Explain Your Title ‘Pastor Emeritus’

00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, you have a new title at Bethlehem Baptist Church, the church you led for over

00:00:08.760 | thirty years, and along with it there's a new document to explain the new position that

00:00:14.400 | you have within the church, and it's titled "Pastor Emeritus, a Covenant between Bethlehem

00:00:19.180 | Baptist Church, Council of Elders, and John Piper."

00:00:22.920 | Explain for us who wrote this document and why, and what purpose does it serve?

00:00:27.500 | It might be helpful, Tony, to share a few thoughts about the role of a pastor emeritus.

00:00:35.360 | This is the title that the elders at Bethlehem have decided to give me as a member of Bethlehem

00:00:42.400 | after thirty-three years as lead pastor for preaching and vision.

00:00:48.120 | So what about the term emeritus?

00:00:51.800 | What does it mean?

00:00:53.600 | This is a Latin word referring to one who has "earned his discharge by faithful service."

00:01:01.440 | It's kind of the opposite of a dishonorable discharge in the military.

00:01:06.640 | First Timothy 5.17 says, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor,

00:01:12.960 | especially those who labor in preaching and teaching."

00:01:15.720 | Well, I was honored a hundred ways while I was a pastor of Bethlehem, and when the title

00:01:24.240 | emeritus was proposed for me, I felt honored again, doubly honored, more than doubly honored.

00:01:30.420 | It's a way of honoring this old guy whose ministry you look back on and say, "I thank

00:01:35.400 | God for that."

00:01:38.200 | So one might ask, "Well, is it even biblical to retire from the eldership?"

00:01:44.960 | And I think the answer is, it's not biblical to lay down ministry and play games till you're

00:01:51.400 | dead at 65 to 95.

00:01:54.720 | That's the typical American view of retirement, and it strikes me as unbiblical.

00:02:01.580 | But it does seem wise and biblically warranted.

00:02:06.320 | The priests, for example, stepped aside in the Old Testament when they were 50, not when

00:02:10.280 | they were worn out, but when they were 50.

00:02:12.540 | It does seem biblically warranted and wise to shift one's focuses and hand off certain

00:02:21.560 | responsibilities.

00:02:23.500 | So my focus has shifted off of pastoral leadership of the church onto leadership in the Bethlehem

00:02:32.620 | College and Seminary and at Desiring God, and in a real sense, these are elder-like

00:02:38.040 | responsibilities.

00:02:39.040 | I regard what we're doing right now in Ask Pastor John as an extension of the teaching

00:02:46.720 | role of my elder qualification.

00:02:50.680 | So a key question then becomes, why produce a document called a covenant between me and

00:02:57.360 | the elders of Bethlehem with a list of ministries that I am committed not to do without the

00:03:03.720 | explicit permission or the mandate of the new lead pastor?

00:03:10.500 | One good friend of mine said to me when he read it, he said, "It didn't sound like

00:03:16.040 | it honored you because it had so many limitations on you, like you're a threat or something."

00:03:23.660 | So let me put that in perspective and try to help people understand the nature of this

00:03:30.120 | animal and this situation.

00:03:32.420 | Here's the first thing.

00:03:34.460 | Except for the proposal that I be called emeritus, I wrote the whole document.

00:03:39.940 | People can read it over at HopingGod.org.

00:03:42.220 | I just Googled it a little while ago just to see if it worked, so I typed in "Pastor

00:03:46.240 | Emeritus John Piper, Hoping God," and boom, it came right up.

00:03:50.000 | So they can read it.

00:03:52.060 | We went back and forth tweaking the wording, but virtually everything that's there I

00:03:57.060 | proposed and I wrote except for the paragraph on honoring me with the title "emeritus."

00:04:06.440 | And I did it for reasons.

00:04:08.540 | They're biblical and experiential wise reasons, and here's several.

00:04:13.700 | The New Testament has the expectation that duly appointed leaders will lead.

00:04:20.400 | So Hebrews 13, "Obey your leaders."

00:04:23.620 | First Thessalonians 5.12, "Respect those who labor among you and are over you in the

00:04:28.380 | Lord."

00:04:29.380 | First Timothy 5.17, "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor."

00:04:35.380 | Now combine that biblical principle of "leaders should lead" with the well-known fact of experience

00:04:42.640 | that new leadership in an organization can be quickly compromised by well-meaning people

00:04:51.860 | who default to treating old leadership as true leadership.

00:04:57.420 | Add to that this fact.

00:04:58.500 | I led the church for 33 years as the preaching pastor.

00:05:02.420 | Imagine, except for a tiny little handful of older people, every single one of the 5,000

00:05:09.180 | folks who was there when I left the church last year came under my leadership.

00:05:16.340 | I'm what they knew as the pastor of Bethlehem, and in that setting, how should people view

00:05:22.980 | my role now?

00:05:24.740 | Because I'd love to be a member of the church and serve these ministries that have grown

00:05:29.300 | out of the church.

00:05:31.360 | And this covenant is a way of saying John wants the new leadership to lead.

00:05:37.260 | He wants to guard against any possibility that his influence would weaken or compromise

00:05:42.500 | the new leadership in any way.

00:05:45.940 | And the best way to make clear what aspects of ministry I will do without explicit invitation

00:05:53.700 | and permission or not do is to put it in a covenant.

00:05:58.620 | So this is not the restraint of a power-hungry older pastor who can't lay down the reins.

00:06:05.780 | I hope.

00:06:07.100 | This is a restraint.

00:06:09.660 | It's an expression of the zeal of that older pastor who is jealous that nobody touched

00:06:15.900 | the reins in the hands of the new leadership, not even inadvertently.

00:06:21.180 | Let leaders lead.

00:06:23.180 | That's the first reason for a document like this, to protect the new leadership from any

00:06:28.180 | compromise.

00:06:29.180 | Here's the second one.

00:06:30.700 | It doesn't just protect that leadership.

00:06:33.540 | It protects and honors my new role as a leader in the seminary and at Desiring God.

00:06:42.660 | I have a new full-time job that people need to understand.

00:06:48.820 | About three-fourths of my time I serve at Desiring God with Look at the Book and Ask

00:06:53.900 | Pastor John and writing blogs, involvement with the staff.

00:06:57.420 | And a fourth of my time I'm with the college and seminary as chancellor and professor of

00:07:02.460 | biblical exegesis.

00:07:04.540 | And that's a full-time commitment for this 68-year-old guy who has to pace himself a

00:07:10.700 | little differently than he did 30 years ago.

00:07:14.620 | And so the second reason the document is valuable to me and an honor to me is to protect people's

00:07:21.280 | expectations of me in roles that I don't have anymore and new ones that I do have.

00:07:28.460 | And the last thing I'd say is that one of the legacies—

00:07:32.020 | I left at Bethlehem, I hope, and which is preserved, I hope—is the lesson that I learned

00:07:38.100 | over the years that clarity and precision and explicitness, especially in writing, is

00:07:44.900 | a way of leadership that maximizes accountability, minimizes confusion, minimizes misunderstanding,

00:07:53.460 | minimizes selective memory.

00:07:56.100 | And the best way to do that is write things down and make them precise.

00:08:01.980 | I believe over the years that habit among our elders has served our people really well.

00:08:09.260 | It has served peace, it has served love, it has served accountability, it has served candor

00:08:14.500 | and openness.

00:08:15.500 | And so I'm happy that we produced a document like this.

00:08:20.300 | So I'm loving being back at Bethlehem.

00:08:22.740 | I've been there about six weeks now, worshiping and loving every minute of it.

00:08:27.660 | I feel honored by the title, "Pastor Emeritus," so that this little event here, "Ask Pastor

00:08:34.340 | John," is legitimate.

00:08:35.340 | And you still use the word "pastor."

00:08:38.340 | I love worshiping with the people.

00:08:41.140 | I'm glad there are clear lines of responsibility and that they're drawn up in a document, and

00:08:46.740 | I'm so eager to see God bless this church, bless Bethlehem College and Seminary, bless

00:08:52.340 | Desiring God in the next decade, and if God gives me life, I expect to be right at the

00:08:57.820 | thick of it.

00:08:58.820 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:09:01.220 | And again, you can read the document at HopeInGod.org probably most easily by Googling the title

00:09:06.300 | of the document, "Pastor Emeritus, A Covenant Between Bethlehem Baptist Church, Council

00:09:11.020 | of Elders, and John Piper."

00:09:12.660 | Well, is $75 too much to pay for a Bible?

00:09:17.100 | Recently, the website Kickstarter was abuzz with a new Bible project that raised over

00:09:22.020 | $1.4 million to produce a really sharp, four-volume Bible.

00:09:26.100 | You may have seen it.

00:09:27.100 | Tomorrow, we will talk about how much is too much for a Bible and how important is it to

00:09:30.620 | read from an aesthetically pleasing Bible.

00:09:33.180 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:34.500 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:09:36.580 | [END]

00:09:38.580 | 1.

00:09:39.580 | What is the future of the Bible?

00:09:40.580 | 2.

00:09:41.580 | What does the Bible teach us?

00:09:42.580 | 3.

00:09:43.580 | What is the future of the Bible?

00:09:44.580 | 4.

00:09:45.580 | What is the future of the Bible?

Explain Your Title ‘Pastor Emeritus’

Chapters