The Doctrinal Flavor of Reformed Churches
00:00:00.000 | Today we highlight an excerpt from a Q&A session Pastor John recently led with the students
00:00:09.800 | at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Earlier that day he had just delivered the lecture
00:00:14.120 | "The New Calvinism and the New Community" on March 12th of this year. Here's a question
00:00:18.780 | that came from one student.
00:00:20.080 | Hi Dr. Piperat, I appreciated your thoughts this morning on New Calvinism and I was just
00:00:25.420 | wondering if you could speak to how the New Calvinists or how the Reformed can relate
00:00:30.040 | to broader evangelicalism. Like I noticed what you had done a couple years ago by inviting
00:00:35.480 | Rick Warren to speak at Desiring God. But I'm also wondering, you know, very practically
00:00:41.240 | would you advise that we commend a Christian to go to Rick Warren's church or a church
00:00:47.400 | that doesn't embrace the doctrines of grace?
00:00:51.320 | Depends on what else is available. Better to go to church, defective church, than no
00:00:55.960 | church. Church is a given in the New Testament. You're not part of a church, you're not part
00:00:59.400 | of Jesus. So that's a big deal. And there aren't many perfect churches. Like none. So
00:01:13.240 | yeah I'd send people to Rick Warren's church in a minute. Unless there was something more
00:01:18.040 | robust, more full. I mean I don't know if you heard my 90 minute conversation with Rick.
00:01:22.960 | It's online. And Rick is a Calvinist. He's a five point Calvinist. His problem is, and
00:01:27.680 | I don't care if he hears this, because I told him face to face, his problem is he doesn't
00:01:32.600 | foreground it. It is so backgrounded nobody would know it. Doctrine plays such a small
00:01:37.560 | role in his preaching. He would say, "but not in our church." He said, "I would take
00:01:45.060 | any random 500 people from Saddleback and put them against any random 500 people at
00:01:51.480 | Grace Church under John MacArthur and my people would win theologically." That's what he said.
00:02:00.200 | I don't know if that's true. But at least you know he's thinking we do curriculum here
00:02:07.180 | and I get people by talking about five ways to be happy and then they go from base one
00:02:13.520 | to base two to base three, home run, and then go over to John MacArthur and play ball. I
00:02:21.480 | don't think that's a good way to do church. I think if you background doctrine so consistently
00:02:27.000 | that eventually you're going to not do as much good as you could. So I told him at the
00:02:30.680 | end of that conversation, "Rick, I'm an older guy. I'm older than you are. Believe it or
00:02:34.920 | not, I'm older than you are. And I'm exhorting you, spend the last 10, 20 years of your ministry
00:02:39.960 | going deep and not just going wide and I think you'll have a longer legacy."
00:02:44.760 | But your bigger question is how to relate to the wider evangelical church. I would hope
00:02:49.240 | that people come to your churches, you become a pastor, they come to your churches and their
00:02:53.780 | first thought is not, "They believe in the five points here." That should not be their
00:02:58.640 | first thought. Their first thought would be, "They've got a gigantic Jesus here, gloriously
00:03:04.360 | able to meet my needs, forgive my sins, save my soul, and meet every practical need in
00:03:10.160 | my life. This is a great place to worship King Jesus. What's behind this? Well, it happens
00:03:16.160 | to be Reformed theology." You don't keep it secret, but there's a way. When you read the
00:03:23.160 | New Testament, your first impression is not, "Ah, five points everywhere." Once you see
00:03:32.760 | them, you spot them. But it's not written that way and our preaching shouldn't sound
00:03:39.760 | that way. It shouldn't sound doctrinaire and packaged and tulipy. It should sound, I mean
00:03:45.760 | the smell of the tulips should be there. They don't smell good though, do they? Roses would
00:03:51.240 | be better. So yes, we should have huge overlapping commitments with the broad, generic evangelical
00:04:01.120 | community and should not be trying to draw a little line, "Oh, I'm not one of those kind
00:04:05.640 | of people." I just think we will have a better impact for the things we love about God, the
00:04:12.640 | true things about God, if we're not constantly fingering all the badnesses that are in the
00:04:19.800 | broader evangelical world, but instead of being robustly strong in the goodnesses of
00:04:25.240 | Reformed thinking.
00:04:26.920 | That was Pastor John at a recent open forum with the students of Westminster Theological
00:04:30.440 | Seminary. And that hour and a half interview between John Piper and Rick Warren recorded
00:04:34.920 | on May 1st, 2011 can be watched at DesiringGod.org. The best way to find it is to go to our website,
00:04:41.920 | DesiringGod.org and search for the blog post, which is titled, "John Piper Interviews Rick
00:04:45.680 | Warren on Doctrine." And the video is embedded in that blog post.
00:04:50.360 | So what have been the most difficult and crippling challenges John Piper has faced in the ministry?
00:04:55.800 | We'll talk about that tomorrow. Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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