An aspiring pastor writes in to ask, "Pastor John, what would you look for in deciding on a seminary?" Don't look for a building, don't look for a campus, don't look for a library, don't look for a location. Look for a faculty. That's my advice. And then if you ask me, "Okay, if I'm looking for a faculty, what am I looking for?" I would say, "Look for a faculty who reveres the Bible as God's inerrant word." Which may be easier to sniff out than whether they love God.

Loving God is a little more personal and abstract, but you can begin to detect in the way a person teaches and writes as to whether their relationship with the Bible is one of amazing, deep, controlling reverence for God's inerrant word. So look for that. Number two, look for rigor in their exegetical labors.

That they are drawing out truth from the Word more than they are drawing out truth from systems. And from books. When you go to their classes, or when you read their books, or when you talk to students about them, are they biblically saturated? Are they bent on proving their points not by saying, "Luther said it," or "Wesley said it," or "Calvin said it," but "Paul said it," and "Jesus said it," and "Here's the verse," and "Here's the logic of the verse," and "That's why we stand on it." Are they that kind of Bible people rather than system people?

Third, look for a solid, coherent, biblical theology with the gospel at the center and the sovereignty of God underneath and the glory of God at the top. Look for a God-centered, gospel-permeated theology with the glory of God and the sovereignty of God very prominent. And fourth, look for people, look for faculty who feel and believe in the lostness of human beings and the uniqueness of Christ as their only hope of salvation.

Men who weep that people are going to hell. They believe in hell. They think people are going there without Jesus. And Jesus is the stunningly all-sufficient, all-satisfying, unique and only way of salvation so that there's an urgency about what they teach. And fifth, look for a love for the church.

Look for a passion to be connected with the church. Not loners off doing their own academic thing, but they're part of the church. They love the church. They want to feed the church and provide leaders for the church. And to that end, I mean, those kinds of faculty, visit classes, talk to students, correspond with faculty, do what you need to do to find out what kinds of people are going to be teaching you.

That's my way of doing it. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.