About a month ago, Joe Rigney resigned as president of Bethlehem College and Seminary. (Next he plans to teach and pastor with our friends in Moscow, Idaho.) Today our school hosted a gathering to honor Joe and Jenny Rigney. Here’s what I said. (I sprinkled in some humor to try to help me refrain from choking up in tears! And below I added a handful of pictures.)

Seven Reasons I’m Still Grateful for Joe Rigney

In September 2020, the trustees of Bethlehem College and Seminary announced that they called Joe Rigney to serve as our school’s second president. On that day I wrote seven reasons I was grateful about that decision. I’d like to revisit those seven reasons and briefly reflect on them two years and eight months later.

Reason 1

I wrote,

My school’s presidential profile says that the president must “embody, grasp, embrace, and be able to articulate and defend the Bethlehem College and Seminary Affirmation of Faith,” especially what John Piper, our Chancellor, calls “Christian hedonism.”

Well, I couldn’t say it exactly like that now since Joe is 50-50 on credobaptism vs. paedobaptism. And lest anyone charge me with “the sin of loyalty,” let the record state that credobaptism is the correct view! But that issue aside, Joe has Bethlehem DNA in his bones. He’s a happy Calvinist. And he has immensely helped us better understand and articulate that biblical manhood and womanhood is brilliant and beautiful.

Pictured above: mixed emotions after the gathering to honor the Rigneys (today)

Reason 2

I wrote,

Rigney is committed to believe and celebrate whatever God’s word teaches no matter how unpopular that may be. As [Abigail Dodds] 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.”

That hasn’t changed about Joe. Over the past decade, Joe and I have talked with each other for many hours and exchanged thousands of messages. (Most of the text messages were on a thread of six people: Joe and Jenny Rigney, Tom and Abigail Dodds, and my wife and me. My wife would routinely pick up her phone near the end of the day and exclaim something like, “I have sixty unread text messages, and fifty of them are in the Dodds-Rigney-Naselli thread.”) In every interaction I’ve had with Joe, he has been entirely committed to the Bible’s authority. He doesn’t waver from that when people slander him. And a lot of people say nasty things about Joe! But it’s like water off a duck’s back because Joe’s goal isn’t to please people but to please God. We love that about Joe.

Pictured above: Rigneys, Dodds, and Nasellis (March 2021)

Reason 3

I wrote,

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.

I think Joe has become even better at this over the past several years. God has given him a brilliant mind for analyzing the big picture, and Joe is a good steward of that gift from God (with the exception of his muddled thinking on baptism!). Joe acts with integrity and doesn’t run away from challenging conversations. It helps that Joe is consistently sober-minded. He never lights his hair on fire. (He doesn’t have much hair to light on fire.)

Reason 4

I wrote,

Rigney has good theological instincts, intuitions, and burdens.

I believe that even more deeply now. Over the past ten years, I’ve been through many challenging situations with Joe. We have served shoulder-to-shoulder in the trenches, and he has earned my trust. He has stuck his neck out for me, and I have stuck my neck out for him. And I’d do it again. After Joe resigned as president, I told him, “I would have gone with you to the end … into the very fires of Mordor.” (Don’t read too much into that analogy. I don’t think of Joe as a hobbit.)

Pictured above: Joe visited the Nasellis while I was on a research sabbatical in Greenville, South Carolina (March 2022).

Reason 5

I wrote,

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.

That’s still true. I am so grateful that Joe had the insight and courage several years ago to explain how empathy can be sinful. I think God used Joe to help our school and our churches avoid being steered off course by a highly reactive victimhood culture that was influenced by critical theory.

Reason 6

I wrote,

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.

That’s also still true. Joe has become a master communicator—whether he’s writing an article or conversing with a small group or speaking to a large conference. He can even talk about a sport as boring as baseball and make it sound far more interesting than it is.

Pictured above: Speakers at Serious Joy: The 35th Bethlehem Conference for Pastors (January 30–February 1, 2023). From left to right: David Mathis, Joshua Greever, Erik Reed, Jonathon Woodyard, Joe Rigney, Andy Naselli, John Piper, Steven Lee, Jared Compton, Jason Wredberg, Brian Hanson, Kenny Stokes.

Reason 7

I wrote,

Rigney is not just a gifted professor but a faithful family man and pastor.

Again, that’s still true. My wife often points out to me that you can tell a lot about a man from his wife. Jenny Rigney is gold. (And she’s way funnier than Joe—although Joe can get on a roll when he starts quoting lines from Pride and Prejudice or from the movie What About Bob?) Joe and Jenny are committed to faithfully enculturating their boys with a Christian education. Christ is Lord over their home.

One More Reason

So, those are my reflections on the seven reasons I was grateful that Joe became our school’s second president.

One more reason is that Joe can come in handy. In summer 2021, a group of my previous students banded together to encourage me with a present—an expensive bottle of Scotch Whiskey. They didn’t know that I don’t drink. (I don’t like the taste! I think it smells like nail polish remover.) Well, I didn’t know what to do with the bottle. But Joe did!

Pictured above: treasuring God by enjoying his gifts—especially the gift of faithful friends (August 2021)

Godspeed

Joe, it’s painful to part. I’ll miss having you as a leader and teammate here—with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. I was hoping to build and fight with you here for decades. The Lord knows all that, and we’re trusting him.

I know you’ll keep doing what King Lune says: Be first in every desperate attack, last in every desperate retreat, and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.

Godspeed, Rigneys.