The Caskey Center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary hosted their annual pastors' conference April 25-26 featuring guest speakers Jeff Iorg, President and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee and Sam Greer, senior pastor of Red Bank Baptist Church (Tenn.).
Iorg spoke to more than 250 pastors and pastors’ wives gathered at the conference about the two primary assignments of Christian leaders, to serve Jesus and steward the Gospel.
“These two things are the core responsibilities of Christian leaders,” Iorg said during his opening plenary address.
Speaking from 1 Corinthians 4, Iorg explained how the passage speaks to these responsibilities for Christians leaders.
“We know that many passages in the Bible speak of serving Jesus by doing things for others in His name and I do not diminish that in any way, but to serve Jesus in this context means that you serve Jesus in a personal way as your primary responsibility for Christian leadership,” Iorg explained.
“Before I serve others in His name, I must first have a personal service relationship with Jesus Christ. Serve Jesus means that you keep Him at the center of your personal relationship and your ministry relationships.
“Stewarding the Gospel means you take the Gospel, which doesn’t belong to you, and you make the maximum impact possible for the person that is does really belong to, our Lord Jesus Christ. Serve Jesus and Steward the Gospel. Ministry is difficult, but it is not complicated.”
Iorg used the past couple of years of his life as a personal example of his character being stretched in ministry leadership. Originally headed for retirement, Iorg instead stepped into his role at the SBC Executive Committee in March 2024.
“I have been through a spiritual shakedown over the last 12 months,” Iorg said. “I was preparing to retire from organizational leadership. But God called and said ‘you’re not going to step away from organization leadership. In fact, I’m going to take you into a leadership laboratory that will test everything about who you are and force you to depend on me like never before.’
“People often ask me ‘has this been a hard year in your new job’? The answer is no, the job is exactly what I thought it would be. The hard part has been the quiet work of God hammering my soul and making me more into a man who looks more like Jesus because of things about me that I’ve had to confront in this leadership laboratory.”
Greer spoke about how all ministry leaders share the same calling and the same confession.
“There will be times in ministry when all you have is your call, but that’s all you need,” Greer said. “We share our callings, and we share this confession of the Gospel. We share these things together.”
Other breakout sessions, for pastors and for pastors’ wives, included topics such as fighting envy in ministry and practicing endurance in ministry. Other times of prayer and fellowship were had throughout the two days.
In addition to their annual conference, NOBTS’s Caskey Center has provided many resources and training opportunities for its students since its launch in 2014.
The Center, named in memory of evangelistic Louisiana pastor Steve Caskey, represents the dream of an anonymous donor family to see Louisiana churches re-engage in the task of evangelism.
One of the most notable ways the Center helps pastors is through a full-tuition scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students at NOBTS and Leavell College who serve at normative size churches in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
These Caskey scholarship students have carried out weekly evangelism efforts over the years, enabling the Center to reach its recent milestone of 10,000 professions of faith.
As of March 2025, Caskey students have initiated more than 87,000 Gospel conversations, resulting in these 10,000 professions of faith.
Blake Newsom, director of the Caskey Center and associate professor of expository preaching, called this recent milestone "an incredible and miraculous accomplishment.”
To learn more about the Caskey Center at NOBTS, click here.
