The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor E-Book

John Piper

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 141

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Following the 2009 Gospel Coalition conference John Piper and D. A. Carson presented two talks at Park Community Church in Chicago, IL, sponsored by the Henry Institute at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The topic of their presentation was on the relationship of scholarship and pastoral ministry. Piper centered on the importance of scholarship and academic pursuits in his role as pastor. Carson, conversely, focused on the importance of pastoral ministry in his career as scholar. The event was enthusiastically received and brought great insight and balance.  Now their talks have been edited with additional content and put into book form. Weaving testimony and teaching, Piper and Carson challenge all those in ministry to think carefully and holistically about their calling. An introduction by Owen Strachan and a conclusion by David Mathis provide context and application to these unique messages.  Pastors and scholars will want to take advantage of this valuable insider perspective from two men who have been acclaimed for their sharp thinking and pastoral hearts.

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“Few books are so needed as this. Recapturing the vision of the pastor as scholar and the scholar as pastor is crucial for the health of the church. Who would not want to read John Piper and D. A. Carson as they reflect on this calling? This is one of the most encouraging and helpful books I have seen in a long time. If you are a pastor, read it. If you have a pastor, put it in his hands.”

R. Albert Mohler Jr., President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“These are important chapters by two of evangelicalism’s most important thinkers. In an age that has largely forgotten the native connection between theology and the church, Piper and Carson remind us that these two worlds belong together. There can be, of course, no turning back the clock; the modern research university is here to stay. But here they offer us two good examples of how to navigate the contemporary terrain with a view to producing ecclesialtheology—theology in service to the church. This short book is a great beginning to a conversation that has been long overdue.”

Gerald Hiestand, Interim Senior Pastor, Calvary Memorial Church, Oak Park, Illinois; Executive Director, Center for Pastor Theologians

“Who could count how many of us have had our lives changed by the ministries of John Piper and D. A. Carson? How many more have come to Christ or have been discipled in the gospel by pastors and teachers influenced by these leaders? This book is a riveting breed, granting us a candid, personal, and behind-the-scenes look at what the Lord has used to shape these men and their ministries. As you read this book, pray that the Lord Jesus would raise up, even now, the next generation of pastor-theologians and theologian-pastors to carry on the great work of Christ exaltation and kingdom mission.”

Russell D. Moore, President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Council of the Southern Baptist Convention

“How we need pastors and professors who love God with their minds and their emotions. Two of the preeminent evangelicals of our day reflect here on what it means to love Christ with all our heart. I was encouraged, convicted, and challenged by this book. It is a treasure well worth reading and rereading.”

Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“I’m deeply encouraged by the growing number of pastoral scholars and scholarly pastors. Probably no living Christians have done more to bring about this trend than D. A. Carson and John Piper. In this book, they will inspire you with stories from their journeys and challenge you with seasoned advice. Most of all, they will lead you to thank God that he gives you the privilege of leading and teaching his church.”

Collin Hansen, Editorial Director, The Gospel Coalition; author, Blind Spots

The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry

Copyright © 2011 by Desiring God Foundation and Donald A. Carson

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover photo: Bill Walsh

First printing 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations marked AT are the author’s translation.

All emphases in Scripture have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2647-3 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2648-0 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2649-7 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2650-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946–

    The pastor as scholar and the scholar as pastor : reflections on life and ministry / John Piper and D. A. Carson; Contributing Editors, David Mathis and Owen Strachan.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-2647-3 (tpb)

    1. Pastoral theology. 2. Theology—Study and teaching. 3. Clergy—Post-ordination training. I. Carson, D. A.

II. Mathis, David, 1980–   . III. Strachan, Owen. IV. Title.

BV4011.3.P58       2011

2010045336

253.071'5—dc22

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Harold John Ockenga (1905–1985) pastor, writer, seminary founder and Carl F. H. Henry (1913–2003) theologian, writer/editor, churchmanRemember your leaders,those who spoke to you the word of God.Consider the outcome of their way of life,and imitate their faith.Jesus Christ is the sameyesterday and today and forever.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

11

Introduction The Return of the Pastor-Scholar

Owen Strachan

13

CHAPTER ONE

The Pastor as Scholar: A Personal Journey and the Joyful Place of Scholarship

John Piper

21

CHAPTER TWO

The Scholar as Pastor: Lessons from the Church and the Academy

D. A. Carson

71

Conclusion The Preacher, the Professor, and the True Pastor-Scholar

David Mathis

107

Notes

113

General Index

117

Scripture Index

123

Acknowledgments

Before it was a book, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor was originally a single-evening event sponsored by the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, held on Thursday, April 23, 2009, at Park Community Church in Chicago. We thank Doug Sweeney, Director of the Henry Center; Jackson Crum, J. R. Kerr, Joe Riccardi, and Whitney Anderson of Park Community Church; Ben Peays of The Gospel Coalition; and the title sponsor of the event, BibleMesh.com.

We also thank John Piper and Don Carson for their willingness to add this event to an already full week of meetings with The Gospel Coalition, as well as for putting their messages to paper and investing the extra energy to expand the original versions into these chapters.

Thank you to our wives, Megan Mathis and Bethany Strachan, who didn’t begrudge our initial phone conversations or the time it took to bring this book together and guide it through the editorial process—Bethany, in addition to caring for Owen while he was injured, and Megan, in addition to carrying the twin boys toward their summer 2010 due date.

Most importantly, we thank Jesus, in a sense the true pastor-scholar. May all praise and glory and honor and power be his.

David Mathis, Minneapolis, Minnesota Owen Strachan, Deerfield, Illinois

Introduction The Return of the Pastor-Scholar

Owen Strachan

“What do you want to be—a pastor or a scholar?”

It’s a common question in some circles. Many young leaders-in-training have wrestled with its binary nature. I must, they think to themselves with some anguish, be one or the other. Surely I cannot be both. So the wrestling begins and uneasy conversations follow. For many, tidy resolutions prove evasive.

Perhaps it isn’t meant to be so. What if the question, though well intended, suffers from a potentially fatal flaw? What if—hold your breath—one could be both? What then?

This book stems from more than a sneaking suspicion that this rather mischievous counter-question might be onto something. This suspicion does not proceed from a vacuum but from the history of God’s church. Unlike our more recent history, when pastors were urged by some to busy themselves with the pragmatic matters of everyday ministry and some scholars focused less on the church and more on high-level academic questions, pastors and scholars throughout the larger span of church history have blended these roles. Pastors worked out of a burden to bless their people with rich biblical theology even as scholars labored to nourish, strengthen, and captivate the church through their scholarship. Often the roles of pastor and scholar were filled by the same person. The pastor was a scholar; the scholar was a pastor.

This is particularly true of the Reformed tradition, the guild whose trans-denominational movement continues to grow in the current day. In Augustine, Luther, Calvin, many Puritans, Edwards, Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, and many more, we find men who loved the church and excelled as theologians. Though our more modern binary categories of “pastor only” and “scholar only” might seem justified, when one turns to the actual history of the church, one finds countless examples of the scholarly pastor and the pastoral scholar. Neither role is a cop-out; both require that their adherents perform all the usual duties of the biblical local church pastor and teacher. We must not make the mistake of making evangelism the enemy of theology, discipleship the enemy of edifying scholarship. Whether in the form of a Calvin, an Edwards, or many others, this simply does not ring true. These examples reveal that robust theology, so far from hindering the practice of ministry, actually enriches it, even as the practice of ministry enhances and increases one’s appreciation for theology.

These models of pastor and scholar thrive in the current day, contrary to what some might think. John Piper and D. A. Carson are two of evangelicalism’s best-known figures. Each has provided leadership for the movement in distinct ways. From his iconic position at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Piper has modeled the theologically minded pastor. Throughout his long and distinguished career at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Carson has exemplified the ecclesially concerned scholar. Each man has published dozens of books, marking them as a leading voice for evangelicals of varying backgrounds. Both have published on a variety of levels, whether for popular, churchly, or scholarly reading.

The giftings of each man have rendered them an example for fellow ministry leaders and believers. Because they have proved able to speak both clearly and profoundly, and always with a sovereign God and a salvific gospel in view, Piper and Carson represent a contemporary starting point for a much wider discussion of ministerial calling.

It was for this constellation of reasons that the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School asked Drs. Piper and Carson to speak at a special event geared toward future pastors and scholars on April 23, 2009. Coming on the heels of The Gospel Coalition national conference, the event was entitled “The Pastor as Scholar, the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry with John Piper and D. A. Carson.” It attracted a capacity crowd to Park Community Church in downtown Chicago. The auditorium and two floors of overflow classrooms were filled with attendees who had come to hear the two leaders speak on their callings. For three hours, the audience listened to the scholarly pastor and the pastoral scholar. Thousands more streamed the media after the event, which created quite a buzz on numerous blogs and other forms of social media.1

This book, we hope, serves the growing conversation on the identities of ministry callings. In addition to the aforementioned event, the Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology, based in the Chicago area, convened in 2007 and is bursting with applications from interested pastors who have a concern to engage the life of the mind in their pastoral work. Theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer gave the Page Lectures at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in late 2009 and commented at length on the necessity of the pastor-theologian, evangelicalism’s “public intellectual” according to Vanhoozer.2 On the publishing front, R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s He Is Not Silent includes a chapter on the pastor as theologian.3 David Wells’s The Courage to Be Protestant argues that historically, “scholar–saints” led the church, pastors who were “as comfortable with books and learning as with the aches of the soul.”4 Douglas Sweeney’s Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word includes important content about Edwards’s ministry as a pastor-theologian.5 An insightful article on the topic by Gerald Hiestand ran in the Westminster Journal of Theology in 2008.6 The recent systematic theology for the church by Daniel Akin, A Theology for the Church, features chapters by leading theologians and scholarly pastors that are aimed at the local church and its leaders.7 In these and other texts, Christian thinkers are mulling over an enhanced pastorate and an engaged academia.

The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor serves as a short, readable introduction to these callings. It suggests by way of experience and meditation an answer to the question posed earlier: “What do you want to be—a pastor or a scholar?” Perhaps we will be forgiven if, like Pastor Piper and Professor Carson, we want in some small way to be a realistic combination of both, in order that we might use our gifts in service to God for the health of our brothers and sisters. This, and no mere rearrangement of ministerial furniture, is the aim of this text: the strengthening of God’s church for the greater glory of its Lord.

CHAPTER ONE

The Pastor as Scholar: A Personal Journey and the Joyful Place of Scholarship

John Piper

This chapter has two parts. First is the story of my pilgrimage to the pastorate, and second is the way “scholarship” relates to the overarching theme of my ministry—that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. The story I tell, from the time I was a boy in high school to the stage in life where I am now, has an angle to it, namely, highlighting the factors along the way that shaped me into the kind of pastor I am today, for good or for ill. The very fact that I am approaching the topic of pastor-scholar this way is immediately part of what you should learn about what makes me tick as a pastor, and how this relates to scholarship. Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to say something about making room for academic scholarship in the busy life of a pastor.

Part One: The Making of a Pastor-Scholar

From one angle this approach is typically American—we Americans, in general, more quickly bare our souls to the world than many cultures do. For example, F. F. Bruce, representing the British of a generation ago (and perhaps much like today’s), said at the end of his autobiography:

While some readers have observed that in these chapters I have said little about my domestic life, others have wondered why I have been so reticent about my religious experience. The reason is probably the same in both instances: I do not care to speak much—especially in public—about the things that mean most to me. Others do not share this inhibition, and have enriched their fellows by relating the inner story of the Lord’s dealings with them—one thinks of Augustine’s Confessions and Bunyan’s Grace Abounding. But it calls for quite exceptional qualities to be able to do this kind of thing without self-consciousness or self-deception.1

So now you can see I am trapped. My first reaction when I read this was to say, “No wonder I have found his commentaries so dry”—helpful in significant ways, but personally and theologically anemic. My second reaction was to say (this was in 1980, the year I left academia and entered the pastorate), “Good grief! You say, ‘I do not care to speak much—especially in public—about the things that mean most to me.’ I say, ‘The only thing I care to speak about—especially in public—are the things that mean most to me!’”

Zero Empathy

Both his and my statements are probably overstatements. But seriously, this is one of the differences between me and many scholars, and it is part of what pushed me out of the guild. I am regularly bursting to say something about the most precious things in the universe—and not in any disinterested, dispassionate, composed, detached, unemotional, so-called scholarly way, but rather with total interest, warm passion, discomposure, utter attachment, and fully emotional, and, I hope always, true. At least true is my goal.

I am with Jonathan Edwards all the way when he says:

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.2

Of course, my assumption is, for Edwards and for myself, that in our aim to raise the affections of our hearers, we have experienced authentically raised affections ourselves. And these affections are in sync with what is true and in proportion to the nature of the truth.

So I have zero empathy with F. F. Bruce and others when they say (sometimes in the name of personality, and others in the name of scholarly objectivity), “I do not care to speak much—especially in public—about the things that mean most to me.” Nor do I care if they say a theological lecture or a critical scholarly commentary is not the place for that.