Piper’s Potential Writing Projects

1. Make a serious beginning on a longer book on divine providence, perhaps called something like Sightings of the Sovereignty of God. The idea here is to encompass all of Scripture and show from it the hundreds of ways God reveals his absolute sovereignty over all things. This would probably take more than one writing leave.
2. Write a shorter book called perhaps Reasoning with Jesus: Thinking for the Glory of Christ.I have most of the raw material for this already on paper in several messages. The idea would be to provide a plea, perhaps especially to younger people, to devote their best mental efforts to understanding and living out the Christian faith.But it would be for everybody and would be different from lots of books about the intellectual life in that it would be largely expositions of Scripture. What does it mean to love God with our minds? How important is education (which is not the same as “school”)? What are people doing with their minds today that makes Jesus angry?
3. Preparing the Ruth cycle of Advent poems for publication without Christmas endings so that in the next year we can put together a suite of materials on Ruth including the book I just finished (Ruth: A Sweet and Bitter Providence) and a set of video messages on the book to be recorded next December.
4. I dream of writing a children’s book. It may be as small as one of the old Arch Books, retelling biblical stories in poetry form. Or it may be a little longer and more substantial in parabolic form.
5. There is churning in me a book on issues of race and ethnicity in the church and in America. If I live, it will be done. It’s a matter of timing. I never feel qualified to write it. But, as with marriage, I may just have to do it anyway and let the chips fall where they may.
6. I might be stirred to do one more book on justification.What needs to be done to complete the picture I have drawn in the first two books (Counted Righteous in Christ and The Future of Justification) is a biblical exposition of how “works” function in relationship to justification. This would involve a treatment of the nature of the faith that justifies, and how it relates to works.
7. Make a serious beginning toward publishing the Romans sermons in four volumes, possibly editing one volume per year for four years.

Read the whole thing here.

Preaching and Holy Hypocrisy

Ministers are noteworthy of their calling. All preachers are vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy. In fact, the more faithful preachers are to the Word of God in their preaching, the more liable they are to the charge of hypocrisy. Why? Because the more faithful people are to the Word of God, the higher the message is that they will preach. The higher the message, the further they will be from obeying it themselves. ~ R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

Are you teetering closely to the edge of holy hypocrisy or are your sermons doable bits of moral advice? Are we pressing into the Word of God to encounter his holiness and grandeur or finessing deliveries to impress men with our personal insights? We have to ask ourselves, are we preaching higher and higher messages that threaten our discipleship with the promise of sanctifying joy or are we preaching lower messages that promote a numbing nominalism?

Role of Counseling in Mission

The Lausanne movement is a historic expression of evangelical mission. Some of the world’s finest theologians, missiologists, and practioners have contributed to the Lausaunne movement. In a recent article, a task force reported on the role of counseling in mission. Counseling is traditionally viewed as a critical part of pastoral ministry. How might it be missional? Have you experienced missional counseling?

Also check out:

• Cape Town 2010: A Global Platform for the Arts
• Lausanne Younger Leaders Gathering West Africa

Fight Club: Peer Discipleship Groups

Less than a year ago I preached a sermon on Gospel-centered Fight Clubs vs. Eckhart Tolle’s higher consciousness. As I closed the sermon I dreamed out loud that one day our city would be filled with lots of little fight clubs, gendered groups meeting to help one another beat up the flesh and believe the promises of God. The response was remarkable. People started asking for tools and methods right away. I wrote up a “how to” piece and then published an article on Fight Clubs. They became viral in our community. As a result, people are fighting sin and treasuring Christ more than before.

We vowed that Fight Clubs would remain an organic, viral thing that is relationship based and would not compete with our primary community structure—City Groups. No sign-ups. Now that our church has grown considerably, I preached another message on Gospel-centered Mortification this Sunday from Colossians 3:5-11. Again, the response was remarkable. Even unbelievers are interested.

Our minister of Missional Community will be leading a three week discussion group on Porn Again Christian at a local bar for the next three weeks to help guys fight sexual sin in particular. Our hope is that this will serve as a stepping stone into Fight Clubs. We’ve seen a lot of fruit from this peer-based discipleship. Not only does it fit our generation, it promotes Christ-adorning discipleship, and it can be missional.