About 100 emails have come in from listeners regarding Mark Driscoll and your relationship with him. Mostly the questions are centered on whether you now regret partnering with Mark Driscoll in the past. Secondarily, are there any lessons you're taking away from that relationship? And third, do you agree with the decisions of Christian booksellers that have decided to pull Mark Driscoll's books off of their shelves?

Well, let me take the, maybe I forget now the order, the first and the last I think, the issue of regret and the issue of books on or off shelves and just dispense with those quickly and then tackle lessons a little more extensively. First, no regret. John Piper has no regret for befriending Mark Driscoll, going to Mark Driscoll's church and speaking at his events or having him come to the Jedi and God conference.

I do not regret that. My regret is that I was not a more effective friend. Mark knew he had flaws. He knows he has flaws. And I knew he had flaws. He knew that I knew he had flaws. There were flaws of leadership attitude, flaws of unsavory language that I think is just wrong for Christians to use, flaws of exegetical errors, say in regard to the Song of Solomon.

I wrote him a long critique of his use of the Song of Solomon. I wrote him personally about these. But I always hoped that in those cases, the relationship with me and with others would be redemptive and helpful. He certainly gave me more time and counsel than I deserved.

I remember him sitting in the dining room downstairs from where we're making this recording right now and spending a long time with me and Noel, giving us good counsel about the last chapter of our ministry, then going home and producing a long paper for me to give guidance to me and the elders.

He didn't have to do that. I didn't even ask him to do it. So there was a mutuality about this, and I felt loved by Mark, and I wanted to love him in return. I do hope for the best in Mark's life and ministry. So no, I don't regret it, because the things he said when he spoke were true and helpful, and I tried to do the same at his church.

With regard to his books, whether they should sit on shelves in bookstores or churches or homes, that's a tough call. If he's disqualified from being an elder, should he still exercise the teaching office of an elder through his books? That's one way to ask the question. But sooner or later, a book becomes detached from the personal life of an author and stands on its own merits as true or helpful or not.

And I can see a temporary reaction to Mark stepping down by bookstores or churches where they pull those back so as not to give any kind of public affirmation of mistakes that Mark may have made, but then maybe in years to come, the books re-emerge as helpful, since I think most of what he has written has been true and helpful.

So let me turn to the lessons. What have I learned? What can we learn from these recent events? Number one, people are very complex. They are multilayered. They are often paradoxical. The psalmist cries out, "Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent of hidden faults." That's an amazing statement.

Some of our sins, he's saying, are hidden to ourselves. He just asks, "I cannot discern my sins." We have flaws and sins that we cannot ourselves fathom. And the second lesson follows. We desperately need to take seriously what wise counselors tell us about ourselves. If we have sins that are hidden from ourselves, then perhaps they're not hidden to others, and we do well to listen.

I think that's implied in that text. Third, this also follows from those two. Sometimes, and I've experienced this, sometimes you can see what others are saying, pointing out to you about yourself, and sometimes you can't. And if you can see it, then you repent, and you fight the sin.

But what if you can't? Even after others tell you what they see, you look and you don't see it in the way they see it. What then? Well, in order to have any integrity, I think you have to go with what you see. Otherwise, you'd be always jerked around by everybody on the street that tells you they see something, and you say, "Well, I don't think it's there." And Paul certainly did not agree with all the criticism that came against him, nor Jesus.

When they said he had a demon, he didn't have a demon. His critics were wrong. And the result is either a struggle—in other words, when you have people around you who say this is true of you, and you don't think it's true of you, then the result is there's a struggle for leadership, and one or both stands down, or there's a fight, and somebody wins.

And that's the ugliest of all. And Mark stood down. And that is probably a concession to, "Yes, much of what you say is true," and probably it's a measure of, "I don't think you saw me right." And that's just life. I mean, Paul and Barnabas couldn't work together because they did not perceive their own flaws.

Somebody was amiss, and they couldn't see it. And I've seen it over and over again. It's just one of the heartaches of relationships. So a fourth lesson is that biblical leadership structures are not luxuries. I think the trend among some megachurches to put in place outside councils with authority that are not based in the elders of the local church is an unbiblical, unwise approach towards church leadership.

I think the biblical pattern of leadership is that every church should have a team of elders, vocational, non-vocational, all with one vote. The preaching pastor has greater sway not by having a veto power with all the votes, but by being a wise, thoughtful, exemplary leader. As soon as I could, I put in place at Bethlehem a leadership structure that gave me one vote, first among 20, then among 30, then among 40, and that's where it ended.

I had one vote, which means I could be voted down easily. But I never doubted I had great authority at that church, ever, because of the pulpit and because I tried to be a teacher leader. I tried to lead with truth, not with official constraints. I never wanted to use office or political power to get my way.

I wanted people to be persuaded. So I think structure really matters, and there are a lot of—I don't know if it's a lot, but there are some megachurches today that I think are going off in an unwise direction. Fifth lesson, I think there is a lesson here about money and salaries of pastors.

I think it is a huge mistake to view pastors as corporate executives with huge salaries in the two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight hundred thousand dollar range. That to me is a clear danger signal that the elders and the pastor have their heart in the wrong place. I don't know Mark Driscoll's salary, but I think that the corporate mindset was too prominent, and so the warning to us stands.

Sixth lesson—I've got eight of these—there is a lesson how the same theology, Reformed or Arminian, on paper can coexist with very different personalities and leadership styles and sins. There is no theology on paper or merely in preaching that keeps a man from sin. Peter's withdrawal from eating with the Gentiles in Galatians 2 was sin, and it was not owing to a defective theology.

Paul said very clearly in verse 14, "I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth." And he means the very truth they believed. Human beings don't live up to their theology. Therefore, when a person falters in their behavior, it is a mistake to jump immediately without wider considerations to, "Oh, defective theology," because there are sinners and some serious ones in every branch of theology.

So Peter knew the truth, and he didn't walk in it, and that's always a possibility with whatever truth is at stake. And Mark Driscoll has done much good in speaking and writing much truth. Thousands of people really have been saved and really have been built up in biblical gospel truth, and those people should not question their salvation or their truth just because he might in some cases have walked out of step with the truth.

Seventh lesson, God's kingdom and his saving purposes in the world are never dependent on one man or one church or one denomination. God is God, and his kingdom is coming, and no one can stop it, and his Word is not bound. And the last lesson I thought of was, "Let him who thinks that he stand, take heed lest he fall.

Restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, lest you too be tempted," Paul said. I think it would be sinful and unbiblical for any of Mark's detractors to simply feel good riddance. That's a sin to feel that. So we pray for truth to hold sway and for grace to transform and renew and restore all of us, including Mark.

Yes, there are valuable and humbling lessons for all of us in this. Thank you, Pastor John. And we return tomorrow to tackle another delicate subject of whether or not it's wise for Christians to watch beheading videos coming out of the Middle East. The phenomenon, of course, is not new, but the grotesque videos and pictures are being used as strategic propaganda today like never before.

So that's tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. you you you you