In March, 2013, I and a small group of Prairie students drove down to Minneapolis to attend John Piper’s TULIP Seminar. I have always been a little skeptical about the TULIP doctrine, so I thought it might be helpful to hear John Piper explain it, as I admire him and consider him to be a pastor worthy of imitating.
Throughout the seminar, the Desiring God twitter feed was accepting questions and Dr. Piper tried to answer some of them. I sent in this question:
#dgseminar Q&A: as a pastor, how essential is it to understand TULIP for shepherding God's people effectively? Can a pastor do without it?
— W.J. Knelsen Family (@WilliamKnelsen) March 2, 2013
Dr. Piper was gracious enough to answer my question, even though the answer was incredibly obvious. In fact, he went even further and addressed the core issue of my question: pride. Listen to this podcast audio to hear his response.
NOTE: this audio is an unedited excerpt from Desiring God. The original, full-length content can be found at the Desiring God website. The excerpt can be found at the 39:50 mark of session 5.