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John Piper

The McLaren Moment: What John Piper meant by “Farewell Rob Bell.”

Mar 17th, 2011
by Michael Krahn.
1 comment

My take on the Rob Bell controversy over at my other blog. Here’s an excerpt:

When the current Love Wins hype is over and the book completes its guaranteed run as a bestseller, Rob Bell will be able to release a book twice as controversial in the future and receive less than half the fanfare. HarperOne should enjoy the flood of free publicity from the power writers of the Evangelical blogosphere this time around. Next time out the bait will be a much tougher sell.

Read the rest here.

__________________

The “other blog” that features only my longer pieces of writing, some of which have been published in print and others that are waiting to be published. The post frequency is about once a week. So, if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for…

Go and take a look at the new site here.
You can subscribe by email by clicking here.
You can subscribe by RSS by clicking here.
The Facebook group for the new blog is here.

Enjoy!

Your Virtual Pastor Is Not Your Pastor

Nov 18th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

There was an excellent post at Desiring God a few days ago called “Embracing the Ordinary“. The posts consists of a quote by Carl Trueman in Republocrat followed by six implications – three for churches and three for pastors. First, Carl Trueman:

[The] Lord has blessed the church of today with some remarkably talented individuals who have been used to do remarkable things. The danger is that, in focusing on such men, we create unrealistic expectations. The evidence that the church models developed by these men can be transplanted with success elsewhere is highly equivocal; more likely, their success is rooted in God’s using their own remarkable gifts and contexts—the right men in the right place at the right time for something great, if you like. The life of Don Carson’s father, outlined so movingly in his Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, is more likely to be closer to the norm for most churches and pastors than that of Redeemer in New York (38-39).

Bingo! This, as I have pointed out ad nauseum, is the major failing of Willow Creek’s “Leadership Summit” event. The “leaders” they present as authorities bear little to no resemblance to the average attendee of the event. Unless you are trying to build an empire with the same look and size (which is actually the goal of many), it makes no sense to idolize these leaders.

They are the exception, not the rule and by defining leadership success by their accomplishments implies that a majority of pastors and other leaders are losers and failures.

The post at DG then considers these six implications (Shortened here. Read the full post for the expanded points):

Three Implications for Churches

  1. Listen (attentively and expectantly) primarily to your pastor’s sermons
  2. Listen to extraordinary preachers (unless he’s your pastor) sparingly
  3. Lower your (likely unrealistic) expectations of your pastor. While he may not be (and likely isn’t) extraordinary, he is (for you and your church) likely the right man in the right place at the right time.

Three Implications for Pastors

  1. Broaden your diet of your favorite preachers
  2. Be content being an ordinary pastor and preacher
  3. To give you proper perspective (and deep encouragement) as you aspire and cope with your newly embraced “ordinariness,” read Carson’s Memoirs annually

Posts like this is one of the reasons I continue to read content at Desiring God written by John Piper and others. Piper’s church is  mega-church size without mega-church BS. Theologically, you may have a few bones to pick with him, but you have to admit that there’s a refreshing lack of mega-church thinking.

There is far too much free-lance pastoring going on, and that’s where this post hits a bit of a paradox. Desiring God and other large ministries put out so much content, with increased influence being the primary goal. Still, I like the “proceed with caution” attitude displayed in the post.

Sometimes people need to be told “That’s a nice thing to say, but that guy’s not your pastor,” and also “If you want him to be your pastor, here’s the address of his church and a membership transfer form.”

Preaching and Teaching Resources

Nov 15th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
1 comment

My favorite weeks are the ones when I’m preparing to preach. Last week was one of those weeks.

During the week Darryl Dash posted a “preaching cheat sheet” based on Haddon Robinson’s book “Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages”

I have two of my own that I, like Darryl, have posted beside my desk. One is based on John Piper’s article The Marks of a Spiritual Leader, the other is from a section of John Stott’s book “Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today“. You can view these three resources either by blog post or PDF by using the links below posted below.

Haddon Robinson (blog post | PDF | order the book)
John Piper (blog post | PDF)
John Stott (blog post | order the book)

Now, go work on a sermon… my next one is in two weeks. The passage is Galatians 6.

What Is a Good Teacher?

Nov 15th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
3 comments

From John Piper’s article The Marks of a Spiritual Leader, here’s a section where he seeks to give some of the essential characteristics of a good teacher. These have been helpful to me in preparing to preach and teach.

  • A good teacher asks himself the hardest questions, works through to answers, and then frames provocative questions for his learners to stimulate their thinking.
  • A good teacher analyzes his subject matter into parts and sees relationships and discovers the unity of the whole.
  • A good teacher knows the problems learners will have with his subject matter and encourages them and gets them over the humps of discouragement.
  • A good teacher foresees objections and thinks them through so that he can answer them intelligently.
  • A good teacher can put himself in the place of a variety of learners and therefore explain hard things in terms that are clear from their standpoint.
  • A good teacher is concrete, not abstract; specific, not general; precise, not vague; vulnerable, not evasive.
  • A good teacher always asks, “So what?” and tries to see how discoveries shape our whole system of thought. He tries to relate discoveries to life and tries to avoid compartmentalizing.
  • The goal of a good teacher is the transformation of all of life and thought into a Christ-honoring unity.

Download as a PDF.

Church Plants, Play-By-Play, and “Pitching” a “Tent”

Oct 27th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
No comments yet

(If you are reading this via email or RSS and you don’t see videos below, click here)

How to plant a church and avoid “The Wrath of Piper”. This video tells you everything you need to know:

This one gives you a worship service play-by-play:

Satire – life can be pretty dull without it.

And finally, a preacher’s worst nightmare:

Exclusivists, Agnostics, Accessibilists, Monergists, Synergists

Oct 26th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
3 comments

Just read the following sentence on a blog:

“The issue between gospel exclusivists on the one hand and either agnostics or accessibilists on the other is logically only a dispute between monergists. For synergists, gospel exclusivism is incoherent.”

That’s a lot of 10-dollar words right there, but the post itself is quite interesting and addresses a passage of scripture I’ve written about in the past – Romans 1:18-25. (You can read those posts here, here, and here).

The post I’m putting snippets of here is a review of John Piper’s “Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved?” by Terrance L. Thiessen. The entire review can be found here.

Thiessen agrees with most of Piper’s ideas in the books and lands roughly (in disagreement) where I do on an issue related to Romans 1:18-20:

When Piper reads Romans 1:18-20, for instance, he concludes that natural revelation leaves everyone without excuse but it does not save (11). But that is an over-reading of the text. Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed against all who suppress the truth in unrighteousness but he does not say that the Spirit of God never illumines the minds of some people whose only access to God’s self-revelation is in nature or history, so that they acknowledge God as Creator and are thankful. Indeed, we have examples of such people. Piper says that natural revelation “does not overcome this suppression. Only the gospel does” (11). But even the gospel does not, as external revelation, overcome people’s sinful tendency to suppress God’s truth. An accompanying work of the Spirit (illumination and enabling) is needed for special revelation to have saving effect. Paul does not say that such work of the Spirit is never done in connection with natural revelation so that it elicits justifying faith.

In short, Scripture clearly states that all who believe and obey God’s revelation are saved and that all who reject God’s revelation remain under condemnation. In numerous texts (such as John 3), gospel exclusivists hear a judgment of those who do not believe, where Scripture is speaking only of those who receive the particular revelation, not of those who are ignorant through no fault of their own.

*****

Those who, by the Spirit’s gracious illumination and enabling, have believed appropriately to the nature of the revelation they had received, will meet Christ at death with joy, recognizing him instantly as the one for whom they were looking. I’ve wondered whether that should be identified as the moment of their justification but, currently, I think it better to grant that God justifies immediately people who have the faith of Noah or Job or Abraham or Melchizedek or Jethro, if they have only received the revelation available to those individuals, regardless of the progress of redemptive history of which they are then ignorant.

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Rick Warren. Running a Half-Marathon

Jul 1st, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

You were expecting to see Rick Warren in running shorts here, weren’t you? Sorry, my photoshop skills aren’t THAT good. Rick in a Hawaiian shirt floating eerily in a pool with a maniacal look on his face was the best I could come up with.

Ok, I admit it: the title of the post is inflammatory and manipulative, but it was “Purpose-Driven” so all is forgiven, right? It’s not Rick who’s running a half-marathon – it’s me! I am however going to see Rick the weekend after I run.

Here’s the deal: on September 26th I’m going to run my first half-marathon; the following weekend I’m taking a roadtrip to Minneapolis to attend Desiring God 2010. This year’s line-up of speakers includes Big Rick, Francis Chan, Al Mohler, John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, and N.D. Wilson.

I’ve created two ToDo lists for myself for the two trips. Let me know if you have any suggestion for my prep work for either event.

Toronto Marathon

Desiring God 2010

ToDo: ToDo:
- Continue training and lose another 10 lbs - Eliminate liveblogging competition (i.e. Pull sparkplugs from Tim Challies car)
- Buy new shoes. Buy new pants too – all of mine are too big now - Have T-shirts made that say “Purpose Driven Pastor”
- Convince wife that this is FUN, not torture (she’s in the 5K) - Have T-shirts made that say “I’m with Ken Silva” for the blogger meet-up
- Perform purification ritual in case I come face to face with The Piper
- Bring purification supplies so ritual can be performed after I meet Rick Warren

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (1)

Jun 3rd, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
No comments yet

This week I began reading Sex and the Supremacy of Christ. I’m using this as my morning study book. I’m about a quarter of the way though and I can already say “You should read this!” The authors (including Piper, David Powlison, Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney  Mark Dever, and others) take neither the shock route (a la www.xxxchurch.com) nor the “we don’t talk about that” route.

What you’ll find in this book is frank and up-front writing about Biblical sexuality, the goodness of sex, sexual sin, and sexual restoration.

A couple of quotes from chapters one and two by John Piper:

“If the Scripture teaches that truly knowing God – truly knowing Christ – guards and guides and governs our sexuality in purity and love, then we may be sure that a pastor, or anyone else, whose sexuality is not governed and guarded and guided in purity and love does not know God – at least not as he ought.“

Echoes of C.S. Lewis: “My conviction is that one of the main reasons the world and the church are awash in lust and pornography is that our lives are intellectually and emotionally disconnected from the infinite, soul-staggering grandeur for which we were made. Inside and outside the church Western culture is drowning in a sea of triviality, pettiness, banality, and silliness.“

“It is inevitable that the human heart, which was made to be staggered with the supremacy of Christ, but instead is drowning in a sea of banal entertainment, will reach for the best natural buzz that life can give: sex.“

Order Sex and the Supremacy of Christ  here.

Doing Good to Other Believers and Doing Good to ALL

Jun 1st, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
2 comments

At our Saturday service this week our speaker for the night (Bill Harder) took on the parable of the sheep and the goats. In the discussion groups that followed afterward there was a bit of confusion that I want to clear up.

First, Bill was saying that this parable is referring (when it says “the least of these”) to other Christians. So this parable in particular is focused on believers caring for other believers in need.

Second, Bill was not saying that this is the only thing commanded in scripture. We ARE commanded to good to all.

There are two places you can do further reading on this. One is an earlier post here, and another is below where I’ve pasted some highlights from a sermon by John Piper, the entirety of which can be found here. Highlights from Piper’s sermon below. Comments welcome:

Here I want to make two points. One is that we are drawn to show mercy to some people because they are Christians. The other is that we are drawn to show mercy to some people because they are not Christians. We are drawn to show mercy to Christians because we see Christ in them, and we are drawn to show mercy to unbelievers because we want to see Christ in them. We help suffering believers because they bear the name of Christ. And we help suffering unbelievers in the hope that they will come to bear the name of Christ.

Galatians 6:10 puts it like this: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” The “especially” is because there is the added delight of affirming in them what God has already done in saving them. So in the complexities of urban trouble and ministries of mercy we are carried by two motives: on the one hand, the desire to confirm and honor the Christ-exalting faith of a brother or sister who is suffering by giving them relief and help; and on the other hand, the desire to waken Christ-exalting faith in suffering unbelievers by giving them relief and help in Jesus’ name and with Jesus’ gospel.

Ministries of Mercy to Believers

Consider two teachings of Jesus. First, the teaching of Matthew 25:31-46, the great judgment when Jesus comes and separates the sheep and the goats and sends one group of people to hell and the other to heaven. Verse 46: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

What’s the difference between these two groups? The difference Jesus focuses on is how they treated his brothers, that is his disciples. And the issue is ministries of mercy, most of which are concentrated in the urban centers of the world: Verse 35ff: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger [refugee] and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then in verse 40 Jesus explains how they were touching him: “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,you did it to me.’”

His brothers are his disciples. This is not everybody. This is not every suffering person. Jesus does not call his enemies his brothers. Matthew 12:49-50, “And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” When Jesus says in Matthew 25:40 that doing ministries of mercy to the least, namely, his brothers, is doing them to him, he means, doing them to his disciples is doing them to him.

We see the very same teaching in Mathew 10:42, “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” In other words, Jesus says that true Christians do ministries of mercy to Christians because they are Christians. And that’s one of the main ways that your Christianity is shown to be real—which is why heaven and hell hang on it.

James explains how this fits with faith as the way of salvation: James 2:15-17, “If a brother or sister [a disciple] is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” If we don’t ever bear the fruit of practical love toward brothers and sisters—the least of them—our faith is dead and we are not saved. That’s Jesus’ point.

So ministries of mercy—many of which are concentrated in the city—must flow toward Christians because they are Christians, or we are self-deceived.

Ministries of Mercy to Unbelievers

Does that mean then, that unbelievers should not get our mercy? No. In fact Jesus was very strong on this matter. He said that if we only love those who love us, if we only do good to those who do good to us, we are no different than unbelievers. So yes, show mercy to your brothers and sisters when they suffer. This is what true families do. But if you only love your family, if you only sacrifice to relieve the suffering of your family, you are no better than an unbeliever.

Listen to Luke 6:27ff where Jesus says,

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. . . . 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 32 If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. . . . 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Conclusion

So I conclude: If we are a true church, if we are true disciples of Jesus, then we will be drawn to show mercy to some suffering people precisely because they are Christians. And we will be drawn to show mercy to other suffering people because they are not Christians. We will be like our Heavenly Father, when we love his children and love our enemies. And that love means “doing good” to them.

It is not always easy to know what the good is in complexities of urban pain, or what mercy should look like in Haiti or Florida or Sudan or your loved one’s hospice. But Christ never said it would be easy. He simply said, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. And then he died and rose again to cover all our sin and make mercy possible.

John Piper is Not That Messiah

May 4th, 2010
by Michael Krahn.
3 comments

Resisting writing about this was the greatest temptation during my writing break.

Piper’s invitation to Warren doesn’t infuriate me or upset me and I find the spectrum of reactions quite amusing. I love that Piper is upsetting some of his followers, causing them to turn away from his leadership. Those who would make him judge and king over Christendom act as if they’ve had their hopes dashed by yet another false messiah.

I doubt that he was oblivious to the potential consequences of inviting Warren to his conference. So this is not a mistake but rather a strategic move to sift the harsh and unruly band of followers who claim Piper as their king.

Piper invited Warren to his conference, therefore Piper endorses every word that Warren has ever said and everything Warren has ever done – so goes the logic for some.

I hope this does send Piperettes running for the exits. Please go… go find a messiah who actually desires your unmitigated affection.

John Piper is not that messiah.

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