Bethlehem Baptist is one step closer to commissioning John Piper from the local church pastorate to greater involvement with Bethlehem College and Seminary and to a wider ministry nationally and internationally through Desiring God.
The Bethlehem elders are announcing to the congregation their candidate for Associate Pastor for Preaching and Vision and, God willing, John Piper's eventual successor as the church's senior pastor.
Yet another pastor who is giving up, or being forced to take leave of pastoral life, and being pushed/induced into academic life. Among those in this group are N. T. Wright, Rowland Williams, and John Piper seems to be joining this trend.
But to be fair, this is not something that the elders are pushing Piper to do, rather, Piper also wants to do:
There is an ever-increasing pull on my life to be involved in ministry outside Bethlehem. Much of this feels strategic to me for the cause of Christ. While I felt competent and energized to formulate plans for the structures of Bethlehem, this outside pull was secondary. But I sense that this is changing. It seems to me that the Lord is saying: "You have led Bethlehem to this point; it is time to hand off the internal leadership labors to another; I have a few other things yet for you to do."Well, I hope that the Lord gives him a lot of years, so he can fulfil what he feels that the Lord has called him to do.
1 comment:
I think we need to hear from John on the topic of N T Wright's recent books, especialy "Simply Jesus" and "How God Became King". If these do not yet answer the questions he has about NTW's presentation of the Gospel I and many others will want those remaining concerns carefully laid out. NTW has several co-authored books that allow his ideas the fuller development that comes from intelligent dialog. Its hard to imagine a bigger publishing event than John and Tom producing one together.
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