Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

John Piper

Carson and Piper on Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Scholars and Pastors

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On November 20, 1998 in Orlando, Florida at the annual meeting and fiftieth anniversary of the Evangelical Theological Society, D. A. Carson and John Piper gave back-to-back hour-long plenary addresses to about 1,000 ETS members (mostly college and seminary professors):

  1. D. A. Carson, “Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Scholars” (MP3)
  2. John Piper, “Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Pastors and Missionaries” (MP3 | manuscript)

James A. Borland reported this in the next issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society:

On Friday afternoon, two plenary sessions were held. In Don Carson’s message, “Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Scholars,” he painted the landscape of the future for Christian higher academics. John Piper then addressed the subject of “Training the Next Generation of Evangelical Pastors and Missionaries.” He pointed out that one may learn much, but if the main thing is ignored or missing, all is lost. That one thing is to know God and to delight in him above everything else. Several questions succeeded Carson’s speech, but a holy hush of meditation followed Piper’s challenge before the large audience began to sing “Fairest Lord Jesus,” a capella (JETS 42 [1999]: 175).

On April 23, 2009 (over ten years later), D. A. Carson and John Piper will once again give back-to-back hour-long addresses on the same topic, only more focused: “The Pastor as Scholar, and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry with John Piper and D.A. Carson.”

Update: Mike Bird reflects on DAC’s lecture.

Piper: “Turn off the television”

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In “Preaching as Worship: Meditations on Expository Exultation” (Trinity Journal 16 [1995]: 29–45), Piper ends with six pointed applications, including this one (p. 44):

2. Turn off the television.

It is not necessary for relevance. And it is a deadly place to rest the mind. Its pervasive banality, sexual innuendo, and God-ignoring values have no ennobling effects on the preacher’s soul. It kills the spirit. It drives God away. It quenches prayer. It blanks out the Bible. It cheapens the soul. It destroys spiritual power. It defiles almost everything. I have taught and preached for twenty years now and never owned a television. It is unnecessary for most of you, and it is spiritually deadly for all of you.

Two Sermons on 1 Timothy 2:1-8

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Here are links to a couple sermons I recently preached:

  1. Pray For Those In Authority (1 Tim 2:1-8) (6-22-08) | MP3 (48:13) | outline
  2. Does God Have Two Wills? Does He Want All People to Be Saved in One Sense and Not Want All People to Be Saved in Another Sense? (1 Tim 2:4) (6-29-08) | MP3 (45:26) | outline

The first is expositional, the second more theological (and heavily indebted to John Frame’s The Doctrine of God and John Piper’s “Are There Two Wills in God?”).

T4G 2008 MP3s

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All of the MP3s for the general sessions and panel discussions are now available for free downloads. Brief bios of the speakers are available here.

I’d recommend listening to these in order:

  1. Ligon Duncan: Sound Doctrine: Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry
  2. Panel Discussion 1: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
  3. Thabiti Anyabwile: Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church
  4. Panel Discussion 2: Anyabwile, Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
  5. John MacArthur: The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing: The Doctrine of Absolute Inability
  6. Mark Dever: Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology
  7. Panel Discussion 3: Dever, Duncan, MacArthur, Mahaney, Mohler
  8. R.C. Sproul: The Curse Motif of the Atonement
  9. Panel Discussion 4: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Sproul
  10. Albert Mohler: Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution
  11. Panel Discussion 5: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler
  12. John Piper: How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice
  13. Panel Discussion 6: Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, Mohler, Piper
  14. C.J. Mahaney: Sustaining a Pastor’s Soul

Related:

John Piper’s “Desiring God”

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Mark Dever posed his eighth “T4Free question” on the T4G blog earlier this week, and I was surprised that my answer was selected. (Perhaps mine had the least misspelled words and the most Piper-like hyphenated ones! Regardless, I’m grateful for this happy providence and eager for edification along with about 5,000 other people at T4G in mid-April 2008.) Here’s Mark’s question followed by the 100-words-or-less answer I submitted:

Q: “What Christian book (other than the Bible) do you think has been read by the most people attending T4G 2008, and why?”

A: “John Piper’s Desiring God

“This richly theological and warmly devotional best-seller has been the means for sending countless Christians on a trajectory towards theology that is increasingly joyful, robust, God-centered, Christ-exalting, and gospel-treasuring.

“My testimony is not unusual. I read it as a freshman in college and again during my first year of seminary, and it had a revolutionary effect on my Christian life. It shaped my attitude towards Reformed soteriology and convinced me that God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.”

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In addition to selling the print book for just $9.50, Desiring God Ministries offers the following free resources:

I thank God for John Piper. He is a gift to the church.

On a related note, D. A. Carson pays Piper no small compliment in the preface to Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson by mentioning him parallel to three other giants of the faith:

“But my aim is much more modest: to convey enough of his [i.e., Tom Carson’s] ministry and his own thought that ordinary ministers are encouraged, not least by the thought that the God of Augustine, Calvin, Spurgeon, and Piper is no less the God of Tom Carson, and of you and me” (p. 11).

Piper on “Planet Earth”

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Last summer I published a blog post entitled “Planet Earth: A Theological Documentary.”

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Yesterday morning during a painfully freezing (!) early morning run, I was listening to an MP3 from John Piper’s 2007 regional conference on “The Pleasures of God.” In part 2 (MP3 | video), Piper describes the pleasure of God in His creation, and he enthusiastically endorses the above “Planet Earth” DVDs.

In the MP3, start at 38:08 to get the context (“God loves the world that He made”) and listen until 42:43. Here are a few highlights:

  • 39:30: “There are many aspects of nature that no human ever sees.” And then some BBC cameraman comes by and captures it!
  • 40:54: This is where the “Blue Planet” and “Planet Earth” endorsement begins.
  • “My wife and I and little girl have worshipped for eight hours watching these unbelievable works of God! There are all these pagans producing this worship DVD!”
  • While they were watching the DVDs, Piper kept saying to his daughter, “That can’t be happening! That can’t be happening!”
  • “I hate evolution. It is so worship destroying! I mean that. Secular, atheistic evolution is worship destroying.”
  • “I get so much pleasure talking about what God has done in creation. It’s way better than talking about movies, but that’s another story.”