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Adrian Don Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don Adrian Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Now whether that\u2019s right or not, I don\u2019t know. You offer yourself up to God and try to do what\u2019s right. But I would say that the front line is the local church. And there is a sense in which seminary is a back-up slot. The front line is the local church, and the first impetus towards ministry and towards stamping people for what ministry ought to be should be within in the context of the local church. And then a good seminary, a good theological college, helps to provide the kind of training and further exposure to more technical knowledge, a grasp of the languages, and this sort of thing. Virtually no local church can provide that, and yet it\u2019s really important for those who teach in such places, nevertheless, to be pastors first, because if they think of themselves of teachers and scholars first, then they tend to produce teachers and scholars. So there\u2019s a stamping, not simply from the course material, but from your own values, what you dream about, what you think about. So, at our seminary, we always want to hire a certain percentage of faculty who wish they were in the pastoral ministry, or else quite frankly, we don\u2019t want them. Now, they have to be academically competent and all the rest, but we don\u2019t want people who just want to be in a seminary. We want people who in many ways would prefer to be in the local church. So, that\u2019s as close as I can come to explaining where I\u2019m at.<\/p>\n Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Adrian<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Don<\/span><\/em><\/strong> By and by, when I look on his face, And in that autumn, I heard a sermon from a man\u2014I think I\u2019ve only ever heard him preach two or three times\u2014a sermon on Ezekiel 22, where God says, \u201cI sought for man to stand in the gap before me for my people, but I found none.\u201d And God used that in a powerful way in my life so that I wanted to cry with my whole being, \u201cHere am I, send me!\u201d But none of that was planned.<\/p>\n Another earlier step was the minister of the church I was [attending] in Montreal said that he wanted me to be his assistant one summer. And I said he had confused me with a theological student\u2014I was chemistry. I never did go and do it, but it was the first time I started thinking about it because some minister had tapped me on the shoulder and said I ought to be thinking about it. So there were many different things that God used providentially to woo me away from chemistry and science and towards vocational ministry.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>Hi! I\u2019m Adrian Warnock. I blog at http:\/\/adrianwarnock.com\/<\/a>. and I\u2019m also privileged to serve as part of the leadership team of Jubilee Church in London<\/a>. I\u2019m here at New Word Alive, together with Don Carson, who has kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions. Thank you for joining us, Don.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>My privilege.<\/p>\n
Excellent. So, Don, you\u2019re obviously a busy man. You do all kinds of things\u2014write books and lecture, and all the various things you do\u2014and yet you, and John Piper, and later this year, Mark Driscoll<\/a>, all sorts of American guys keep coming over here. Why do you think that is? Why do you come?<\/p>\n![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/298\/2008\/06\/theend-763786.jpg\")
<\/a>The Church of Christ is world-wide at the end of the day, and partly because of Trinity<\/a>\u2019s reach, we serve many countries, and partly because of my own roots over here (I lived here for nine years, my wife is English), and partly because there is a camaraderie in the ministry itself. Not only do we come here, but there are a number of Brits who come to where we are, and then we might even meet up in Kuala Lumpur. That\u2019s the way the Church is, increasingly. There\u2019s a global reach, and we lean on each other, gain support from each other, and try to bring glory to Christ in different ways in different parts of the world.<\/p>\n
Fantastic. Well, we\u2019re certainly glad you\u2019re here. I have very much enjoyed listening to your talks. What\u2019s your impression of the conference as a whole?<\/p>\n
The buzz I\u2019m hearing (but I\u2019m the outsider) is that people are really grateful for the Bible teaching, not only in the big sessions, but also in a lot of the seminars and so on. After John\u2019s material last night, for example, on suffering, there was one woman in a wheelchair who said that she had found this one of the most encouraging things she had ever heard in her life, and the whole conference is worth it just for her, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Yes!<\/p>\n
And then when you realize there are five thousand people who are receiving blessings from God from his Word in one way or another, it\u2019s something for which to be incalculably grateful.<\/p>\n
Yes. I guess there\u2019s no real substitute for gathering people to hear God\u2019s Word, is there really?<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>That\u2019s right. That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>Whatever context it\u2019s in. And it\u2019s interesting because I\u2019ve just been talking to John, who obviously gave up theological life to become a pastor. And I guess you\u2019ve devoted your life to training pastors. Is that a fair way of describing it?<\/p>\n
Yes. I started off in pastoral ministry. He started off with theological . . .<\/p>\n
So you did it the other way around?<\/p>\n
I went the other way around. And there are dark moments when I wish I hadn\u2019t. But you can\u2019t second guess either yourself or God all the time. It\u2019s not right. But about fifteen years ago I almost left Trinity to go to a church. It was a church near a major university and I wanted to do the sort of thing that John is doing. I had two or three senior men in the ministry, both already at that time in their early 70\u2019s, descend on me and tell me in very authoritarian terms that I just must not do it because they were afraid that if I did I wouldn\u2019t reserve enough time to do some of the writing I was doing.<\/p>\n
Oh, that\u2019s good. So, of all the many books that you\u2019ve written, Don\u2014this is again a question I asked John about his books\u2014but of all the books that you\u2019ve written, what would you say would be the most important two or three books\u2014the ones that perhaps people should start with reading, let\u2019s say?<\/p>\n
I have no idea how to answer that because people find books are important for different reasons. So for some people working through the front end of post-modernism, the 1996 book or whatever date it was, The Gagging of God<\/a><\/em>, they found very helpful at the time. On the other hand, widely read by pastors was my John commentary<\/a>, for example. I just don\u2019t know how to answer that sort of question.<\/p>\n
I guess it\u2019s what fits that person.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>That\u2019s right. And as you say\u2014What should they read first? Well, an awful lot depends on who they are. If they\u2019re a lay person, [they] might start off with a book like Jesus\u2019 Sermon on the Mount<\/a> or something like that. I just don\u2019t have a formulated answer for that.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/298\/2008\/06\/9781433501999m-707832.jpg\")
For pastors today who are in small churches and sometimes feel discouraged and wonder if their life is worth it, what I\u2019d now recommend is the one that came out just a month or two ago called Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s short\u2014only 160 pages\u2014 and it\u2019s really on my dad. He was a quintessential, ordinary pastor in many ways. He never preached in another country. He never wrote a book. He was never a conference speaker or the like. Most of the congregations most of his life were 30 people. But he exemplified faithfulness in some pretty grueling circumstances. He nursed my mother through the Alzheimer\u2019s years. He was a church planter cross-culturally moving from the English to the French side of Canada, and had a passion for faithfulness in all kinds of small ways. Yeah, it\u2019s not so much a critical history as a collection of our memories of him and a lot of his diary entries and so on as he struggled with these kinds of things and tried to be faithful in small corners.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m guessing that he was probably one of the main influences on you growing up and into ministry, was he?<\/p>\n
Not directly. When I left home I had no intention of going into the ministry. In some ways I was closer to my mother. Nevertheless, his pattern certainly has stamped me. But I started off in chemistry and mathematics. I had no intention of going into the ministry. That came about by other things. But, undoubtedly, in all kinds of subliminal ways I scarcely recognized, his pattern has affected me. But it wasn\u2019t a kind of direct thing\u2014\u201cOh, I want to be like Dad!\u201d sort of thing. It wasn\u2019t that at all.<\/p>\n
So who did influence you most to make that kind of jump from chemistry to theology?<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t a single step either. I worked in a research lab in Ottawa for the federal government in air pollution. I discovered that the people in this lab\u2014I had a good budget, I had a good project, I enjoyed what I was doing\u2014but most of the people in the lab were either resenting it and waiting for retirement or, alternatively, chemistry was their god. And I didn\u2019t fit in either camp. I was enjoying it, but at the same time another chap and I were trying to start a Sunday School in a new church in the upper valley, and that became more and more important to me as time went on. I remember a chorus that I learned as a boy playing out in my mind again and again: <\/p>\n
Beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face;
By and by, when I look on his face,
I will wish I had given him more.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n