Christian Book Review - We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry

John Piper Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry, 

 

Updated and Expanded Edition 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 362 Reviews 4.3 on Goodreads (3,193) Brothers We Are Professionals Book Review ✅ Scott Ayres - Live Stream Labs Kindle $9.99 Available instantly Paperback $14.06 See all formats -6% $14.06$14.06 List Price: $14.99$14.99 $22.63 Shipping & Import Fees Deposit to Nigeria Details Delivery Wednesday, January 3. Order within 12 hrs Or fastest delivery Monday, January 1 Deliver to Nigeria In Stock Qty: Qty:1 Add to Cart Buy Now Ships from Amazon.com Sold by Amazon.com Returns Returnable until Jan 31, 2024 Payment Secure transaction Send as a gift. Include custom message 

sellers on AmazonOther sellers on Amazon) from $13.20$13.20 Book details Print length 320 pages Language English Publisher B&H Books Publication date February 1, 2013 Dimensions 5.45 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches ISBN-10 1433678829 ISBN-13 978-1433678820 

In this revised and expanded edition of Brothers, We Are Not Professionals that includes a new introduction and select all-new chapters, best-selling author John Piper pleads through a series of thoughtful essays with fellow pastors to abandon the professionalization of the pastorate and pursue the prophetic call of the Bible for radical ministry. "We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry," he writes. "The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness, there is no professional tenderheartedness, there is no professional panting after God. "Brothers, we are not professionals. We are outcasts. We are aliens and exiles in the world. Our citizenship is in Heaven, and we wait with eager expectation for the Lord (Phil. 3:20). You cannot professionalize the love for His appearing without killing it. And it is being killed. "The world sets the agenda of the professional man; God sets the agenda of the spiritual man. The strong wine of Jesus Christ explodes the wine- skins of professionalism." 

About the Author

Pastor John Piper is founder and senior teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the author of more than 50 books, and more than 30 years of his preaching and teaching is available free of charge at desiringGod.org. John and his wife, Noël, have four sons, one daughter, and fourteen grandchildren.

A book every pastor should read. Yes, every pastor. Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2018 I'll state it right up front—every pastor should read "Brothers, We Are Not Professionals" by John Piper. The pastor is called upon to do lots of things, some of which are considered by both pastor and parishioner to more "spiritual" or more "business." But in... See more 3 people found this helpful Helpful Share Report Synth 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase Excellent Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2017 Excellent presentation of attitudes, priorities, and habits of a minister/pastor/elders/shepherd, naturally seen through the lens of Piper's main thesis: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in us. My only minor gripe is that I wish he would have... See more 3 people found this helpful Helpful Share Report @joemcfddn 4.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase Refine, refresh and challenge your motives for ministry! Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2016 We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and heart of the... See more 6 people found this helpful Helpful Share Report DHaron 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase Please read these words... Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2015 I work as a pastor for Church who highly regards Andy Stanley's church model and seeks to reach the unchurched. While I love the desire of this model, I find this book- and John Piper in general- to be a breath of fresh air from the thinking found behind these models.... See more One person found this helpful Helpful Share Report NNiemi 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase A great book Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2022 This should be read by all pastors and teachers, and even by the average Christian. It would help the church enormously. Helpful Share Report Ryan Brush 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase would recommend to all, I'm just your average joe college student Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2018 This book esceeded expectations. I've read a lot of pipers stuff but this was particularly special. He engages some of the most important, deep, woldview-changing topics. He gives practicals on how to carry out each of the chapters, but he spends a great deal of focus on... See more 2 people found this helpful Helpful Share Report Benwhitt 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase Like a Handbook for Pastors Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2019 In a day when many fall to the temptation to shrink pastoral ministry to building an organization through an excellent weekend 'experience', Piper points the way to faithful shepherding through Bible-saturated exhortations concerning a wide array of subjects. With an... 

Brothers, we are not professionals. Suppose I wouldn't have minded if he said brothers and sisters or something on that order. Seems a bit male-driven. Otherwise, a really excellent and spirited charge to Christians and ministers. 

 

This book is written for full time pastors, but it's just as useful for the person who wants to improve themselves and get closer to God. I really love Piper's writing style; it is accessible but...

 

one of those books where one chapter takes you so far in one direction you are inspired and encouraged and challenged and not sure if that can quite be right, and then the next chapter takes you off in a different direction. an always timely corrective for anyone getting...See more One person found this helpful Report Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase Five Stars Reviewed in Canada on October 23, 2017 Another well-written book by John Piper Report Mark Question 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase Excellent Book Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2016 Excellent book that should be mandatory reading for all evangelically minded Christian pastors. Report FEW 5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase great Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2013 great , essential read for all in any form of Christian leadership.and others. Very readable but also challenging. Thank God for this wisdom. One person found this helpful Report See more reviews How customer reviews and ratings work Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Brothers, We Are NOT Professionals, by John PiperI first heard Dr. John Piper speak at a conference in Austin, Texas in the dead of winter, 1998.  If you have heard Dr. Piper speak, you can probably guess the topic on which he spoke that day:  God’s passion for His own glory and the Christian’s hard pursuit of joy in that truth.  I bought one of his books that day—The Pleasures of God—and over the next few weeks as I pored over its pages (reading one chapter of it at least ten or twelve times!) my thinking, my theology, and my life were set on a new, “white-hot” trajectory of recognizing and exulting in God’s majesty!  I have read several of Piper’s books since then, and my respect for and admiration of him have only been increased.  Like many others of you reading his books, I can only pray that our Lord will give me a small fraction of the explosive love for God that He has given to John Piper.  Piper’s latest book, Brothers, We Are NOT Professionals!, is one more missile in what has become an arsenal of books aiming at the apathy and hum-drum routine of most American churches.  This time, Piper pleads with pastors of local churches to realize they are not part of a cultured profession; rather, the very heart of their calling as pastors is to be radically God-centered, most often at the expense of a respected position in the world.  It’s a price worth paying, though, for any man who believes he is “sent by God to save people from hell and make them Christ-exalting, spiritual aliens in the world,” (3).As I opened it, I expected the book to be an extended discussion of the differences between professionalism and Christian ministry.  It really wasn’t.  Piper dispenses with those distinctions in the first chapter, and a convicting series of distinctions it is:We are fools for Christ’s sake.  But professionals are wise.  We are weak.  But professionals are strong.  Professionals are held in honor.  We are in disrepute.  We do not try to secure a professional lifestyle, but we are ready to hunger and thirst and be ill-clad and homeless.  When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things.  Or have we? (2)The rest of the book is a series of articles on issues on which Piper believes the Christian minister must take an unmovable stand.  There are thirty chapters, as there are in many of Piper’s books—a month’s worth of daily quiet-time reading.  Piper addresses a wide range of issues, from the theological to what many might call “social,” though I’m sure Piper would argue they are all, from justification by faith alone to racism, theological at heart.  A sampling of some of the chapters I found most encouraging, or convicting:  God’s Passion for His Glory (ch 2), Justification by Faith Alone (ch 4), “Christian Hedonism” (ch 7), Prayer (ch 8), Careful Biblical Exegesis (ch 11), Original Biblical Languages (ch 12), Hell (ch 16), Baptism (ch 18), Wealth (ch 23), Missions (ch 26), Abortion (ch 27), Marriage (ch 29), Seminaries (ch 30).The book is full of the passionate and inspiring language that marks most of Piper’s works.  “Prayer,” he says, for example, “is the splicing of our limp wire to the lightning bolt of heaven,” (53).  Piper is a master of images like that one, images that stick in your mind for years to come.  If you’ve heard Piper speak before, or read any of his books, my guess is that you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The Lord has certainly given John Piper a gift of communicating, and He is using it mightily to His glory in the world.  Piper’s book is refreshing in that every page of it—I’m not kidding; just open it—every page is filled with Scripture quotations and references.  What an example for other people writing books on the church today!  Piper is a wonderful example of a man who is determined to be lashed tight to the Word of God; if only others would follow his lead, the church would find herself much blessed and much delivered from a wilderness of errors.I want to mention briefly just a few of the chapters that I found especially helpful.  Chapters 9 and 10 work together as an exhortation to pastors to guard their time.  “The great threat to our prayer and our meditation on the Word of God is good ministry activity,” (60).  So many things are demanded of pastors—usually out of good hearts—but the result can very quickly be that between hospital visits, counseling, and idle chats, the most fundamental part of a pastor’s calling (the ministry of the Word and prayer) gets squeezed out.  How can his time be protected?  Quite rightly, Piper points out that the Bible contains a solution:  the work of the deacons.  In Acts 6, the apostles told the church to pick out seven men whom they could “appoint over this need.”  Piper says, “The care of the widows was a real need.  And it was precisely this need which threatened apostolic prayer,” (61).  The role of the deacons was to ease the pressure on the apostles and elders of having to deal with the overwhelming physical needs of the church.  They were to help the pastor protect his time for prayer and study by themselves ministering to the hurting, the sick, the ones needing counsel.  How many deacon boards today function in this manner?  Don’t they usually rather meet together to assess how the pastor is doing in keeping up with these very things?  What a burden would be lifted from the shoulders of most pastors if their deacons would pick up the mantle Scripture gives them!The chapter on abortion (Chapter 27—Brothers, Blow the Trumpet for the Unborn!) is profound.  Piper uses a number of texts of Scripture to make his case for why unborn babies should not be killed:  Psalm 139:13, Job 31:13-15, Psalm 82:3-4, and Exodus 20:13, among others.  He also reprints a letter he sent to the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune questioning the paper’s logic in endorsing abortion because it is a “personal” and “sensitive” issue.  He writes:In fact I challenge you to publish two photographs side by side:  one of this “child” [a preemie born at twenty-four weeks at a local hospital] outside the womb and another of a “fetus” inside the womb both at twenty-three or twenty-four weeks, with a caption that says something like: “We at the Star Tribune regard the termination of the preemie as manslaughter and the termination of the fetus as the personal choice of the mother.” (215-216)The paper refused to print the letter.  What a surprise.  In another section of the same chapter, Piper lists several reasons why we know pro-choice advocates know the unborn are really human beings.  One of his reasons is chilling:  “They know there is a lethal inconsistency between doing fetal surgery on babies in the womb to save them while their cousin, at a similar stage of development, is being killed just down the hall,” (214).  O God, have mercy on us.I would offer one suggestion for improvement in Dr. Piper’s book.  That is the place of the local congregation in God’s plan of redemption.  There are several places in the book where a discussion of the centrality of the local church would have been a powerful addition to his argument.  One of these places is in the chapter on Baptism.  Dr. Piper does a great job of explaining the Baptist arguments for believer baptism.  The chapter ends with a pressing question: “Why have I dwelt on this?”  Piper’s answer:  “Because my sense is that many pastors, in order not to be contentious on this issue, neglect it almost entirely and do not call people to repent and be baptized. . . . I think we need to teach our people the meaning of baptism and obey the Lord’s command to baptize converts . . . ,’” (135).  But why?  Why is baptism so important?  Because the Bible calls us to work for the purity and holiness of Christ’s church!  If the church is to be a witness of Christ to the world, if it is to showcase the redemptive work of God, then it is crucial that those who are “members” of that “body” be evidently believers and followers of Christ.  To loosen the bonds of believer baptism is, at best, to dilute the witness of the local church to the life-changing power of God.  After all, the divine plan was all along that “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church!” (Ephesians 3:10).Dr. Piper’s book will be a great encouragement, and a convicting exhortation, to every pastor in America.  There’s no reason to limit it to pastors, though.  Most, if not all of the issues are just as relevant and just as pressing to church members as to church leaders.  This is not the best introduction to Piper’s works; that would be Desiring God, or even better, The Pleasures of God.  But Brothers, We Are NOT Professionals will be a much-needed challenge to a church that often seems more enamored of the country club than the Word of God.By:Greg GilbertGreg Gilbert is the Senior Pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. You can find him on Twitter at @greggilbert.SHAREMore reviews tagged as:Pastoring WorkSubscribe to 9Marks articlesSupport 9MarksOur work is possible by the generosity of our readers. Give TodayMore ReviewsBook Review: The Shepherd’s Toolbox, by Timothy Z. WitmerBy Phil NewtonBook Review: Exegetical Fallacies, by D.A. CarsonBy Brian Vickers9Marks MailbagPut your Church on the MapBuilding Healthy Churches

International Sites*         Copyright © 2023 9Marks Contact Privacy Policy Website Design by openbox9DOWNLOAD DOWNLOADCLOSEPURCHASE PURCHASECLOSEBrothers, We Are Not ProfessionalsA Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministryby John Piper ModalJohn Piper pleads with fellow pastors to abandon the secularization of the pastorate and pursue the prophetic call of the Bible for radical ministry.We pastors are being killed by the professionalizing of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has nothing to do with the essence and the heart of the Christian ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness, there is no professional tenderheartedness, there is no professional panting after God.Brothers, we are not professionals. We are outcasts. We are aliens and exiles in the world. Our citizenship is in Heaven, and we wait with eager expectation for the Lord (Phil. 3:20). You cannot professionalize the love for His appearing without killing it. And it is being killed. The world sets the agenda of the professional man; God sets the agenda of the spiritual man. The strong wine of Jesus Christ explodes the wineskins of professionalism.Named among the “10 Best Books Every Preacher Should Read” in the January/February issue of Preaching Magazine.Desiring God890K subscribersBrothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry<div class="player-unavailable"><h1 class="message">An error occurred.</h1><div class="submessage"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrS97on8dDA" target="_blank">Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>2013, B&HENDORSEMENTS*         It was the kindness of God which led me to stumble across this book in my first year of pastoral ministry. I remember vividly kneeling at my bedside in tears, feeling so rebuked and so encouraged at the same time. I loved this book then and, with several new chapters, I love it even more now. I hope every pastor reads this book and listens to its sane, practical, biblical advice.John Piper makes me uncomfortable. And I thank God for that. He makes me uneasy with the worldliness that so easily creeps into my heart in my thinking about ministry. He highlights temptations to compromise – temptations that I know personally. He warns me of hidden traps. He urges me against allowing the calling of God to be domesticated by the outlook of this passing age, or by my desire to be esteemed by it. But he also reminds me of issues where my people need to be challenged and encouraged. I read Brothers, We Are Not Professionals when it first came out a decade ago, and have returned to portions of it repeatedly, for examination, encouragement and exhortation. I am delighted now to commend this new edition, with additional chapters addressing important topics. This book is ultimately not only convicting, but comforting, and not only exhortational but devotional. This is a faithful prophet’s call to the sons of the prophets. May the Lord grant, by the power of his grace, that we would be able to join John is his prayer: “Thank You for protecting me for all these years from the deadening effects of professionalization.”*         Ligon Duncan, Chancellor, Reformed Theological Seminary 
*         John Piper is a pastor to pastors. His love for them and his desire to see them faithfully fulfill their calling leaps from each chapter of this book. It will challenge you. It will instruct you. And most of all, it will encourage you as you shepherd God’s flock which He has entrusted to your care.*         Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary 
*         This is not a book for those who want a simple and easy life, it’s a book for servants whom God has raised up to get down on the ground and selflessly serve by leading God’s people, proclaiming God’s truth, and earnestly contending for the faith. May the Holy Spirit use this book to help ignite the next generation with a passion to deny themselves and take up their crosses to serve Christ and his sheep from every tribe, tongue, and nation.*         Burk Parsons, Pastor, Sanford, Florida 
*         This book has been a staple for our pastors-in-training for many years — one of the few books I consider to be an absolute must read for those wanting to pursue God’s work in God's way. God used the first edition of this book to profoundly shape my ministry philosophy, and I am honored to be able to recommend this 2nd edition of Brothers We are Not Professionals. I cannot commend it highly enough. Read it. Re-read it. And then teach it to others.
Once again, Dr. Piper has provided a generation of pastors with a clear and profound statement on our calling, and his legacy of biblical faithfulness and commitment to God’s glory is felt in every chapter.Buy the book on Amazon- https://www.amazon.com/dp/1433678829/  

 

 

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