Pastor John recently led a Q&A with the students of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Here's a question from one of the students. I was just wondering, what are some struggles and hurdles that you feel like the, I guess, the New Calvinist movement still needs to overcome? The New Calvinism, if it is, you know, it doesn't have any borders to it, in terms of separation from the old, is filled with people at every level of maturity, which means it's filled with people who are incredibly sensitive and discerning to the dynamics of racial relationships, and people who are stupid, absolutely ignorant, and naive, and bumblers.

We all can grow in our maturity in talking with other human beings like us and different from us. So there's room there to just grow in the authentic, natural discernment of what makes another person feel honored in talking to you, not a project or a specimen, right? You're an Asian specimen.

I should know not to say that, right? I should not make you feel like, I know why he's talking to me in the dining hall. I'm his project, you know, I'm his specimen. And mature people will know how not to do that. And they're not easily definable features about a personality and about a strategy that make that happen.

It's not like you can say, learn these five things and you won't ever make that mistake again, and make people feel like projects. So that's a big deal. I would say we've got a long way to go in a pervasive theology of why race exists. Is interracial marriage biblical?

Does God want various ethnicities in the same worshipping congregation? Or is he OK with homogeneous units? Just the theological, theoretical foundations of those questions. We're not all thinking about. We're not all up to speed on their answer. So, I mean, one of my rationales for talking about this morning, I said, was it's not spoken about too often in our churches.

Well, that's an understatement. I think the average evangelical church, depending on lots of different things. This is just not spoken about very much. And I think no matter where you minister, it should figure pretty regularly into your preaching, because it is one of those inalienable implications of the gospel, whether you're in Dalbo, Minnesota, surrounded for 30 miles on every side by Scandinavians or not.

It doesn't matter. These people should be global Scandinavians being taught a theology of multi ethnicity and why the Bible has it in. So there's there's room to grow there. The last thing I'd mention is I think pastors should be persuaded more than they are probably across the board and helped more than they are to be aggressively intentional.

In pursuing racial diversity and harmony, I mean, there's a lot of people feel like if you become intentional, you're into artificiality and you're into quotas and you're running that risk of criticism for sure. Like if you say we need some color on this staff. OK, so you're going to give preference to color over white right now.

You're into preferences, right? Yep. We have two African-Americans on staff on pastoral staff. That happened. One of them, because I wrote an article, a blog on why Bethlehem is pursuing racial diversity in its leadership. Very controversial, just very controversial, because because I mean, just think of it. You're going to post a position and, you know, because of your network, 90 percent of me like you.

Ninety nine percent are going to be like you, maybe 100 percent. Is that OK? That's all we got. Or are you going to go look? Are you going to press? Are you going to search? Are you going to work? Are you going to go outside your little zone here of a few million people?

And as soon as you do that, you're in trouble with some of your elders and with people who are saying this is this. You just this is so artificial. This is just absolutely phony. This is so politically correct. This is just off the charts. So I wrote that article and Kempton Turner, a young black youth leader in Texas, read it.

It was blown away positively by this and made a connection with David Michael, who was in our family discipleship in Texas on another issue. And they clicked so well that within about a year he was being interviewed for the youth position at Bethlehem. Now, that happened because of intentionality.

I wrote an article. This is why we're doing it and what we're doing. He happened to read that article. And now he's on step in their seven years. I love him to death. He is so unbelievably full of the Bible, full of the Holy Spirit. And I just love this quote.

Give you a flavor of how Kim can communicate with these kids. 90 percent of which white, a white. Right. He he was addressing the issue in a in a Baptist church. Let's be the same, I suppose, in a in an infant Baptist church. Whatever you call it, that our kids are growing up, covenant kids, right, going up and they get saved.

Six, eight, ten. In our tradition, they get baptized. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. And they never were on drugs. They never were sleeping around. And then and so they think, I mean, testimony and Kimpton said, there are no boring resurrections from the dead. Of course, they don't know what he's talking about.

You've all been raised from the dead. And then he has to unpack a reform view of regeneration. That's true. There are no boring resurrections from the dead. If a kid knows how he got saved, whether at three, five, ten or whatever, he's got a stunning story to tell about being raised from the dead.

And so I mean, I'm just saying that because I just thank God for Kimpton Turner, who happens to be some little bit of color on our staff because of some intentionality. So my my point there is we need to help pastors believe in mature, sensitive, wise, biblically grounded, intentional pursuit of diversity.

That was Pastor John recently with the students of Westminster Theological Seminary. For more on how racial diversity intentionally shaped the pastoral hires at Bethlehem, see the document titled How and Why Bethlehem Baptist Church Pursues Ethnic Diversity, which was published as Appendix Three in John Piper's book Bloodlines. You can download the entire book free of charge at DesiringGod.org.

Click on books and look for the title Bloodlines. Also on the much bigger point of how reform theology undercuts racism and undergirds racial harmony. See chapter nine of that same book, Bloodlines. So what does reform theology offer the ills of our society? Pastor John explains that tomorrow. Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke.

Thanks for listening.