Last week I began an interview series I am calling “Meet the Ministries.” This is an opportunity for us to meet some of the Christian ministries available to serve us. The first interview featured Grace to You. This week I’m glad to share an interview with Matt Perman, Director of Strategy for Desiring God.

How and when did Desiring God begin?
Desiring God as an organization began in 1994. An elderly couple had been in charge of the weekly sermon tape ministry since John Piper began preaching in 1980. But in 1994, they suddenly decided to retire. So John Piper went to his ministry assistant at the time, Jon Bloom, and said “I’d like you to take over the tape ministry.”

As Jon Bloom gave this some thought, it stood out to him that more and more people were contacting the church requesting John Piper’s books, sermon tapes, articles, and other resources. These requests were all being handled by different staff members.

So after a few days of praying and pondering these things, he went to John Piper and suggested that they create a coordinated, proactive strategy for using resources to spread the vision of God that so many of us have come to love through John’s preaching and writing.

John Piper said, “That’s a great idea! We could call it Desiring God Ministries.” The name of the ministry comes from John’s foundational 1986 book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, which basically articulates the core concepts that we are about.

Jon Bloom became the first person on staff and things continued to develop from there. Jon remains the executive director today. He is the best at telling this story, and was recently interviewed by Tim Smith of Mars Hill church in Seattle on how DG started.

Why does DG exist? What are its chief goals and key emphases?
Desiring God exists to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. That’s our mission and reason for being.

We believe that God is supreme in everything. Further, his supremacy is most clearly seen not simply when we know truth about him, but when we also delight in Him. The things of God are very great; but this greatness is not reflected if we remain neutral about God or carry on as if nothing is different.

For example, if I bring my wife flowers on our anniversary and say “no big deal, Heidi, it’s my duty,” she is not honored. But she is honored if I say to her, “I love being married and I’m so glad it’s our anniversary.”

Likewise, when we rejoice in and treasure God - rather than remain neutral or devoid of any emotional response - He is honored. He is shown to be great (which is the purpose of life, by the way) and worthy of praise.

Here’s how we put it: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

It follows from this that joy is not simply icing on the cake. Rather, we ought to seek joy. We ought to seek joy. This is what the Scriptures command (Psalm 37:4; Matthew 6:21; Philippians 4:4; Psalm 97:12) and model (Philippians 3:8; Psalm 43:4; Hebrews 12:2). Yet so often the idea has crept into the church that somehow it is bad to want to be happy. That desiring to be happy is sinful.

But the problem with the human race is not that we want to be happy. The problem is that we seek happiness in the wrong things-in things outside of God (see, for example, Jeremiah 2:13). And the great irony here is that this results in less satisfaction.

It results in less satisfaction because those things ultimately cannot satisfy. The idea is often out there that the most exciting life and the greatest happiness comes from following the values of the world—either for outright sin or domesticated comfort—and that if you become a Christian you must give up the desire to be happy and perhaps even settle for a boring life.

But this is exactly backwards. The greatest satisfaction is in God, not outside of God. When we aim for the joy that the world offers, we are settling for less, not more. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “The problem is not that our desires are too strong , but too weak.” Then he continues: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the sand because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

So Desiring God is here to say: The desire to be happy is good, not sinful. That is not your problem. But stop seeking your satisfaction in temporary, fleeting pleasures that have no value. Seek real and ultimate satisfaction. Pursue your joy in God, who is supreme in all things and the only lasting source of joy.

One last thing here: This message is not contrary to the also very biblical emphasis that a life of radical service for God and others often involves suffering, and that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Instead, this truth is precisely what enables us to bear up under suffering.

We are able to endure suffering and in fact “rejoice in our suffering” (Romans 5:3) because our joy and hope are in God, not the world. So even when everything goes wrong, we can be like the saints in Hebrews who joyfully endured their trials because they knew that they “had a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34) or like Moses who “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26).

The message of Christian hedonism is not a chipper happiness, but a deep-seated joy in God that therefore enables us to engage in radical deeds of love and to truly grieve over the brokenness in the world. We are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

How can DG serve the readers of this web site?
I love this question because it gets at a few more of our dominant emphases as a ministry.

We have made all 29 years of John Piper’s sermons, conference messages, articles, and even books (except when a publisher wouldn’t let us) available on our website for free and without registration.

We did this because it is one of the most effective ways that we know how to fulfill our mission to spread a passion for the supremacy of God by helping people fan the flame of their joy in God.

So I would say to your readers: Our website is at your service. Everything is there and everything is free because our aim is not to make money, but to help you find your joy in God.

So read, listen, and watch the resources whenever, wherever, and however you want to help fuel your joy in God. If you are interested in some specific ones that you might want to start with, here are a few that I would recommend:

• If you are interested in a book, you might enjoy Desiring God or Don’t Waste Your Life. Again, you can read both of these online for free, along with many others.
• If you are interested in a sermon or conference message, I would recommend Passion for the Supremacy of God part 1 and part 2 or A Passion for the Supremacy of Christ—Where He is Not Named. Each of these messages can be either read or listened to.
• If you are interested in an article, I might recommend Rebuilding Some Basics at Bethlehem: Christian Hedonism or Thoughts on Why Everything Exists.
• If you are interested in a biography, I might recommend reading or listening to Piper’s biography on the life of William Wilberforce.
• If you are interested in browsing all of our resources by topic or Scripture, or browse through all of the sermons by date, you can do that as well.

You may also be interested in subscribing to our blog. And if there is a product that you want to buy but which you don’t have the funds for, please make use of our whatever-you-can-afford policy.

Why do you post everything online for free?
When you asked about how Desiring God could serve the readers of this site, I pointed to our website. So it makes sense for me to talk a little bit more about why we post everything for free and how this relates to our view of serving.

The call to be God-centered entails a call to serve others before yourself. The two greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40). Jesus said that he came “not to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). And Paul said “let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 4:4) and pointed to Jesus as an example (4:5ff).

It can be easy to think that this applies only to us as individuals—that individuals should put others first, but organizations are different. They should focus on survival.

But that’s not how we think. We want to follow the example of Christ organizationally as well as individually. We want the grace and mercy of Christ to be reflected as fully as possibly in what we say and in what we do.

So Desiring God is here first of all to serve. Survival is not our first priority. We do not exist to exist. We exist to be of use to others in the building up of their faith. And so we will do this even at cost to ourselves.

This is why one of our core principles that we don’t want money to be a hindrance to people. To help keep money from being an obstacle, we’ve had a “whatever-you-can-afford” policy from the start, and that’s why when we got to the point where we were able to post all of John Piper’s sermon audio online, we posted it all for free.

We don’t believe that this is the only way to do things. But for us, this is the best way that we know how to demonstrate the gospel in what we do, in addition to what we say.

A corollary of these things is that we aim to reduce all obstacles—that is, all friction—to spreading, not just the monetary ones. By doing this, more people can access the resources and spread them more effectively.

Consequently, our vision when it comes to the internet is that we post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

Each of these four things goes to the issue of removing all possible friction that might slow down or hinder the process of spreading. If you don’t put everything online, but only some things, there are helpful resources that people won’t be able to access at all. If you make people have to pay to access material online, you introduce friction into the process and slow down spreading.

And if you wall up your content behind a registration gate, you similarly introduce friction into the process and many people will just move on to something else rather than deal with the hassle of registration.

Another source of friction that is not as obvious, however, is a hard-to-use website. If a website is hard to use, people will have a much more difficult time finding the resources that will be most useful to them. They will waste time and energy trying to figure out how to use the site rather than being able to focus completely on the content itself.

So when we undertook our major website redesign a few years ago, we made usability the core, governing philosophy of the redesign. We re-architected the site from the ground up on the basis of principles of usability so that the site would hopefully be as easy to use as possible and, consequently, introduce as little friction as possible into the process of accessing resources.

Our aim behind all of these things is to remove all friction to accessing our content because we believe that is the right thing to do, we believe it best reflects the gospel for us, and we believe it best serves people.

Who are the key leaders within the ministry?
Other than John Piper and the board of directors that oversees the ministry, some of the key leaders in the ministry are: Jon Bloom, executive director; John Knight, director of development; Terry Kurschner , director of finance; Matt Perman, director of strategy; Scott Anderson, director for networks & partnerships; Lukas Naugle, director of resource productions; and Eric Johnson, director of marketing and internet.

How many employees does DG have?
We have 38 employees plus about 50 regular volunteers.

What is DG’s annual budget? How is the ministry financed and how do you ensure financial integrity?
Our annual budget is currently $5.5 million. About half of our budget is financed through donations. The rest of our budget is financed through resource sales, conferences, and the bookstore that we run at conferences and at the church. Also, John Piper donates all of his book royalties to the ministry and takes no salary from Desiring God.

In regard to the donation side of things: Our donations largely come from what we call “an army of small donors” rather than a few large donors.

Some of these donors have chosen to be a part of what we call the “Philippian Fellowship.” Basically, this is a group of about 2,100 friends of the ministry who have committed to faithful pray and/or give financially to the ministry. Members of the Philippian Fellowship receive weekly prayer requests and other information as well.

The ministry of Desiring God would not be possible without our donors. When I say that our aim is to serve, not be served, I don’t mean that we have the misguided notion that we can do this by ourselves. I mean that we are not in this for what we can get out of it. And that our desire in all that we do is to see people benefit, not increase donations. But we do need donations in order to continue. Those who share the vision of what we do are critical partners in the ministry. And I think that one of the things that they value about Desiring God is that we are not about money.

We ensure financial integrity through several means. The independent consulting audit firm, Larson Allen, currently advises us on internal controls and conducts our annual audit. We are members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. And our director of finance, Terry Kurschner, is a man of incredible integrity and detail whom we are blessed to have over our finances.

How do you expect DG will be different in ten years? Twenty years?
It is really hard to say on this, because we couldn’t have even seen where we would be today back ten years prior. And the pace of change in the external environment has only increased. So we have a few principles that guide us in the way we go about discovering the future which I will share.

First, our mission and values govern everything that we do. Along with our affirmation of faith, they constitute our “core.” The core provides the constant that you need to successfully navigate change and to develop in a way that is effective and remains in alignment with your DNA.

Having a core is critical to remaining adaptable and flexible. In fact, as Jim Collins has argued, the fundamental dynamic of any organization that is effective over time is the concept of preserve the core and stimulate progress—and to create mechanisms that weave this dynamic into the fabric of the organization.

This principle doesn’t tell us how things will change, but gives us something more important: an understanding of how to move forward into a future that is radically changing for all types of organizations. Critical to DG in all stages will always be our mission to spread.

Second, DG develops more like a story than a blueprint. We didn’t know or plan—indeed, couldn’t have known or planned—what things would be like today when we started 15 years ago. So our approach is not to blueprint out a future that we cannot control anyway. The result would be a lot of frustration, dead ends, and wasted time.

Instead, one of the key ways to progress in the midst of ambiguity is through incremental progress. That is, through a few tangible mechanisms that drive progress while acknowledging that we are very limited in what we can know about the needs and context of the future environment.

One of those mechanisms—which arose naturally at DG from the very start—is the principle of “try a lot of stuff and keep what works.” You don’t know what will always be best in advance, so you try a lot of things. The things that work, you keep and build on. And by that means, the organization develops and advances incrementally according to what it is good at and what is needed.

This is one of the fundamental ways to “build on strengths,” which Peter Drucker rightly said all organizations must do. And it allows you to adapt intelligently to the future, without having to think you can predict it.

Third, and closely related to this, are the talents and strengths of our people. We believe that people are most effective for an organization when you put them in positions where they can play to their strengths.

Your strengths are what you are good at, what you love doing, and which align with the goals of the organization. As people focus on their strengths, new capabilities and initiatives develop, and these are the lines along which Desiring God has largely grown over the last 15 years.

Fourth, the concept of evolutionary progress, like a story, is best complemented by a twin principle of discontinuous and intentional progress. A good example here is that of setting a big, clear, compelling, and even audaciously large goal that focus the organization on accomplishing a certain major task over the long-term. Jim Collins calls these “BHAGs” in his very helpful book Built to Last.

Having a big goal like this aligns the organization and creates unity and collaboration, and a sense of excitement. It also gives concrete intentionality to the future of the organization.

At the same time, like the concept of evolutionary progress, BHAGs reflect the fact the future cannot be largely known or controlled by us. A BHAG does not attempt to script out or blueprint your future in detail.

Rather, a BHAG defines the broad strokes, and evolutionary progress fills in the rest of the details. In this way, you combine intentionality with flexibility, charting a course without defining everything in advance, and thus remaining adaptable to an uncertain future environment.

I think that this also best reflects the fact that God is sovereign over the future, not us, while also upholding the fact that we are indeed to be intentional and make plans (Proverbs 16:9).

I don’t want to belabor this point, but Collins has a great statement in Built to Last on how Jack Welch utilized this combination of intentionality with organic growth at GE:

Instead of directing a business according to a detailed … strategic plan, Welch believed in setting only a few clear, overarching goals. Then, on an ad hoc basis, his people were free to seize any opportunities they saw to further those goals. This crystallized in his mind after reading Johannes von Moltke, a nineteenth century Prussian general influenced by the renowned military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, who argued that detailed plans usually fail, because circumstances inevitably change.

I think that is very helpful, and biblical.

We came to an understanding of our 5- to 10- year BHAG a few years ago, which we’ve expressed in a one-page document that we call our “vision statement.” Here’s our current BHAG:

We want to see millions of people around the world more accurately understand the Bible and increase in their love for Jesus Christ by reading, listening to, and watching our resources at the times and locations that are most helpful to them, and eagerly sharing these resources with others.

In pursuit of this vision we will, joyfully and by God’s grace, develop an integrated global distribution network that makes our resources accessible at any time, at the lowest strategic cost, in the most effective formats, to the most effective spreaders.

We can do better at communicating this constantly among the staff here, and I’m working at mechanisms for doing that right now as we speak.

But wherever we end up in ten or twenty years, it will likely be somewhere along the lines of the aim we have expressed in this BHAG, plus whatever comes about as a result of the evolutionary progression of the Desiring God story and allowing our staff to work within their strengths.

And all of the progress, growth, and development that happens will be in alignment with, not contrary to, our core. We will preserve the core and stimulate progress.

How does DG work with other Christian ministries?
We want to see every sound ministry be as effective as possible. We see ourselves as one small piece of a much larger picture of what God is doing. And we want to see the entirety of God’s kingdom flourish and advance. So we are eager to do whatever we can to serve the wider picture of God’s work in the world.

To get to specifics here, there are a few things. First, it really stands out to me that there is at present a truly remarkable spirit of camaraderie among gospel-centered ministries. Part of this is reflected in the extent to which we are all able to learn from one another and mutually encourage one another. This is largely informal, but it is very significant and, I think, very beneficial.

Second, one of the most significant ways in which we work with other Christian ministries comes through John Piper’s speaking. He invites other pastors, theologians, and ministry leaders to speak at our conferences, and he is often invited to speak at theirs. We have especially significant interaction with the T4G and Gospel Coalition affiliated ministries.

Third, we seek to partner strategically with churches. Our regional conferences, which we hold in various parts of the country once or twice a year, are an example of this. They provide an opportunity to partner with a church or network of churches to carry out the conference and equip people in the church and wider area with resources.

We also partner with churches for large-scale give-aways. Every year, for example, we do a case lot special in which we make a certain book available for about a dollar per book. Churches can purchase these books in case quantities at that rate for the purpose of distributing large numbers of books.

Fourth, we partner with churches and ministries as the opportunity arises for collaborative projects that are strategic for the mission and promoting resources. This is sort of a new area that is developing.

Fifth, our growing international outreach division is entirely based upon the premise of partnerships. Our international outreach director, Bill Walsh, looked at the task of helping equip pastors and leaders in the developing world with much-needed resources, and said “if we take a top-down, centralized approach to this task, we will be able to do almost nothing.”

A centralized approach where we, for example, set up offices in different countries and seek to distribute resources would never scale. So the approach we are taking to international outreach is to identify partnerships globally of ministries and churches and individuals that we can equip to do the work of spreading internationally. This is a core philosophy of our international approach.

The last point to make here is that partnerships with other ministries and churches is more and more becoming a major priority for us. It is something that we are pursuing with increasing intentionality and which we see developing in an even more significant way over the next few months and years.

What are some of the ways DG has seen evidence of God’s hand of blessing?
Now this is a tough question, Tim, because the last thing that I want to do is say “hey everyone, look at how God is using us!” We realize that we are quite small, that the office supply budget of a company like Apple is probably larger than our entire annual budget, and that we are imperfect and flawed. But, I see your point and will try to say a few things.

First off, we are grateful for anything and everything that the Lord is doing through our very imperfect efforts. Any good that does come through the ministry of Desiring God is simply grace.

Second, we are amazed at the remarkable people that God has brought on staff at Desiring God. This is a very substantial blessing that may not be the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks how God has blessed the work of the ministry, but it is absolutely critical. We do not take for granted that without the quality and spirituality of the people that we have, we could not do what we do.

Third, he has blessed us with an incredible team of supporters-people who hold the rope for us in prayer or financial giving or both. People are praying for us. And our financial support has been better than expected through these challenging economic times.

Fourth, we see evidence of God’s blessing in the resource spreading that has been happening. The growth over the last four years or so has been especially surprising. At present on our website, we receive about 1 million visits per month and 3 million page views per month. There are about 18 million audio and video streams and downloads per year and 225,000 online product orders per year. There are about 23,000 subscribers on the blog.

Off-line, John Piper has authored more than 40 books, with over 6 million books sold in the United States. There are 226 translated books into 26 languages other than English.

We know that numbers do not automatically equate with the blessing of God, and that numbers are not the most important component of God’s blessing. But that does give a picture of the spreading that God has brought about so far, and for which we are very grateful.

Last of all, and most significant, are the testimonies that people send us. That’s how we really know if we are having an impact. We are blessed and amazed at the stories that come our way from people each day.

Speaking personally, how has working closely with John Piper impacted you as a person?
In more ways than I can count. First of all, John Piper has taught me more about God than anyone else. He has profoundly affected my worldview, which in turn affects everything else.

Second, I learned from John Piper that we should “expect great things from God; attempt great things for God” (William Carey). His emphasis that risk is right and that we should dream dreams for the kingdom rather than coast through life is a constant spur to action for me.

Third, I spoke earlier about how one of the convictions we have is that we are here first to serve, not be served. And that this has ramifications in all sorts of ways and had an impact even on the way we thought about the website when it came time to do the major redesign. This mindset is one of the biggest things I’ve learned from John Piper, and I don’t even think he knows that he models this.

Over the years, often in casual conversation, I started noticing a recurring emphasis. When we’d talk about the website, for example, he would talk about making it easy to use for people - long before I had done any research or reading on the subject, or even knew that there was a body of literature on that (and I don’t think he knew that at the time, either). He would talk about how the importance of anticipating people’s needs and being generally thoughtful. How we shouldn’t wait for there to be a problem to see what we should address; we should think ahead about what people will need and make it right to begin with.

As I mentioned, I don’t think he was trying to teach anything in these comments; he was just describing the way he thought about things. But it would come up in a noticeably frequent way when we would talk about things like the website and such.

I kind of “caught” from this the general principle that trying to anticipate people’s needs and be thoughtful about them is an implication of Christian service and love. If we love God and therefore love others, we will seek to do good for them and serve them - and we will seek to be proactive in doing so.

This has influenced the way I thought about everything—the website (make it usable), our resources (make them free), management (think of serving your employees and the world first, not surviving), the Christian life in general (we are to be consistently and remarkably doing proactive works of good for others and the world), and more.

Everything boils down to: Christians are here to do good for others, to the glory of God. We aren’t here to build up our own comforts, but to expend ourselves in radical deeds of love. This is because God is good, God seeks our welfare, and God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him - and therefore we can risk and let go of comforts here because God is our satisfaction and strength, not the things of this world.

John Piper teaches this explicitly and there are some incredible sermons on these things, but it is the impact of working with John personally that most forcefully and significantly taught me this mindset and gave me this desire. I certainly have a long way to go, but this is how I think and what I aspire to be as much as God will enable.

How can the readers of this web site serve and support DG?
Thanks for asking, Tim. While the most important thing to us is simply that people come to see God for who he is, we absolutely need and cherish the involvement of everyone that feels called to be a part of what we are doing.

There are three main things the readers of this site can do to serve and support DG: Pray, pass the word, and give. In that order.

So if you can only do one thing, pray. If you can do two things, also pass the word. If you can do three things, consider giving and maybe becoming a part of our Philippian Fellowship.

Here’s how you can pray: Pray for John Piper’s speaking and writing; pray for the website and that God would use it to build up his people in joy and faith; pray for wisdom and effectiveness for our growing international outreach department; pray for our staff; pray that we would be faithful to God’s word; pray for our continued efforts in spreading that as many as possible would see the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

If you want to spread the word, here are some resources that you might be most interested in pointing people to:

• Our website or blog
• The message “Let Your Passion be Single,” which is Christian hedonism unpacked in a single message.
• The message “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain.”
• The article “The Goal of God’s Love May Not be What You Think.”
• The sermon “Sustained by Sovereign Grace - Forever”, especially for those who are going through difficult times.
• The book Desiring God or Don’t Waste Your Life.

Last week I reviewed Bill Farley’s new book Gospel-Powered Parenting. I recommended it highly, saying it had “just the right combination of affirmation (your struggles are universal struggles, your joys are universal joys) and exhortation to both encourage and challenge me in all the right ways.” After I reviewed it, I found there were a few things I wanted to ask the author. I went ahead and asked if he would be willing to do a brief interview about the book and he was kind enough to do so. I trust you’ll enjoy his answers as I did.

1. Why the gospel? Why is the gospel the key to empowering parenting? What is the connection between the words “gospel” and “powered?”
Paul tells us that “the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). We hear this verse and think the pulpit or witnessing, but parents should hear this and think family devotions. Parents convinced that God’s power is latent in the gospel center their families around the gospel. They are convinced that it provokes new birth, that it will knit their children’s hearts to God, and motivate godly behavior. Our children receive the “imperishable seed” of new birth through the message of the gospel (1 Pet. 1:23). Often parents don’t center their parenting in the gospel because either they don’t really understand the gospel, or they don’t believe that God’s power is latent in the gospel.

The gospel also protects parents from “moralism,” the idea that well-behaved children are the main thing. New Birth is the main thing. The morality of Christ imputed to your children is the main thing. It is not what our children do for Christ but what Christ has done for our children that is the main thing. Ironically, without aiming at it, gospel centered parents get godly behavior from their children.

In addition, the fear of God is the key to attracting God’s favor upon our parenting. Many think that the fear of God is an Old Testament concept. But the main place we get the fear of God is at the cross of Christ—the heart of the gospel.

2. Today we are hearing the word “gospel” everywhere (at least, those of us within a certain subset of the Christian world). Do you think there’s a danger that it could become cliche? Could gospel begin to lose its meaning when it’s applied to everything?
When the gospel becomes “clich” Christianity has become irrelevant. The center has been displaced. That is because the gospel is the main thing. It is the center of the Bible. The Old Testament predicts it. The gospels recount it, and the epistles look back to explain and apply it. I think the recent surge of Gospel-centeredness is really just a resurgence of biblical Christianity.

This may sound strange to many Christians. To many the gospel is “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” But the gospel is deep. It is a well with no bottom. The more we understand it the less apt we are to stray from it. It starts by assuming the bad news. We are in trouble. Our default condition is Hell. God owes us nothing but justice. We are all running pell mell toward damnation. We cannot solve this problem by being good. We are in profound trouble.

The gospel is the “good news” that solves this problem. It reconciles enemies—God and man—and makes them friends. It opens the gate of Heaven to all who believe. It infuses Christians with an indomitable hope. It motivates love, grace, and forgiveness.

In my view, this new Gospel-centeredness is a profound deepening of the faith. It is what really matters. I believe there will be tremendous long-term fruit from the recovery of this emphasis.

Those who understand the gospel never get tired of hearing it. I watched my son preach on penal substitution last Sunday, and even though I covered the same ground ten weeks ago, the congregation was transfixed. Despite the fact that this message is the ABC of the gospel, my congregation would listen to it every week and keep coming back for more. What I am trying to say is that the gospel is not something we start with so that we can pass on to the deeper truths. It is the deeper truth.

The thesis of my previous book, Outrageous Mercy, is that the gospel teaches us everything we need to know about God, man, eternity, Hell, Heaven, how to get into Heaven, what God loves, and what he hates. In addition, it teaches us everything we need to know about how to live. If all of this is true, it must also teach us about parenting. The point of Gospel Powered Parenting is that it does.

3. We want to affirm, of course, that it is well within the rights of any Christian parents to homeschool their children. We want to affirm that this is often a wise decision for parents. Yet in Gospel-Powered Parenting you explicitly mention that your five children, all of whom are believers, went to public schools and state colleges. You emphasize the importance of an offensive mind-set. Do you find that, at least for some Christian parents, homeschooling is really just one aspect of a larger defensive mind-set?
Many things motivate home-schooling—a desire for a better education, the longing to mingle the gospel with academic subjects, the desire to cast our children in a biblical mold, and a longing to protect them from evil influence. What I am saying is that if protection is the main thing, or the only thing, we might be in trouble.

Let me be clear. I am all for home-schooling and/or private Christian education. Although my children all graduated from public High School, my two oldest daughters went to a private Christian school for several years, and we home-schooled my youngest during his Junior High years. None of my fourteen grandchildren are in public education today. My oldest daughter taught in a classical Christian school for twelve years. I am not against home-schooling: I am against a fear-oriented, defensive mindset. Home schooling does not necessarily presume this mentality.

4. What are the potential dangers in this?
The potential dangers are primarily reactionary. You could take this idea to an extreme and fail to protect children when you should. That would not be helpful. I am not saying that you shouldn’t protect your children from some influences. I am just saying that “protection” should never be our primary strategy. Isolating them from worldly influence by itself is seldom productive.

5. What does an offensive mind-set look like in parenting?
An offensive mindset targets the child’s heart not the child’s external environment (friends, music, school, etc.). In order to reach their child’s heart effective parents focus on their relationship with the child. Rather than fearing the world’s negative influence, they focus on the gospel’s power to influence their child. This parent worries more about their example to their child rather than the world’s example. This parent waits patiently for New Birth rather than assuming it because a child was baptized, or made a confession of faith at a summer camp.

6. Why is it such a temptation to try to control, or over-control, our children’s’ environment? Why do parents need to guard against this?
I think it is a temptation because our default condition is independence from God. We think our influence is the deciding factor in our child’s character development. It isn’t. Ultimately, the influence of God trumps all of our efforts. God gives New Birth. We can’t give it to our children. Our children can’t take it. It is God’s gracious gift (Mt 13:11, Mt 16:17,Luke 19:42; 24:16, 24:31, 24:45;Jn 1:12,13;Jn 5:21;Jn 9:39; Jn 6:39,Rm 9:10-24; Eph 1:1-6; 1Pe 2:9). Therefore, and this is crucial, pleasing God is the most important thing a parent can do to move God to regenerate their child. This means that effective parents are God-centered not child-centered. Their focus is always on God, not their children. Fearing God is one crucial way that parents can please God. We learn this fear at the cross. That is why I call it gospel powered parenting.

7. Do you feel that some Christian parents allow fear to be a motivating factor in the education of their children?
Yes, this is sometimes true. I am a pastor. I have watched parents try to protect their children into God’s kingdom. Fear of worldly influence is often their motive. Sometimes they are home-schooling families, but not always. When a parent thinks “protecting” their child from the outside world is the main thing, they are saying something. They are saying that Christianity equals “moralism,” (pleasing God through outward behavior), that obedient children are the main thing, that the child’s problem is “out there” rather than within his own fallen nature. Sometimes they assume that their child is basically good. Negative influence will corrupt that goodness. Therefore, protecting their child will enable that goodness to flourish. This mentality also assumes that New Birth has little power to equip a child to conquer temptation.

8. How can a parent guard against moralism? Isn’t there huge temptation, perhaps especially when we are within view of other Christians, to judge parenting by the outward shows of immediate obedience and other potentially-moralistic standards?
Moralism is the assumption that we make ourselves acceptable to God with good behavior. It is the deadly enemy of Christianity. It is the one thing that all non-Christian religions share in common, and the rejection of moralism is one crucial doctrine that sets Christianity apart. The Bible says God accepts us because we believe, not because we perform.

Moral behavior is important, however it is not the ultimate goal of parenting. New Birth is the final goal. Morality matters because it glorifies God. Our children will never be moral in a pleasing way to God until their hearts are changed through the miracle of New Birth, and even then, their morality will never makes them ultimately acceptable to God.

So, to answer you question, the only way to guard against moralism is to understand the nature of New Birth, to understand justification by faith alone, and to aim all of your parenting efforts at these targets. Parents that center their families around the gospel tend to get these results.

9. Why did you and your wife make decisions about educating your children?
Our children were in public schools during the years 1980 to 2000. We put them in public school because of the convictions mentioned above. There was a Christian sub-culture at their High School. They made their friends there. Generally, they prospered spiritually.

However, I must make some caveats. First, public education has degenerated since our kids were in school. We might do differently today. Second, we made some mistakes. We were not flexible enough. Some of our children easily withstood peer pressure. Others struggled. Looking back, we probably should have put the children that struggled in private school or home-schooled them. In short, I am not making any rules about where your children should be educated. The Bible takes a different tack. It stresses the role of the father, the importance of parental example, and the fear of God taught by the gospel.

10. How will you know if this book has been a success? What do you hope for it?
I will not know if this book has been successful until I am with God in eternity. I will feel successful if I meet saints who came to New Birth because their parents read this book and changed their approach to parenting.

There are a vast number of ministries serving the church today. Though I am familiar with many of them (by name at least) I have often wondered what each of them offer to us, and what we can offer to them. I thought it might be useful to offer a series of interviews with some prominent ministries to ask just this kind of question—who are you?, what do you do?, why do you exist?, and so on. It is useful, I think, even to know the size of the budgets of these organizations and the number of people they employ. You may be surprised at how big (or how small) some of these organizations really are. So over the next few weeks I will be interviewing representatives from many of these ministries. I trust you will find the interviews interesting and hope they will show you how different organizations are seeking to serve the Lord in such different ways.

First up in the series is Grace to You, a ministry that I am sure is familiar to most of us as the teaching ministry of John MacArthur. In this interview Grace to You is represented by Phil Johnson, the original Pyromaniac. Kudos to Phil who (remarkably) typed this whole interview on his iPhone while flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Those thumbs must be throbbing.

How and when did GTY begin?
This year marks the ministry’s 40th anniversary. We technically started with a handful of volunteers on John MacArthur’s first Sunday as pastor of Grace Community Church. There was a man in the church who coordinated the recording of those earliest sermons on reel-to-reel tape. His plan was to make a few copies to send to missionaries. He would make the copies by daisy-chaining tape recorders together in his living room and duplicating tapes in real time. He was doing this on the first Sunday John began pastoring the church, and that first Sunday’s sermon is still in the GTY catalog. It’s titled “How to Play Church.”

Right away, people began to request copies to send to friends and relatives. The guy who was doing the recordings kept having to recruit volunteers to meet the demand for tapes. That was the genesis of Grace to You (known as the Word of Grace Tape ministry in those days).

John’s first Sunday at Grace was in February of 1969. By the end of ‘69 the ministry had outgrown that living room and was moved to the church and placed under the oversight of the elders.

Cassette tapes were fairly new and unknown in 1969, but the need for a more efficient way to duplicate and distribute recordings drove the elders to the new technology. The cassette format made it possible for tapes to be duplicated at high speed and distributed by the thousands.

Tapes were cheap: $1 apiece. And within 5 years the ministry was distributing a million tapes a year. (We get that many downloads in a typical month today.)

In 1978, because of the persistence of one volunteer (named Norm Sper), a daily radio broadcast featuring John MacArthur’s teaching began airing in three cities (Baltimore, Tampa, and Tulsa). Known as “Grace to You,” the program was 30 minutes long, meaning only half a sermon could air each day. Industry experts insisted the format would not work; sermons should be aired on weekends in an hour-long format. Daily programs needed to be live talk or studio-based teaching, they said. Sermons were too impersonal.

John Macarthur himself was skeptical of the format and wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the prospects of radio at first. But Norm and a staff of enthusiastic recruits worked tirelessly to get the broadcast on the air, and it was immediately successful.

I was living in the Tampa Bay area when “Grace to You” debuted in the autumn of ‘78, and I was a devoted listener from day one.

I came to work for the ministry in 1983, and in 1985 we formally merged the Word of Grace tape ministry with “Grace to You” radio. The resulting organization became a standalone, nonprofit parachurch ministry under an independent board, and we soon adopted “Grace to You” as the name of the consolidated ministry.

Why does GTY exist? What are its chief goals and key emphases?
Our purpose statement speaks to that very point:

As believers committed to God and walking in obedience to Him, we affirm the purpose of Grace to You, which is to teach biblical truth with clarity, taking advantage of various means of mass communications to expand the sphere of John MacArthur’s teaching ministry.

We use mass communications media to expose John’s teaching to as wide an audience as possible “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-13).

One of our principal tasks is to protect believers from being “tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (v. 14). We accept the God-given responsibility of “speaking the truth in love” (v. 15) and strive for the growth of the church and glory of the Lord, rather than the praise and honor of men.

Our role is not to supplant the local church’s ministry, but to support it by providing additional resources for those hungering for the truth of God’s Word. Media ministries can never substitute for involvement in a biblical church, group Bible study, or interaction with a teacher. Yet we sense the need for more in-depth resources, evidenced by the many Christians and Christian leaders worldwide who depend on our ministry to supplement their own study.

Our desire is that God be glorified through Grace to You’s resources. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of this ministry, and we desire to perform our work as unto Him, to reflect Him to all those we encounter, and to operate not in our own strength but through His power (Philippians 4:13).

How can GTY serve the readers of this web site?
We aim to supplement, not supplant, the ministries of local churches by providing resources for in-depth Bible teaching. Our most important ministries have pastors and church leaders in view. We also have a vital ministry to lay people who (for various reasons) aren’t finding adequate spiritual nourishment from the weekly teaching in whatever church they attend.

Who are the key leaders within the ministry?
John MacArthur, of course, and our board of directors. We also have a 6-man management team who oversee our staff on a day-to-day basis, I lead them, and Don Green (managing director) handles most of the hands-on administration. All our staff, starting with the management team, are supremely gifted. The second-newest guy on the management team has been there more than 10 years, so it’s a very stable ministry.

How many employees does GTY have?
Around 50 full time plus 175 volunteers who donate time and energy every week.

What is GTY’s annual budget? How is the ministry financed and how do you ensure financial integrity?
Our annual budget today is about $17.9 million. GTY is funded about 85 percent by donations from our listeners; 15 percent by sales of materials. We manage costs and expenditures carefully. We have been members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountavility (ECFA) since its inception. We follow standard accounting and reporting procedures, and we are audited annually by a large, independent accounting firm.

How do you expect GTY will be different in ten years? Twenty years?
I expect we’ll have some younger staff members and lots of new media. But we want to be faithful to our purpose statement, and to our doctrinal position. Both of those have remained unchanged for 40+ years.

J. Vernon McGee’s ministry is the model for our future plans. We intend to keep broadcasting John MacArthur’s timeless Bible teaching as long as people will listen—hopefully my successors will still be doing that even long after we’re all gone.

How does GTY work with other Christian ministries?
We obviously maintain an ongoing, informal partnership with our sister ministries, The Master’s College & Seminary and Grace Community Church. That’s a fairly close relationship, even though we are not organizationally connected in any way. It’s based on common ministry goals and strengthened by the fact that we affirm the same doctrinal statement.

We also enjoy friendly relations with a host of other ministries, such as T4G, ACE, Ligonier, Desiring God, etc. Our involvement with these other ministries ranges from conferences in which we are joint participants to staff relationships in which we often compare notes, share ideas, discuss common goals, and seek solutions to common problems.

Speaking personally, what are some of the things you’ve learned from John MacArthur while working closely with him in this ministry?
I’ve learned to appreciate the importance of diligent study, courage in the face of opposition to the truth, and various helps for better discernment. Also, I was pretty much an Arminian until I heard John MacArthur’s teaching on Ephesians 1-2, and that series convinced me that God is sovereign in election.

What are some of the ways GTY has seen evidence of God’s hand of blessing?
The long-term, steady growth of the ministry has been remarkable. No matter what crisis or financial collapse threatens the national economy, it seems God always supplies our needs. The only significant downturn our ministry has ever experienced was owing to bad decisions involving subtle compromises in our development philosophy. We have seen God supply our needs again and again, in miraculous ways, and as long as we have kept our focus on doing ministry rather than getting diverted by fundraising campaigns, every need we have is always abundantly supplied.

How can the readers of this web site serve and support GTY?
Pray for us, partner with us, and use the resources we provide to help spread God’s Word in an increasingly ungodly culture.

This morning I finish up my interview with Burk Parsons. Today he explains how he came to minister alongside R.C. Sproul and shares some of his dreams for the future. If you are just catching up, here are links to part one, part two and part three of the interview.

*****

How did you come to meet R.C. Sproul and to minister alongside him?
I first began listening to RC in 1994. Developing Christian Character was the first series I ever watched. In 1996 I attended my first Ligonier Ministries’ National Conference and met Dr. Sproul. For more than two years I hated Reformed theology and despised anyone who breathed words of Calvinism. I thought it was deadly, heretical, and against the very nature of God Himself. I was a serious Bible-college student, and, as such, had to study the Bible. My studies brought me to a serious crisis of faith late one night in a large field next to the parking lot of Sarasota Baptist Church when I realized that I can either believe the Bible as the authoritative and inerrant Word of God and thus accept the veracity of the doctrines of grace taught therein or reject the Bible as the Word of God. Of course, I had no other choice but to submit to the teaching of Scripture. But it wasn’t easy. It was a real crisis as I literally yelled out to God for direction and an answer. He answered me promptly with a needed admonition from His Word—my mind was immediately drawn to Paul’s stern words: “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Rom. 9:20 NIV). In the end, having fought against Calvinism with all the free will I could muster, when it came right down to it, it was the clear teaching of the Word of God that convinced me—through and through. In the end, I had spent all my resistance on something, and on Someone, I could not resist. For another two years then, I began to tackle the much bigger, and much more difficult questions of covenant theology, revelation and redemptive history, Israel and the church, infant baptism, church polity, and so on. I’ll spare you the details, Tim, for the sake of your current ecclesiastical and doctrinal associations (I’m smiling).

In 1999 when I started seminary, I needed a job, and the best thing I could find was working with Ligonier Ministries in their development department making calls every night. It was tough, but I had a job. After five months I began to work on frontline (where all the toll-free calls come in to Ligonier) sharing a desk with my dear brother (and one of the finest biblical and theological scholars around) Keith Mathison, we answered theological questions, counseled, and helped students find helpful resources from Dr. Sproul and others. A year later I was invited to help serve in the editorial department along with Keith, and so the story goes.

All the while, however, I was training to serve the Lord as a pastor, and all of my overseers at Ligonier were made aware of that. I was completing my internship as a candidate under care of the Central Florida Presbytery of the PCA, under the leadership of Bob Ingram. Before I completed my internship, several men from Saint Andrew’s approached me about coming on staff, but I needed to complete my two-year internship, and so I did. But when I finished it, in 2002 I made the decision to accept the second offer from RC and the elders of Saint Andrew’s to join the staff. When I met with the elders at their monthly meeting I explained that I was committed to them, to the congregation of Saint Andrew’s, and to RC for the long haul. In 2004 I finished seminary, and on July 18, 2004, I was ordained as a teaching elder (incidentally, I later found out RC was ordained on July 18, 1965).

In 2002, when I started, Saint Andrew’s was a five-year-old congregation, with about 300 or so in attendance, meeting together in a one-year-old beautiful sanctuary. Today, by God’s sustaining grace, the congregation has continued to grow spiritually as well as numerically through the conversion and transfer of both young and old who have left other traditions, i.e. Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist (well, truth be told many are still Baptists, and we love them), and have joined us in worship, discipleship, and outreach. Two Sundays ago nearly 1400 worshiped together in our new building—(some call it a cathedral). It is an astonishing, eighteen-million-dollar project that RC and I have prayed will not be the focus of our attention but a place in which God’s people will gather until Christ’s return to focus our attention on Him—a place from which we will continue to go out into the community and all the world to draw men’s focus to Christ.

What are the two or three most important things you’ve learned from ministering alongside Dr. Sproul?
That is a terribly difficult question to answer, Tim. As you can imagine, I learn things from RC every week. But it is absolutely crucial that I also say this: I have probably learned as much from his wife, Vesta, as I have from anyone in my life. Truth be told, she’s the backbone of the entire ministry, and she is like a mother to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express adequately what she means to me this side of the new heavens and new earth. She’ll hate that I said even that much about her.

Now, to attempt to answer your question: Among many things, I have learned the following three things from ministering alongside RC: Know the Lord. Know His Word. Preach His Word.

You are still young! What ministry have you been involved with and what do you think (or hope or dream) that God has got for you in the years ahead?
Good question. I am thankful to have a wife who is willing to go anywhere and serve God anywhere He might call us. I am thankful for children who have endured Uganda and are ready to do it again. I am thankful to have an overseer at Ligonier Ministries, Chris Larson, who is the most gifted and godly man whom the Lord has ever raised up to serve Him at Ligonier who wants to be faithful in supporting me in any ministry opportunities the Lord might provide me. I am thankful to have a group of godly elders at Saint Andrew’s who are dear friends and co-laborers in the Lord. There is a love and unanimity among us as elders that is hard to find. You could ask any of them, and they would say the same thing. I am thankful that I serve alongside a man who thinks more highly of me than I think of myself, really. I have a lower opinion of myself and my abilities than just about anyone around me, and I say that not because I am afflicted with false modesty, but because I am simply amazed how the Lord continues to sustain me and entrust me with more every day. We are not adequate in ourselves as to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

With that said, it has been RC’s express desire for some years now that I take his place at Saint Andrew’s after he has gone to be with the Lord. In fact, a few years ago I spoke with him about my anxiety of having to preach in his pulpit, and he quickly admonished me never to call it “his pulpit” but “our pulpit,” in which the Word of God is preached. If people only knew, RC has a more humble and sober opinion of himself than anyone I have ever met. Most weeks, he’s overcome at how God continues to bless the ministries of Saint Andrew’s and Ligonier. I feel the same way, we are two guys, one young (33) and one old (70) who are beside ourselves that God has chosen us to serve Him in His kingdom as shepherds of His flock. R.C. serves as an under-shepherd to Christ, and I serve as an under-shepherd to R.C.

I should also mention that in the autumn of 1999 I was on my knees praying that God would put RC Sproul in my life as my mentor, and that He would allow me to directly serve him in my life. It was an express prayer that I penned in my journal. To this day, my call is to serve him as I serve the Lord. He is my teacher, and a student is never above his teacher. My sincere prayer is that the Lord would sustain me in pastoral ministry all my life, and that I would remain faithful to God as I remain faithful to the legacy of faith of Dr. Sproul.

I am thankful to serve as editor of Tabletalk—it is a labor of love (well, I also get paid for it, thankfully)—it is something I hope to be doing the rest of my life. As the magazine continues to flourish (it’s amazing considering how many periodicals are unfortunately falling by the wayside), having well over 200,000 readers in more than sixty countries. It remains the world’s largest subscriber-based theological devotional, and it continues to gain the attentions of young and old, from 18-80, around the world—may God be praised. It is our hope to hold the line biblically, doctrinally, and ecclesiastically so that hundreds of years from now, if our Lord should sovereignly tarry (and I hope He doesn’t), that historians will look back and recognize that amid all the doctrinal turmoil of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries there was one magazine called Tabletalk that was faithful and held the line proclaiming the Word in season and out of season. Of course, the designers and other editors have a central part to play in all this, by God’s sustaining grace.

In the last few years I have had wonderful opportunities to serve the Lord in various ways, through conferences with men, such as Sinclair Ferguson and Thabiti Anyabwile (men way out of my league), and through the upcoming 2010 Ligonier National conference at which John Piper will be speaking (I’m terribly anxious; I hope someone will slip Piper some sleeping pills before I speak so that he’ll be sleeping somewhere while I’m speaking). God has given me wonderful opportunities to do some writing, writing not just to publish but to produce some things that I hope will truly help the church and meet real needs where there is nothing else available for the layperson. That’s really my desire, to help produce materials that anyone can pick up, read, and understand.

Although I was accepted to do Ph.D. work at Edinburgh in 2004, I realized that I already had a good job and didn’t think it would be wise to leave the opportunity God had provided me to serve Dr. Sproul. So a few years ago, I began a to work on a D.Min. through Reformed Theological Seminary under Steve Childers. I am just about finished with my course work. It has been a wonderful program and more rigorous and time consuming than I first thought. I encourage every pastor to pursue further studies. It forces us to interact with many authors that we likely would not otherwise (incidentally, Ligonier Ministries has just started a D.Min. program with an incredible line up of professors.)

Of course, none of us knows what the Lord has in store for us in the future, but I can tell you the desires of my heart. It’s funny, Tim, as I think about this, I already feel as if I have lived a full life, yet I have as much energy and passion for future kingdom service as I have ever had.

I hope to continue to live a simple life. My family and I live in the country, with many neighbors who still need Christ. My family and I spend a lot of time together, and I love every minute of it. I do a lot of work on our property; I still drive a truck, and I listen to old country music, bluegrass, and everything JS Bach ever wrote. I love to hunt quail and big game. I love to backpack with my band of brothers. I love to gather together with the men who are close to me, which I do on a weekly basis (they keep me honest, humble, and real, something all pastors, and all men ad women, need).

I hope that as a part of this simple life with my family the Lord will sustain me in serving Him a pastor of His flock here in north-central Florida at Saint Andrew’s as a hub for the mission field all around us (the world has come to Central Florida). I’m delighted to able to do some writing from time to time, speak at conferences from time to time, and continue to help train other ministers in the church and in the seminaries—but I am called first and foremost to serve the flock of God as a pastor to equip God’s people for ministry. That is my calling and my sincere delight.

Tim, lastly you asked about any hopes or dreams I might have. Well, here are just a few: While I have spent a great deal of time overseas teaching and preaching, perhaps when I’m in my forties, I’ll have the opportunity, by God’s grace, to spend about a quarter of my time overseas with unreached peoples and help convince many other Christians and pastors to do the same using their personal resources. Perhaps in my fifties, I will be able, by God’s grace, to establish a new kind of seminary that actually mentors, disciples, and equips pastors rather than simply gives them things to think about, memorize, and regurgitate. Perhaps in my sixties, I will be able, by God’s grace, to keep preaching in the church and help convince us that conference and para-church ministry is not ideal (something that Dr. Sproul firmly believes, incidentally), but that it is through the simple, ordinary-means-of-grace ministries of local congregations around the world that is where kingdom work is foremost accomplished. Perhaps in my seventies, by God’s grace, I will have good male friends with whom I can still talk about God and His Word and with whom I can still hunt, backpack, and change the world. And perhaps after I’m dead, something I look forward to almost daily, my children and children’s children will know the Lord by God’s grace, and that all those whom I have served will continue to point others to the Cross.

*****

Once more I’d like to express my appreciation to Burk for participating in this interview. As you can tell, I’m sure, this was no small commitment for him.

This morning I continue my interview with Burk Parsons. You can find part one of the interview here and part two here.

*****

Yesterday I began an interview with Burk Parsons. You can read the first part here. The interview continues today…

It was several years ago now that I first met Burk Parsons. If you know Burk (or know his name, at least), it is probably through a connection with Ligonier Ministries or Saint Andrew’s Chapel (where R.C. Sproul is Minister of Teaching and Preaching). At Ligonier Ministries he serves as Editor of Tabletalk Magazine while at Saint Andrew’s he is Minister of Congregational Life. When I first met him it did not take long for someone to tell me a little bit of Burk Parsons trivia that quite surprised me. A mutual friend asked, “Did you know that Burk used to be a member of the Backstreet Boys?” I assumed he was joking but snooped around just a little bit and found out that it appeared to be true; before he was a seminarian and before he was a pastor, Burk was a member of a boy band—and one of the world’s most famous boy bands of all time, at that.

This was something I had to know more about. Recently I asked Burk if he would be interested in talking about those days. The facts of what happened and how he walked away from untold worldly wealth and fame has never really been told, at least not beyond his circle of friends and associates. Yet it is a tale worth telling, I am convinced. As we did this interview, as I heard Burk tell about his call to ministry, about his desire to serve the Lord even at great cost to himself, about the wisdom, even as a young man, to realize that he could not serve two masters, I was greatly encouraged. And I hope and pray and trust that the same will be true for you. Burk’s story is interesting on a human level (how does someone get to be in a boy band and what on earth would compel someone to walk away from such fame?) but there is much interest even beyond that. His story has something to teach us all since his story is just a piece of God’s greater story in which Burk’s chapter, right here and now, gets to intersect with our own.

This tale cannot be told properly without going into some level of detail, and for that reason the interview will be posted here in a few installments. Today Burk will tell about his life and family, how he became a Christian and how he knew that God had called him to the ministry. In the days that follow he’ll talk about his days with Backstreet Boys, tell whether or not it is true that he was also made an offer by which he would be the guy at the front and center of ‘N Sync, and learn about how he came to minister alongside R.C. Sproul. I hope you will check in day-by-day.

Let’s get started.

*****

Tell me about yourself, Burk—your family, your job, your ministry.
Amber and I have been married nearly ten years. Amber is a sweet southern Florida lady and the oldest of seven children. She grew up in a Southern Baptist home with a father and mother who pray together as a family every morning before her father (a law-enforcement officer) goes to work. By His grace, the Lord has provided me an overseer and mentor (R.C. Sproul) who is insistent that I have plenty of time to spend with my wife and our children, Claire (5 years old) and Elizabeth “Lizzy” (2 years old). We hope to have more children, possibly through adoption. As you know, I serve as the associate pastor at Saint Andrew’s in Sanford, Florida, where Dr. Sproul serves as senior minister. I have served the congregation for eight years, and I have had the honor of serving churches, on staff or as intern, for about fifteen years now. I also have the great privilege of serving as editor of Tabletalk, the monthly Bible-study devotional magazine of Ligonier Ministries, where I have served for more than ten years now. Many people ask how I do both—serving as pastor and editor. It’s really quite simple, I serve the people of Saint Andrew’s all week, and I have set aside Fridays for my Tabletalk and Ligonier related meetings. On Friday mornings I go to the Ligonier offices to pray with the great group of men I have the honor of serving with at Tabletalk, and then I usually lead our weekly devotional time at Ligonier Ministries. Next, I meet with my overseer and dear friend Chris Larson (Exec. VP), and then go into planning meetings with the Tabletalk editors or designers. Often, I do my writing and editing in the early mornings and evenings. Of course, every day of the week I discuss pressing matters with the other editors, and every Wednesday I gather with RC and Vesta Sproul to discuss the ministry of the church and, secondarily, matters involving Tabletalk and Ligonier.

When and how did you become a Christian?
I first heard the Gospel when I was thirteen. My Father (at 65 years of age) had just recently trusted Christ after having lived apart from Christ and the fellowship of the saints most of his life (incidentally, he was the son of a small-town Presbyterian pastor in Missouri in the 1920s and 30s). For my thirteenth birthday, my father told me he wasn’t going to get me a gift but that he was going to take me to hear someone speak at Farhills Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio. The man we went to hear is Arthur Blessit, the fellow who carried the cross around the world in the 1980s. All I remember is my father’s tears after the service. In fact, every time we went to church he cried after the sermon. It always seemed to me his tears were those of a life wasted unto self. He was a very successful man in the world of politics and fundraising.

After hearing the Gospel for the first time, I began to hear it all the time, and every time I heard it I responded doing whatever the preacher told me to do—raise my hand, walk an aisle, stand up. Over and over again, I responded to the call to repent and believe—it was the only thing that made any sense to me.

Tell me about your call to the ministry. When and how did you know that God had set you apart for the ministry?
After coming to Christ, the Lord immediately put me under the care of several gracious men who mentored me—these men came from Southern Baptist, Mennonite, Pentecostal, Charismatic, and fundamentalist backgrounds. Our Lord used them mightily in my life. They were godly pastors and teachers who pointed me to the Word and to our Lord (as I write this, Tim, it’s early morning; I’m in my study at home, and I cannot hold back my tears as the Lord reminds me of these men—it is sobering). They shepherded me with humility and wisdom.

Since the time of my parents’ divorce when I was eleven, considering all that kids have to struggle through when their homes are divided, I was forced to question everything I thought I knew—I was forced to consider the end for which God created the world and the end for which He placed me in it. These are questions every kid thinks about I suppose, but I sincerely asked them and desperately needed answers. And when the simple, clear Gospel of Jesus Christ consumed me at my conversion, my questions were answered. From that point on, the only thing that really made any sense to me was Gospel ministry. It was the only thing I could see myself doing, and it was clear in my mind what the Lord was calling me to do. At fifteen, I was a pretty serious kid, for better or worse, and I always found myself struggling with the deep issues of life and death, which is generally the case with most kids who have to endure the divorce of their parents. God used my parents’ divorce to drive me to depend on Him alone.

*****

Go to Part 2 where I ask, “People may have heard rumors in the past that you were an original member of the Backstreet Boys. Is this true?”

On September 28, 2008, I was shocked to read these words on the blog of Terry Stauffer, a man I had met at a couple of conferences and who has long been a reader and commenter at my blog: “Last night at about 4:45 our precious 14 year-old daughter Emily was attacked and killed as she was out for a walk. We don’t know a lot of details, but we know that two young men came upon the scene right away, but it was too late for Emily. I will write more as more details come available. Please pray for us, for our church family who are meeting without us right now, and for family that is travelling. We are realizing from the inside the value of good, Gospel theology right now. ”

Terry is pastor of Edson Baptist Church in the small town of Edson, Alberta. Emily’s murder shocked this small town of less than 10,000 people—the kind of town where this crime is unheard of. I continued to follow Terry’s blog as he dealt with the aftermath—Emily’s funeral, national media attention, the arrest of a suspect and life following the loss of a child. Through it all, Terry’s faith strengthened me from afar. I recently asked Terry if he would be kind enough to participate in an interview and I am grateful that he was willing and able to do so. I offer this interview in the hope that it encourages you in the Lord who promises (and delivers) strength as strength is needed.

*****

In a short note you posted on your blog the day after Emily’s death you wrote this: “We are realizing from the inside the value of good, Gospel theology right now.” Tell me about the value of that good, gospel theology as you began to grapple with the reality of what had happened.
In recent years, my wife and I have been learning that the gospel puts everything else into perspective. Reading good theology books, listening to gospel-centered messages and reading our Bibles with Christ at the center has become a real passion for us. God was preparing us in many ways for Emily’s death. In the past couple of years, we have been growing in our understanding of sin and grace. Submitting to what God says about our sin is essential to understanding the good news.

Perhaps the greatest power of a gospel perspective the understanding that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person - not even the death of a child. The worst thing for anyone is to face the wrath of a holy God in his or her sinful condition. We are by nature children of wrath. Christ absorbed that wrath for us on the cross to bring us reconciliation with God. Of course, the hope of Emily’s resurrection (and ours) because of Christ’s bodily resurrection cannot be overstated - this is our sure hope and it keeps us going.

On a more personal level, on the first morning after Emily’s death, I was overwhelmed with thoughts about what her last minutes must have been like. In the middle of that desperation, I remembered, “Christ was forsaken so that Emily didn’t have to be.” In fact, I wrote that “good gospel theology” line only a few minutes after this realization. Emily’s Saviour brought her to Himself, and Emily is safe and secure, full of joy inexpressible and full of glory. That is a great comfort for us.

As you began to plan for Emily’s funeral you wrote, “The funeral for Emily will not be a celebration of her life, though she will be appropriately honoured. We desire this service to be Gospel-saturated and glorifying to Christ our Redeemer. I can honestly say that’s the way Emily would have wanted it.” How did you use the occasion of her funeral to bring glory to Christ?
We had a sense that Emily’s funeral would be well attended by the community and it was. Her murder rocked our small town - things like this just don’t happen in Edson. We knew that there would be many non-Christians there and we wanted them to hear about Christ and the life that He alone gives.

For ourselves, we just had to major on the gospel. We began the service with the song, In Christ Alone. That gave Juanita and me the strength to make it through the service. The beauty of the gospel is that it fits every need and every occasion. We were in a sense selfish in that we did what we needed to do for our own souls, that is, worship God and cling to the Gospel. But that’s just what everyone else needs, too, even if they aren’t aware of it. If someone doesn’t believe, they need to hear the gospel. If a person is a Christian, they will long for the refuge and hope of the gospel.

We did speak about Emily, we did honour her by sharing memories and a projected slide-show of her life. In her testimony, Juanita said, “I could talk a lot about Emily.” However, we needed to confess God’s glory more than anything that day.

The funeral was widely covered by the media. What kind of reaction was there to this gospel-saturated funeral?
We braced for the media’s spin, or sensationalism, but we were pleased with how respectfully they treated us and relayed the gospel message. I would have liked to have seen more, but compared to our expectations, we were relieved.

We’re still waiting to see what God is going to do in the lives of some people that we were able to talk to. We have heard stories from all over the place about how people have turned to or turned back to the Lord, and for that we are very thankful. We’re still praying for several people that need to come to Christ and hope to hear more stories of grace as time passes.

We could relay several testimonies that we’ve heard about. We’ve been brought to tears several times when we’ve heard stories of how God has used Emily’s death to point people to Christ. 

During Emily’s funeral you said, “When Emily’s death was confirmed on Saturday night, I was shocked and bewildered. All I could pray was, ‘O Lord, Help! Help! Help!’ As I was on my knees, a thought came to me: ‘If all my talk about the Gospel and God’s goodness is not true now, then it was never true.’” Tell me about that, if you would. How did these words sustain you through such pain?
In moments of despair - that first night was just one of them - it was almost as if God put His hand on my shoulder and said, “Courage, now. Go back to the truth - trust me.” I easily spiral down into my own thoughts and feelings, but God is gracious to remind me of His presence and His Word. These times of despair (sometimes they felt like panic attacks) were very humbling, but God kept bringing His Word to mind (sometimes through a song or a hymn), or He drew me to read the Psalms.

In those early days, some people would say, “You’re so strong!” I would suppress a chuckle because I knew the truth. I have never felt so weak and helpless in my life. We said - and say -that God is carrying us. That is so true, and it is deeply humbling. Though I have believed and treasured the gospel for many years, God’s truth has never seemed so utterly true! 

Tell me about the role of the church, and especially the local church, in the days following Emily’s death.
We thought we knew what a great church we have, but we really had no idea. Emily’s murder was a terrible shock for everyone, and people were so helpful and so gracious. We needed the church so much, and they came through.

The first Sunday we were back at church was two days after Emily’s funeral. People were surprised that we were back so soon, but we needed to be there. I was amazed at the tender strength of everyone involved. The songs, scripture readings and sermon faced death head on. There was no equivocating - they saw the enemy and confronted it with the power of the cross. Though we shed a lot of tears that morning, we were significantly encouraged.

People from all the churches in town served us so well, as did many from the community. We were overwhelmed by these expressions of love. Though it was hard to be on the receiving end of so much kindness, we came to realize that these people wanted to do something because they were grieving too - even people that didn’t know Emily personally.

Practical ways we have been served:

• Meals for over a month
• The loan of a house so we could get away to Edmonton for a couple of days in the week following the funeral
• Housecleaning
• Gifts for the children - money, stuffed animals, journals and books and a family swimming pass were only a few of the ways they were encouraged
• Friends who completed a scrapbook of Emily’s life for the funeral (it was mostly done but needed about 20 layouts to complete it)
• Friends who put together a PowerPoint presentation for the funeral
• A friend who coordinated the mounting and presentation of some of Emily’s photography for the funeral
• The freedom for Terry not to preach for over a month
• Cards from all over the world - from people we know personally to complete strangers
• Encouragements and small gifts from online friends that have been sent over the months since Emily’s death
• Two quilts made especially for our family
• Friends who ask “how are you really doing?”
• Gifts of encouraging books and journals
• Prayers of God’s people - still continuing on

Scripture tells us that one of God’s purposes in suffering is to bring both the person suffering and other believers to greater maturity. Have you seen evidence of a growth in maturity in your life, your wife’s life, and the lives of other Christians?
First the short answer, yes, yes and yes.

For me, the biggest thing is that God seems much bigger and I seem much smaller. I think I take life more seriously, and I am more conscious of my sin. If I’m honest, I think I have withdrawn a bit as well; I’m not following up with people like I know I should. Knowing my weakness is a good thing. Submitting to my weakness is sinful, considering what I’ve been given in Christ.

I am amazed at the maturity of my wife, Juanita - and very thankful. She has pressed into God even more since Emily’s death, though her devotional reading was deeper and more consistent than mine before that. I see a growing sense of sensitivity to others as a fruit of this suffering in her life, among other things.

We see fruit of gospel perspective in the lives of several people. Thanks to this question, I’m reminded that I need to follow-up on this and express thankfulness for these evidences of grace to some of these people.

Has Emily’s death given you a different perspective on heaven and eternity? Has it made heaven seem that much nearer? That much more precious?
Absolutely. This has been one of the greatest lessons and benefits of Emily’s death.

One related story: During the last three weeks of August 2008, I preached a mini-series on Revelation 21-22. This led to a great conversation with Emily in early September as we drove to Edmonton (two hours away). That conversation on Heaven and future things is such a precious memory now.

A Spurgeon quote:

“Dear friend, have you found that trouble cuts the cords that tie you to earth? When the Lord takes a child, there is one less cord to fasten you to this world and another band to draw you toward heaven. When money vanishes and business goes wrong, we frequent the prayer meeting, the prayer closet and the Bible. Trials drive us from earth. If all went well, we would begin to say, “Soul, relax”. But when things go amiss, we want to be gone. When the tree shakes, the bird flies away. Happy is the trouble that loosens our grip of earth.” - From Beside Still Waters

Did you ever wrestle with questions of “why?” Do you still?
On a horizontal level, I find myself thinking, “What a waste.” Emily was so talented, growing spiritually, so alive that her death does elicit the question, “Why?” Her murder was so random - broad daylight on a busy path in a small town. It is still hard to process sometimes.

However, God brings me back to the truth of His goodness and sovereignty. We know that Emily’s death was not outside His will and plan for good.

There is a song, So I Will Trust You, from Sovereign Grace Ministries, Come Weary Saints that helps me get back to a healthy perspective at these, “Why?” times. God made me, He saved me, I know He loves me - so I will trust Him. I sang along with that song through gritted teeth a few times early on, but I’m thankful that as I confessed those words, my heart was encouraged.

How is the police investigation proceeding? Have they arrested a suspect and determined a motive?
The police arrested a suspect a few weeks after Emily’s murder, but as for motive, I have no idea. The case is before the courts now. It will be a long process.

Would you like to speak to the man who killed your daughter? If so, what would you wish to tell him?
Perhaps some day. We’re processing what forgiveness looks like in this case. From the day we were told of the arrest, we’ve been talking about honoring God in this whole process. I just preached a message on David and Bathsheba on Sunday and concluded by saying that God can forgive anyone from any sin, even if this forgiveness offends our sense of justice.

Repentance and forgiveness can be a complicated issue. We were given a copy of Chris Braun’s Unpacking Forgiveness and have found that helpful.

In this case, we don’t want to interfere with what is happening in the courts. We’ll take things one step at a time and keep praying for wisdom and courage to do what is right. We have certainly surrendered any sense of vengeance to God, and we are thankful for God’s grace in that.

One concluding thought:

We’re learning that God gives strength as we need it. When people say, “I could never be as strong as you,” I always think - and sometimes say - “I couldn’t either.” There’s no way either Juanita or I could have been prepared for the loss of Emily, or for the attention that we have received since her murder. God gives grace and strength step-by-step as it’s needed.

June 19 marked the beginning of Toronto’s annual Pride Week. Now in its 28th year, this is a week-long celebration of diverse sexual and gender identities. Here is how the organizers describe it: “Pride Week celebrates our diverse sexual and gender identities, histories, cultures, creativities, families, friends and lives. It includes a three-day street festival with over eight stages of live entertainment, an extensive street fair (including community booths, vendors, food stalls), a special Family Pride program, a politically charged Dyke March and the infamous Pride Parade.”

My friend John Bell pastors New City Baptist Church right in the heart of Toronto and has an active evangelistic ministry within Toronto’s gay village. I asked him if he would write an article reflecting on some of the joys and challenges in this unique ministry.

*****

It is Gay Pride week here in Toronto and Tim has asked me to write a guest post detailing my evangelistic efforts in Toronto’s LGBT-oriented community [LGBT stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender). I would appreciate any helpful insights or criticisms the readers of this blog can offer me, as well as your prayers.

I began this ministry two years ago while working as an intern in a downtown Toronto church. I was told that part of my internship duties would involve three hours of evangelism every week in a coffee shop or pub. This was not happy news. To be honest, I find this kind of evangelism very intimidating. “Cold call” is not my style; I’m too polite! As the pastor explained what he expected of me, a likely scenario played itself out in my mind: I approach somebody at Starbucks who is reading a book and drinking a latte. I introduce myself and ask if I may sit with them and talk. Naturally, they want to know my business, so I straightaway introduce the topic of religion or Jesus, probably sounding like the Mormons who came to their door the previous week while they were eating dinner.

Personally (and God uses all types, so I’m not making an absolute statement) I find this kind of evangelistic tactic less than ideal. I don’t know anything about this person, yet I have just interrupted their morning coffee to talk about what I want to discuss. I wanted my evangelism to get off on a better foot, to be more natural; I wanted to initiate the discussion in a way that was neither “rude” nor by way of a specious pretext (conducting a poll on spirituality, etc). Moreover, if I asked to sit and speak with a woman, she might think I was hitting on her. Of course living where I do, a man might think the same thing. Better to take the bull by the horns, I thought. I had never been to a gay coffee shop before but I thought (correctly) that gay men would want a complete stranger to sit with them and chit-chat, so that’s what I decided to do.

Toronto’s gay village is just a ten minute walk from where I live. The first time I ventured out, I prayed to the Lord that he would show me where to go and what to do and what to say. I was very nervous. I had no plan. I was certain I was going to see all manner of disgusting things and that I was going to be thrown bodily out of the establishment for disseminating fundamentalist hate. But I had to tell my pastor that I had evangelized for three hours that week, so I was stuck.

The Lord went ahead of me. I stepped into the first coffee shop I saw, a Timothy’s at Church and Alexander. I found out later that this is the gay coffee shop in all of the Greater Toronto Area. (See the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_and_Wellesley). Its clientele is mostly middle-aged men. I bought my coffee and looked around for a place to sit. The tables are very small and the seats are close together—perfect for evangelism, though I’m sure that was not the original intent!

The gay community in Toronto is very close-knit. Most of the men have known each other for years and everyone is on a first name basis. Many men are fixtures at this coffee shop. I have become friends with four of these fixtures: A– , who has severe cerebral palsy that confines him to a wheel chair (that does not impede his sex life, however; he told me he’s had hundreds of partners); D– , an HIV infected drag queen who was molested by a Catholic priest; J– , a civil servant, recently relocated from Ottawa; and C– , who works in the credit department of a national bank. These men have accepted me as their friend and have introduced me to other gay men, although they know I’m a straight, born again conservative Christian who does not condone their lifestyle.

I have talked to quite a number of gay men now—almost all of them white and middle aged. Many of them came out of the closet after having been married with kids. For whatever reason, 85% have come from Catholic backgrounds. That means that much of my evangelistic groundwork has already been covered. There is no need to explain that the bible has two testaments, or who Moses or Abraham were, or convince them of the historic factuality of the resurrection; for the most part, they believe it. I’m finding it’s the authority of scripture that I need to deal with the most.

When I first meet someone at the coffee shop and they ask me what I do (which is a natural “in” to introducing the gospel) they assume that I must be a liberal gay Baptist minister, because otherwise what would I be doing in their coffee shop? (The first man I talked to had only just broken up with his boyfriend, a Methodist pastor.) I begin by asking them questions. I get them to do all the talking for the next 45 minutes. I ask them about their job, their background, their family life, their personal life and what they believe and why so I can get a picture of their epistemology and worldview. Needless to say, I frame my questions in an inquisitive, slightly naive, polite fashion, not in an interrogative, formal way. Gay men love to talk (at least the ones in this coffee shop seem to) and people in general today enjoy discussing “spirituality”. Then, out of politeness, they will inevitably ask me what I believe. So I tell them the gospel, starting with Genesis 1, laying out for them the biblical storyline and worldview.

I have been able to share the gospel with many men over the past two years, even though I am saying things highly offensive to the gay lifestyle—which is actually their identity. I base everything I say on the authority of the word; that is, I make it clear to them that that is what I am doing, that I believe the bible is authoritative for all peoples in all cultures and times because it is God’s authoritative revelation to human beings. I stress this emphatically. And I tell them that the Bible condemns me, it condemns everyone. It condemns me as an idolater, someone who is selfish and sinful, who has de-godded God and installed himself in the position of “The Ruler of John’s Life.” I have done things in my life that I am ashamed of and oftentimes what I am ashamed of the bible calls my “sin” (I have found that gay men can relate very well to shame). I do not zero in on their homosexuality (which is what they expect me to do) but rather the fact that they are sinners. Now, more often than not, they will push me and ask if practicing homosexuality is a particular expression of their sinful disposition and I will not hesitate to tell them “yes.” When asked, I tell gay men that, personally, I have a “live and let live” approach to everyone’s sex life, but my personal opinion doesn’t count for anything if God, our creator, has declared otherwise. I tell them I know that I am sounding very intolerant and bigoted when I tell them that they are sinners and that their lifestyle is not pleasing to God. Who am I to tell another human being such a thing on my own authority? But then I explain that it is not on my own authority that I am saying these things. Rightly or wrongly, I am utterly convinced that the bible is the revelation of God. I am banking my eternal soul on it being so. It condemns me, but I have found salvation in Christ. It condemns you. I am here to tell you about the salvation that I have found in Jesus, that I believe you need, that the bible says he needs.

By presenting the gospel in this fashion (which is the same way I present it to heterosexuals) I have yet to have someone become outraged over my perceived intolerance—though I am sure that day is coming! In fact, being straight and conservative has worked in my favor because they see that I must really care about them to come into an environment where I’m a fish out of water to tell them a message that I know they will find offensive. And I do really care for them. Many of them come from backgrounds where they would have believed something similar to what I believe about the authority of God’s word, from a Catholic perspective, but have since “moved on.” Perhaps I am young and deluded in their opinion, but I’m a nice guy and they put up with it, because they can see that I love them, and often times they will say, “We will hear you again on this matter”. They like the fact that I am willing to be their friend, even if I don’t condone their beliefs. I think that shows an integrity and respect; they respond to it and are willing to reciprocate.

I do all this because I love the LGBT community. They are a community comprised of individual eternal souls. Sadly, they are culture that has almost no contact with biblical Christianity in any form. How many drag queens can count a born again Christian amongst their friends? Very few, to our shame.

I’m the pastor of a new church plant in downtown Toronto and it is my earnest prayer that God would use our people to impact this spiritually needy community. I pray for the day when transvestites can walk through our church doors and be greeted with genuinely warm smiles and Christian love. But before that day is likely to happen, they will need a Christian friend whom they have grown to trust; a person they know would never invite them to a place where they are going to be hurt or embarrassed publicly; a place where everyone is on level ground before the cross of Christ because all are sinners; a place where no one person’s sin is made out to be more repugnant than another’s; a place where all sinners can sit under the uncompromised preaching of holy Scripture and hear of the world’s only Savior and salvation in his name alone.

I pray that we would be more deliberate in this regard; that as God’s sovereign grace works through his faithful witness, the church, we would see more gay men and women come to Christ.

In 1997, Douglas Groothuis (Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary) published The Soul in Cyberspace. It was, as far as I know, the first Christian book that critiqued and contemplated the darker side of computer-mediated communication. Twelve years is a long time when it comes to technology (and digital technology in particular) but I recently read this book nevertheless, and was surprised by just how relevant it is, even today. Though cyberspace has changed and evolved a great deal, almost all of Groothuis’ concerns remain and almost all have grown even more pointed as the years have gone by.

I recently conducted a short interview with him, asking him to reflect on this book, twelve years on.

*****

One of your concerns in The Soul in Cyberspace was cyberspace taking the place of real, face-to-face human contact. You wrote, for example, of those who sought in cyberspace “the emancipation from the drag of the body?” How have your thoughts on this matter developed in the past decade? Have new innovations lessened your concern? Have your concerns been proven at all wrong?

With the rise of social networking—Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.—the temptation to avoid the face-to-face world has increased. There are more toys to distract one from this mode of being. I wrote of simulated worlds in The Soul in Cyberspace, but they had not reached the proportions of SimLife or SecondLife, which are entire “cultures” for the disembodied.

In your book you wrote, “The compulsive search for diversion is often an attempt to escape the wretchedness of life. We have great difficulty being quiet in our rooms. … Cyberspace may be the greatest temptation yet offered to humanity to lose its soul in diversion.” And this was written long before YouTube. Have things gotten any better in the intervening years? Have things gotten worse?

Yes, things are much worse. The diversions are accelerating at an alarming pace. Consider laptops. I recently had to ban them from my classroom at Denver Seminary because so many students were multi-tasking—shopping on line, checking email, and such like—while I was pouring out my soul lecturing. Now that they are illegal, students look at me and at each other more. Somehow, they still remember how to take notes by hand. However, one student admitted using his pocket device to look of the definition of a word I was using. If he could do that, he could also use text messaging and get diverted from the learning environment of the classroom.

Yes, some students will be responsible and only use the laptop to take notes on the template that I distribute or use them for genuine research related to the lecture. But given the pandemic mindset of multi-tasking, I cannot count on this kind of responsible behavior; so I banned them.

Like nearly anyone who writes on technology, you depended a great deal on the insights of Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan died 29 years ago and Postman died 6 years ago (though his last book was written 10 years ago). Does either man have a successor? Who is advancing their insights to the digital age?

I would add Jacques Ellul to that distinguished roster. He died in the mid-1990s. I don’t discern anyone contributing that quality of insight today—offering anything very original in a constructive sense of social critique. However, Quentin Schulz has brought together many solid insights in his book, Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age.

You wrote, “The digitized word does not abide forever.” Is there a way in which the digitizing of text has undermined, or stands to undermine, the immutability of the Word of God?

Not in the metaphysical or moral sense of Scripture as divine propositional revelation. It is objectively and eternally God’s holy disclosure of convicting, saving, and sanctifying truth. However, digitizing texts can destabilize our sense our awareness of its immutability, since texts can be manipulated so easily when they are in electronic form. Even the ready availability of Scripture on line can subvert one’s consciousness that texts are part of a larger argument, system, and narrative. We are less likely to lose the context when we read Scripture in book form. Nevertheless, having the text available for “capture” does save key strokes in my own writing. But efficiency has its trade-offs and draw-backs—something Americans are always reluctant to admit (or even recognize).

A quote from your book: “The book, that stubbornly unelectric artifact of pure typography, possesses resources conducive to the flourishing of the soul. A thoughtful reading of the printed text orients one to a world of order, meaning, and the possibility of knowing truth.” Is there a way, then, in which the printed word is inherently superior to the digital word? What do we stand to lose as we transition to the digital word?

The printed word, as a unique medium, has strengths (and weaknesses) not shared by the digitized word. I appeal to McLuhan: “The medium is the message.” Or, to dilate a bit: each communications medium shapes its content distinctively and shapes the perceiver necessarily. For one thing, we lose a sense of history when we move from books to screens. Books can be old friends, both the content (which stays in our minds) and the artifacts themselves, which we treasure. For example, I would not part with my 1976 edition of Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who is There, which I read shortly after my conversion. It was that book, those ideas, that sparked my vision for Christian ministry. Moreover, I love the cover of that edition and enjoy looking over the many notations I put into the book through multiple readings. Having the same book in a digital form, while worthwhile in many ways (for example, I could capture text and put it on my blog!), would not be the same. Much would be lost.

You said “Ours is an age infatuated with, addicted to, and voraciously hungry for ever-increasing doses of information.” Is this hunger for information in some way dangerous to the soul?

Yes, since we have limited capacities for knowledge and wisdom. Knowing what matters most—truths about God, ourself, and creation—takes time and effort. Being awash in information is not the same as gaining knowledge (truth received in a rational way). Americans are usually well-informed ignoramuses. We have oceans of facts or information at hand, but little knowledge. Wisdom is the proper use of knowledge. Americans typically have no idea how to handle all the data thrown at them: the more information, the less meaning.

“Instant access to all kinds of information may corrode a sense of coherence and meaning if the information is not put into an appropriate framework.” Postman makes the point that once we commit ourselves to technology, we feel that only technology can solve our problems. Has technology come up with an appropriate framework to understand and use information? Or do we need to look for solutions outside of technology?

Technology cannot explain itself sufficiently and does not attempt to do so typically. We get so immersed in the use of technology (and there are so many new gizmos to figure out) that we fail to ask questions about the meaning of technology: What does it do to our sense of self, of others, of God, of time, of death, of politics, and much more.

If our sensibilities are set by the capacities of hypertext, we may begin to relinquish our grip on the very notion of authority. Has hypertext changed the way we perceive authority? Has it changed the way we read and interact with text?

We tend to skip around instead of reading from point A to Z. This makes for superficiality and incoherence. We get a data-fix and move on. Moreover, most on-line text is surrounded by flashing, moving images that distract us from text qua text.

You wrote the book before anyone had heard of social media. Yet you said, “the notion that ‘community’ can thrive in cyberspace challenges the very meaning of community and the nature of our sociality.” You found it contradictory that the technologies that have isolated us from personal contact (radio, television, computer) could bring us into a global village of intimate connection. Have the years between then and now proven your fears correct? Has cyberspace brought us some kind of community? Or has it endangered true community?

Some technologies can further significant human encounters not available otherwise. For example, I met two wonderful young people in Hungary in 2007 at a conference. My emails, Skype (which I have only done once!), and instant messages have been meaningful because I met them face-to-face previously and because these technologies provide a kind of communication not possible otherwise. However, if these technologies did not exist, I could still write letters—which is becoming a lost art, sadly.

But overall cyberspace (and hardly anyone calls it this any more) has diminished community if one means by that embodied relationships bound by troth, friendship, citizenship, and physical proximity. People practice an “absent presence” constantly as they talk on cell phones while checking out at the supermarket or at Starbucks, as they send text messages during classes instead of attending to teachers and students, as they play video games instead of getting to know their spouses and children. One could go on.

This seems very perceptive in light of what I see on the Net today: “The soul in cyberspace may easily habituate itself to browsing, data-surfing, and skimming in exchange for analysis, reflection, and discourse.” Is there something inherent in the digital medium that leads us to browse, to skim, to reject real analysis, reflection and discourse? Is there anything we can do about it or is this just the nature of the beast?

I think I covered the problem above. What we can do about it is to create engaged classrooms, discussions, church services, and reflective reading of significant texts, especially the Bible. This means putting aside multi-tasking and immersing oneself in propositional communication of various forms. One illuminating exercise I require of my students is to abstain from one major electronic medium for ten days. This reorients their awareness and shows them the possibilities for unmediated communication—and for silence.

As I understand it, the ultimate purpose of your book was to try to understand how this medium of cyberspace shaped us, our families, our churches, our nations, our world. In the front of the book I jotted this, my one big takeaway from the book: “Christians are specially equipped to think rightly about technology.” Is this the case? What do Christians stand to lose if we do not understand the effects of technology in each of these areas? What do we stand to gain?

As recipients of salvation by God’s grace in Christ, we can gain a proper relationship to God and a proper perspective on God’s world. But this is not automatic. Sadly, for many reasons, Christians are often the least reflective people about technologies. Our populism and pragmatism get the best of us and we fail to step back and ask the more philosophical and theological questions of our technologies. Yet Christians should ask God to grant them wisdom to discern God’s kingdom purposes for technologies. If we fail to gain discernment, the result is simply worldliness: we engage technologies in ways that undermine virtue, make us less sensitive to good, evil, and God himself. These are no small perils. See Romans 12:1-2; I John 2:15-17; Hebrews 5:11-14.