What Would You Tell the Next Generation of Church Leaders?

By John Piper, Christian Post Guest Columnist Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

If at the end of your life you could say one thing to the next generation of church leaders, what might it be?

This is risky, because I know how it could be misused by people who don't like me anyway. But I think I'm going to say to them on my death bed, "Make the Bible the supreme intellectual and emotional authority in your life, for the sake of magnifying Christ in the fullness of his person and his work, so that generation after generation preserves the foundation and the capstone of the glory of God in Christ, and the grace that is the apex of that glory."

I'm a Calvinist, and I'm not going to go there, because I believe I got my Calvinism from the Bible. If I didn't get it from the Bible, then I don't want people to be Calvinists. So it seems better to say, "Hold fast to the Bible. Base everything on the Bible. If you are going to criticize somebody, criticize them from the Bible. If you are going to affirm somebody, affirm them from the Bible. If you are going to do a strategy, do it from the Bible. Be a Bible saturated people." That's what will make for long term staying power for the gospel.

I know this is going to be called bibliolatry, and people will say, "You worship the Bible, not God." Bologna on that. People who reject the Bible for God become idolaters. The only God worthy of knowing and loving is the one we meet in and discover through the Bible. I do want him to be everything, and the Bible is secondary compared to him; but if we try to say him or something about him without stressing the foundation of the Bible, then we will lose what we are trying to preserve after a generation.