Ten Criticisms of John Piper’s Preaching
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Welcome back to the podcast on this Thursday.
00:00:06.640 | John Piper has preached a couple thousand sermons
00:00:09.460 | in front of a few hundred thousand people around the world.
00:00:13.800 | Only the Lord knows the true count.
00:00:15.840 | I tried to put the numbers together
00:00:17.220 | and I couldn't figure it all out.
00:00:18.700 | Whatever the exact numbers,
00:00:20.600 | it's a lot of sermons in front of a lot of people.
00:00:25.120 | And a young preacher wants to know, Pastor John,
00:00:26.960 | how your preaching has been critiqued over the years.
00:00:30.040 | Here's his email.
00:00:31.720 | My name is Aaron and I'm a very new preacher from Australia.
00:00:35.320 | Pastor John, I've read your book, Expository Exaltation,
00:00:39.080 | and I found it thoroughly helpful.
00:00:40.860 | My question for you is this,
00:00:41.960 | in your early years and perhaps even now,
00:00:44.200 | what kind of criticisms have you received
00:00:46.240 | for your preaching?
00:00:47.600 | In particular, have you received feedback
00:00:50.000 | in regard to your volume?
00:00:51.400 | How loud do you preach sometimes?
00:00:53.540 | I love your passion,
00:00:54.860 | but have people ever given you feedback,
00:00:56.500 | teaching you to adjust your tone, dynamics, or expression?
00:01:00.720 | What did you do with the criticism
00:01:03.280 | and what have you learned from it over the years?
00:01:05.720 | I'm laughing because I can remember
00:01:09.560 | some really funny feedback.
00:01:11.680 | So Aaron asks about the loudness, tone, dynamics.
00:01:16.680 | But let me broaden this out and give you 10 criticisms
00:01:24.040 | that John Piper's preaching has received over the years
00:01:27.780 | and how I've tried to respond to each.
00:01:30.520 | And it includes what he's asking, but it's more.
00:01:34.400 | Number one, and the reason I was laughing,
00:01:36.900 | Char Ransom, bless her heart, she's with Jesus now.
00:01:40.940 | Char Ransom, one of my great cheerleaders
00:01:44.620 | in my early years as a pastor at Bethlehem,
00:01:48.400 | told me about 15 years into my ministry,
00:01:53.500 | I like the early John Piper.
00:01:55.340 | (both laughing)
00:01:58.000 | And I said, well, what do you mean, Char?
00:02:01.200 | And she said, the teacher, not the shouter.
00:02:04.480 | And she said it with a twinkle in her eye.
00:02:07.000 | And she was a loyal listener for another 15 years.
00:02:10.360 | But I tried to take that to heart
00:02:13.400 | and do what I have told so many young guys to do
00:02:19.160 | by all means, let your affections show if they're real,
00:02:24.160 | but be sure they correspond to the realities of the text
00:02:30.740 | and be sure they are varied
00:02:34.360 | because any single sustained tone or loudness
00:02:38.260 | will start to grate on the ear
00:02:41.540 | and sound artificial after a while if it's not varied.
00:02:45.980 | So variety, authenticity, appropriateness to the text
00:02:50.980 | and to the audience.
00:02:53.440 | And I don't think she thought I ever got it right.
00:02:56.900 | (both laughing)
00:02:59.080 | I never got it right.
00:03:00.360 | But some people can love you in spite of things.
00:03:02.900 | Number two, early on, my wife said,
00:03:07.720 | you drop your voice at the end of sentences, Johnny.
00:03:11.080 | People can't hear the end of your sentences.
00:03:13.760 | And that was true, I listened, that was true.
00:03:16.740 | I think that's true for a lot of young pastors.
00:03:20.540 | They get into a bad habit.
00:03:22.140 | It was simply a bad habit.
00:03:23.780 | It wasn't any constitutional inability.
00:03:26.260 | It was just a learned quirk that needed fixing.
00:03:31.060 | And I think I was able to overcome that.
00:03:33.380 | At least she hasn't said anything about that
00:03:35.420 | for 20 years or so.
00:03:36.960 | Thanks, thank you, Noel, for good advice.
00:03:39.220 | Wives are your best critics often.
00:03:42.180 | Number three, you're not looking at all the parts
00:03:45.860 | of the congregation.
00:03:47.480 | Your eye contact with significant segments
00:03:49.920 | of the people is non-existent.
00:03:52.360 | You seem to look at these two or three directions,
00:03:55.380 | but you neglect this part of the people,
00:03:57.300 | you neglect that part of the people,
00:03:58.780 | you don't look at the balcony.
00:04:01.060 | Now that was extremely helpful.
00:04:04.120 | And I knew it was true as soon as they said it.
00:04:06.680 | I just want to encourage young men, for a new preacher,
00:04:11.200 | just getting the content right is huge challenge, right?
00:04:15.840 | And there's not a lot of mental resources left over
00:04:18.700 | to think about, oh my goodness, where am I looking?
00:04:21.500 | But with a bit of effort and the relaxation
00:04:26.300 | that comes from experience, you can overcome that,
00:04:29.820 | and then it can become second nature
00:04:32.100 | to just look naturally everywhere during your preaching.
00:04:36.900 | Number four, you overuse certain words.
00:04:40.780 | This is my wife again, and she's the key critic here.
00:04:44.280 | This was a recurring issue over the years.
00:04:46.720 | I didn't solve this.
00:04:48.620 | I don't know that you ever solve this, at least I don't.
00:04:52.040 | She has to tell me this every few years.
00:04:54.820 | You use unbelievable too often.
00:04:57.520 | You use absolutely too often.
00:04:59.680 | You use precisely too often.
00:05:01.960 | You use amazing too often.
00:05:04.160 | Now those would be like criticisms separated
00:05:07.440 | by three or four years.
00:05:09.920 | And I suppose this is why I am so insistent
00:05:13.620 | for young preachers to give serious thought
00:05:16.500 | to finding fresh ways of saying things,
00:05:19.500 | because often young preachers think
00:05:22.300 | that if they can just say what comes naturally,
00:05:26.140 | that they'll sound fresh.
00:05:27.540 | That's a lot of baloney.
00:05:29.500 | They won't sound fresh.
00:05:31.560 | They'll sound like they're in a rut.
00:05:33.660 | We default in our natural ways to familiar words
00:05:39.020 | and familiar words start to sound hackneyed,
00:05:43.900 | which will communicate to the people.
00:05:45.880 | He's not really seeing fresh beauties
00:05:48.480 | in the Bible and in Christ.
00:05:50.340 | He just says the same old stuff over and over again.
00:05:54.560 | Number five, you sound angry.
00:05:57.640 | Really?
00:05:59.360 | Yikes, I don't want to sound angry.
00:06:02.660 | I'm not angry.
00:06:04.740 | Even if you say, "I'm not angry."
00:06:07.420 | You sound angry when you say you're not angry.
00:06:10.020 | Well, that's the way it comes across.
00:06:12.360 | And at one point I remember,
00:06:15.060 | I had to stop listening to Martin Lloyd-Jones.
00:06:18.640 | I love Martin Lloyd-Jones because he did sound angry.
00:06:22.420 | He did.
00:06:23.260 | I kept listening to him and I'm thinking,
00:06:25.800 | from my American ears,
00:06:27.660 | this growling Welshman sounds angry.
00:06:31.240 | He's not angry, but he just sounds angry.
00:06:33.760 | So I made a conscious effort to pray,
00:06:36.140 | "Lord, fill me with real, authentic joy
00:06:41.140 | and humble amazement at grace and let that spill over.
00:06:47.340 | Don't let me be angry or don't let me sound angry."
00:06:51.920 | In other words, I think the best way to push out bad sounds
00:06:55.540 | is not mainly to try not to sound a certain way,
00:07:01.100 | but to sound a better way
00:07:02.740 | because you really feel that better way.
00:07:06.180 | Number six, you use words people don't know.
00:07:11.180 | What?
00:07:12.260 | People don't know obsequious?
00:07:14.020 | (both laughing)
00:07:16.300 | People don't know parsimonious, pusillanimous, lascivious?
00:07:20.140 | Well, of course they don't.
00:07:21.700 | So get real, Piper.
00:07:23.040 | Do you want to impress or do you want to communicate?
00:07:25.960 | I want to communicate.
00:07:27.600 | So I tried to fix it.
00:07:29.980 | And now I'm a real stickler with our seminary guys
00:07:33.500 | when it comes to taking their academic jargon
00:07:37.020 | into the pulpit.
00:07:38.860 | Use ordinary language.
00:07:41.520 | But I do believe that there is a place for teaching words
00:07:47.620 | that it would be good for people to know
00:07:51.140 | that they might not ordinarily know.
00:07:53.960 | Propitiation, expiation, redemption, sanctification,
00:07:58.640 | glorification, and lots of others
00:08:01.020 | that might not be part of people's ordinary vocabulary.
00:08:05.060 | And I think this is done, can be done
00:08:08.260 | without sounding academic or too teachy in the pulpit.
00:08:13.260 | Number seven, your message is too complex.
00:08:17.360 | It goes over our heads.
00:08:19.760 | I can remember a couple telling me that my second year,
00:08:23.940 | maybe it was my first year at Bethlehem,
00:08:25.820 | and they left the church.
00:08:26.740 | They just left the church.
00:08:29.720 | So I have tried to work hard
00:08:31.920 | to make complex things more understandable.
00:08:36.880 | I think all the great truths in scripture
00:08:39.280 | can be explained in understandable language.
00:08:44.280 | Not necessarily acceptable language, but understandable,
00:08:49.440 | which leads to the next criticism.
00:08:53.960 | Your preaching is too oriented on the glory of God,
00:08:58.600 | too Calvinistic, it's too out of step
00:09:01.400 | with contemporary culture on issues like sexuality,
00:09:05.360 | relationships of men and women,
00:09:07.160 | too blunt and uncompromising on the sin of abortion,
00:09:11.320 | et cetera.
00:09:12.700 | Now, this sort of criticism only concerned me,
00:09:17.580 | not because of the content.
00:09:20.280 | I wasn't gonna change biblical views to fit the audience,
00:09:24.320 | but because of the proportion.
00:09:27.440 | So I tried to form the habit of checking,
00:09:31.520 | checking my emphases and asking others
00:09:34.560 | to see if something was being emphasized
00:09:37.320 | that was good and true,
00:09:39.280 | but maybe out of proportion with other things in scripture.
00:09:44.000 | Number nine, you don't give enough application, Piper.
00:09:49.640 | You focus mainly on exposition
00:09:52.760 | and not enough on application to real life situations.
00:09:56.720 | My response to this has probably been inadequate.
00:10:00.600 | In fact, Tony, I wonder if 10 years of Ask Pastor John
00:10:05.360 | is my way of doing penance.
00:10:07.100 | (both laughing)
00:10:09.280 | For all those years without 10 minutes of application
00:10:12.080 | at the end of the sermon, I've been catching up, right?
00:10:15.920 | If I were to try to defend myself,
00:10:20.040 | I would say something like this, and maybe it's inadequate.
00:10:23.560 | I try to do exposition itself in such a way
00:10:28.560 | that even as I do it, it feels like application.
00:10:34.640 | It feels relevant to real life situations.
00:10:37.480 | So whether I've succeeded, I don't know.
00:10:39.960 | Number 10, you preach too long.
00:10:43.020 | Lots of things affect the length of a sermon
00:10:47.080 | in the local church, wearing out your nursery workers,
00:10:49.920 | poor nursery workers down there waiting
00:10:51.440 | for this long-winded preacher to get done,
00:10:53.760 | managing the ebb and flow of parking.
00:10:55.880 | Say, if you got two services,
00:10:57.200 | you got to get the parking lot cleared out.
00:10:59.880 | The hunger of your people, can they take it?
00:11:03.280 | And my response to this criticism of length has been,
00:11:06.580 | I will try to keep my finger on the pulse of the people
00:11:12.040 | and all those other considerations
00:11:14.680 | and not expect or demand more of my people
00:11:19.360 | than they can gladly receive,
00:11:22.140 | as well as all those other factors.
00:11:26.000 | But in general, I have found that it is hard for me
00:11:30.240 | to do adequate, faithful exposition week in and week out
00:11:34.840 | in less than 45-minute messages.
00:11:38.040 | And the folks seem to relax into that routine with pleasure.
00:11:43.040 | So what I hope Aaron hears in all of this
00:11:47.360 | is that we will all be criticized.
00:11:50.240 | There is a way to take all of it to heart in some measure
00:11:55.240 | and make it part of improving over a lifetime of preaching.
00:11:59.880 | Amen, yeah.
00:12:00.800 | I just want to encourage you.
00:12:01.960 | When I think of your preaching, I think of your smile.
00:12:04.340 | You smile more than any preacher I've ever seen in my life.
00:12:06.680 | That's always struck me.
00:12:07.520 | I'm thinking to myself,
00:12:08.340 | "How does that fit together with, you're angry?"
00:12:09.960 | It doesn't, no.
00:12:11.360 | No one smiles in the pulpit more than you do, Pastor John.
00:12:13.840 | It's incredible.
00:12:14.720 | Your most underrated pulpit gesture,
00:12:16.640 | that's what I call it.
00:12:17.840 | Think of Pastor John.
00:12:18.800 | And if you want to hear more
00:12:20.120 | about Pastor John's preaching experiences,
00:12:22.840 | and who doesn't really,
00:12:24.920 | you'll want to check out two other episodes
00:12:27.400 | that come to my mind.
00:12:28.280 | APJ 1374, John Piper's most bizarre moment in preaching.
00:12:33.280 | It is really bizarre.
00:12:36.120 | APJ 1374, and also APJ 50,
00:12:39.680 | does it bother you that people are entertained
00:12:42.260 | by your gestures?
00:12:43.560 | I did a whole episode on that.
00:12:45.020 | Find them both.
00:12:45.860 | APJs 1374 and 50,
00:12:48.760 | at askpastorjohn.com.
00:12:50.360 | Well, unconditional election is up next.
00:12:54.800 | Unconditional election.
00:12:56.840 | Isn't unconditional election just a dry theological topic
00:13:01.000 | for eggheads?
00:13:03.180 | No, we all need it.
00:13:05.520 | 10 reasons why you need to know
00:13:07.800 | and understand unconditional election.
00:13:11.160 | That's up next on Monday.
00:13:13.540 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:14.380 | We'll see you then.
00:13:15.220 | (upbeat music)
00:13:17.800 | (upbeat music)
00:13:20.380 | [BLANK_AUDIO]