ABSTRACT: Many who know John Calvin as a brilliant Reformed theologian do not yet know him as a model of pastoral collegiality and accountability. Under his leadership, ministry in sixteenth-century Geneva often happened in plurality and community. In particular, four regular meetings fostered Calvin’s vision of collegial ministry: the weekly Company of Pastors, Congrégation, and Consistory, and the quarterly Ordinary Censure. Through these institutions, the city’s pastors prayed together, studied together, encouraged and exhorted one another, and labored for the advance of the gospel together. Their model of ministry offers an enduring case study for pastoral practice, especially in a day when many pastors feel discouraged, isolated, and perhaps on the verge of burnout.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Scott Manetsch, Chair of the Church History and the History of Christian Thought Department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to describe John Calvin’s model of pastoral collegiality in sixteenth-century Geneva.

In a New York Times article from August 2010, Paul Vitello describes the serious difficulties faced by many Christian ministers in the United States today.

Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could. Public health experts . . . caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and unhappy.1

During the past decade, researchers have probed various factors contributing to the poor mental and physical health of America’s professional clergy.2 Some factors commonly identified include poor pastor-church alignment, lack of resilience, lack of self-awareness, unresolved conflicts, heavy workloads, unreasonable expectations, financial pressure, and loneliness or isolation. Though no single aspect is usually decisive, the cumulative effect of these tensions and troubles frequently produces high levels of stress that force pastors to question their vocation, or cause them to leave the ministry altogether. Pastoral work often becomes “death by a thousand paper cuts.”3

“A historical awareness of the pastoral office can provide a broader perspective and a refreshing draught of wisdom.”

Thankfully, a variety of helpful resources are now available to support and encourage pastors who are burned out, bummed out, or burdened with congregational ministry.4 One important resource for pastoral health and flourishing that is frequently overlooked in contemporary discussions, however, is the history of the pastoral office — the practices, convictions, and institutions that Christians in the past have adopted to nourish and strengthen gospel ministers. As we shall see, a historical awareness of the pastoral office can provide a broader perspective and a refreshing draught of wisdom as modern-day Christian ministers live out their vocations in ways that are pleasing to God and sustainable for a lifetime of faithful and fruitful ministry. This present essay offers a case study of the model of ministry created by John Calvin in Geneva from 1536–1564. As we’ll see, Calvin recognized the unique challenges faced by faithful gospel ministers and created practices and institutions to promote pastoral collegiality, accountability, and spiritual vitality.5

Proclamation of the Word

When John Calvin (1509–1564) first arrived in Geneva in the summer of 1536, the city republic had been Protestant for barely two months and faced an uncertain future. As Calvin later recalled, “When I first arrived in this church there was almost nothing. They were preaching and that is all. They were good at seeking out idols and burning them, but there was no Reformation. Everything was in turmoil.”6 Over the next 28 years (with a three-year hiatus from 1538–1541), Calvin emerged as the chief human architect responsible for building a new religious order in Geneva that prioritized the preaching of God’s word, the fourfold ministry (pastor, elder, deacon, professor), church discipline, and intensive pastoral care and visitation. Calvin’s vision for a church reformed in doctrine and practice was articulated in Geneva’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541), in the city’s catechism and liturgy (1542), and in Calvin’s expansive biblical commentaries and sermons. For the Genevan Reformer, the faithful exposition and proclamation of God’s word was one of the marks of a true church, standing at the center of gospel ministry. As he once noted, the word is the “means of our salvation, it is all our life, it is all our riches, it is the seed whereby we are begotten as God’s children; it is the nourishment of our souls.”7

One of the first steps Calvin took upon arriving in Geneva was to restructure parish boundaries in order to give priority to the preaching of the word of God. He and his colleague Guillaume Farel consolidated nearly a dozen Catholic churches and chapels into three parish churches within the city’s walls — St. Pierre, la Madeleine, and St. Gervais — and recruited six or seven Reformed ministers to serve these three urban congregations. Calvin also consolidated Geneva’s countryside parishes and appointed around a dozen pastors to serve these rural churches.

The proclamation of God’s word stood at the center of religious life in Calvin’s Geneva. In the city, preaching services included weekday sermons at 8:00 a.m., early morning sermons at 4:00 a.m. for domestic servants, Sunday sermons at 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and a catechetical sermon on Sundays at noon for children. By 1561, there were 33 sermons preached within Geneva’s city walls each week. Calvin and his pastoral colleagues shared the preaching load and rotated between the city’s pulpits. “The preacher was not the proprietor of a pulpit or the captain of his congregation: it was Christ who presided over his Church through the Word.”8 Even so, a disproportionate responsibility for preaching fell on Calvin and his more gifted colleagues such as Theodore Beza and Michel Cop, who regularly preached more than 150 sermons per year.

Calvin and Geneva’s ministers prioritized God’s word in other ways as well. The Genevan liturgy, written by Calvin in 1542, was filled with scriptural allusions and rich biblical language. The singing of the Huguenot Psalter was a standard feature of both public and private worship in Geneva. Children were required to attend catechism classes where they learned the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer — a basic primer for Christian faith, conduct, and worship. In 1555, the ministers, along with the church’s elders, also began conducting annual household visitations to ensure that all of Geneva’s residents had a knowledge of basic biblical doctrine as articulated in the catechism and were living in accordance with God’s word. Finally, during the sixteenth century, Geneva became a center for Protestant publishing, with the city’s presses printing no fewer than eighty editions of the French Bible as well as translations of the Scripture into English, Italian, Spanish, and Latin. For Calvin and Geneva’s ministers, reading, hearing, and obeying God’s word was essential for the life of the church and the spiritual health of God’s people.

Pastoral Collegiality and Accountability

In addition to prioritizing the proclamation of God’s word, Calvin also created pastoral institutions in Geneva to encourage the collegiality, accountability, and spiritual health of the Protestant ministers who served the city’s churches. These institutions included the Company of Pastors, the Congrégation, the Ordinary Censure, and the Consistory — four pastoral bodies that profoundly shaped religious culture in Geneva and preserved Calvin’s theological legacy for generations to come.

Company of Pastors

In the mid-1540s, Calvin began to convene the ministers of the city and countryside every Friday morning to discuss the business of the church. This institution, known as the Company of Pastors, became a fixture of religious life in Geneva thereafter. The Company, whose membership consisted of around fifteen to eighteen pastors and several professors, was responsible to monitor public worship in the city, recruit and examine new pastors, supervise theological education at the Academy, oversee the work of the deacons and public benevolence, and offer godly advice to the city magistrates. Owing to the theological stature of Calvin and several of his colleagues, the Company of Pastors soon developed a vast correspondence with Reformed churches throughout Europe, becoming a kind of hub of international Calvinism. As such, the Company served as an advisory board to foreign churches on doctrinal and practical issues, solicited financial and political support for embattled Protestants, and supplied student-pastors to foreign churches. Moreover, the Company of Pastors began in 1555 a top-secret program where it recruited and trained Reformed ministers and sent them as missionary pastors to Catholic France.

“What collegial relationships might God be calling us to cultivate for our spiritual and emotional health?”

Calvin constructed the Company of Pastors out of the primary conviction of the equality of the ministry: all Christian ministers possessed equal authority under the word of God to proclaim the gospel, administer the sacraments, and govern the church. Though Calvin, as the moderator of the Company, possessed special moral authority among his colleagues, he rejected any notion of spiritual hierarchy within the pastoral office — all of Geneva’s ministers were considered equal gospel partners. As such, the Company provided a regular space where Geneva’s ministers could meet with one another, discuss theology, learn from one another, and support one another in their common vocation. This kind of support was especially important for Geneva’s countryside pastors, who often faced special challenges and dangers. One such pastor, Jean Gervais, experienced the scourge of warfare, roaming vigilantes, and aggressive Catholic missionaries during eighteen years of ministry in his small parish of Bossy-Neydens. On one occasion, he was even kidnapped and held for ransom. In the midst of these persistent dangers, the Company supported Gervais and his family by providing regular prayer support, encouragement, and advice; the ministers also petitioned the city magistrates for better wages and physical protection for their beleaguered colleague.9

Congrégation

A second institution that Calvin created in Geneva to promote pastoral collegiality and accountability was the Congrégation — a weekly assembly modeled after Huldrych Zwingli’s Prophetzei in Zurich, where the city’s pastors, theological students, and interested laypeople met for intense study of Scripture. Each week, different pastors were appointed to lead the discussion as the Congrégation worked systematically through books of the Bible. After an opening prayer, the designated pastor read the chosen passage aloud in French, and then offered a careful explanation of the passage drawn from his knowledge of the original Greek or Hebrew texts. After this exposition, the rest of Geneva’s pastors added their insights and corrections, contributing to an extended discussion of the exegetical and theological issues relevant to the biblical pericope being studied. In this way, then, the Congrégation functioned as a preacher’s clinic, a training ground for young preachers, and a tutorial where laypeople learned basic principles of biblical interpretation. The Congrégation was also a place where Calvin and his colleagues tested out their exegesis as they prepared sermons or wrote biblical commentaries.

From Calvin’s perspective, the collegial study of the Scripture was of vital importance in preserving the doctrinal purity of the church, forging unity among the ministers, and spurring ministers on to continued growth as faithful interpreters of the word of God. Scripture needed to be studied and interpreted in community. Calvin articulated this conviction in a letter to a colleague in Bern: “The fewer discussions of doctrine we have together, the greater the danger of pernicious opinions,” he noted. Indeed, “solitude leads to great abuse.”10 The Congrégation helped Geneva’s ministers mature as interpreters of God’s word and remain submissive to its teaching.

Ordinary Censure

The Ordinary Censure was a third institution that Calvin established in Geneva to promote pastoral collegiality and accountability. Four times a year — on the Friday before Geneva’s quarterly communion service — the ministers from city and countryside met behind closed doors to address personal grievances against one another, exhort one another to godliness, and offer fraternal corrections. The goal of this censure was to preserve the spiritual purity of the pastoral office, correct public and private sins, and achieve reconciliation among members of the pastoral company. At the conclusion of these meetings, the ministers shared together a meal of hot soup as a visual display of their spiritual unity in Christ.

Although the proceedings of the Ordinary Censure were strictly confidential, anecdotal evidence indicates that these meetings could be tense and contentious. During the sixteenth century, ministers were censured for a variety of sins and moral failures such as arrogance, slander, negligence in personal study, conflict with pastoral colleagues, inflammatory preaching, and teaching questionable doctrine. In one notable case, a minister was censured by his colleagues for attacking and beating a member of his congregation who came late to the worship service. Even more explosive was the case of Jean Ferron, who appeared before the Ordinary Censure in 1549 under suspicion of having groped a servant girl in his household and spoken salacious words to her. Ferron admitted to having done so “in order to test if she was a good girl.”11 The ministers sternly reprimanded Ferron and ordered that he be transferred to a different parish. Outraged, Ferron launched a blistering attack against Calvin and his fellow ministers. In response, Geneva’s pastors met again behind closed doors, exonerated Calvin, and suspended Ferron permanently from the ministry.

As these examples suggest, Calvin believed that pastors needed not only collegial support and encouragement, but also formal structures that held them accountable to God’s word, promoted godliness, and addressed areas of weakness and recurring sin.

Consistory

This commitment to hold ministers accountable within the church was also seen in the Consistory, the most famous church institution that Calvin established in Geneva. Beginning in 1542, the city’s pastors and twelve lay elders met every Thursday at noon to address cases of misbehavior and wrong belief among Geneva’s residents. During the decades that followed, this disciplinary court addressed hundreds of moral infractions each year, ranging from adultery to public drunkenness, from gambling to blasphemy, from business fraud to spousal abuse. Frequently, the Consistory served as an informal “counseling service,” where the pastors and elders addressed the grievances of embattled family members or neighbors in hopes of encouraging repentance and reconciliation.

Church discipline in Calvin’s Geneva took a number of forms, ranging from pastoral advice, personal admonition, public rebuke, temporary suspension from the Lord’s Supper, or (in rare cases) exclusion from the church. For Calvin, church discipline was a form of spiritual medicine, mandated by Scripture, to bring about the repentance of sinners, preserve the purity of Christ’s church, and protect Christians from the bad examples of the ungodly. As such, church discipline was indispensable for the health of any Christian community. “All who desire to remove discipline or to hinder its restoration . . . are surely contributing to the ultimate dissolution of the church,” Calvin stated.12 To be sure, the Consistory’s discipline could be intrusive, heavy-handed, and paternalistic; but at its best, it was an expression of pastoral care that God used to bring about repentance, reconciliation, and spiritual growth.

It is noteworthy that the ministers who staffed the Consistory sometimes also became objects of its discipline. During the sixteenth century, more than a dozen ministers were called to the Consistory’s chambers for various moral infractions, including fornication, greed, rebellion against the magistrates, usury, refusing to preach, and domestic quarrels. Some of these ministers were reprimanded; others were suspended from the Table; still others were deposed from their offices. In one memorable case, the Consistory confronted the rural minister Jean de Serres for abandoning his pastoral charge without notice due to family concerns and in hopes of securing a more lucrative church post in France. The Consistory sternly reprimanded Serres, temporarily suspended him from the Lord’s Supper, and recommended his demission from the ministry. The pastors and elders reminded Serres that the pastoral vocation was an “exceedingly sacred and honorable charge”; indeed, “his ministry should be one hundred times more precious to him than all of these things.”13

Contemporary Lessons and Suggestions

As we have seen, Calvin believed that ministers of the gospel needed collegial relationships of support and accountability if they were to flourish in their ministries. Modern studies regularly confirm this conclusion: “The isolation and loneliness of ministry often turns hardships into damaging experiences rather than ones of growth.” Indeed, “intimate relationships are necessary for spiritual growth.”14 In Geneva, Calvin addressed these concerns by creating four institutions, the Company of Pastors, the Congrégation, the Ordinary Censure, and the Consistory, which sought to facilitate pastoral relationships that were transparent, supportive, developmental, and collaborative. It would not be wise, of course, to import uncritically Calvin’s model of ministry into contemporary church life. (Ministry practices that are older are not necessarily better.) But even so, Calvin’s construction of the pastoral office in Geneva offers a valuable case study that can alert us to dangers, guide us in biblical wisdom, and spur our imaginations as we pursue the spiritual health of the church and her ministry leaders. Three points of application seem germane in this regard.

First, God can use institutions to preserve Christian truth and promote pastoral well-being. Evangelical Christians are frequently suspicious of building institutions for fear that they will become moribund and depart from their original gospel mission. Such concerns are not entirely without basis. Yet, at the same time, James K.A. Smith is correct in warning us against a cynical anti-institutionalism, for “institutions are ways to love our neighbors.” They are “durable, concrete structures that — when functioning well — cultivate all of creation’s potential toward what God desires: shalom, peace, goodness, justice, flourishing, delight.”15 As we have seen, Calvin recognized the importance of creating institutions to preserve his theological legacy and promote the well-being of the pastors who served Geneva’s church. What institutions might we create — or replicate — to contribute to the flourishing of Christian ministers?

Second, pastors who thrive in ministry have healthy relationships with other Christian leaders that are centered in the word of God. Calvin built into the DNA of the Genevan church weekly meetings where the city pastors met face to face, studied Scripture together, engaged in theological discussions, prayed for one another, and encouraged one another to persevere in their Christian vocations. They even occasionally shared meals together. For pastors today, collegial relationships of trust and support might be fostered among leaders of a multi-staff church, in a community ministerium, through denominational networks, or by regular gatherings of old seminary friends. Over the past decade, groups of pastors around the United States have even expressed this vision by forming their own versions of the Company of Pastors. These groups are most successful when they are attentive to God’s word, devoted to prayer, and committed to mutual sharing that is authentic and held in confidence. If we are presently isolated and lonely in Christian ministry, this question bears serious reflection: What collegial relationships might God be calling us to cultivate for our spiritual and emotional health?

“Calvin recognized that collegiality and accountability were two sides of the same coin.”

Finally, pastors who thrive in ministry are accountable to others and open to advice and constructive criticism. Calvin recognized that collegiality and accountability were two sides of the same coin. Consequently, even as Geneva’s ministers were welcomed into a pastoral company that provided emotional and spiritual support, they were also held accountable by colleagues for their doctrine, their preaching, and their personal behavior. The Congrégation provided a venue where ministers could get honest feedback on their skills as interpreters and expositors of the word of God — with an eye toward personal growth and improvement. Likewise, the Ordinary Censure allowed ministers to address with their colleagues those habits, sins, and conflicts that undermined personal holiness and disrupted the unity of the church. In Geneva, no minister was a lone ranger, above correction. These questions bear asking, therefore: Who is asking us the hard questions that we need to hear? Do we have colleagues who regularly speak God’s truth to us? If not, how might we welcome such people into life and ministry?

For Calvin, the call to be a Christian pastor was a high and holy calling — but it was also a most challenging vocation, not to be lived in isolation. Ministers of the gospel flourished as they experienced communion with Christ through his word, were empowered by the Holy Spirit, and enjoyed the precious gift of godly colleagues in ministry.

Austin Duncan: I want to welcome you to our Q&A session with pastors John MacArthur and John Piper. There is something wonderful about this opportunity. Both of these men are known for their deep well of biblical and theological knowledge. Their years and years of pastoral faithfulness have prepared them for moments like these. They both have a burden to answer people’s questions.

Dr. MacArthur, you have had hundreds of sessions with your local church where you’ll just open up the microphone on Sunday night and answer people’s questions — and they’ll line up. Two weeks ago, you answered questions for two hours regarding what was on people’s hearts.

Dr. Piper, you have a podcast called Ask Pastor John. It’s incredibly helpful as the dear Tony Reinke asks you so many questions. The podcast has produced a book. It’s called Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions. It’s sold out in the book tent already. It disappeared quickly. You can get it online. I recommend that to you, men. And obviously, Dr. MacArthur’s years and years of answers to Bible questions are at gty.org.

I think that’s where I’d like to start. Why is it so important for the pastor to be accessible to ask and answer questions, to be there for people’s needs? Why has that become such an important part of your ministries?

John MacArthur: Well, because you don’t want to spend your whole ministry telling people what they don’t want to know.

John Piper: Sometimes we do.

MacArthur: Yes. But I said you don’t want to spend your whole ministry . . .

Piper: That’s true.

MacArthur: You want to spend some of your ministry telling them what they don’t want to know.

Piper: Touché.

MacArthur: But you also want to spend a lot of your ministry telling them what they desperately want to know — the cries of their heart, the dilemmas that they face. And you want to do it particularly in a pastoral role where there’s trust. You don’t have to sort of give an apologia for every answer you give because you’ve built trust by feeding them the word of God.

I think Paul set me on that course when he dialogued (diálogos) and talked back and forth with the people he ministered to, in order to answer their compelling questions. For him, it would’ve been more difficult because all they would’ve had at most would be the Old Testament. For us, we can direct them to the New Testament. But this has always been a vital part of our ministry. And I think what I hear from deconstruction people, the “exvangelicals,” is that they went to a church but they never got their questions answered. There’s no reason for that. We have the answers.

Duncan: So, it’s about the contemporaneity of those questions, it’s what’s on people’s hearts, and it’s also about the sufficiency of Scripture. What’s the burden behind your desire to answer people’s questions, Dr. Piper?

Piper: Well, at my stage in life, I don’t have a local church anymore that I oversee as the pastor. Look at the Book, which is the other little thing I do online, has kind of replaced my preaching role, and Ask Pastor John has replaced my counseling role. So, I get to do all my pastoral work online. That’s one way to look at it.

The other thing is that the pulpit of John MacArthur and John Piper is not exactly the same as the Q&A of John Piper and John MacArthur. At least that’s what people tell me about you, and I think that’s what I’ve found. They say you’re a bulldog in the pulpit. And then they say you’re the kindest, gentlest, most gracious person in conversation. I’ve seen both of those. Now, I have no idea whether I’m viewed as a bulldog or a kind person, but I think I am viewed as a different person.

I think that your flock needs to know you both ways. It is not a bad thing to be a prophetic authority in the pulpit. That scares the heebie-jeebies out of people. And it’s not a bad thing to be a lowly servant, quiet listener, who gets your arms around people out of the pulpit.

MacArthur: You preach with boldness, and you give an answer with meekness and fear.

Duncan: We’ve highlighted before in Q&As with the two of you how different you both are. You have different personalities and are wired in different ways. I think that’s something that we thank God for in the way he makes people different. But there’s something that has been noticed at this conference, and it’s that you two have an unusual bond. People are taking pictures of you two greeting and hugging each other and talking together and posting them online and just talking about how encouraged they are by the bond and friendship that the two of you share.

I really want this Q&A to be helpful to these pastors that are watching and listening to this. I think there’s something that you could teach us about why relationships with another pastor are so important. What is it about friendship that will enhance a man’s pastoral ministry? We’ve heard a little bit about that in this conference, but speak experientially to these brothers, and help them think about the pastor and friendship.

Piper: I’ve heard people say that your best friends are going to have to be outside of the church, not within your own church, your own staff, or your own elders and deacons. I did not find that true. And I don’t think it’s healthy to talk that way. For 33 years, I considered my staff my best friends.

MacArthur: Yes.

Piper: The elders were absolutely trustworthy with my life. If Noël and I were having problems, I didn’t try to hide it from anybody on the staff. They were my closest friends. They are still today, the ones that I still have around me. That’s the first thing I’d say. Don’t feel like, “Oh, you can’t have a good friend inside the church because you can’t really be honest with them.” Baloney. You really ought to be honest with the people closest to you and those who work with you. We need to know each other through and through. For whatever reason, Jesus had his Peter, James, and John. And he had his 12, and he had his 70. There are concentric circles of intimacy, it seems, that mattered to him. They certainly matter to me. To this day, I meet with two guys every other week, and they know me like nobody else knows me. That keeps me accountable. That’s a big deal today, accountability. But it never feels quite that way if you’re with really good friends.

“How do you even function in the midst of slander unless you love heaven, unless you believe in the world to come?”

So, that matters. They know me, they can speak into my life. And those friends need to not be yes-men. They need to be fearless around you and speak into your life without feeling like they’re going to be squashed because you have more authority than they do. So, I think it makes a huge difference whether you’re accountable, whether your heart is open, and whether they can bear your burdens that you share with them and pray for you at the deepest levels where very few other people are praying for you because they don’t know what you’re dealing with.

Duncan: Dr. MacArthur, what would you add about friendship?

MacArthur: Well, let me talk about John. I was asked, “Why would you have John Piper at the conference?” My immediate answer was, “Because one, I love him; two, he is as formidable a lover of Christ as there exists in the world today; and three, because he feeds me.” I don’t get a lot of time with John, but I did get a thousand pages plus of Providence delivered to me through your mind and your heart. Your face is on every page because I know you. I’m reading but I’m hearing you. And I know you well enough to know what went on for you to be able to produce such a massive work. I don’t know that there’s more than a handful of modern people who have had that kind of biblical effect on me. I mean, you probably read more old authors than current authors, like I do.

Piper: Yep.

MacArthur: But for a current author, you’ve delivered your soul to me in so many ways. I remember we were at the Sing! conference one year, you might not remember this, and you were speaking at the early session. It was about 8:00 a.m. I was in the green room when you showed up, and you said, “What are you doing here?” Do you remember that?

Piper: No. But I’m eager to hear.

MacArthur: I said, “What do you mean what am I doing here? You’re speaking.” You said, “You came to hear me speak?” I said, “Of course.” I mean, you’re processing, “You flew from California last night and got in late. It’s 7:00 a.m., which is 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. for you.” I wait for the Lord to use you to bring me what I need for my heart and soul. So, anytime I can do that, I’m going to be there.

Piper: Well, you’re kind. C.S. Lewis made the distinctions about the four kinds of love. Eros is where lovers are looking at each other in the face, telling each other how delicious they are.

MacArthur: No, it’s not that kind of love, John.

Piper: Don’t — don’t interrupt. I’m getting there. And philos is friendship, and you’re not facing each other. You’re facing a passionate goal, shoulder to shoulder. And you’re not doing a lot of intimate talk. I started with the intimacy piece of those guys who know me through and through, but what makes it friendship is the shoulder-to-shoulder pulling in a worthy, great cause you’re willing to die for. And when you sense in another person that you’re pulling in the same reins — in the same yoke — then you feel like, “We could die together. This would be good. This would be good.” That’s the kind of friendship you want. You want a shoulder-to-shoulder, common goal, a common vision.

This might be a good place to say this. I don’t believe it’s a good goal to have a theologically diverse staff. I’ve heard pastors say, “Oh, we don’t need to agree on all the theological things on the staff.” I say baloney. You have to lead your people together. You have to lead. So, when you’re shoulder to shoulder, you know what the other person is thinking, you know what the other person is feeling. And, oh, the camaraderie that brings you. When the church gets into a crisis, oh my goodness, how glorious is it to have a few close friends that you absolutely know are going to be standing by you through the crisis?

MacArthur: That’s a great answer.

Duncan: That’s why J.C. Ryle said, “Friendship is that gift from God that doubles our joys and halves our sorrows.” That’s what you men are sharing with us, and that’s why pastors need Christ-honoring, Christ-centered, Christ-pursuing friendships.

Piper: Can I say one more thing? If you’re really bound together deeply — theologically and spiritually — you don’t have to spend a lot of time together. I mean, I have a few friends I see once a year or so. I see him less often than that probably. And when you get together, you just pick up where you were. That’s the way it was with those people. For years, I’ve related to some people that way. It’s like a once-a-year friendship, but it feels deeper than some people you see every week because the shoulder-to-shoulder, common convictions and goals are so deep. So, don’t feel like you can’t have significant friendships with people that you knew in college or you knew in seminary. You keep up with them at a distance.

MacArthur: You know, I had that kind of relationship with R.C. Sproul. We were on opposite coasts, and we spent some time together, maybe once or twice a year. And yet, there was this shoulder-to-shoulder attitude that we knew if we ever were in a severe battle, we needed to be together. And that’s where we were at ECT. That kind of defined that relationship. People said, “How could you have such a friendship when you had different theological views on certain things?” It’s right back to exactly what John said. R.C. would always say, “When I’m in a foxhole, I’m going to call you.”

Piper: That’s good.

Duncan: Let’s talk about the flip side of this, which is the deepest and darkest part of friendship — when a friend fails us. We’ve all had that experience of betrayal. Maybe there’s a friend that drifts into error or a friend that drifts into sin. Maybe you could help the pastors here process what was a common experience for the apostle Paul and for the Lord Jesus — when friends fail you. When that happens, how do you continue to pour yourself into the lives of people? How do you ensure that you don’t become self-protective but you continue to invest and pour in and love your friends, even when friends fail? Talk a little bit about that experience in ministry.

MacArthur: For me, it goes back to our Lord and Judas, or it goes back to Paul and Demas. The best of the best of the best of the best are going to be betrayed. And the more you invest in someone, the more potential they have to devastate you. So, you can be gun-shy. My dad told me when I was just starting out in ministry, “Don’t make close friends with the people you serve with because you’ll find yourself being so terribly disappointed.” I usually took my dad’s advice but I never took that advice because it was overpowered, for me, by the experience of Christ, not only with Judas but even with Peter. If he was disappointed with Judas, who was a devil, how much more disappointed was he with Peter, who was a true believer?

So, who am I to expect loyalty from everybody all of the time? And we know what Paul endured, whether it was John Mark or Demas or whatever, and who knows all the other stories. He said, “All in Asia have forsaken me” (see 2 Timothy 1:15). How can you come to the end of your ministry and say, “Everybody has forsaken me”? How is that even possible? You’re the apostle Paul. You’re the reason that anybody is even a Christian.

But you have to understand that goes with the territory. That’s part of it. You do some inventory in your own heart and ask, “Could I have done something different?” But for me, the Lord has always balanced that with many more who are faithful over the long haul. I focus on that and rest in the fact that if it was true of the apostle Paul and of our Lord, I should probably expect a whole lot more disloyalty than I get.

Piper: There’s an interesting connection that I didn’t see until about three years ago in the Demas text. Second Timothy 4:7–8 says,

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

And two verses later, he says Demas disappeared in love for the world. So, I think one answer to the question of how you survive Demas is by loving the second coming, which means something like this: This world is one conveyor belt of disappointments. Every day has a disappointment in it. Some situations don’t go the way you want. Somebody lets you down. Life is disappointing, and some of them are awful. Demas probably broke his heart. But he so loved Christ and he so loved the second coming and he knew everything was going to work out. It’s all going to be okay.

So, I think we need to have a heavenly mindset, which is the way Jesus told us to deal with slander in Matthew 5, right? When they say “all kinds of evil against you falsely,” “rejoice and be glad” (Matthew 5:11–12). Why? “Great is your reward in heaven.” So, how do you even function in the midst of slander unless you love heaven, unless you believe in the world to come? That’s one piece.

Another piece I’d say about betrayal is don’t become embittered. Lean into reconciliation possibilities. It might seem absolutely impossible that this relationship could be fixed. You might think, “It’s just not going to happen. It’s just so ugly.” Don’t believe that. God does miracles. The worst betrayal I ever experienced was 1993. There was a seven-year adultery from a man I’d worked with for 10 years, which devastated the church. There were 230 people who left in those days. I think we had an attendance of about 1,200 people in those days, and 230 people walked because they didn’t like church discipline.

I had dinner with that man 10 years later, and we wept. We held each other. I attended his funeral, hugged his wife, and we made it okay. It was okay. We’re going to be in heaven together. And that’s possible, guys. It’s really possible. Your job is to believe that and not to be the one who’s just sneering and saying, “You just get out of my life and you stay out of my life because of what you wrecked in this church or what you wrecked in my relationships.” So, believe the miracle is possible — that reconciliation could happen.

MacArthur: You know, building on that, I think you also have to look at that person as an instrument through which the Lord is perfecting you.

Piper: That’s right.

MacArthur: Those are the best times for your spiritual benefit. They tear down your pride and self-confidence and sense of privilege and expected rights. And if you will look at the person that hurt you the most as the instrument that God used, then you’ll understand what Paul was talking about when he wrote to the Corinthians about the thorn in the flesh. The Lord said, “I’m not going to remove it because when you’re the weakest, you’re the strongest” (see 2 Corinthians 12:9–10). We’re never going to be too weak to be effective.

Piper: Right. That reality of chapter 12 really runs through all of 2 Corinthians, doesn’t it? The pastoral suffering is for the sake of their people. It’s just all through the book. It starts off in 2 Corinthians 1, saying, “May you be comforted with the comfort with which you have been comforted by God” (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–5). So, if you wonder why you’re going through the hell you’re going through right now, it’s for the sake of your people. God wants to do something in your shepherd’s heart that will make you a more wise, compassionate, loving, insightful, caring shepherd.

Duncan: You both have battled for truth and various difficult doctrinal controversies. You’ve battled for truth in ethical matters where someone drifts into error. I think both of you model being warriors for the truth. And this conference is about the triumph of truth. How do we think about battling for truth and maintaining that full awareness of grace? Another way to say it is, how do we differentiate, in our battling for truth, between contending and being contentious? How can we be bulldogs and followers of the Lamb?

Piper: Yeah, that’s good. You should be a preacher. You sound like H.B. Charles. I love John Owen and I love Machen, so I did this little book years ago called Contending for Our All. R.C. Sproul wrote something for it. He liked it. And that made me feel really good. But here’s the one quote that made all the difference for me, and it’s been a goal. I don’t know if I’ve achieved it, but Owen said that we should “commune with the Lord in the doctrine for which we contend.” Now, here’s what that means to me. Let’s say I’m fighting for justification, say, with N.T. Wright, or I’m fighting for Calvinism against Roger Olson or whatever. I know these guys. I’ve communicated with them. It’s not like throwing hate bombs over the fence.

My desire is that I would be authentic with them and real with them, and that I would not be contentious, but when it’s justification or the sovereignty of God, as I go into battle, whether it’s over lunch or in a book, I’m saying, “Lord, I don’t want this to be a game. I don’t want to have a little tiff here. I don’t want to play word games or doctrine games or proposition games. I want to know the sweetness of justification. I want to know the preciousness of the sovereignty of God. That’s the only reason I want to defend this. I don’t want to win anything. I’m not out to get strokes or be famous. I want to enjoy you.” I think that’s what Owen meant. I want to enjoy God in the doctrine for which I contend. I think that changes the spirit from contentiousness to a humble, holy, courageous contending. That’s one factor.

MacArthur: I think that’s true. That will prevent you from being angry or being hostile, because if you love that truth, that basically takes over your heart. That is the first thing. This is a truth you love, not a club with which you want to beat people.

The second thing is that this is a person that you love or that you care about, so your attitude is going to be the combination of how you feel about the truth and how you feel about the person. And if you lose it on either side, if you’re trying to win an argument, you’re going to be cantankerous. Or if you’re indifferent to the person, you’re going to become frustrated with dealing with the person, and you’re going to lose the tenderness and persuasiveness that the Spirit of God would want you to have while you’re trying to convince them.

Duncan: That’s very helpful.

Piper: I would add that joy, along with love, has a huge effect, because you can lose your joy quickly in an argument. Anger is an omnivorous emotion. It eats everything. It eats compassion, it eats joy, it eats everything. If you get taken over by anger, you lose those things. And joy is a great antidote. In your local church, there will be little controversies. We’re talking about big controversies here, public controversies. But in your church, you’ll have controversies. People don’t like what you just said or believed. I had a guy one time who did not like my eschatology. I won’t even tell you which side anybody’s on here.

I preached on a Sunday evening and I said, “I can’t imagine anybody wanting to do that.” He was at the back of the row and said, “I don’t believe that,” right out loud in the service. Now, here’s another illustration of somebody you get really reconciled with. I said to him, along with the other people sitting with their arms crossed in the back row, “I’m going to out-rejoice you and outlive you.” And I did. I was brand new. I was three years into my 33-year ministry, and we became precious friends. We never agreed, but we were precious friends. When he moved away to Iowa, later, he called me after about six years and he said his wife had died. He asked if I would do the funeral.

So, don’t think that the people who stand up and shout out in your service, saying, “I don’t agree with you, pastor,” won’t do a 180 and love you like crazy before you’re done. Because what was under that was that he loved the Bible. He loved the Bible. He thought I was unbiblical, but then, after two or three years, he said, “Piper is not unbiblical. He’s totally under this Book, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.”

Duncan: To think about your ministries and how they will be thought of in the future is beyond our capability as people with our limited understanding of how God works and how providence unfolds. But I think it’s not speculation to say that, though you’ve written hundreds of books between the two of you, tens of thousands of pages and millions of words, you both will be known for one book, first and foremost, that you wrote. I think John Piper will be known for Desiring God and John MacArthur will be known for The Gospel According to Jesus. Those are formative, definitive, huge-impact books that reflect the heartbeat of your ministries and the emphasis of your lives. I would like you to just consider why those books. I’m especially interested in Dr. Piper telling why that is the case for Dr. MacArthur, and Dr. MacArthur, why that’s the case for John Piper.

Piper: Oh, that’s not what I expected. You didn’t put that in the notes. That’s going to be fun. A twist. Let’s go for it.

MacArthur: I can give maybe a sophomoric answer to the question regarding John Piper. I think why that book meant so much to him was his life was revolutionized permanently by Jonathan Edwards. I don’t know a John Piper without Jonathan Edwards. This is what comes across to me and, obviously, I’m on the outside looking in. But you can’t shake this. I mean, last night, you were saying what you said 50 years ago. You can’t shake it. And somebody said, “What did you think?” and I said, “It was the best of the best of the best of John Piper.” Because it runs so deep. It’s in every fiber of his being. Everything in the Bible leads him to that pleasure. And I think God used Jonathan Edwards.

I mean, that’s all I can say, because the first thing you said last night is, “I’m Edwardsian,” by your own confession. That’s amazing with all the opportunities there are for us to be influenced by people. What was the Lord doing when he dropped Jonathan Edwards in you, in an irretrievable act you could never undo? I mean, you took Jonathan Edwards even beyond where Jonathan Edwards thought he could go. The awakening to those truths define him.

In my case and probably all of our cases, it took us longer to get on the bandwagon than it did you, even when you started it early on, saying, “This is Christian Hedonism.” I mean, you were double-clutching because you knew that sounded weird. But you won us over, John, through these years. Was that somewhat true?

Piper: Everything you just said was true. The last part, I’ll wait and see if it’s the case.

MacArthur: I can’t speak for everybody. But I’m in.

Piper: He’s already answered my half of the question by preaching the sermon he preached two nights ago. This was your theme from 40 years ago with The Gospel According to Jesus and the question, “Where’s obedience in the church today?” So, here’s my interpretation of why that took hold of him, gripped him, and held him. He’s preaching the same sermon now that he wrote in the book there. I wrote a review of that book. I couldn’t put that book down. I was so excited about it because of what I was fighting in those days, a kind of easy believism that we both considered rampant. And it’s just as rampant today. There are lots of unbelievers in the church.

What John saw were the radical words of Jesus, where he says things like, “If you don’t love me more than you love mother, father, son, or daughter, you’re not worthy of me” (see Matthew 10:37). Period. That’s just totally crazy radical, right? He is saying, “You just won’t be a Christian if you don’t love me.” And obedience flows from love. He says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?” (see Luke 6:46). Lots of people are going to hear the word at the end and be shocked. John MacArthur saw all these radical words, and he looked out at the evangelical church, and he thought, “Do they read the same Bible I read? Do they hear the same gospel?”

So basically, that book argued that James 2 should be in the Bible. It’s not an epistle of straw. If your faith does not transform you into a person who loves other people and produces good works, it isn’t saving faith and, therefore, churches need to be confronted with the carnality that is dangerous to their souls. And that’s what I was dealing with. I’ve never considered myself to be a very effective evangelist, although I thrill with every story of anybody that gets saved, which I heard yesterday from one of you brothers. Thank you for that encouragement. But I’ve always felt myself talking to a church that doesn’t look saved, or churches that don’t look saved. Their Christianity is so lukewarm — which Jesus is going to spit out of his mouth — that I’ve wanted to do a Christian Hedonist kind of revival.

The relationship between the two books is this. When you published that and then I later published a book Future Grace and What Is Saving Faith?, I said, “All I’m doing is trying to complete what MacArthur is saying.” MacArthur is saying, “You must obey in order to have saving faith,” and I’m saying, “You know why that is, folks? Because saving faith is being satisfied in Jesus, and that changes everything.” That’s all it is. It’s hand in glove, fitting together.

Duncan: That’s good. Let’s continue to talk about preaching, and more specifically, about the act of preaching. I want you to think about encouraging these brothers in the grind of preaching — the continual, ever-present, burdensome joy of preaching the word of God to the people of God. How has your view of preaching changed since you were a young preacher? How do you think about preaching now? And maybe the question is, why do you still believe in expository preaching? And where did this commitment come from? After all these years and all these thousands of sermons, how has your view of preaching changed?

MacArthur: Well, that’s a simple question because it’s the approach by which you maximize the content of the Bible. If every word of God is pure, and if there is a milk aspect of truth, as Paul talks about, and a meat aspect of truth, that means you start somewhere and you keep going deeper. I would say now I probably love expository preaching more than I ever have, and I find it inexhaustible. By the time I get to Sunday, I could be dangerous if I didn’t preach. Do you understand that, John?

Piper: I would like to see you be dangerous.

MacArthur: I might say to my wife, “You might want to go away on Monday because you’re going to get a sermon.” It’s the inexhaustibility of Scripture — the depth and breadth and height and length. It’s the inexhaustible reality of Scripture. It reveals itself to me every single week. I feel like somebody on the shore of the Pacific Ocean with a bucketful of water. If you ask me, “Is that the ocean?” I would say, “No, it’s just one little, tiny part.” I could preach endless lifetimes and never exhaust the truth of Scripture. At the same time, expository preaching not only covers everything, but it goes in depth. It has to because you can’t get away with not explaining something. So, I love expository preaching.

One other thing that comes to mind, and I think about this a lot. I’m never trying to figure out what I’m going to say on Sunday because I’m progressing through a book, and everything is building on everything else. I wouldn’t know another way to preach, really.

Piper: The short way of saying that is you believe in expository preaching because God wrote a book.

MacArthur: Yeah.

Piper: I mean, just let it sink in. God gave us a book. What would you do? What else would you do but tell people what’s in the book? You don’t know anything. God knows everything. He’s totally smart. Just let it sink in, brothers. If you believe this, it is the word of the Creator of the universe. Why would you waste your time talking about anything else? That’s what he just said.

The other part of the question is about change. You’re asking two guys who probably, more than any other two people on the planet, haven’t changed anything. We don’t change. People ask me, “What have you changed since your theology formed?” and I say, “Yikes, I can’t think of anything.” But in regard to preaching, if I had to do it over again, I would try to be more intentional about combining careful, local, immediate, expository explanation of texts with doctrinal formation of the church. I don’t think I did that the way I would do it now. I want to do more of this.

Now, that’s dangerous to say because I know some of you may come out of confessional traditions, where you start with a system and you have to work to be expositionally faithful. And others of you start with expositional, immediate faithfulness, and you have to work to get to system and doctrine. I want to be somewhere in the middle because I think churches can listen to us do exposition and never form a framework of theology of their own without some help. That’s one change I’d probably make.

I wouldn’t necessarily preach theme sermons, like a whole series on predestination or a whole series on regeneration, though that would be great. I would do that. But, rather, as you’re going through texts and you bump into a word that’s just laden with doctrinal content, I probably would go into it more now than I would have back in the day. So, that’s one difference.

Another difference is that the actual delivery has changed in that I feel much more free to go off script, all the time. I feel the ability to look right into people’s eyes while I’m talking. That used to throw me for a loop in the first five years of preaching. If I looked at somebody, I’d lose my place. I couldn’t think. I think young preachers have a hard time being immediately, directly engaged with human beings.

Thirdly, as an older person, I feel more warranted to press into people’s consciences, even older people. I mean, a 30-year-old pastor with about one hundred 60-year-old people in his church is a little bit hesitant to get serious with them and press into their sins. I don’t care anymore. That’s one difference, I think. But in summary, where I land and where I would be happy to die tomorrow regarding preaching is that it is a combination of faithful, rigorous exposition of what’s really there, mingled with a passionate demonstration or exultation in the reality of what it’s talking about, mingled with in-your-face application to their consciences. Those three things are what I want to do when I preach.

MacArthur: It’s actually a little easier to do that on the internet.

Piper: It is?

MacArthur: It’s easier than to face the same people every week and do that. You have to come back next week, John.

Piper: You lose some and you win some, right?

Duncan: Here’s a little more about preaching. Titus 1:1–3 says,

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior . . .

Let’s encourage these brothers in their preaching and how preaching triumphs. Talk to us about the triumph of preaching. How can you help them see that their preaching — which we’re able to forget our own sermons in a week’s time sometimes — has eternal significance and lasting, persevering power in it? Encourage the brothers that their preaching will triumph. Help them think about triumphant preaching.

Piper: Isaiah 55:10–11 says,

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven     and do not return there but water the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;     it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,     and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

That’s just an absolutely glorious promise that God doesn’t speak in vain. And the closer you can get to his word when your word sounds, the more confident you can be that this wasn’t wasted. It may look for a moment like it had little effect. It is never without effect if you’re faithful to God’s word. So, there’s a promise where he says, “I will cause my word to accomplish my purposes.” That’s what I say to myself over and over again when I step into the pulpit.

And I would say this: Lasting effect doesn’t come from homiletical cleverness, meaning acronyms or how this conference has all Ps. How you ever did that, I have no idea. I said, “That’s cool. How did they do that?” That has zero effect on the lasting nature of your sermons. You need to know that. And when you come up with an acronym and you use Cs in your sermon — like compassion, whatever, and wherever — that has zero effect on the lasting nature of your sermons.

That will help you remember his outline for about three days, but we’re talking about three million years. That’s all we care about. What will affect people in three million years in your sermon is whether they were born again and whether the Holy Spirit convicted them of a sin in their lives, and they killed it, and they walked in holiness until they saw Jesus. In other words, the lasting effect of preaching is the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, you do the best you can with your acronyms, and you do your best you can with stories, and you do your best you can with H.B. Charles’s amazing ability to put these little things together. You just say, “That’s great. How did you do that?” You do the best you can, and it holds people’s attention, and that’s good, but in the end, you’re talking about what’s going to be true in ten years. And the answer is only if they were born again and if some major mental structures in their life just turned 180 degrees, like the sovereignty of God, free will of man, regeneration, etc. These are massive alterations in their thinking. That’s what you’re after, and that’s the work of the Holy Spirit through a faithful rendering of his word.

MacArthur: I would agree with all that. I would simply say that effective preaching is a journey. You start somewhere and you’re going somewhere. John illustrated that last night. You told us where you were going to go. You were going to get us to pleasure and we bought into that, so we followed the journey. The four points, whatever you called them, weren’t the reality of the message; they were just the progression to get to the main point. I always think of an outline or any kind of structure as the necessary, logical chronology to get you to the main point. One of the things with preaching is people have to be willing to stay with you till the end because they know that they’re going to be given some precious reality if they’ll stay.

I think you handle the Scripture in a progressive way that keeps them involved in that journey. It could be mnemonic devices or whatever you use. Preaching is not just shooting out one idea and another idea and another idea and another idea and an emotional thing and a story. It’s going somewhere. It’s a crafted argument, and it has all the necessary devices to hold them to that. You have to shift and change and pace all of that. But if they’ll stay on the journey, they’ll learn eventually in your preaching that the finish is worth the trip.

Duncan: I think that’s what makes both of your preaching so similar is that it’s driven and logical and focused on the text. Though you sound different, when we have our seminarians listen to the same passage from John MacArthur and listen to the same passage from John Piper, the central truth is the same. It’s the same passage, it’s the same meaning, because that’s what Paul said. But the way you get there is different. John Piper moves a lot more than John MacArthur in the pulpit. But it’s driven by logic, right? Both of you are so fastidious and logical and movement-oriented toward, “This is the meaning of the text and how it needs to be brought into light and life.”

Talk a little bit about each other’s preaching. What is it that you see in MacArthur’s preaching that is of such preciousness to you? And what do you see, Dr. MacArthur, about John Piper’s preaching that you love?

Piper: I’m not going to say anything that we don’t all say. Dr. MacArthur’s preaching is incredibly clear. It is so clear. It doesn’t fumble around to get to the clear point. As I’m listening, I think, “He’s not wasting any words here. He’s not blowing smoke.”

And then, the second thing is I think, “That’s really there in the text. That’s really there. Look at that.” And people love that. I love that. I think, “Tell me what the text says. I want to know what God says.”

Third, he has the ability to relate the immediacy of the text to doctrinal concerns or cultural concerns without getting off on a tangent that gets you bogged down in excessive application, but rather you feel the force. You think, “That’s relevant. Right now in this situation, that’s relevant.” Those three things, at least, that strike me, attract me, and draw me in. I want to hear clarity. I want to see what’s really in the text. I want it to be relevant to my life in this culture right now.

And there’s just plain earnestness. A lot of preachers are playful. I mean, we all know one preacher who crashed and burned a while back, and he said, “The main model you should have are stand-up comedians.” That’s what he said. He said that should be the main model. He said, “Do you want to learn how to communicate? Watch stand-up comedians.” John MacArthur doesn’t watch many comedians.

MacArthur: And neither do you.

Piper: I don’t. I don’t even have a television.

MacArthur: I would say the same about John for the very same reason. He has clarity in giving the meaning of the text and the doctrinal implications. I like to think of it this way: Application is one thing and implication is something else. There may be a thousand applications, but there’s usually just a few implications that just are so pervasive it changes how you approach life.

John is a genius at the implication of a given text without saying, “This is what you do on Tuesday afternoon when this happens and this happens and this happens.” It’s the power of that implication drawn because you know the text said it, and you understand the bigger picture of the theology that undergirds that specific revelation. I want to feel the implication, I want to feel the burden of that text, and I want the people to feel that burden. I don’t want to over-define it on a practical level, lest I leave something out.

Duncan: What you just heard was not me trying to get them to compliment each other. I’m being serious. This is a good word for young preachers. And you’ve both poured your life into training men. Immature people are drawn to personality instead of truth. They’re of Paul, they’re of Cephas, they’re of MacArthur, or they’re of Piper. That was a master class for young preachers to learn what they have to prioritize. And it’s not style. It’s substance and truth and a focus on the text. And that’s what we’re so grateful for in you men and your impact in our lives because of that, and the model you have shown.

Piper: Here’s just one caution. The fact that I love to hear that kind of preaching is owing to the fact that I’m born again and have spiritual taste buds on my tongue. His preaching is going to alienate a lot of people and so is mine. Almost everybody in this room likes everybody, right? This is a nice group to be among. But you’re going to have churches where you preach like he does or like I do, and they will not hear it because they’re not thinking, “Give me more Bible. I want to hear more of the Bible.” That takes a spiritual mind. So, that’s why prayer, which H.B. reminded us of, is absolutely essential. We pray for our people to have ears to hear.

Duncan: Here’s a final question. Our culture idolizes the young. The Bible reveres the aged. Old age in the Bible is a gift from God; it’s a blessing attributed to divine favor. It’s a cause for honor, respect, and blessing. You both, if I could say it with all the force of what the Bible is saying, are old. And we love you. We love you old. At 78 and 84, you are modeling for all of us, if the Lord gives us that many breaths, what it looks like to age in a way that honors Christ. So, let’s talk about that for just a few more moments here. Talk about aging as a believer and as a pastor. How do you think about growing old, in your experience, to honor Christ and serve his church?

MacArthur: Well, I don’t know that I’ve created a paradigm in which to think about myself. I just do what I do. Old age has its issues, like putting on your socks and getting a longer shoehorn every year. But I don’t know if I even think about that. I’ll tell you what I do think about is, “Lord, please keep me faithful.” I just don’t want to say something somewhere or do something that would undo a lifetime of endeavoring to be faithful. I trust the Holy Spirit. I don’t fear. I’m not afraid to live my life. I trust the Spirit of God. I love the Lord and I love his word, but I’m not invincible.

The second thing is that I pray, “Lord, don’t let some people say things about me that aren’t true and that are destructive.” Because I don’t ever want to be in a position to have to defend myself because that’s so impossible. But I seek to take heed to myself and my doctrine and stay faithful. I pray, “Lord, protect me from my enemies who could undo so much if they were believed when they said things that weren’t true.”

Piper: So many things to say. That prayer, “hold me,” is something I pray. “He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. For my Savior loves me so. He will hold me fast.” There’s no hope without it. Because if you think sanctification is progressive in the sense that there’s no battle after age 70 of walking with Jesus, you’re not thinking straight. The danger of the sins of lust, sloth, and doubt at age 78 is just as serious. When Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course,” he meant, “to the end, until they cut my throat because, on the way to the gallows, I could betray him” (see 2 Timothy 4:7). I mean, my view of eternal security, which is a Romans 8:30 kind, is it’s a community project and it is to be fought for. That’s the way God keeps you. He keeps you.

So, I just fully expect that as long as I have a brain, it has to be engaged in praying, “Keep me. Don’t let me do anything stupid to undermine the ministry. Don’t let me betray my wife. Don’t let me give up on prayer. Don’t let me become superficial. Don’t let me cave in to just watching videos every night. O God, protect me from the world and the worldliness that can creep into a 78-year-old heart.”

I don’t know if you thought this way, but I used to think that since sanctification is progressive, that my 30-year-old patience would be 40 years more patient now. It didn’t work. That might be just absolutely self-indicting for me to say, because progressive sanctification means you ought to be a more holy person at 78 than at 38, and it doesn’t feel quite like that. I’m an embattled soul. These arrows just keep flying, and you need the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit every day. If you think you’re going to coast someday, you’re going to be destroyed, because there’s no coasting in this life.

“O God, protect me from the world and the worldliness that can creep into a 78-year-old heart.”

Here’s a caution. I know that we are going to get to the point where we can’t preach. I mean, would that we could die before we get there. But that’s up to God. We don’t believe in mercy killing. No matter what California or Oregon or Minnesota says, we don’t believe in that. God will decide if we have to sit in a nursing home and not have all our faculties. That’s going to come if we don’t die. And the question is, will we be able to be faithful? So, don’t hear this as a kind of triumphalism: “Yeah, strong old people!”

However, I sat under the ministry of Oswald Sanders at age 89. He was 89 and I was 50-something. And he said, “I’ve written a book a year since I was 70,” and I just thought, “Yes, that’s what I want to be like.” Now my new model is Thomas Sowell, who’s 93, right? When he turned 90, the interviewer asked him, “How is it that you’ve written a book every 18 months since you were 80?” So I said, “Great, life begins at 80.” I have two years to run up to it and then we take off.

The way that balances out with the fight is that you shouldn’t view aging as so embattled, so beleaguered, and so difficult with aging that you give up. The outer nature is wasting away. Believe that while you have life, you have ministry. I hate the American view of retirement. I think it’s totally unbiblical. I think it destroys souls. Ralph Winter used to say, “Men in America don’t die of old age; they die of retirement,” meaning, they lose heart. They lose purpose.

So, pastors, you don’t have to do like he does and stay in the pastorate forever. You don’t have to do that. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. I stopped at age 67. I’m not sure I should have. I don’t have total confidence about that. But I’ve tried to be useful. I’ve tried to be useful from 67 to 78. All that to say, be so reminded about the battle and be hopeful and optimistic and energetic about what God might call you to do between 65 and 85.

Duncan: This Q&A was not brought to you by AARP.

Piper: I have never responded to one of those 10,000 envelopes. Never.

MacArthur: Me neither.

Duncan: We’re well aware. We’re so grateful for God’s faithfulness on display in both of your lives. And this was a very fruitful, profitable hour. Thank you so much, brothers. Dr. MacArthur, will you pray for these men, and that God would be faithful in their ministries and lives?

MacArthur: Father, this has been such a refreshing hour together. In so many ways, our hearts have been warmed and even thrilled to feel the impulse of every heart beating in this room about ministry and preaching, so that they can embrace every thought, every answer that we tried to offer. It felt like we were giving water to their souls and strengthening them. That’s the way it came across in their exuberant response.

Lord, we ask that this might be used to raise this generation of pastors, these men who are right here, to a level of faithfulness and an endurance that will glorify and honor your name. We don’t want this to have just been a moment’s experience, as enjoyable as it was, but an experience that bears lasting power so that we’ll see a difference in the future. There are so many defectors, so many people who are superficial and shallow in their approach to ministry, and we need none of that. We need the best and the most dedicated and the most devout and the most faithful and the most powerful.

So, use this, Lord, by your Spirit in the life of everyone who’s here to make a notable, significant difference in the next decade and even beyond in the church. For your glory, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Audio Transcript

What makes a good musical worship experience? That’s today’s question from a listener to the podcast by the name of Jeff. “Hello, Pastor John. I know many Christians speak of a good worship experience as one associated with an emotional response. And I have several relatives that will say, ‘A good worship experience is tied to the quality of the music, how well the musicians sing and performed on stage.’ And they will defend popular Christian worship bands who hold to a theology that’s a little bit weak, but defend the songs because of the personal emotional high that they cause. As a result, my relatives will say things like, ‘The worship experience was very powerful.’ We even know of a local church that doesn’t allow children in the singing portion because it distracts from the worship experience. So my question for you, Pastor John, is this: What makes for a good musical worship experience?” I put that question to Pastor John in Nashville. Here he is.

Well, not taking the kids out. Noël and I wrote an article in our first year or two at Bethlehem making the case that we will not have a children’s church, but the children will be in worship services after about age 3. And my argument was this: Where else will a 3-year-old, 4-year-old, 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old boy, say, learn what the heart of a mature man toward God is if he doesn’t see his dad sing, if he doesn’t see his dad pray, if he doesn’t see his dad bow down in holy reverence? There’s so much more going on in a good experience of worship.

Worshiping with Head and Heart

The other thing that came to my mind when I heard that question was that the word experience is viewed negatively because it’s got connotations of empty emotionalism. “That was just an experience.” But the word experience in English is necessary. I mean, it’s a good word. Worship is an experience — it is. And it needs to be fleshed out as to what kind of experience it is. And what makes it good is that there is truth, and there is a response to that truth in understanding; and there is worth and beauty and greatness, and there is a response to that in affections.

Now, that little summary came from a sentence by Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards says, “God glorifies himself in the world in two ways. He glorifies himself by his glory being seen [meaning known, understood] and his glory being delighted in. He who sees God’s glory does not glorify him so much as he who also delights in that glory.” Now, when I read that sentence, I thought, He’s so absolutely right.

You heard me say yesterday, “God will not be half-glorified,” meaning that he doesn’t want a doctrinally straight church with zero experience of affections, and he doesn’t want a church with all over-the-top emotions and affections and almost no rich understanding of the nature of God and what he’s done in the world.

So, what I’m looking for in a good experience of worship is this: Is there richness of truth here — truth in the welcome, truth in the prayers, truth in the preaching, truth in the singing? Are the lyrics of the songs permeated with the biblical truth that is loved in this church? And do these people give some evidence that it makes the difference — like it touches anybody? Does anybody feel anything here? Because if this church is totally blank — I mean, if it is emotionless — I’m thinking, “God is not prized here. God is not valued here. God is not cherished here. God is not enjoyed here.” That’s just not worship. I don’t care how true the doctrine is or how straight the preaching is. So those are massively crucial things, I think, for worship to be a good experience.

“The congregation is the worshiping body, with the help of people who are musicians or leaders from the front.”

Now all of that, I think, presumes (or maybe I shouldn’t presume it) that the chief actors in worship are the congregation. This conference is all about how you lead in order to make that happen. But it’s the congregation singing or praying or confessing or reciting. The congregation is the worshiping body, with the help of people who are musicians or leaders from the front. That implies the question, What would that leadership be like? What would the good leadership be to make that happen, so that the people are singing, the people are praying, the people are reciting, the people are confessing authentically from the heart?

Undistracting Excellence

In answer to that question, I wrote down that undistracting excellence is needed from the leaders. Undistracting means you don’t get in the way. It can’t be shoddy, because that’s going to distract. If you make mistakes, people are going to be jarred and won’t be able to keep focusing. It’s not ostentatious. That means you’re too good and you’re showing off on the piano or whatever instrument you’re playing. It’s not entertaining. Leaders are not calling attention to themselves.

The tension in this conference is significant, isn’t it? This is a largely performance-oriented conference, even though you’re singing a lot. These are remarkable things going on up here on stage, and they could easily intimidate a lot of pastors that can’t do anything like that. And I know Keith and Kristyn don’t want that to happen to any pastor in the room. They want a thirty-person church with lay leadership and no education in music to be powerful in connecting with God on Sunday morning, which is very possible. So, leaders are not calling attention to themselves.

Singable, Truth-Filled Music

And then maybe lastly, I wrote down two things that I think you’d look for in the music for a good experience.

One, it’s singable. It’s singable by men. Men. I was just talking with a remarkable music theoretician back there over lunch, and he was talking about the changes of the last thirty years. And one of the changes, he said, is that the register has gone up. I think too often in our service at home, “Look at people — the men just dropped out. Did anybody notice no men are singing right now?” Or, “They shifted to a lower octave, and it sounds weird. What just happened?” The scope of singability matters, and I think it’s crucial that the men sing. It’s almost a given that women sing. Women seem to have an easier ability to get all over the range on these things. Men, we’re not so good at that. We need a lot of help to sing. And when the men are singing, oh my goodness, that really helps the women, helps the children, helps everybody view this God better.

“Lyrics that are God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, gospel-rich are essential.”

Two, I think emotionally suitable, truth-carried lyrics — lyrics that are seriously joyful, lyrics that are God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, gospel-rich — are essential.

And then I have to say one more thing, Tony, because this is what I write about. This is what I did for 33 years. Don’t ever say, “We worship for thirty minutes, and then we preach.” I’ll get my back up if you say that. I’m a preacher, and I worship. Preaching is worship. It ought to be.

I call it expository exultation because it’s not just music that should have truth components and affectional components. Preaching should have truth components and affectional components. So, expository: I really am explaining the Bible, drawing meaning out of the Bible that’s really there. And exultation: I’m really thrilled about it. Can anybody tell? That’s what I want. That’s what preaching is. It helps people see the truth and then be caught up with the preacher in his love affair with that God and that salvation. So, I think a good experience, a good worship experience, will have at least all of that.