Piper’s legacy in missions is the synergizing of God’s glory and the necessity of God’s people to treasure him in our delights and affections. In material ways, Piper’s writings focus on one thing (God’s glory) applied to everything else. While “Desiring God” is his most read and influential book, “Let the Nations be Glad” and missional sermons greatly influenced a generation of young believers to give their lives “for the fame of God’s name.”
Piper’s Influence on Missio Dei Theology and Practice
In full disclosure, I come to this as someone significantly influenced by Piper’s theology and worldview; I see God’s Word and the world through a similar lens. Here, I highlight what I see as Piper’s main contributions and offer some critiques as well.
Piper’s Realignment of Missions as Worship
While Scripture has always summoned the nations to praise God, Piper’s ministry influenced missional theology from an emphasis on spreading God’s love through the gospel to God’s worship because of it. This was especially motivating to young Western Christians, for whom global evangelism was often viewed as cross-cultural gospel ministry done by professionals. Locating missions in the grander story and passion for the worship of God’s glory brought missions into the realm of known personal experience. Mission as worship “felt” noble, necessary, and infectious. I was raised in what was traditionally a “missions-minded” church, and even through bachelor’s and master’s level theology study, I am unaware of ever hearing of missions as worship. Evangelism was presented as the solemn duty of a Christian. Piper replaced this guilt motive with the affectional language of delight, relish, and holy satisfaction. His relocation of missions as worship captured the imagination of reformed evangelicals and did much to advance the financial and human resourcing of missions.
Piper’s Calvinistic Passion for the Unsaved
A second noteworthy contribution is Piper’s ardent Calvinism mixed with his personal passion for reaching the lost. He counters the standard criticism that the doctrines of grace are anti-evangelistic. Rather, he argues that Calvinism, when properly understood, must compel evangelism to convert God’s not-yet-reached elect.
This is what man cannot do. It is impossible. Only God can take out the heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26). Only God can draw people to the Son (John 6:44,65). Only God can open the heart so that it gives heed to the gospel (Acts 16:14)…The sovereign grace of God, doing the humanly impossible, is the great missionary hope (Piper 1996, 198).
Yet, for most, Calvinists are the least evangelistic, hiding behind their doctrine of election. The caricature was that trusting in God’s sovereignty and election meant passivity in gospel sharing and global missions. Sadly, this has been the practice of many reformed churches and Christians, as Calvinism can easily slip into gross determinism ignoring that God ordains ends as well as means. In this way, Piper stands in a long line of strongly Calvinistic pastors and theologians who were also highly engaged in gospel outreach. His biography book series, “The Swans are Not Silent,” celebrates and tells the story of pastors and missionaries in the tradition of the doctrines of grace, whose lives and ministries bore much evangelistic fruit.
Piper inspired the Reformed to missions and drew the non-Reformed toward his theology and worldview through the magnetism of his missional call. Organizations like Desiring God, the former Together for the Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and other Reformed-leaning groups all experienced remarkable growth as all the reformed boats rode the Piper high tide and his grand vision of God’s sovereignty and missions. I have never read Piper use the term missio Dei, but he was a significant contributor to the elevation of the concept and call within global missional ideology.
Piper’s Summons to Urgency in Global Missions
The boldness and passion of Piper’s preaching, combined with the theologically compelling nature of his writings, made him a force of missional motivation. Piper dedicated one of evangelicalism’s most influential conferences, the annual Desiring God National Conference, to missions in 2011. Under the title, “Finish the Mission: For the Joy of all Peoples,” noted speakers included Louis Giglio, David Platt, and Ed Stetzer. Over the years, this national conference became the bellwether of reformed evangelicalism. As an example of this conference’s influence, it is plausible that Tim Keller’s participation in the 2006 Desiring God conference launched him into his international ministry. Piper’s passion for the nations, the gospel, and the glory of God kept these themes alive through his affiliate ministries, media, and national conference outlets.
Author Michael Lawrence wrote about Piper’s effectiveness at mobilizing the church for missions and made a bold claim, “By some accounts, John Piper, former pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, has done more to motivate a new generation of young American Christians into fields of missionary service than anyone else alive today. How has he done it?” (Lawrence 2017). Lawrence answers the question by echoing this article’s proposition that Piper’s grand vision of God and God’s glory, combined with a deep doctrinal call, made him a great mobilizer for missions in our time.
More Theology of Missions, Less Practice of Missions
For all of Piper’s missional fervor, even his most missions-specific book, “Let the Nations Be Glad,” is largely devoid of missional strategy. All of Piper’s familiar themes are there: the supremacy of God, the centrality of Christ, missions as worship, etc. In this, Piper acts more as a prophet and theologian of missions, which is greatly needed. A full-orbed missional theology, or what we call missio Dei, is more of a supportive truth than a highlighted one. Piper is more of a missions theologian than a missions theorist with a focus more on the why than the how of missions. What if he had matched his soaring missional rhetoric with missional movement efforts akin to Alan Hirsch’s “Forgotten Ways”? While not necessarily a fault, we can only speculate the multiplication impact if Piper had engaged more practically with missional theology or helped chart pathways for the masses of people who were motivated by his prophetic call.
Practical Implications
Here, I will unpack some practical implications of John Piper’s influence on the missional movement.
God (And the Gospel) Still Motivate Great Commission Engagement
Piper’s ministry is, first and foremost, expositional and doctrinal. He is exceptionally counter-cultural, anti-flashy, and anti-attractional church oriented. His appearance and clothing are simple and minimal. By most measures, Piper would not fit the mold of a “successful” American evangelical ministry in the modern era. Yet, his message was remarkably fresh and compelling to a large swath of Christianity, especially young people. Despite our cultural distance from the ancient apostles, doctrines about God still grip when flowing from someone who clearly is personally convinced and passionate about them. It reminds me of someone who questioned why Benjamin Franklin would go hear the evangelist George Whitefield preach truths Franklin didn’t believe in. His response was, “I don’t, but he does.” There are deeply doctrinal Christian teachers and academics who match and surpass Piper in his depth of doctrinal discourse. There are communicators whose oratory surpasses his as well. Piper’s uniqueness is the synergy of both depth of biblical insight and passion for God, his glory, gospel, and mission in the world. His ministry shows that passion for God is infectious, and passion for God’s mission is as well.
