Pastor John, you have a new title at Bethlehem Baptist Church, the church you led for over thirty years, and along with it there's a new document to explain the new position that you have within the church, and it's titled "Pastor Emeritus, a Covenant between Bethlehem Baptist Church, Council of Elders, and John Piper." Explain for us who wrote this document and why, and what purpose does it serve?

It might be helpful, Tony, to share a few thoughts about the role of a pastor emeritus. This is the title that the elders at Bethlehem have decided to give me as a member of Bethlehem after thirty-three years as lead pastor for preaching and vision. So what about the term emeritus?

What does it mean? This is a Latin word referring to one who has "earned his discharge by faithful service." It's kind of the opposite of a dishonorable discharge in the military. First Timothy 5.17 says, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching." Well, I was honored a hundred ways while I was a pastor of Bethlehem, and when the title emeritus was proposed for me, I felt honored again, doubly honored, more than doubly honored.

It's a way of honoring this old guy whose ministry you look back on and say, "I thank God for that." So one might ask, "Well, is it even biblical to retire from the eldership?" And I think the answer is, it's not biblical to lay down ministry and play games till you're dead at 65 to 95.

That's the typical American view of retirement, and it strikes me as unbiblical. But it does seem wise and biblically warranted. The priests, for example, stepped aside in the Old Testament when they were 50, not when they were worn out, but when they were 50. It does seem biblically warranted and wise to shift one's focuses and hand off certain responsibilities.

So my focus has shifted off of pastoral leadership of the church onto leadership in the Bethlehem College and Seminary and at Desiring God, and in a real sense, these are elder-like responsibilities. I regard what we're doing right now in Ask Pastor John as an extension of the teaching role of my elder qualification.

So a key question then becomes, why produce a document called a covenant between me and the elders of Bethlehem with a list of ministries that I am committed not to do without the explicit permission or the mandate of the new lead pastor? One good friend of mine said to me when he read it, he said, "It didn't sound like it honored you because it had so many limitations on you, like you're a threat or something." So let me put that in perspective and try to help people understand the nature of this animal and this situation.

Here's the first thing. Except for the proposal that I be called emeritus, I wrote the whole document. People can read it over at HopingGod.org. I just Googled it a little while ago just to see if it worked, so I typed in "Pastor Emeritus John Piper, Hoping God," and boom, it came right up.

So they can read it. We went back and forth tweaking the wording, but virtually everything that's there I proposed and I wrote except for the paragraph on honoring me with the title "emeritus." And I did it for reasons. They're biblical and experiential wise reasons, and here's several. The New Testament has the expectation that duly appointed leaders will lead.

So Hebrews 13, "Obey your leaders." First Thessalonians 5.12, "Respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord." First Timothy 5.17, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor." Now combine that biblical principle of "leaders should lead" with the well-known fact of experience that new leadership in an organization can be quickly compromised by well-meaning people who default to treating old leadership as true leadership.

Add to that this fact. I led the church for 33 years as the preaching pastor. Imagine, except for a tiny little handful of older people, every single one of the 5,000 folks who was there when I left the church last year came under my leadership. I'm what they knew as the pastor of Bethlehem, and in that setting, how should people view my role now?

Because I'd love to be a member of the church and serve these ministries that have grown out of the church. And this covenant is a way of saying John wants the new leadership to lead. He wants to guard against any possibility that his influence would weaken or compromise the new leadership in any way.

And the best way to make clear what aspects of ministry I will do without explicit invitation and permission or not do is to put it in a covenant. So this is not the restraint of a power-hungry older pastor who can't lay down the reins. I hope. This is a restraint.

It's an expression of the zeal of that older pastor who is jealous that nobody touched the reins in the hands of the new leadership, not even inadvertently. Let leaders lead. That's the first reason for a document like this, to protect the new leadership from any compromise. Here's the second one.

It doesn't just protect that leadership. It protects and honors my new role as a leader in the seminary and at Desiring God. I have a new full-time job that people need to understand. About three-fourths of my time I serve at Desiring God with Look at the Book and Ask Pastor John and writing blogs, involvement with the staff.

And a fourth of my time I'm with the college and seminary as chancellor and professor of biblical exegesis. And that's a full-time commitment for this 68-year-old guy who has to pace himself a little differently than he did 30 years ago. And so the second reason the document is valuable to me and an honor to me is to protect people's expectations of me in roles that I don't have anymore and new ones that I do have.

And the last thing I'd say is that one of the legacies— I left at Bethlehem, I hope, and which is preserved, I hope—is the lesson that I learned over the years that clarity and precision and explicitness, especially in writing, is a way of leadership that maximizes accountability, minimizes confusion, minimizes misunderstanding, minimizes selective memory.

And the best way to do that is write things down and make them precise. I believe over the years that habit among our elders has served our people really well. It has served peace, it has served love, it has served accountability, it has served candor and openness. And so I'm happy that we produced a document like this.

So I'm loving being back at Bethlehem. I've been there about six weeks now, worshiping and loving every minute of it. I feel honored by the title, "Pastor Emeritus," so that this little event here, "Ask Pastor John," is legitimate. And you still use the word "pastor." I love worshiping with the people.

I'm glad there are clear lines of responsibility and that they're drawn up in a document, and I'm so eager to see God bless this church, bless Bethlehem College and Seminary, bless Desiring God in the next decade, and if God gives me life, I expect to be right at the thick of it.

Thank you, Pastor John. And again, you can read the document at HopeInGod.org probably most easily by Googling the title of the document, "Pastor Emeritus, A Covenant Between Bethlehem Baptist Church, Council of Elders, and John Piper." Well, is $75 too much to pay for a Bible? Recently, the website Kickstarter was abuzz with a new Bible project that raised over $1.4 million to produce a really sharp, four-volume Bible.

You may have seen it. Tomorrow, we will talk about how much is too much for a Bible and how important is it to read from an aesthetically pleasing Bible. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. 1. What is the future of the Bible?

2. What does the Bible teach us? 3. What is the future of the Bible? 4. What is the future of the Bible?