our churches,” Jeff told Baptist Press, “and I wanted to do something personally about building relationships with African American leaders. One way to do that was to join Mt. Zion.”

Jeff and Ann sat down to talk with Baptist Press weeks after his inauguration as president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee (EC), a position that moved them to Nashville and set him on a schedule of frequent travel for the position that delayed their anticipated retirement.

Officially, the Iorges are still members of Mt. Zion. In their eight years at Mt Zion before moving to Nashville, the two helped with a church plant in North Fontana, Calif. Jeff helped develop ministry leaders. Ann found a familiar niche in children’s ministry. And while the predominantly African American church has members of other ethnicities, Jeff became the first Anglo to serve as an elder in the history of the church founded in 1922, serving in the position the last five years he resided in Ontario.

“Praise God, he selected Mt. Zion,” Kennedy told Baptist Press. “We really have thrived in our relationship. I love him so much. We have a mutual love and respect for each other. Dr. Iorg was very intentional in his contributions to Mt. Zion, and that’s why we were very eager to have him serve as an elder.

“We told Dr. Iorg he could go anywhere in the world and he still belongs to Mt. Zion. That’s the way it works in our community. He joined Mt. Zion,” Kennedy said. “He’s a part of our cultural uniqueness as a church. And so he’s a member of Mt. Zion. He’s still an elder. He knows he can log in any time he wants, any Tuesday he wants. He knows he’s welcome.”

The Iorges have high praise for the congregation.

“You do realize when you’re there that you’re part of a Black church, but quite frankly after a while, we were just part of a church,” Jeff said. “It’s one of the finest churches we’ve ever been a part of. One of the finest churches, on every level, discipleship, evangelism,” Ann and Jeff said almost in unison, one finishing the other’s sentence in a comfortable fashion common to long-married couples.

“It was amazing how we learned that church is church.”

Ann and Jeff have lived in multicultural environments most of their adult lives, including his leadership of the Northwest Baptist Convention from 1995-2004, and Gateway Seminary from 2004-2024. But their time at Mt. Zion, they said, was the first time they worked cross-culturally as minorities.

“It was really helpful for us to learn that when a minority person comes into a white church, or a minority person comes into a Korean church or a Chinese church, or any church, that’s what they feel like, and that’s why it was so helpful to us, because for the first time we were the minority,” Jeff said. “In the past, we had always been in the majority and we’d always been very accommodating and we thought, very open to and very much willing to work with people from all backgrounds, and I think we were. But we never realized how they saw it, from their perspective, and that’s what was really helpful. We really grew a lot through that process.”

A new family

Jeff and Ann had largely different beginnings that intersected in September 1978, when he interned in college ministry at Elmcrest Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas. Neither one remembers the exact day they met, but both recall it had to have been when Ann joined the church with perhaps 50 to 100 other college students.

They do recall their first date. In January 1979, they saw the Blackwood Brothers, a gospel quartet, in concert. Jeff remembers vividly that Ann wore a “kind of a mauve sweater.”

Ann grew up in a Christian home. Her father Bill died when she was 12 and her mother Fran Cope, whom she describes as a very strong and committed Christian, suffered from mental health issues. Today, Cope is doing well and is the fond subject of an illustration Jeff told many times in support of the Cooperative Program to incoming Gateway students, entitled “Stop Stealing from my Mother-in-Law .” Living on a fixed income, Cope continued to support the CP.

Jeff doesn’t recall his biological father, whom his mother Juanita divorced when he was 3. But he recalls his adoptive father Jim as an alcoholic. His mother married Jim when Jeff was 5, and neither of his parents was a Christian in his childhood.

“My home was chaotic, alcoholic,” Jeff said. “That’s the best way to describe it – alcoholic chaos.”

But Jeff found stability in the church after accepting Jesus at age 13. He was mentored by church leaders at Elmcrest Baptist, including pastors, deacons and Sunday School teachers, who taught him godly manhood and leadership.

Along with Jeff’s sense of humor, Ann was attracted to his sense of purpose.

“I needed some stability in my life, I think, and Jeff was very stable,” Ann said. “I always have enjoyed his sense of humor. I’m a little bit more serious. He makes me laugh, so I’ve always enjoyed that about him.

“I’ve also enjoyed the fact that he was a really strong person, and that he was very purposeful and everything he did he did with purpose, even back then. I always appreciated that about him.”

They married when Ann was barely 20 and Jeff was 21, eager for a new beginning, and have been married 44 years.

“Ann and I just wanted to start a new family together,” he said, “and try to start a family that was going to be very different than what we had both experienced. We did that. We today have three really healthy, spiritually growing adult children. The two of them that are married are married to very fine Christians, so we’re very pleased with how that all happened.”

“Maybe,” adds Ann, “because both of us had difficulties growing up, difficult situations and circumstances, we both probably grew up a little quicker than most kids do. We were married very young. … But I think because of our upbringing, we were both ready to just get on with life, because we had already been responsible for sure for ourselves for a long time, at least in terms of our choices. We always had a roof over our head and food on the table.”

A new identity

Elmcrest minister Burtis Williams, conducting an opinion poll on the morality of the country as a segue to sharing the gospel, led Jeff to Christ during “school day” at the Taylor County Fair, when students attended during school hours to boost fair attendance. Williams arrived early that Thursday morning to set up his booth.

“And I looked down the hallway of the big display building and I saw a kid walking along by himself. He was moving along at a pretty good clip,” Williams recalled to Baptist Press. “When he came within shouting distance, I just said, ‘Hey, come over here and take this opinion poll.’ He was very engrossed in the opinion.”

They talked of sin, repentance and salvation, “and then and there he prayed to receive Christ. He was very, very intent on what this was all about.”

Jeff attended church the following Sunday, Williams said, continued attending and hung around church whenever he had a good bit of time. Williams encouraged Jeff through his studies at Hardin-Simmons University.

“It was very evident that Jeff was going somewhere in his faith,” Williams said. “Very, very bright, very curious. He was extremely dedicated and committed to living right and that kind of thing. Because of that, I had a great deal of interest in his becoming what I hoped he would become.”

Williams, 83, and his wife of 60 years, Linda, have remained friends with Jeff and Ann throughout the Iorges’ ministry. Williams offered words of encouragement and prayer at Jeff’s installation service as SBC Executive Committee president and CEO.

It was also Williams who led Jeff’s mother Juanita to Christ when she was 60. After leaving Elmcrest, Williams moved to the community where Juanita lived.

“It was a God thing,” Williams said. “He just opened the way to see her come to Christ. I baptized her. Just a thrill. Extra measure, after knowing Jeff.”

Jeff always had a good relationship with his mother, whom he describes as having been supportive of him, very moral and hardworking. And although her husband had been an alcoholic, she didn’t drink.

“My mother and I always had a very close relationship and a very supportive relationship, and when I went into ministry, she was very supportive of that choice,” Jeff said. “She was very supportive of the Oregon church plant (Pathway Church, Gresham), and all that time she wasn’t a Christian.

“And I guess as I got older, I admired her more because of what she had to endure.”

Jeff recalls having struggled with his identity as a youth. He took his stepfather’s last name informally until around age 13 and, living in a small town, it created no problem until he started to need a legal name for various documents and registrations. His stepfather legally adopted him around the same time Jeff accepted Christ.

“And so I think that, without realizing it, all of that confusion about my name and my identity impacted me more than I was realizing. And it wasn’t until I was an adult that I’ve started facing up to those issues and realizing that I really needed to settle some of those issues in my life, and I settled them primarily through spiritual development and growth,” Jeff said. “My identity became in Christ, and that became really the foundation of what gave me a sense of who I was.”

A prolific writer and speaker, Jeff has been quick to ask for prayer throughout his professional journey.

“The longer I’ve been in ministry, the less impressed I’ve been with myself and more in awe I am that God has used me. I just marvel at that.”

“Absolutely,” adds Ann. “I think that’s true for both of us.”

When the SBC Executive Committee asked Jeff to serve as its president, the couple was considering retirement. Both had been active in Southern Baptist ministry for decades, and Ann has worked in ministry wherever God has taken them. She’s gifted in hospitality, preschool and children’s ministry, loves church planting, and has taught at Gateway.

Jeff admires that Ann has continued to grow throughout their marriage.

“She’s not anything at all like the person I married,” he said. “She’s morphed into a substantially different person, in healthy and beautiful ways. … I jokingly say I’ve been married to about three different women. She keeps morphing into these different versions of herself, which keeps life interesting.

“I asked her one day, ‘How many more of you are there?’ And she said, ‘Maybe one or two, just to keep things interesting.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s definitely been interesting.’”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.)