Book Review: Brothers, We Are Not Professionals by John Piper

What is the nature of the vocation known as “pastor”?  While the pastoral calling has many facets and characteristics, one that John Piper adamantly believes should be avoided at all costs is the idea of pastor as a ministry professional.  This is the focal point around which the revised edition of his book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals  (Nashville: Crossway, 2013), revolves around.  While a pastor may possess a particular skill set Piper’s vision of ministry is more concerned with the primacy of serving as one called by God to minister among God’s people, reliant on God’s power rather  than anything else.

Piper draws from his 30+ years of pastoral ministry to offer encouragement and wisdom to all who are called to serve as pastors today.  He addresses matters of character, theology and culture, providing insights into ways in which the pastor needs to tend their own person in order to tend God’s people well.  The book is saturated with scripture, as Piper draws extensively from the Old and New Testaments to ground his lines of reasoning, as well as citing references from throughout the church’s history.

There are two issues that may dissuade certain readers from picking up this book and drawing from its wisdom.  One is that Piper is a Baptist, known for embracing a complentarian model of ministry, rather than an egalitarian one. While he uses the form “Brothers,…” as the title for each chapter I believe that the wisdom included in each chapter is of equal value for women serving in pastoral ministry.  Additionally, as a Baptist, he holds to baptism as an ordinance, rather than a sacrament.  As someone who fully embraces orthodox Reformed theology I found that Piper’s words on baptism could be used constructively not only in reference to baptism, but also within a covenantal understanding of the Lord’s Supper.

In the past few years I have read a few of Piper’s books and listened to him speak on several occasions.  His mantra, if you will, has been and remains, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  In Brothers, We Are Not Professionals Piper ‘s overarching goal is for pastors to more fully pursue glorifying God in their personal lives and public ministries, so that those they minister among are enabled to do the same.  He accomplishes this purpose and I highly commend this book.

Book review: Think by John Piper

“Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.”  Those words, attributed to Steve Jobs, were widely shared shortly after his death in 2011.  Depending on the way in which Job’s words are understood they both agree and disagree with the goal of John Piper in his book Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010).  We can simply live with other people’s thinking, which is not always a bad thing, for much wisdom has come before our era.  Or we can think deeply about what we learn today, so that our faith rests and grows on a solid foundation.

Piper asserts that thinking, i.e. giving serious consideration to the things one is called to believe, is needed for a person to come to faith in Christ, and for one who has that faith to then grow as a Christian.  Rather than simply having ‘faith,’ without understanding what that may mean or how it may call one to live, he makes a “plea to see thinking as a necessary, God-ordained means of knowing God.  Thinking is one of the important ways that we put the fuel of knowledge on the fires of worship and service to the world.” (15)

Using a writing style that is conversational and very readable, Piper starts with a description of his early career, first as a scholar and then a pastor, showing the role that thinking played in broadening and deepening his faith.  He writes “But thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love – such thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God.” (27)

The middle of the book contains a discussion of the importance of thinking in a person’s coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ, showing from the Bible that faith isn't something that is simply ‘acquired’ but must also be understood.   We don’t have faith merely by believing a text such as John 3:16.  Thinking is essential to understanding the meaning contained in the text.

Later in the book Piper explains several ways of thinking that may sound acceptable to modern readers but which are actually contrary to the kind of thought that helps believers to understand God.  He demonstrates the fallacies within relativism, which is a rampant thought-form in the 21^st century, and he also shows how pragmatism and subjectivism are both forces that lead to an exaltation of human thinking, rather than a deepening of godly wisdom.  He concludes with a discussion of the connection between knowledge and humility, demonstrating that while thinking nurtures spiritual maturity and deepens faith it does so in a way that continuously exalts God.

In Matthew 22:37 Jesus said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  Throughout this book Piper connects loving God with thinking about God deeply, saying “loving God with all our mind means that our thinking is wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.” (91, italics Piper)

And “treasuring God above all things” is what a life of Christian faith is all about.

Book Review: The Supremacy of God in Preaching

“People are starving for the grandeur of God.  And the vast majority do not know it.” (107)  These words begin the conclusion to John Piper’s short and excellent book, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), a book where he lays out a vision of God that he believes should drive the words that pastors bring to their pulpit, not just occasionally but every time that they rise to speak from the Bible the words that God has laid on their hearts.    

Piper wrote the first edition of this book in 1990, drawing from two lecture series, given in 1984 and 1988, and the book is divided accordingly.  In Part 1 he discusses the topic “Why God Should Be Supreme in Preaching,” beginning with preaching’s goal, the glory of God, which he believes is rightly paired with the Christian’s delight in God.  He summarizes the connection between God’s glory and the believer’s joy with these words: “God’s deepest commitment to be glorified and my deepest longing to be satisfied are not in conflict, but in fact find simultaneous consummation in his display of and my delight in the glory of God.” (29)  The task of the preacher is to make God’s glory so central, and essential, to faith that the Christian is fully satisfied in God and finds every other desire wanting in comparison.

Piper uses a Trinitarian framework in Part 1.  God’s glory is in relation to the Father, the Ground of Preaching is connected to the Son, and Gift of Preaching is derived from the Spirit.  A deep understanding of this theology of preaching will guide the preacher to approach his or her task with both gravity and gladness.  He writes, “Gladness and gravity should be woven together in the life and preaching of a pastor in such a way as to sober the careless soul and sweeten the burden of the saints.” (55)

The topic of Part 2 is “How to Make God Supreme in Preaching.”  In this section Piper does not offer his own wisdom but turns to a preacher he has had a life-long admiration for, Jonathan Edwards.  As Piper discusses Edwards and Edwards’ ministry the twin keys are Edwards’ grasp of, and submission to, God’s sovereignty and a consequent, and constant, desire to proclaim God as supreme.

Everything that Edwards understood of God flowed from his sovereign nature.  Piper writes, “For Edwards the infinite power; or absolute sovereignty, of God is the foundation of God’s all-sufficiency.  And his all-sufficiency is the fountain of his perfect holiness, and his holiness comprehends all his moral excellency.  So the sovereignty of God for Edwards was utterly crucial to everything else he believed about God.” (78) 

Understanding the otherness of God’s nature in relation to humanity then is the basis for preaching and delighting in his sovereignty. “In summary, then, when Jonathan Edwards becomes still and knows that God is God, the vision before his eyes is of an absolutely sovereign God, self-sufficient and all-sufficient, infinite and holiness, and therefore perfectly glorious.” (82)  That is an amazing vision of God!

Are people, people who believe in God as made known through Jesus Christ, starving for God’s grandeur?  Generally speaking I would have to agree with Piper.  Living after the Fall we are so broken, and our gaze is so inward, that we rarely look beyond ourselves to glimpse the glory and majesty of God as made known in the Bible.  And when we glimpse it, even rarer are the moments when we savor it. 

Last week I read the Christian atheist, by Craig Groeschel, (my review is here). His central assertion is that there are many common ways in which people professing Christian faith live in ways that suggest their faith is often in something else.  Groeschel offers valuable and practical wisdom to strengthen the faith of faltering believers and their witness in the world. 

In The Supremacy of God in Preaching John Piper offers something equally practical and necessary to today’s preacher, which is encouragement and wisdom so that every sermon is one that is saturated with a vision of the glory of God, a vision so majestic that God’s people may find the satisfaction of every need in God alone.