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Was Piper Unprepared? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Well, in life, big callings come upon us at various points.
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  Speaker 1: That's how life works. The older we get, the more
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  Speaker 1: responsibilities we take on over time. We become students and
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  Speaker 1: church members and employees and then husbands and wives and parents.
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  Speaker 1: It just continues to grow. And those new responsibilities call
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  Speaker 1: us to be stretched and to be humbled and to
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  Speaker 1: be trained for those new responsibilities. But how much training
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  Speaker 1: do you need before you can succeed at something? It's
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  Speaker 1: a question with an autobiographical turn for you, Pastor John,
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  Speaker 1: today on Ask Pastor John. Was Piper... Unprepared. Unprepared for what?
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  Speaker 1: Unprepared for the pastorate. You became a pastor in 1980
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  Speaker 1: at the age of 34. And when you took leadership
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  Speaker 1: at Bethlehem Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis, you had what
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  Speaker 1: we might call some gaps in the resume. You had
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  Speaker 1: zero elder experience. You had zero experience hiring and firing people.
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  Speaker 1: You had zero experience in making a church budget. You
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  Speaker 1: had done exactly zero baby dedications. You'd made zero hospital visitations.
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  Speaker 1: no funerals. You did have two weddings and 15 sermons preached.
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  Speaker 1: But you also had 13 or so years of academic
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  Speaker 1: training and experience in the Bible. This was all mentioned
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  Speaker 1: in a conference this spring in Justin Taylor's interview of
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  Speaker 1: you about your early pastoring days. And in that delightful conversation,
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  Speaker 1: this point about your pastoral experience or lack of it
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  Speaker 1: raised further questions online that I wanted to collect and
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  Speaker 1: pitch to you here on APJ, namely two questions that
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  Speaker 1: I see. Number one, looking back now, were you unprepared
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  Speaker 1: for pastoral ministry? And second, what's the right balance of
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  Speaker 1: academic and real-life pastoring experience that a man needs before
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  Speaker 1: he becomes a pastor? And are either of those two things,
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  Speaker 1: the academic or real-life pastoring experience, are either of those
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  Speaker 1: two decisive?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I'm really glad you asked the question because I
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  Speaker 2: knew after that interview the things that we were talking
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  Speaker 2: about there would.
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  Speaker 1: Raise questions like this.
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  Speaker 2: And so I'm glad for the chance to clarify. I
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  Speaker 2: think the answer to your first question is, was I unprepared,
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  Speaker 2: is no. I think I was prepared enough that faced
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  Speaker 2: with the different challenges of pastoring, I had the resources
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  Speaker 2: in my Bible and in my life experience and my
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  Speaker 2: church experience and in my God-given intuitive grasp of human
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  Speaker 2: nature and common sense that I could figure out most
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  Speaker 2: things sufficiently. So that's what I mean by, no, I
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  Speaker 2: don't think I was unprepared. The second question raises a question.
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  Speaker 2: You say, what's the right balance of academic and real
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  Speaker 2: life pastoring experience? And the question it raises for me
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  Speaker 2: is whether real life experience in every aspect of life,
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  Speaker 2: not just pastoring per se, counts as pastoring experience. I
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  Speaker 2: think in one sense, at least, it does. And that
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  Speaker 2: certainly was the case for me. So let me try
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  Speaker 2: to illustrate from my own life, at least as best
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  Speaker 2: as I can figure out what God was doing in
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  Speaker 2: those years. You mentioned that I had never run an
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  Speaker 2: elder beating, never hired or fired anyone, never overseen the
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  Speaker 2: formation of a church budget, right? All that's true. So
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  Speaker 2: what in the world do I mean when I say
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  Speaker 2: I was not unprepared? But here's the reality as best
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  Speaker 2: I can remember it. When I came to Bethlehem, I
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  Speaker 2: was 34 years old. I was married, had three children,
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  Speaker 2: owned a home, held down a job for the past
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  Speaker 2: six years. had more or less kept my eyes open
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  Speaker 2: with a serious observation for about, say, 16 years from
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  Speaker 2: the year that I left home at age 18 until
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  Speaker 2: now I'm 34. I didn't walk around with my eyes
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  Speaker 2: closed for 16 years. Hundreds of things were registering as
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  Speaker 2: wise or foolish. helpful or harmful, good or bad, efficient
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  Speaker 2: or inefficient. I was in the school of life every
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  Speaker 2: day of my life. I watched my teachers in college
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  Speaker 2: and felt that made an effective lecture. That didn't make
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  Speaker 2: an effective lecture. I watched the chaplain and how he
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  Speaker 2: visited me in the infirmary and what he said and
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  Speaker 2: what he looked like and how he had people over
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  Speaker 2: to his house. I watched the way the speakers in
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  Speaker 2: chapel spoke, and I just absorbed what was helpful and
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  Speaker 2: what was unhelpful in communication. In seminary, I watched David Hubbard,
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  Speaker 2: the president, lead a faculty of stallions, as he called them.
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  Speaker 2: I was on the student advisory committee to sit in
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  Speaker 2: on some of the faculty meetings, and I marveled. at
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  Speaker 2: his way of managing these free spirits. I watched Ray
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  Speaker 2: Ortlund lead his church with joy there in Pasadena in
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  Speaker 2: those crucial years. I watched the way Virgil Olson functioned
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  Speaker 2: as the dean at Bethel and how his wife related
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  Speaker 2: to the faculty. She got down on the floor in
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  Speaker 2: her house and barked like a dog one time.
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  Speaker 1: I said, I love this couple.
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  Speaker 2: I watched the way Carl Lundquist, the president, dealt with
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  Speaker 2: controversy among the faculty and held them together when he
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  Speaker 2: was the president there. I watched the way Walt Wessel
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  Speaker 2: led the Bible department and how he interviewed possible faculty
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  Speaker 2: members during those six years Bethel. And of course, all
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  Speaker 2: of that is the tiniest tip of the iceberg of
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  Speaker 2: thousands of observations about life and leadership and relationships and
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  Speaker 2: communication that were pouring into this brain of mine for
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  Speaker 2: 16 years. Every day is an education if your eyes
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  Speaker 2: are open, right? And things are, I mean, if they're registering,
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  Speaker 2: if you're putting pieces together in your mind and building
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  Speaker 2: a vision of how you relate to people and how
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  Speaker 2: people function and what gets things done and what succeeds
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  Speaker 2: and what doesn't, you're fitting them into a pattern in
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  Speaker 2: your mind and in your heart about the wise way
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  Speaker 2: of doing things. Every day brings another observation. that has
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  Speaker 2: to be fit into your growing understanding of human nature
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  Speaker 2: and what makes people tick and what motivates people and
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  Speaker 2: what offends people. The whole approach to life and leadership
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  Speaker 2: is being built day by day for 16 years. I
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  Speaker 2: call that preparation. Yes, that's good. And then you add
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  Speaker 2: the most important crucial fact, for the Christian, namely all
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  Speaker 2: of that. All that life experience is being filtered through
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  Speaker 2: the grid of a biblical worldview that is being refined
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  Speaker 2: every day by daily Bible reading and meditation. That's what
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  Speaker 2: meditation is. How does what I'm reading right now relate
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  Speaker 2: to what I experienced yesterday or a year ago or
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  Speaker 2: what's coming up tomorrow? This is explosive when you think
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  Speaker 2: about it. Every day we are going to school by
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  Speaker 2: observing our own souls. Soul, how are you feeling today?
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  Speaker 2: Are you going to deal with these feelings? And on
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  Speaker 2: and on. Our own temptations, our own habits, our motivations,
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  Speaker 2: and by observing other people, and in all the ways
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  Speaker 2: that those people intersect with our lives, whether on the
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  Speaker 2: street or in a novel, for example. So what I'm
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  Speaker 2: saying is that I came at age 34, to the
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  Speaker 2: pastorate with, let's just say, at least 16 years, and
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  Speaker 2: I'm not even counting the first 18, which are really
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  Speaker 2: formative also, at least 16 years of intensive schooling in
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  Speaker 2: the seminary of life. 16 years of intensive Bible reflection
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  Speaker 2: on all that experience and an ever-growing intuitive sense of
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  Speaker 2: what makes people tick, and how they're motivated, and what
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  Speaker 2: does their body language say about what they're feeling, and
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  Speaker 2: what are their longings, and what would offend them, and
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  Speaker 2: what would make them happy, and what are their deepest needs.
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  Speaker 2: All these things emerge from my Bible-saturated life of learning
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  Speaker 2: and learning and learning from daily experience about human beings
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  Speaker 2: and the way the world works. and the way God
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  Speaker 2: thinks about the way the world works. So I did
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  Speaker 2: not feel adrift when I walked into my first board
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  Speaker 2: meeting with 24 men. We called them deacons, not elders.
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  Speaker 2: I'd never sat in a room like that in my
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  Speaker 2: life when I was in charge. And I felt like
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  Speaker 2: I had a good handle on what biblical leadership looks like,
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  Speaker 2: just because I thought about it a lot from the Bible.
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  Speaker 2: an intuitive sense of how to deal with real human beings,
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  Speaker 2: a Holy Spirit love for these men, a Holy Spirit
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  Speaker 2: confidence that he would work in them and for them,
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  Speaker 2: and then some clear biblical guidelines and instincts about what
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  Speaker 2: the church needs from these leaders. And when it came
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  Speaker 2: to budget and money, I had developed, through extended biblical
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  Speaker 2: reflection from marriage experience and personal budgeting and being a
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  Speaker 2: part of another church, I had developed a theology of money,
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  Speaker 2: a theology of how to raise money from 2 Corinthians
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  Speaker 2: 8 and 9, because I had hit head-on in Germany
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  Speaker 2: the Kirchensteuer. That's the That's the German word for church tax.
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  Speaker 2: And I just had this big conversation with people about what?
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  Speaker 2: You support your church by taxing everybody in the world?
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  Speaker 2: You know, a certain percentage of their income tax goes
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  Speaker 2: to the Lutheran church or the Catholic church. And I thought,
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  Speaker 2: how does that fit with 2 Corinthians 8 and 9,
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  Speaker 2: where everything is so completely non-coerced and non-required and out
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  Speaker 2: of love and overflowing with joy and I had thought
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  Speaker 2: a lot about money, and I'd thought about how to
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  Speaker 2: spend it, not just raise it, because of the way
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  Speaker 2: Jesus talked about it and the way 1 Timothy 6
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  Speaker 2: talks about it. So at every point, it seems, whether
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  Speaker 2: it was a baby dedication or a hospital visitation or
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  Speaker 2: a funeral, I had my Bible. I had a heart
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  Speaker 2: of compassion for parents and for grieving people. I had
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  Speaker 2: intuitions about human nature, all of which was informed by
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  Speaker 2: years of real life dealing with people so that my
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  Speaker 2: confidence that I could create a baby dedication or a
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  Speaker 2: funeral meditation or a flow of service on Sunday morning
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  Speaker 2: or encourage somebody's faith in the hospital, I could do
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  Speaker 2: this because I had deep confidence in my Bible. And
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  Speaker 2: I knew what the Bible was doing for me in
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  Speaker 2: all those circumstances. So I suppose... What I want to
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  Speaker 2: plead for in pastoral preparation is to say to young
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  Speaker 2: men at age 18, or whatever age they will listen
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  Speaker 2: to me, be in the Bible every day, analyzing it
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  Speaker 2: carefully and synthesizing a vision from it that relates to
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  Speaker 2: all of life. Build an all-encompassing worldview. from what you're
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  Speaker 2: seeing in the Bible so that you feel its guidance
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  Speaker 2: in virtually every area of your life. And second, open
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  Speaker 2: your eyes and go to school every day in the
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  Speaker 2: real world, analyzing what you see carefully, synthesizing it into
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  Speaker 2: a coherent vision of human nature and how to live
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  Speaker 2: wisely in this world with all that the world gives
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  Speaker 2: you by way of experience and information and all of
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  Speaker 2: it informed by the Bible. And third, pray, pray, pray
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  Speaker 2: that God would take all that Bible experience and all
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  Speaker 2: that life experience and form in you relational and leadership
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  Speaker 2: instincts and intuitions that will serve you in every dimension
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  Speaker 2: of pastoral life.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, open your eyes and go to school every day
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  Speaker 1: in the real world. The seminary called Real Life, the
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  Speaker 1: Bible-saturated life of observing people, reflecting on experiences, developing wisdom,
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  Speaker 1: interpreting everything through Scripture that helps form all of your instincts,
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  Speaker 1: your judgments, the compassion that you give, and your leadership
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  Speaker 1: capacity that you need for pastoral ministry. That's a great
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  Speaker 1: word for Eager, young, aspiring pastors for any leader really
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  Speaker 1: that aspires to leading well. Thank you for taking up
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  Speaker 1: these follow-up questions from online personalities who were asking, you
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  Speaker 1: might be an aspiring pastor right now. And you're asking
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  Speaker 1: the question, I'm eager to pastor right now. Should I
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  Speaker 1: skip seminary altogether? And that answer is no, do not
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  Speaker 1: skip seminary. That was APJ episode 1325, which can be
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  Speaker 1: found in the podcast archive at askpastorjohn.com. We can get
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  Speaker 1: a lot of formal training in this world and it
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  Speaker 1: can be very helpful, but all the training in the
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  Speaker 1: world will not alleviate the anxiety we can sometimes face
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  Speaker 1: over whether we're serving people adequately with our gifts. We
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  Speaker 1: all want to excel at our callings. We all want
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  Speaker 1: to be capable. We all want to succeed. We all
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  Speaker 1: want to bless others and truly impact this world for good.
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  Speaker 1: But we can find ourselves staring at the ceiling in
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  Speaker 1: bed at night, running through the various situations and thinking
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  Speaker 1: about whether we are accomplishing any of those things. Next time,
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  Speaker 1: peace for second guessers. I'm Tony Reinke. Pastor John, I
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  Speaker 1: will see you back here on Monday.