Can I laser in on that transition a little bit from Bethlehem to Desiring God and Look at the Book? From afar, it looked like it was done as well as possible, at least from an outsider’s perspective. Moving from John Piper to Jason, what did you learn in that? What did your leaders learn? If there are ministries and leaders considering transition, what would you like them to know about that time?

The main thing I learned is that God is gracious in processes like this, and God is sovereign. If I were to say anything to a pastor who’s 55 years old, I would say pray for the next ten years that that happens because God will be preparing it to happen at age 56 for what happens at age 67.

For example, so here we are starting a little institute to train men for the ministry in 1998. I finished in 2013. Like fifteen years early, the first class, Jason Meyer, shows up as a 22-year-old guy, I suppose, and newly married. He’s with us for two years. Absorbs the ethos, the DNA about our church, loves what he sees, goes on, finishes his studies at Southern, takes a pastoral role, then teaches in a college. Then we (I can’t remember — 2010, maybe) called him, not knowing anything about the future, to be a teacher in that institute, which is now Bethlehem College and Seminary.

And the church moves towards my completion. I announced a couple of years ahead of time, “I think I want to be done out there a certain time. So let’s put the processes in motion, start praying, put together a team that would start looking at possibilities, pray and just think, how will God do this?” We didn’t know. And the elders just prayed earnestly. They began to do special prayer meetings on Thursday morning, 6:30 a.m., just to pray about transitional issues because God’s got to do this, because everybody thought this is going to be hard.

I’ve been there 33 years, not going to be an easy transition. And one day we are gathered, this group of fourteen or seventeen, I can’t remember who were in charge of thinking this through and praying this through. And they said, “Well, let’s put names together.” And we started sort of from the inside out and we got, I think 15–17 names on this list. Jason was on the list, and somebody said, “Why don’t you just go ask him if he’s open? He’s downstairs.”

Wow. Is that right?

And so I knock on his door, and I don’t know how much of this to reveal. I think it’s okay in retrospect. But I walked in, and he told me later, “I knew why you were there.” God had been at work in him in some remarkable way. So I said, “Jason, are you open to being considered as my replacement?” I think he’ll be okay. He said, “I think that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Wow. Praise God. Hey, that one Spirit aspect, just working in people’s hearts.

But this wasn’t presumptuous on his part at all. He wept and trembled; he later said, over telling his wife that this was in the offing. Because God had met him a year earlier in a remarkable way and had opened that possibility to him. And then he had done it again in the April before my approach to him in a church service when I announced that I would be done, the Holy Spirit did this again, raising the sense of “I think that may be what I’m supposed to do.”

So when I walk in there, he suspected what was going to happen, and we didn’t need to look any further. We didn’t tell the church he said that. He said, “We’re not going to preempt the process here by a divine word because we want to be submissive to the church. The church will make this call.” And so the first thing I learned, in other words, is God is sovereign, and God works.

The second thing is be really methodical, slow, careful, and involve the church in this process. We were very cautious about putting anything over on the church. We didn’t come to the church and say, “We have the man.” We didn’t do anything like that. We said, “You’re going to have untold numbers of times to meet with him, talk with him, ask him questions.” When the vote is made, it will be a provisional vote. He came on with me as an associate for, I forget how many months, four or five months. And I said, “So that’s one vote. That doesn’t lock him in. You’re not committed to him. Then there’ll be another vote where he takes my place. So you’ll get to watch him, minister, sharing the pulpit, sharing in life for several months, and then the vote will happen.”

And here’s the last thing I should say that God showed me. God was in it, brought Jason to tears that God was in it. I didn’t go to those meetings after he was the candidate. I backed away and said, “This is the church. This is the elders. I’m not pushing anything here. I think that’s a good guy. But you make this call.” On the night when we voted, they voted. I wasn’t there. There were about eight hundred people.

We never have meetings with eight hundred people in business meetings. We have two hundred people in business meetings. Eight hundred people showed up. After all the appropriate question, answer, and whatnot, prayer, there was a closed ballot with seven “no” votes out of eight hundred, which is unheard of. Unheard of in a Baptist church.

People vote no just to vote no. So to only have seven.

Absolutely. These are seven people probably who said there needs to be some “no’s” in this. So God is sovereign. Pray like crazy. Look for people who share the DNA. Don’t be pushy. Don’t rush it. Trust your people. Trust the Holy Spirit.

I know in our conversation earlier this weekend, there were those that said, “Pastor John, you leave, Bethlehem’s attendance is going to drop by 40–50 percent.” How has it gone?

That’s not true. I mean, that’s true that they said that to me. And it’s not true that it happened. And it hasn’t happened. I mean, I think if you were attending Bethlehem, you would feel there’s a new guy up there and everything else feels really good. Really similar. And I’m not at all saying that’s the way it has to be. I mean, Jason is Jason, elders will be new. Staff will be new. Vision will be new. That’s great. You can’t hold on to the wineskin of the last 33 years. There’s fresh wine, there’s fresh skin, so let it be. But that didn’t happen.