Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry

By: John Piper

John Piper pleas with his colleagues to abandon the secularization of the pastorate and return to the primitive 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 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 professionalism in childlikeness, there is no professionalism in tenderheartedness, there is no professional panting after God.

"Brothers, we are not professional. 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 an agenda for the professional man; God sets the agenda for the spiritual man. The strong wine of Jesus Christ explodes the wineskins of professionalism."

Format: Paperback