American Reformed Baptist pastor, theologian, and author (b. 1946). Founding pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis (1980-2013) and founder of the teaching ministry Desiring God. Educated at Wheaton, Fuller Seminary, and the University of Munich (PhD in New Testament under Leonhard Goppelt). His 1986 book Desiring God launched the influential movement he named Christian Hedonism — the conviction that "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." A slogan that sounds paradoxical until unpacked through its Pauline, Augustinian, and Edwardsian roots.
Piper's ministry has been one of the most significant in post-2000 Reformed evangelicalism. Four contributions. (1) Christian Hedonism. The claim that joy in God is not a subsidiary aspect of the Christian life but its center. Piper draws on Jonathan Edwards' treatment of affections and ends (The End for Which God Created the World) to argue that God's pursuit of His own glory and man's pursuit of joy in God converge at the cross. (2) Expository preaching. Piper's 32 years of expository pulpit ministry at Bethlehem — verse by verse through Romans (over seven years), John, and many other books — modeled doctrinal, experiential, doxological preaching. His sermons are freely available online and have trained thousands of younger preachers. (3) Young, Restless, Reformed movement. Along with Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Don Carson, and others, Piper was a central figure in the early-2000s resurgence of Reformed theology among young American evangelicals. Don't Waste Your Life (2003) challenged a generation to radical obedience. (4) Missions and suffering. Let the Nations Be Glad (1993) is one of the most important books on biblical missions in the modern era. Piper has repeatedly called Christians to embrace suffering as normative (A Sweet and Bitter Providence, Future Grace). His ministry is theologically careful, emotionally warm, and unafraid of hard doctrine. For many younger evangelicals, Piper is the doorway to Reformed theology; for older Reformed readers, his warmth recovers what drier scholasticism had lost.