John Piper lists 5 ways churches can move away from ‘casual,’ ‘coffee-sipping’ culture

Jan 23, 2024 by Dave Doveton

By Michael Gryboski, TGC.

Noted theologian and author John Piper has listed five ways that he believes congregations can move away from what he describes as a “casual,” “coffee-sipping” church culture, adding more context behind one of his viral tweets from last year.

In an episode of “Ask Pastor John” posted on the Desiring God website on Thursday, Piper spoke about the need for “reverence and awe” when gathering together in worship.

The episode comes after Piper sparked debate last September when he tweeted about whether churches should “reassess whether Sunday coffee-sipping in the sanctuary fits.” The post drew around 3,000 likes and about 1,500 comments, many of which were critical. The new episode seeks to “[build] out the context behind” the tweet, which is the desire to shape a church with a “reverential vibe.”

“I argued last time that sipping coffee in the holiest hour of congregational worship does not fit with the reverence and awe that Hebrews 12:28 calls for. ‘Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,’ Hebrews says,” Piper stated.

“But I argued that sipping coffee is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that people and leaders don’t have a heart that resonates with what I mean by ‘reverence and awe’ and the holiness, the sacredness of that hour of congregational worship on Sunday morning (usually),” he continued.

“Those realities are not prominent in their mind and heart, those reverent realities. They know those words: reverence, awe. They know the words, but the words don’t have compelling existential content, with the kind of serious joy that makes people eager for reverence and awe. They’re just words.”

Piper, chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a former pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, sought to provide “a possible way forward for pastors to lead the church gradually” away from “the atmosphere of casual, chipper, coffee-sipping, entertainment-oriented gathering to a more seriously joyful, reverent, deeply satisfying encounter with God.”

Read here.