Today the trustees of Bethlehem College & Seminary announced that they have selected Joe Rigney as president-elect. Details here.
I’m grateful to God for President Tim Tomlinson’s faithful leadership as our school’s first president.
Here are seven reasons I’m grateful that our trustees selected Joe Rigney to serve as our school’s second president:
- My school’s presidential profile says that the president must “embody, grasp, embrace, and be able to articulate and defend the Bethlehem College & Seminary Affirmation of Faith,” especially what John Piper, our Chancellor, calls ”Christian Hedonism.” If there is a person on the planet who can articulate Christian hedonism better than John Piper, that person is Joe Rigney. (I have heard John Piper say that he thinks Joe Rigney does it better.)
- Rigney is committed to believe and celebrate whatever God’s word teaches no matter how unpopular that may be. As one of my friends put it, Rigney ”would rather die than drift a millimeter from the Bible. A man whose grip on Reality is so firm that you’d have to chop off his hand to undo it. And even then, he’d be holding on with his teeth and his toes.”
- Rigney is a rigorous, perceptive, penetrating thinker. He models what Piper calls assiduous attentiveness. He can wisely analyze multilayered intellectual and cultural issues. He is unflappable and intellectually honest.
- Rigney has good theological instincts, intuitions, and burdens.
- Rigney is humble and eminently persuadable, and he is principled and not easily manipulated. He can sympathize with others while being aware of how empathy can be sinful.
- Rigney is gifted at communicating in a clear, articulate, and compelling way. (I borrow the phrase ”Kill the dragon, get the girl!” from him.) He is one of the few people I enjoy listening to talk about anything—whatever the topic—because he is consistently interesting, thought-provoking, and edifying.
- Rigney is not just a gifted professor but a faithful family man and pastor. I recently listened to every sermon he has preached to Cities Church (a church that Bethlehem Baptist Church planted about five years ago), and he served me well by faithfully explaining and applying the Bible.
To learn more about Bethlehem College & Seminary, see here.
Update on October 1: John Piper thanks God for Joe Rigney as the president-elect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgdV9bmM4Rw
