Evangelicals Now
<< January 2002 >>

Lingering in the presence of the Lord

The second part of an interview with John Piper

John Piper has had a great influence on evangelicalism in the UK, specially since the publication of his book Desiring God. This is the next part of an interview gained while John was visiting Oxford recently.

EN: John, you have spoken about declaring the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples, and of the need for sound theology hand in hand with warm emotion towards God. How has that emphasis affected how you have tried to steer the church at Bethlehem?

JP: The heartbeat of my life is the preaching ministry. So the vision is cast and the trumpet is blown on Sundays and mid-week. I also do about eight weekend seminars a year to keep the church taught on some distinctives. Then I've assembled a staff of about eight pastors who all share the vision.

And our worship has evolved. We used to be more classic in our orientation. Then there was an upheaval because of a major moral lapse in one of our staff. That caused the church to lose about 250 people and made us flat in our growth for a few years and made us step back and ask ourselves 'what do we want to be as a church?' When we did that we realised where we were. Imagine a musical spectrum from the extreme of acid rock right through to J.S. Bach. We realised that we were in a narrow section of the spectrum very much towards the Bach end. We said we wanted two things to change. We wanted the middle of where we were to broaden. And then we wanted to move a little towards the less classic end, simply because that is where most ordinary people are.

You can deceive yourself into thinking that you are being faithful to some great noble tradition, when in fact you are just being elitist. So, I'm a low church kind of guy!

Worship that flows
EN: So how does this change the worship ethos?

JP: We would put a high premium on intentionally going hard after God and communing with him in our worship. You try to get all human intrusions out of the way, so that the leader does not insert himself between each item of worship. No one stands up and says, 'Now folks we're going to pray' or 'Now we're going to sing'.

There is a worship order written. The songs are all there. They can be stretched out or shortened down by a sensitive worship leader. I don't lead the service. I just preach. We work through the service beforehand and he crafts it. So we have about 30 minutes of singing, praying and Scripture reading, which just flows, so people can focus on God.

We've just been singing to God, therefore we do not need anyone to say, 'Now let's pray', because we've already been speaking to God in the song. If we do say, 'now let's pray' we are implying that we haven't been addressing God in our worship song. That brings an air of unreality. We have been speaking to God in our song.

So the premium at Bethlehem church is conscious communing with the living God. We call it lingering in the presence of the Lord.

Watering down?
EN: How important is the idea of the inerrancy of the Bible to you?

JP: The more I live, the more I love the Bible and the more conservative I become defending its accuracy. I hope that is not because of old age and a hardening of the arteries! I hope it's because of watching God use it, confirm it, and dealing over several decades with critical theories that prove abortive and unhelpful.

EN: There is a debate at present over the fact that evangelicalism has strengthened numerically and academically since WWII, but somehow that seems to have gone hand in hand with a watering down of evangelicalism. What is your comment on that?

JP: I think that what leads to watering down is that you prize the affirmation and esteem of the academic guild above faithfulness to Scripture and historic Christianity. That is what has happened in many academic evangelical circles. Significant evangelical seminaries in the US, in order to be affirmed in the wider academic community, have, in the hiring of faculty and the establishing of policies, put academic excellence (as it is defined by the guild) above rigorous orthodox devotion to historic Christianity and the inerrancy of Scripture. Once you get that the wrong way round you start to drift.

It need not be. I don't want to plead for academic tom-foolery, or academic weakness, or intellectual sloth, or cultural obscurantism. I believe it is possible to be academically and intellectually rigorous and hold fast to the faith and the inerrancy of Scripture.

Guarding the church

EN: You mentioned that your own church, some years ago, had a problem with a moral fall by one of the leaders. Sadly, that is a growing experience in many churches. Did you learn anything by way of trying to protect the church in the future?

JP: We did some little nitty-gritty things and then I learned some spiritual things.

For example, in the nitty-gritty, we put windows in all the staff's office doors. We also tried to get all our staff together, working in one place rather than being scattered around in isolated offices. But such things are very minor because nothing is going to stop immorality if it is in the heart.

So you have to figure out how to read the heart. As I thought about what had happened in our church I realised that I had gone way too long tolerating what showed itself to me as a spiritual cooling off in the staff member. He had stopped praying to the Lord in meetings. He seemed distant in leadership. I just smelled that something was wrong before the sin occurred, but I didn't think it was enough to act upon.

But I should have picked up on what my nose told me.

I should, for example, have gone to his wife much earlier and asked, 'How do you feel about him at home? Is everything as it should be?' And I should have somehow enabled his wife to answer such questions without him being around so that she might have felt free to be honest. Since the trouble erupted she has said that she too had sensed that something was wrong.

I should have discovered the spiritual roots of this much earlier. I am a lot more careful in hiring staff now. I also have a lot more vigilance over their spiritual walk.

To be concluded next month.
John Benton