Dr. Jeff Iorg has released a statement clarifying his comments urging Southern Baptists not to pick and choose which denominational entities to fund. Iorg, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), made the remarks during a trustee meeting of the Executive Committee last week.
In his update to trustees on Sept. 22, Iorg argued that selective giving to the denomination’s Cooperative Program sprang from the same “expressive individualism” that leads to “convincing children they can choose their own gender.”
“One of the Executive Committee’s core responsibilities is managing and distributing Cooperative Program funds to SBC entities,” said Iorg. “This is becoming more challenging because of how churches and state conventions are changing the definition of Cooperative Program giving.”
Iorg lamented that in 2025, the Executive Committee has received financial contributions in 33 different “Cooperative Program configurations,” meaning that local churches are designating funds for certain SBC entities and not others.
“This is more than an accounting challenge. It is redefining the Cooperative Program as a catch-all phrase, masking a return to an old approach of societal giving,” Iorg said.
Arguing that “previous generations of SBC leaders” rejected this approach, Iorg said that selective Cooperative Program giving is “rooted in a worldview shift that has marked Western culture and unfortunately bled into SBC life. The problem is the fracturing influence of expressive individualism, the dominant worldview of our time.”
“Expressive individualism is the root of cultural developments ranging from obsessive sharing on social media to convincing children they can choose their own gender,” said Iorg. “It is the worldview which demands mass customization and at the same time fuels aggressive tribalism. Southern Baptists live in this cultural milieu and are being influenced by it.”
Iorg drew criticism from some Southern Baptists after a clip of his address began circulating online. Several Southern Baptist pastors expressed that the decision of their churches to withhold funds from certain SBC entities resulted not from expressive individualism but from the belief that those entities had not been responsive to calls for reform or transparency.
Following the backlash, Iorg released a statement, saying, “An edited version of clips from my speech has been passed around the internet accompanied by inaccurate claims about the presentation, so we have provided the full manuscript and complete video here.”
