DR. PIPER RETURNS TO HIS CLASSROOM “Check this out, dude.” Two second-year seminary students exchange arcing homework now squabbling, now congratulating each other on the agreement between their analysis of “grounds” and “purpose” clauses in the first chapter of Philippians, as the others file in to a semi-circle around Dr. John Piper and fill up the remaining, available seats. Piper fiddles with his document lamp so that the text leaps on to the projector screen. As demonstrated by the most recent Desiring God National Conference, “Look at the Book,” Piper is preeminently a teacher from the text of scripture. Class begins as sixteen voices join in five verses of the hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” Piper follows song with a reflection from Jeremiah Burroughs, and all read along from The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, one of the course textbooks for this book study on Philippians. For Piper, the discipline of arcing, which he learned as a student under Daniel Fuller at Fuller Seminary, imitates the attitude of the Puritans toward Scripture. “The Puritans are penetrating,” Piper announces. “They go for the marrow.”
source and goal. Christ is the all-satisfying reality we were created to know and love. Therefore, to be lackadaisical about the truth is to be unloving.”
A proclaimer at heart
For Piper, this new season of life in the classroom has given him more unrestricted time to spend studying scriptures in preparation for his classes and alongside his students. As he describes it, “The greatest privilege in the world is to know and love God through his treasure-laden, self-revealing word. None of God’s self-revelation outside the Bible can lead to salvation. Nor can it fill in the spectacular contours and colors of the indistinct impression of majesty that comes through nature and conscience. But the Bible! O the Bible! What a treasure chest of holy joy! In this book we can really know him. It is his own word. And it is inexhaustible. Therefore the prospect of being able to spend the last chapter of my life on earth going deeper, and taking aspiring preachers with me, is irresistibly attractive.” Piper’s return to the classroom has generated a lot of enthusiasm among “Treat them like gold” the students. When asked what he found different between Piper’s preaching Piper takes yet another minute to clarify why he has his students arc and teaching, second-year student, Adam Polhman remarked, “ Surprisingly every passage they bring to class: “Arcing, alone, does not take you to the they are not much different. He is at heart a proclaimer.” Classmate Luke marrow of the text; Bostrom agrees, “Pastor arcing is the beginning John still preaches to us of understanding, not in the classroom.” For the end, but it does Danny Francis, Piper’s eliminate dozens of preaching only made misinterpretations.” His him seem more familstudents use it to begin iar when he entered their exegesis. And as the classroom: “I feel as Piper walks through if I already know him his arc of the text on from his sermons I’ve the projector, students heard and his books join in, offering other I’ve read.” Ben Katterrelationships between son, also a second-year each of Paul’s phrases and student who works with clauses. “I am looking the high school youth to see that your arc is at the Downtown Camconsistent with itself, not pus of Bethlehem Bapthat it matches mine,” tist Church also finds Piper reminds them. Piper’s preaching and As Piper passes back teaching similar. “Now, arcs, diagrams, and study in the classroom,” he questions from the week “...John is unleashed again to do what he loves most, teaching students to think through says, “we get to see the the Greek text for the feasting of their own souls and the feeding of the flock. ” Tom Steller before, one complains, kind of motor that is “Pastor John, I am havunder the hood. He ing trouble reading your is still single-mindedly notes in the margins.” To which Piper responds without missing a beat, “Prepassionate for the word. We knew that about him before. Now we see how tend my notes on your homework are from an illegible, handwritten manuthat plays out in his exegesis tool shop.” script of Jonathan Edwards, and treat them like gold.”
A way of loving students
Dr. John Piper has returned to teaching in the classroom after a year’s writing sabbatical in Tennessee. Academic Dean Tom Steller describes it, “Pastor John has been serving Bethlehem College & Seminary in the classroom for years, primarily teaching the preaching class. Now for the first time in over 30 years John is unleashed again to do what he loves most, teaching students to think through the Greek text of the New Testament for the feasting of their own souls and the feeding of the flock.” Piper himself sees his teaching role as a way of loving his students. When he spoke at the school’s inaugural convocation he announced that: speaking the truth is a form of loving students just as falsehood is a form of hating one’s students. For Piper, this means running hard after truth in the classroom, as he summarized, “Amazingly Paul says, in his famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love rejoices in the truth.’ That means that we do most good for people when we are passionate to know the truth. The ultimate reason this is true is that Jesus said, ‘I am the truth’ (John 14:6). In other words, if we see all things truly, we see them in relation to Christ as their
Simply, “Pastor John”
Students have been continually encouraged by Piper’s disarming humility. Luke Bostrom laughed when asked what it is like to sit under such a highprofile professor, “I remember on the first day of class, one student asked Pastor John how he would like us to address him, given the many titles he has. Pastor John smiled and said, ‘I’m not going to answer that question.’ So some of us call him Pastor John, some Dr. Piper, some just ‘professor.’” After a month in the classroom with Piper, for Clay Harris, a seminary student on staff with Cru, Piper is “now simply Pastor John. As with many of our other professors his competence, passion, and pastoral heart break through any preconceived barriers I may have had.” For Piper, the ability to train future pastors in such a close and concentrated setting has long been a strong desire: “Now, the dream I once had is a reality: I get to teach men who are so close to church ministry we can taste it together. I have never regretted 33 years in the pastoral ministry of preaching. Now I am thrilled to be able to teach generations of men who will take up that great work.”
Spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. 1