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Ten Criticisms of John Piper’s Preaching · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to the podcast. On this Thursday, John Piper has preached a
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  couple thousand sermons in front of a few hundred thousand people around the world.
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  Only the Lord knows the true count. I tried to put the numbers together
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  and I couldn't figure it all out. Whatever the exact numbers, it's a
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  lot of sermons in front of a lot of people. And a young preacher
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  wants to know Pastor John, how your preaching has been critiqued over the years.
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  Here's his email. My name is Aaron and I'm a very new preacher
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  from Australia. Pastor John, I've read your book Expository Exultation and I found
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  it thoroughly helpful. My question for you is this, in your early years
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  and perhaps even now, what kind of criticisms have you received for your preaching?
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  In particular, have you received feedback in regard to your volume, how
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  loudly you preached? Sometimes? I love your passion, but have people ever
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  given you feedback teaching you to adjust your tone, dynamics or express What did
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  you do with the criticism and what have you learned from it over the years.
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  I'm laughing because I can remember some really funny feedback. So Aaron asks
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  about the loudness, tone dynamics. But let me broaden this out and give
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  you ten criticisms that John Piper's preaching has received over the years, and how
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  I've tried to respond to each, and it includes what he's asking, but
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  it's more Number one and the reason I was laughing. Shar Ransom, Bless
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  her heart, she's with Jesus now. Shar Ransom, one of my great
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  cheerleaders in my early years as a pastor at Bethlehem, told me about fifteen
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  years into my ministry, I like the early John Piper. And I said,
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  well, well, what do you mean, char She said, the
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  teacher, not the shouter. And she said it with a twinkle in her
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  eye, and she was a loyal listener for another fifteen years. But I
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  tried to take that to heart and do what I have told so many young
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  guys to do. By all means, let your affections show if they're real,
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  but be sure they correspond to the realities of the text, and be
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  sure they are varied, because any single sustained tone or loudness will start to
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  grate on the ear and sound artificial after a while. If it's not varied,
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  so variety authenticity, appropriateness to the text and to the audience. And
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  I don't think she thought I ever got it right, I ever got it
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  right. But some people can love you in spite of things. Number two.
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  Early on, my wife said, you drop your voice at the end
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  of sentences, Johnny. People can't hear the end of your sentences. And
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  that was true. I listened. That was true. I think that's true
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  for a lot of young pastors. They get into a bad habit. It
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  was simply a bad habit. It wasn't any constitutional inability. It was just
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  a learned quirk that needed fixing. And I think I was able to overcome
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  that. At least. She hasn't said anything about that for twenty years or
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  so. Thanks, thank you, Noel for good advice. Wives are your
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  best critics. Often. Number three, you're not looking at all the parts
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  of the congregation. Your eye contact with significant segments of the people is non
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  existent. You seem to look at these two or three directions, but you
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  neglect this part of the people. You neglect that part of the people.
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  You don't look at the balcony. Now, that was extremely helpful, and
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  I knew it was true as soon as they said it. I just want
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  to encourage Joman. For a new preacher, just getting the content right is
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  huge challenge, right, and there's not a lot of mental resources left over
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  or to think about, oh my goodness, where am I looking. But
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  with a bit of effort and the relaxation that comes from experience, you can
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  overcome that, and then it can become second nature to just look naturally.
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  Everywhere during your preaching number four, you overuse certain words this and my wife
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  again, and she's the key critic here. This was a recurring issue over
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  the years. I didn't solve this. I don't know that you ever solve
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  this, at least I don't. She has to tell me this every few
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  years. You use unbelievable too often, you use absolutely too often, you
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  use precisely too often, you use amazing too often. Now those would be
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  like criticisms separated by three or four years. And I suppose this is why
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  I am so insistent for young preachers to give serious thought to finding fresh ways
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  of saying things, because often young preachers think that if they can just say
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  what comes naturally, that they'll sound fresh. That's a lot of blogey they
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  won't sound fresh, they'll sound like they're interrupt We default in our natural ways
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  to familiar words, and familiar words start to sound hackneyed, which will communicate
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  to the people he's not really seeing fresh beauties in the Bible and in Christ.
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  He just says the same old stuff over and over again. Number five,
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  you sound angry, really, yeake. I don't want to sound angry.
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  I'm not angry even I'm not angry, not angry. When you say
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  you're not angry, well, that's the way it comes across. And at
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  one point, I remember I had to stop listening to Martin Lloyd Jones.
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  I love Martin Lloyd Jones, because he did sound angry. He did.
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  I kept listening to him, and I'm thinking, from my American ears,
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  this growling Welshman sounds angry. He's not angry, but he says sounds angry.
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  So I made a conscious effort to pray, Lord fill me with real,
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  authentic joy and humble amazement at grace and let that spill over. Don't
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  let me be angry, or don't let me sound angry. In other words,
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  I think the best way to push out bad sounds is not mainly to
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  try not to sound a certain way, but to sound a better way because
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  you really feel that better way. Number six, you use words people don't
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  know. What people don't know obsequious, people don't know parsimonious, pusillanimous,
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  lascivious. Well, of course they don't, So get real, piper.
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  Do you want to impress or do you want to communicate? I want to
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  communicate, So I try to fix it. And now I'm a real stickler
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  with our seminary guys when it comes to taking their academic jargon into the pulpit.
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  Use ordinary language. But I do believe that there is a place for
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  teaching words that it would be good for people to know that they might not
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  ordinarily know. Propitiation, expiation, redemption, sanctification, glorification, and lots
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  of others that might not be part of people's ordinary vocabulary. And I think
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  this is done can be done without sounding academic or to teach you in the
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  pulpit. Number seven, your message is too complex. It goes over our
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  heads. I can remember a couple telling me that my second year, maybe
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  it was my first year at Bethlehem, and they left the church. They
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  just left the church. So I have tried to work hard to make complex
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  things more understandable. I think all the great truths in Scripture can be explained
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  in understandable language, not necessarily acceptable language, but understandable, Which leads to
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  the next criticism. Your preaching is too oriented on the glory of God,
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  too calvinistic, it's too out of step with contemporary culture on issues like sexuality,
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  relationships of men and women, too blunt and uncompromising on the sin of
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  abortion, etc. Now this sort of criticism only concerned me, not because
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  of the content. I wasn't going to change biblical views to fit the audience,
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  but because of the proportion. So I tried to form the habit of
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  checking, checking my emphasis, and asking others to see if something was being
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  emphasized that was good and true, but maybe out of proportion with other things.
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  In Scripture number nine, you don't give enough application, Piper. You
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  focus made me on exposition and not enough on application to real life situations.
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  And my response to this has probably been inadequate. In fact, Tony,
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  I wonder if ten years of asked Pastor John is my way of doing penance
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  for all those years without ten minutes of allocation at the end of the sermon.
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  I've been catching up right. If I were to try to defend myself,
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  I would say something like this, and maybe it's inadequate. I try
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  to do exposition itself in such a way that even as I do it,
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  it feels like application, it feels relevant to real life situations. So whether
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  I've succeeded, I don't know. Number ten, you preach too long.
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  Lots of things affect the length of a sermon in the local church, wearing
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  out your nursery workers. Poor nursery workers down there waiting for this long winded
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  preacher to get done, managing the ebb and flow of parking. Say,
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  if you've got two services, you've got to get the parking lot cleared out.
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  Hunger of your people, can they take it? And my response to
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  this criticism of length has been I will try to keep my finger on the
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  pulse of the people and all those other considerations and not expect or demand more
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  of my people than they can gladly receive, as well as all those other
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  factors. But in general, I have found that it is hard for me
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  to do adequate, faithful exposition week in and week out, in less than
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  forty five minute messages. And the folks seem to relax into that routine with
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  pleasure. So what I hope Aaron hears in all of this is that we
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  will all be criticized. There is a way to take all of it to
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  heart in some measure and make it part of improving over a lifetime of preaching.
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  Man. Yeah, I just want to encourage you. When I think
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  of your preaching, I think of your smile. You somehow more than any
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  preacher I've ever seen in my life. That's always from something. How does
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  that fit together with angry? It doesn't know. No one smiles in the
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  pulpit more than you do. Pastor John is incredible, your most underrated pulpit
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  gesture. That's what I call it. Think of Pastor John. And if
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  you want to hear more about Pastor John's preaching experiences and who doesn't really,
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  you'll want to check out two other episodes that come to my mind APJ thirteen
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  seventy four, John Piper's most bizarre moment in preaching It is really bizarre APJA
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  thirteen seventy four, and also APJ fifty Does it bother you that people are
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  entertained by your gestures? Did a whole episode on that find them both apj's
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  thirteen seventy four and fifty at asked pastor John dot Com, well, unconditional
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  election is up next? Unconditional election. Isn't unconditional election just a dry logical
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  topic for eggheads? No, we all need it. Ten reasons why you
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  need to know and understand unconditional election that's up next on Monday. I'm your
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  host, Tony Rankie. We'll see then