Plans for 2021 and Beyond
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to the podcast. We have a special episode to close out of the week.
00:00:07.540 | It's an update, and we're gonna take a moment to look back and look ahead, and
00:00:11.500 | that is because our fiscal year comes to an end in 12 days, at the end of June, and
00:00:16.140 | it's a good time to stop and look back at God's providence over the past year,
00:00:20.620 | to thank him for his kindness, to see what we can learn from him, and then to
00:00:24.900 | ponder our planning for the year to come, and particularly for the summer ahead for
00:00:28.780 | you, Pastor John. So as we start, what would you want people to know?
00:00:32.780 | Well, Tony, just right off the bat, my guess is that a lot of people wonder, at
00:00:38.940 | least I did, why we have a fiscal, a financial year that is different from
00:00:45.460 | our calendar year. That just seems to complicate things. It does for me when I
00:00:49.020 | try to think about this, and one of the answers is this. December is far and away
00:00:55.340 | our biggest month of support from our donors, and the scope of that month's
00:01:02.500 | giving shapes the planning for the future of what we're able to do, and
00:01:07.700 | therefore we can't be doing the serious, detailed planning in the very last month
00:01:13.620 | of the year when that's the month that is shaping the planning. So it makes
00:01:17.900 | sense to me now, a little more than it used to, as to why we do it that way, so
00:01:22.640 | that we can formulate our goals for the fiscal year starting in July, based on
00:01:29.300 | what we saw happen in December and then in the beginning part of the year. So
00:01:33.680 | just, I think it's good to begin with that kind of clarification of, "Why in
00:01:37.760 | the world are you doing this in the middle of the summer?"
00:01:40.620 | That's good, and it reminds us that so much of what we plan and pursue at
00:01:45.460 | Desiring God, it hangs on the amazing generosity of those who love this
00:01:49.380 | ministry. And I know, Pastor John, you and I, we both feel the blessing of that,
00:01:53.100 | especially in doing this podcast, right? Week in and a week out. We wouldn't be
00:01:57.540 | doing APJ without your support, and so we hope that you rejoice with us as God
00:02:03.500 | continues to show his favor on us. And speaking of his favor, we are nearing a
00:02:08.540 | huge benchmark that we've had our eye on for a few years now, huge for us anyways,
00:02:12.780 | and that is 200 million all-time episode plays. 200 million episodes played over
00:02:22.540 | the course of our nine-year history. It is amazing. I mean, we are on pace to hit
00:02:26.860 | that benchmark sometime in late July, maybe early August, but we're just weeks
00:02:31.540 | away from that. So 200 million plays. Thank you to everyone who listens in a
00:02:36.540 | podcast app or listens in the APJ app or who listens in YouTube. YouTube
00:02:41.300 | represents about 40 million of those plays alone, which is just incredible to
00:02:45.340 | me. That is weird, you know, people go to YouTube to watch. No, they don't. They
00:02:49.500 | listen. Well, they're listening right now, so thank you, YouTube audience, for
00:02:53.060 | listening through YouTube. And there are no signs of slowing down. We still get
00:02:56.900 | dozens of questions every day. We continue to record and try to keep up
00:03:00.580 | with at least some of those questions. It's a wonderful work that we get to do
00:03:04.220 | in partnership with our listeners and our donors. It has been a gift to us that
00:03:08.820 | APJ is the kind of ministry that is possible to pursue right through all the
00:03:13.380 | limitations that come in a pandemic, like the one that we're emerging from. It has
00:03:17.660 | been a year like really no other in our lifetime. Right, especially here in
00:03:22.860 | Minneapolis. Yeah. The effects of COVID-19 and the violence that we experienced that
00:03:29.500 | was stirred up last summer because of the killing of George Floyd, these two
00:03:34.980 | realities have created a kind of wartime mentality here in Minneapolis for the
00:03:40.900 | past year or so. There never has been a time before when I would sit with my
00:03:46.580 | wife each evening and she would read to me the casualty statistics of the
00:03:52.140 | pandemic in Minnesota. I mean, it's as if we were sitting here in a war and she's
00:03:57.940 | reading me the statistics from the front lines of the war. This many people
00:04:02.300 | infected, this many people in intensive care, this many people have died. During
00:04:08.460 | the German bombing of London in 1940, I'm reading a book about this right now,
00:04:13.580 | there were austerity measures. Black out your windows so no light gets through to
00:04:20.500 | show the bombers where to drop the bombs. Drink your tea sparingly because you
00:04:24.700 | only get three ounces of rationing each week. Carry your gas mask to work. And
00:04:30.820 | that's the way it's been with the pandemic. Closed restaurants, closed
00:04:35.620 | theaters, closed schools, closed churches, and all the while here in Minneapolis
00:04:40.060 | boarded up coffee shops two blocks from my house and boarded up restaurants and
00:04:44.180 | wondering where the next simmering unrest is gonna break out. So yeah, it's
00:04:50.180 | been an unusual year for everybody. Very unusual, but it sure hasn't seemed to
00:04:56.820 | slow you down or even slow the ministry down at all. No, in fact, if anything, I
00:05:02.700 | would say the pandemic increased my output. Yeah. I mean, that's just the
00:05:09.780 | nature of my job. If a pandemic says to me, "You have to stay inside, Piper," that's
00:05:15.860 | like a fox saying to a rabbit, "I have to throw you into the briar patch." Oh no, no,
00:05:22.180 | please don't throw me in the briar patch. That's where I live. Ironically, I say to the
00:05:27.940 | pandemic, "What a painful gift you have been to me. You said to me, 'Stay there at
00:05:35.700 | your desk, Piper, and do your 252 look at the book episodes to finish the book of
00:05:42.300 | Ephesians.'" I mean, that was a gift to me. I mean, I loved finishing the book of
00:05:47.540 | Ephesians, the second greatest letter in the world, and we did 252 look at the book
00:05:53.260 | episodes on it. And then, "Stay there again, Piper, and get going on 1 Thessalonians."
00:05:57.820 | And so I've done, goodness, as we're recording this, I've done about 50 more
00:06:03.260 | episodes on 1 Thessalonians. And while you're at it, stay there and work with
00:06:07.900 | Crossway of Desiring God and Westminster Books to launch this big red book on
00:06:11.900 | Providence. And oh, while you're at it in quarantine, take a couple of weeks and
00:06:17.060 | write a book on coronavirus in Christ and apply the doctrine of Providence to
00:06:21.580 | that particular trouble. And then, from another angle of my life, it was a
00:06:26.740 | tremendous privilege and pleasure to teach preaching in the fall and the
00:06:33.100 | spring at Bethlehem College and Seminary. I think we only missed one class in
00:06:37.060 | person because of COVID. I love, Tony, I love being in class with these future
00:06:43.740 | preachers. It is such a delight. So, no, the COVID-19 has not slowed me down or
00:06:51.740 | slowed down Desiring God. The teaching team with David Mathis and John
00:06:56.900 | Blum and Marshall Siegel and Greg Morris and Scott Hubbard and Joe Rigney, they
00:07:01.660 | didn't miss a beat in the steady stream of articles that they produced. And David
00:07:07.100 | finished his book called "Humbled," which is supposed to be, I believe, out this
00:07:12.380 | fall. And as far as I can tell, COVID didn't slow you down. I believe you
00:07:19.100 | finished your book, "God, Technology, and the Christian Life." And I think our
00:07:25.220 | listeners would love to hear about that. What are you trying to do in that
00:07:30.700 | major book, and when can they look for it? Yeah, January is when it
00:07:36.180 | launches from our friends at Crossway Books. I've always wanted to write a big
00:07:39.560 | book on technology and really get into the weeds of things like genetic
00:07:42.980 | engineering and nuclear power and space travel and robotics and self-driving
00:07:49.100 | cars and artificial intelligence and medical advances and anti-aging
00:07:53.780 | innovations, which are really taking off now. And to look at all of that and
00:07:57.420 | really ask, "Where did all that come from?" And does it all violate what God
00:08:02.460 | intended for his creation, or does it fulfill it? Have we discovered new
00:08:07.860 | powers that God never intended for us to ever find? Are these new technologies a
00:08:12.620 | sort of forbidden fruit we were not supposed to find or touch? And so, you
00:08:17.580 | know, back in my book on smartphones published in 2017, I wrote a little
00:08:21.540 | 12-page introduction as to how I think of tech broadly, knowing that that little
00:08:25.900 | introduction would eventually need to become a big book one day on technology.
00:08:30.060 | But the large book idea was really only a distant dream of mine for many, many
00:08:33.900 | years. And so I started to write out some messages and pick away at it. I
00:08:37.940 | delivered a few messages on tech to friends of ours at DG, at donor
00:08:42.300 | gatherings, to many of our friends who live and work inside the tech industry.
00:08:46.380 | And I delivered those messages to those small gatherings. One was in Phoenix, a
00:08:50.700 | few were in Seattle, and then the virus just closed everything down, all of our
00:08:53.980 | travel. And it was like, "Well, I guess fiscal year 2021 is gonna be the year
00:08:58.100 | that I have the time now to read and to research and to finally write this big
00:09:02.660 | book on technology." So I did it, it's done, it's ready for a January release, and
00:09:06.380 | you've written the book on Providence. And this is basically my little attempt
00:09:12.060 | to help Christians appreciate God's providence over big tech, over Elon Musk,
00:09:16.620 | and over Silicon Valley, and to really show how God, through his Word, leads us
00:09:21.420 | to embrace a God-centered worldview over all of it, so we're not left with a
00:09:25.660 | godless worldview where he doesn't factor in at all to big tech. And I fear
00:09:30.380 | that that's really where many Christians live, with a view of technology that's
00:09:34.140 | pessimistic and dystopian, because at root it's simply a godless view of
00:09:39.140 | it all. God is nowhere to be factored into the equation, for whatever reasons.
00:09:43.380 | And I think that's problematic for a lot of reasons. And so I'm thrilled with
00:09:47.780 | this book, and I hope it's as enjoyable to read as it was to write. But as we
00:09:52.980 | look ahead for the summer, we will continue to press on with APJ episodes
00:09:56.740 | here, and you continue to plan to press on with Look at the Book episodes.
00:10:00.380 | Anything else we should have on our radar? Well, Desiring God in the new year
00:10:06.100 | is gonna—new fiscal year—is gonna pour a lot of energy, a lot of resources into
00:10:10.820 | the global dimension of our ministry, the global reach of our resources. Indeed,
00:10:17.800 | as we did last year, coronavirus and Christ set the bar so high—I don't know
00:10:23.620 | if we'll ever reach it again—with 31 languages. Almost overnight we translated
00:10:29.420 | that little book into those languages, working with translators in those various
00:10:34.900 | cultures. An even more coordinated effort is underway with the Providence book for
00:10:41.740 | translation into, I think, nine major languages right now, simultaneously, and
00:10:47.340 | Desiring God getting behind those in a big way. But on my front burner is a
00:10:52.980 | writing leave in July and August to work on a book on the Second Coming. I've
00:10:59.340 | wanted to do this for a long time. I think I would say that my goal for the
00:11:03.540 | book is that more people would come to love—love—the Second Coming of Christ,
00:11:12.380 | because Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:8, "There is laid up for me the crown of
00:11:19.580 | righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that
00:11:25.700 | day, and not only to me, but to all who have loved his appearing." What an amazing
00:11:35.340 | privilege to have time and resources to work on a book like this. So, Tony, we
00:11:41.260 | can't say it too often to our friends on this podcast that you're working on APJ
00:11:48.540 | and God Technology and the Christian Life, and my working on a book like the
00:11:53.700 | Second Coming of Christ is happening because people have come to love what we
00:12:00.380 | live for at Desiring God. The glorifying of God through being more satisfied in
00:12:07.100 | God than anything else, even in our suffering, through the teaching of the
00:12:11.260 | truth and beauty of all that God is for us in Christ, with everything rooted in
00:12:16.620 | God's infallible scriptures, the Bible. That's what we're about, and we are
00:12:22.460 | thankful to those of you who share these convictions with us. Amen. So very
00:12:29.180 | thankful. It really is an amazing privilege. Thank you all for listening
00:12:32.540 | and for watching and reading DG Resources. Thank you to everyone who
00:12:36.220 | prays for the ministry, and thank you to all our ministry partners who
00:12:39.860 | financially support us so that we can make all of our resources and translate
00:12:44.060 | them into many languages and spread them all over the world free of charge. It's
00:12:49.220 | an incredible work, and if you want to join us in the labors, you can today at
00:12:53.260 | DesiringGod.org/donate. That's DesiringGod.org/donate.
00:12:59.380 | Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you back here on Monday. Bye-bye.
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