Courage in the Pastorate: An Interview with John Piper

JBMW: Tell us about your background, about your family, and about how you became a Christian.

JP: I had the great honor and joy by sheer grace of being born into the home of an evangelist, Bill Piper, and a godly woman, Ruth Piper. They had two children, my older sister and me. My folks raised us under the Word of God and under an umbrella of prayer. They were the happiest Christians I have ever known. They taught me the truth of Christ, and I embraced that truth and made a profession of faith when I was six years old. There were times when I had theological struggles or questions, but I never really saw any reason to doubt the validity of what my parents had taught me.

I went to Wheaton College, where this was all deepened and strengthened. I loved my days at Wheaton. They were tremendously significant, as I discovered a whole new realm of hymnology and church history and a wider evangelical life than at the Baptist church where I'd grown up. Fuller Seminary was a stretching, broadening experience for me because of the things I discovered about how to interpret the Bible and the grounds for believing its truth. During this time I developed strong convictions about Reformed theology under the influence of Dan Fuller, who pointed me to the works of Jonathan Edwards. So I look back on my life as one grace after another.

JBMW: How did you come to your convictions about biblical manhood and womanhood?

JP: None of us know exactly how we have come to think the way we do because the seeds of our convictions are sown long before we know anything about it. Most important was the fact that I grew up in a Bible-believing home, where my parents said that the Bible is true and to be obeyed, regardless of what the culture says. So I've never felt a strong impulse to change my views just because they are at variance with the culture-at-large. I don't care about being up-to-date in Kansas City. I care about honoring the Scriptures. So when I realized that the Scriptures teach a complementary view of manhood and womanhood, I accepted that teaching, even though it went against the dominant viewpoint of the culture. Further, I viewed the Scripture's teaching as a good thing, because God is good.

However, I would be naïve if I didn't say that the home where I grew up had a significant impact on me, though not exactly in the way some people might think. My dad was away from home two-thirds of the year in evangelistic meetings, so my mother was everything to me. She was my financial adviser, the one who taught me how to make pancakes, the one who taught me how to clean my room, and the one who made sure I got out and played football and basketball with the guys. And yet when my daddy came home, he was clearly the leader. He took the initiative. He was the one who said, "We're going to worship this morning," or, "Let's have devotions, Mommy you read this, Johnny you read that." When we went to a restaurant, he drove the car, and he paid the bill. He was taking all those intangible initiatives, and I was absorbing his words and actions and the fact that my mother loved it-omnicompetent though she was. I had the privilege of seeing my mother run the household by herself most of the time and yet also see her gladly submit to Dad's leadership when he was there. So the idea that his leadership signified her incompetence never occurred to me.

When I graduated from high school, as I recall, I was nineteenth in my class, of 300 or so, and the eighteen who were ahead of me were women, except for my friend Kenny. When I went to Wheaton, it was women who were always ruining the grade curve because they were so bright. I grew up surrounded by tremendously intelligent, articulate, competent women, most of whom were very happy that men were strong, godly leaders in their homes and in the church. So this background strengthened me for the days of controversy when I had to decide for myself: "Am I going to go with the cultural flow of egalitarian feminism, or am I going to stick with the plain meaning of Scripture?" And the more I studied the issue, the less compelling the arguments on the egalitarian side seemed. So I remain a believer in a very happy, hope-filled, creative, complementarian view.

One more point. The essential thing about God, as I see Him in the Scriptures, is that He is sovereign and good. This means that when He tells us to do things, they're good for us. So I'm going to trust His Word and believe that for the man to be the head of the woman in the home and for men to be the godly, spiritual leaders in the church is really good for women, good for men, good for kids, good for evangelism, good for world missions, and good for every kind of ministry that the church ought to do.

JBMW: How do you get men involved in church and in leadership?

JP: Leon Podles, author of The Church Impotent, says that men aren't in the church because they view it as feminine. I was speaking at a conference recently when a woman came up to speak with me after my address. I had made a comment about my belief that it wasn't appropriate for women to serve as preaching pastors. She told me that she was a Methodist minister and that she thought I was wrong. Then she asked me, "What do you do if men won't rise to the occasion and minister in the church?" I said, "If you're married and your husband doesn't read the Bible to the children, then you should read it. If you're married and your husband won't take your kids to worship, then you should take them to worship." But before I could make my next point, she jumped in and said, "I preached last Sunday, and there wasn't a single man in my congregation." I looked at her and said, "You know, you may be a cause of that." She smiled (amazingly!), so I continued: "To correct the problem of the feminization of the church by having women step in and fill the roles that men should be filling is probably not the best way to solve the problem."

Men need to see God as a King, a Lord, a Warrior, a Defender, a Protector, and a Provider, and that to follow this God will reinforce them as men rather than feminizing them. I try to model this in my preaching, but I also try to emphasize that God has so much tenderness and compassion that no woman could ever think, "Well, I've got a male God." And then I try to embody both of these qualities. I want to be a strong person and a forceful person and a risk-taking person and an adventuresome person. I try to preach with as much gutsy virility as I can. And yet I want to be able to put children in my lap and give them a big hug, and I want to be able to put my arms around elderly people. I want to be tenderhearted and thoughtful and kind and generous. So my first answer to your question is by modeling.

Second, by structuring. I inherited a church with an allmale deacon council. We went through a ten-year process of bringing our church into an understanding of biblical eldership and the fact that elders should be men according to 1 Tim. 2:12. Every year we emphasized that godly, strong, humble men should be the primary initiative takers and leaders in the church. And once you say and model that, and then constitutionalize it as well, you are sending a strong signal to men that they make or break this church. Today we have an all-male council of elders, while deacons can be both men and women. This also has sent a strong signal to women. It's not that they can't or shouldn't minister here; women minister everywhere-and quite competently. But we believe that it is healthy for women to look to men as the primary leaders and responsibility takers in this church, because that is how God has designed us, and following His design will cause both men and women to flourish. Men are the leaders here, and the women love it.

JBMW: Many of us believe that you stand out as a pastor with courage. Why is it that most pastors lack courage? Do churches want pastors with courage? They used to require that pastors have integrity, but now it seems that all they want are pastors who have good manners.

JP: Courage is a much-needed quality in pastors today. We're having a conference in February 2000 at my church, and I've asked Albert Mohler of Southern Seminary and Ben Patterson of Hope College to speak on the theme of "Courage in the Ministry." Both of these men have exemplified courage because they've gone through the "wringer," and they have something to teach us.

A couple of reasons why courage doesn't seem to be very common among pastors today: We live in an age where political correctness calls for such tolerance and pluralism and breadth of acceptance that taking a stand for anything controversial or divisive will not be labeled as courageous, but as mean-spirited. Once upon a time, such a stand would have been lauded as courageous, but that is not the adjective people are going to use today. A pastor who draws a line in the sand and says we will go this far and no further as a family, as a church, as a denomination, will be described in ugly language. And most pastors aren't willing to be slandered like that. They might be willing to die if they look as though they're dying courageously for truth. But when you take a courageous stand for truth, that is not how you will be perceived and portrayed. You will be described as divisive, insensitive, intolerant, unkind, as majoring on minors-anything to paint the picture as something other than admirable. Courage always sounds admirable, but nobody will use an admirable adjective about you if they don't like what you're doing.

We also live in an atheological age, where pastors have lost their nerve doctrinally. They don't hold enough doctrines with certainty so as to be courageous in the defense of them. They're not sure if these doctrines are true or important enough. So, when you have an atheological church, you don't have much to stand for, and if you don't have much to stand for, you're not going to need courage. What you are going to need is the managerial skill and therapeutic insight to make the people who are unhappy in your church feel better. The problem here is a failure to see the importance of biblical truth and the doctrinal formulations of it. The church will stand or fall, love will abound or not abound, missions will bear fruit or not bear fruit, on the basis of whether you hold fast to the truth. If you really are a truth-driven person, you will tend to be a courageous person as well, because it takes courage to disagree with people who are departing from the truth, whether they call it courage or not.

JBMW: How has the feminization of discourse affected preaching?

JP: The priority of relationship has replaced the priority of conviction. Today it is more important that we speak in ways that help people feel nurtured and dealt with tenderly and kindly rather than speaking the truth- however it makes people feel. By claiming to be "hurt" by what we say, people hold many pastors hostage and use emotional blackmail to keep pastors from speaking the truth. Many pastors interpret their ministry in terms of meeting felt needs so as to create a climate of family warmth, as opposed to discovering from the Bible essential, glorious truths about God that people desperately need to know and love, whether they know they do or not. And so, this replacement of real needs, theologically, with felt needs, relationally, undermines the nature of preaching as a strong, courageous declaration of the glory of God in an expositional way.

JBMW: You were one of the founders of CBMW. In the twelve years since CBMW was founded, have things become better or worse in the evangelical world with regard to issues of manhood and womanhood?

JP: Both. I would never have dreamed that things could become as good as they have in some sectors, given the trajectories we were on. But things are much worse in other sectors. What stands out most to me over the last twelve years is the fragmentation of evangelicalism. That fragmentation has opened the door both to a profound rejection of biblical teaching on manhood and womanhood in some areas and to a profound affirmation of it in others. Witness the statements adopted by the Southern Baptists and by Campus Crusade. Who would have dreamed twelve years ago that the Southern Baptists would be where they are today? But unfortunately, the struggles in the Christian Reformed Church haven't gone the same way. In the mainline Protestant churches the battle now is over the ordination of homosexuals, and evangelical churches will probably have to deal with that issue next. Unfortunately, the word ‘evangelical' has become so elastic that you can't tell who is an evangelical anymore.

JBMW: Should women be involved in combat?

JP: Not by design. I have no problem with a woman joining her husband to defend their children if they are attacked. But what you're asking is, "Should it be American policy to plan for women to be drafted into combat alongside men?" The answer to that is absolutely not. There are tactical and strategic reasons that soldiers can tell you about, given the way soldiers have to live with each other and die for each other, in settings where the dynamics between men and women would be utterly out of place and confusing and distracting.

But there is also a fundamental "given" in our being created by God as male and female: The man should feel a strong desire to be the protector in the home, in the church, and in society. One of the ways to put that desire into practice would be to say that we will have an all-male army. This isn't, in any sense, demeaning toward women, as if to say that women can't pull a trigger, or fly a jet, or drive a tank, or throw a grenade. Of course they can. It has nothing to do with competency here, although there is a strength factor. It has mainly to do with what is noble, what is beautiful, what is good, what is wholesome, what helps to create not only a workable society where children are raised, but a society that is beautiful in the way men and women relate to each other. One of the beautiful things that God has designed is this: Men are programmed to be soldiers. You can see it in lesser situations where a danger is encountered. The man will feel a noble impulse to try to disarm the aggressor or stand between the aggressor and the woman. He doesn't push the woman forward fifty percent of the time and say, "It's your turn to go after the thug this time." That impulse is just built into a man, and it's not sin or macho, domineering attitudes that cause this. It's a God-given desire to be a servant who is willing to die for the protection of the woman. Society will be ripped to pieces if we treat women in a way that puts them forward to receive the bullets of our enemies.

JBMW: What about women in political office? Should we vote for a woman for President?

JP: I feel fuzzier about that one. When a man and a woman have similar qualifications, I'm inclined to think that we should vote for the man. I would probably say it even stronger than that in light of Isaiah 3:12, where part of the judgment of God upon His people is to subject them to being ruled by women. But the reason I say it less forcefully is that there may be exceptions where, in the Providence of God, He wills for a Deborah to rise up and assume a particular role, precisely in order to make a point about the men involved. However, I would hasten to add that the book of Judges is not a book that is filled with normative people, nor does it set forth normative examples of ideal leadership.

JBMW: Where have you and your wife struggled with issues of manhood and womanhood? How do you deal with disagreements? Have you ceded any issues where you disagree, and is such ceding sin?

JP: When a husband and wife disagree, I don't think it's sin to concede to the woman, unless the disagreement involves a moral issue, where your conscience is bound by the clear teaching of Scripture and it would be sin to let her have her way. We husbands should give jurisdiction over spheres of domestic activity to our wives and not even ask them to check things out with us. Leadership does not mean that I dictate the way everything is done. Leadership means that I take the bottom-line responsibility to provide a moral atmosphere in the home, where Christ is honored, and everything works smoothly. It means that I take the initiative to get the family to worship, to pray at meals, to lead in family devotions, to discipline our children correctly, to talk through financial and neighborhood issues.

One of the ways I help couples get a handle on leadership is to ask, "Who says, ‘let's' more often? The man or the woman?" The man ought to say ‘let's' more often: "Let's talk about the kids, let's have a state-ofour- marriage discussion, let's work on our finances, let's get things in order in the home, let's take care of our yard better, let's consider getting a new car." If the woman is constantly going to her husband and saying, "Let's, let's, let's. . . ." and he's always dragging his feet, not taking the initiative, she's going to be a very frustrated woman. She should not have to be the one who says ‘let's.' The man should be.

I asked Noel at the beginning of our marriage and have asked her periodically over the last thirty years, "Do you operate happily on the principle that I am generally the initiative taker in this family? And if we cannot agree on an issue, even after many hours of conversation, will you submit to my judgment?" And she has said, "Yes." Now that does not mean that I always invoke that privilege. But it's crucial that she give it. That's what submission is. And a good husband, a good leader, a good lover will often say, "I don't think we should re-do the bathroom now," or "I'm not sure we should adopt a child now, but I see where your heart is, and I love to see you flourish. I want to honor your desires, and I believe God is sovereign and will work things out. And for your sake and for your joy, I yield to your choice." She would have gone either way. She would have let me have it, or she would be happy to hear me give her this choice. That's not an abdication of leadership. That's a servant way of handling leadership. And it's based on the principle of submission, where she says, "You call the shot, and I'll be happy with whatever you decide."

JBMW: How have you taught your sons about manhood?

JP: I have four sons, ages 27, 24, 19 and 16, and now a daughter, who is three years old. She was adopted three years ago and has been a wonderful addition to our family. Now I will really come to terms with whether or not I believe in manhood and womanhood as I raise this little girl and watch all of her competencies develop.

With regard to the boys, again, just as in the church, the lion's share of shaping is done by modeling. They learn a hundred times more by what they observe than by what you tell them. As my boys have grown older, they've heard me walk through controversies, they've seen me debate thorny issues, they've read some of the articles and books I've written, they've heard me preach week after week, so they know where I stand on these things. Also important is how their mom and dad relate. If a man takes the spiritual initiative, almost everything else is going to fall into place. And by spiritual initiative, I mean, they know that Daddy is the one who is getting up early to pray and read his Bible. Daddy is the one who calls the family together for devotions. He is the one who disciplines them when they disobey (unless he's not home). He leads his wife in prayer every night. These things are absolutely shaping for young men, and if the wife is flourishing through all that, they can't help but pick up that this is good, and they will then desire to find a wife who will flourish under their spiritual leadership.

Of course, it's a huge spiritual battle. That your children become Bible-believing Christians is the main thing. And if they've become Christians and they've watched you flourish with your wife in a complementary role, then I think they're going to embrace Scripture's teaching on manhood and womanhood.