Hansen Young, Restless, Reformed

A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2100-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

From places like John Piper's den, Al Mohler's office, and Jonathan Edwards's college, Christianity Today journalist Collin Hansen investigates what makes today's young Calvinists tick. Church-growth strategies and charismatic worship have fueled the bulk of evangelical growth in America for decades. While baby boomers have flocked to churches that did not look or sound like church, it seems these churches do not so broadly capture the passions of today's twenty-something evangelicals. In fact, a desire for transcendence and tradition among young evangelicals has contributed to a Reformed resurgence. For nearly two years, Christianity Today journalist Collin Hansen visited the chief schools, churches, and conferences of this growing movement. He sought to describe its members and ask its leading pastors and theologians about the causes and implications of the Calvinist resurgence. The result, Young, Restless, Reformed, shows common threads in their diverse testimonies and suggests what tomorrow's church might look like when these young evangelicals become pastors or professors.

Collin Hansen (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the vice president for content and editor in chief for the Gospel Coalition and the executive director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and wrote Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation. He is an adjunct professor and cochair of the advisory board at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. You can follow him on X at @collinhansen.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hansen, Collin

Leseproben

CHAPTER TWO: Out of Bethlehem

BETHLEHEM BAPTIST CHURCH, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

February isn't the best time to visit Minneapolis. But I couldn’t complain, since for months I had persistently lobbied for an interview with John Piper. Now I had an appointment, his last available time before undergoing surgery for prostate cancer and leaving on a five-month sabbatical. Bethlehem Baptist Church offered the sabbatical to their pastor upon serving them for twenty-five years.

The weather didn’t let me down. It was just as cold as I thought it would be. In the dead of winter downtown Minneapolis seemed in hibernation. Pulling up to the church, I couldn’t believe how close it was to the Metrodome. For years my family watched Twins baseball games nearby, unaware of the thriving if outwardly nondescript church around the corner. Later I learned Piper frequently employs the Metrodome as sermon fodder. Imagine how Puritan preachers chastised their congregations for itching to visit the theater after church and you’ll understand Piper when the Vikings play on Sunday afternoon.

Bethlehem is neither fashionable like Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, nor sprawling like Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Community Church in west suburban Chicago. Bethlehem lacks that most characteristic megachurch feature—ample parking. Good thing I showed up early.

The Saturday evening service felt surprisingly casual. Then again, Minnesota’s Scandinavian culture eschews formality and downplays controversy—two reasons I’ve always been surprised that an intense, controversial pastor like Piper settled here. Still, there was no mistaking Piper’s stamp on the worship service. The congregation sang “I Am on the Battlefield for My Lord,” a black gospel hymn that reflected both Piper’s commitment to racial harmony and his theological mentality. After the singing, he invited a member of the congregation to stand and recite the week’s “fighter verse.”

With cancer and sabbatical on his mind, Piper struck a personal note in his sermon. He consciously avoids premeditated humor, but he couldn’t help but draw a few laughs from the congregation that evening. “I want you to know it would be my delight to serve you until I’m seventy years old,” he said. Decades in Minnesota have failed to eradicate his southern accent. “I’ve said to the elders many times, ‘Look, as soon as I start saying unintelligible, stupid, embarrassing things, would you just mercifully and quickly call me emeritus?’” The audience’s relaxed chuckles indicated obvious affection for their longtime pastor.

Piper’s sermon, based on 1 Corinthians 1:10–31, aimed to make sure that affection for him didn’t hold up the church while he stole away for the summer. Unlike some popular preachers who deliver generic Bible messages, you could tell Piper had prepared his sermon with certain church members in mind. He called out a couple of elders—not by name—who said the church goes into a holding pattern when Pastor John is gone.

Piper hit his stride as he cast a vision for his church. It would be an understatement to describe Piper as animated in the pulpit. His gestures match his theology. Piper lifts the gaze of his audience toward a mighty, transcendent God. “Would it not be just like God to choose a time when the big-shot preacher is away to bring the greatest awakening—the greatest ingathering of souls, the greatest giving, the greatest sending, the greatest season of signs and wonders, the greatest worship, the greatest impact on the world?”

The passage’s repeated descriptions of God calling and choosing did not escape Piper. If his calling card is God’s glory, Piper has also become known as an ardent advocate of Calvinism. His sermon fused these two interests. “That’s how all of you got saved who are saved,” he said. “And you will give God a lot more glory if you know it and embrace it and praise him for it. The cross became irresistibly beautiful. You could not but freely embrace it.”

At sixty years old, Piper is the chief spokesman for the Calvinist resurgence among young evangelicals. Ten years of Passion conferences have introduced him to a generation of young evangelicals. More than three thousand pastors heard Piper deliver a keynote address in 2006 at Together for the Gospel, which also featured R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur. The conference organizers—Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C. J. Mahaney, and Al Mohler—seemed ever conscious of the stoic man seated directly in front of them in the first row, watching over them for three days like a grandfather observing his son with grandchildren. Nearly every story I heard while traveling included lessons learned from at least one of Piper’s many best-selling books, especially Desiring God.

“John has the gift of catching the attention of young thinking people and getting them excited about thinking as an exercise, because he himself does it so passionately,” theologian J. I. Packer told me. “He gives them the sense that passionate thinking is at the essence of real life.”

I visited Piper in Minneapolis to find out how he has caught the attention of young evangelicals. What’s so captivating about his passion for God’s glory? What is bringing Calvinism back in style? I also wanted to meet the youth who sit under his preaching every week. What’s so appealing about a pastor who cites Jonathan Edwards, a long-dead Calvinist who got fired from his church? Do they really buy into total depravity and unconditional election? Finally, I planned to explore a common critique of Piper, that so-called Piperites pledge him unhealthy allegiance. I traveled to Minneapolis because you can’t study Calvinism without dropping by Geneva.

After the evening service, Matt Van Zee stuck around to answer some of my questions. Casual dress and an earring might have branded Matt with the emerging church. Arms raised during worship might have pegged him charismatic. He quickly assured me that despite the last name, he knew nothing about the Dutch Reformed tradition. Matt said he first learned about Calvinism while attending a Christian high school in the Twin Cities area.

“When we first learned what Calvinism is, it struck everybody like, ‘Whoa, God predestined? That’s really terrible.’” I’d guess most Calvinists have either shared this thought at one point or at least heard others react that way. Matt started reading the New Testament for himself as a junior in high school. Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 stuck out. “Calvin wasn’t just being difficult,” Matt said. “He was seeking to systematize what I was seeing in Scripture.”

Matt didn’t consider his story to be unique. “People are brought up with one conception of Calvinism as the stale ‘frozen chosen,’” he explained. “Or they’re like me and haven’t previously read the Scriptures themselves, so when they do they’re like, ‘Whoa, wait a second. There is a pretty strong theme throughout the Old and New Testament of God’s extreme sovereignty over the wills and decisions of people.’”

Matt’s pastor would be pleased with how the twenty-five-year-old described Calvinism to me. Mere knowledge is not the end of Calvinism or any other theology. Theology should drive a Christian toward transformation—toward greater worship of God and more powerful service for his sake.

“Calvinism is such a comfort and a means to follow Christ more passionately,” Matt said. “I feel pretty overwhelmed by my sin a lot of the time. And when I evangelize, I reach this point with people where I can’t convince them. I’ve studied; I’ve tried my best. And what do I pray for? God, break their heart. Make the cross irresistibly compelling so they just see there’s no other hope.”

I could already tell Matt didn’t fit the buttoned-down bookworm stereotype of Calvinists. Despite strong convictions, he didn’t seem eager to wield his theology as a sword. When studying at Bethel University, Matt steered clear of the late-night dorm debates when fellow students clashed over grace and free will. “I just want people to have a biblical position,” he said. “If they’ve searched Scripture and honestly come to the conclusion that Arminianism is the truth, good.”

Still, Matt couldn’t help but wonder how many evangelicals deny God’s sovereign purposes for the same reason he did at first—because he didn’t want to concede that much control to God. He sure doesn’t have that problem now. Like other young Calvinists I interviewed, Matt has made his peace with hard doctrines. A Charles Spurgeon quote comes to mind: “I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine.”1 Non-Calvinists have longed chafed at this sort of response, which they say alienates unbelievers. Calvinists, in turn, argue that some Christians have compromised biblical fidelity for apologetic appeasement.

“It seems like there is this urge to defend God for things he doesn’t even defend himself against,” Matt explained. “There’s a search to let God off the hook for problems in the world as if he’s not in control of them, when in the Bible there are passages like, ‘Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?’ [Amos 3:6] And in...