Dear Friends,

As many of you may know, the Pipers have left Minneapolis for a year to make space for the new leadership at Bethlehem. They are now settled in Tennessee, renting the home of an extended family member for the months ahead. For the first time, John is on staff full time at Desiring God, and he has plenty of travel and writing to fill his calendar as he works remotely for this season.

So what will John be doing? Here’s a short portion of an update and invitation he sent last week to some of our financial partners. It’s an update and an invitation to help.

There are over 20 speaking engagements, including three trips overseas. I’ve plunged into three book projects. The firs

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We have never known days like these at Desiring God.

John Piper is now on staff full-time at DG and has begun a more unfettered ministry to the wider world through writing and speaking.

Along the way, we want to make it easy for you to see what he’s up to and hear what he’s been saying lately. Here’s a rich baker’s dozen of new messages from Pastor John so far in 2013.

1. “Joy As the Power to Suffer in the Path of Love for the Sake of Liberation”
Passion Conference | Atlanta, GA

The year began with a bang, as John addressed more than 60,000 college students in the Georgia Dome on how our joy in God frees us to suffer the sake of others’ freedom.

2. “Sailing to the Nations to Finish th…

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For 33 years Bethlehem put bread on our table. They paid our salary. They didn’t muzzle this ox while he was treading out the grain (1 Timothy 5:18). They were the hands of God in meeting our needs. I am profoundly thankful. It was a sweet and powerful farewell last night — and included a special recommissioning from the elders for a final chapter of ministry beyond Bethlehem.

Now I’m treading out the grain at Desiring God. The muzzle is still off. I get my first DG paycheck today. My title in this new role is Founder and Teacher. My job is full time, divided over “Content Creation,” “Fundraising and Donor Relations,” “Board Leadership,” “Staff Leadership,” and “Other.”

For the first…

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Update 12/27
We have received $360,000 of the $745,000 that we need in order to meet our end-of-year financial goal. Thank you for your generous support! The Lord is good, and all of his paths are "steadfast love and faithfulness" (Psalm 25:10).

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Dear Friends,

It may surprise you the way the Desiring God website began. That’s what this video is about: how one ordinary man got an extraordinary vision from God. I hope the story of Moe Bergeron inspires you.

For decades, Moe was a factory worker and bi-vocational pastor on the rugged spiritual soil of New England. He was one of the first to believe in the power and potential of computers “talking” to each other, and he may have been …

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This Advent is the 33rd John Piper has spent among the people of Bethlehem Baptist Church. And it is his last Advent as senior pastor.

God willing, Pastor John will serve as an associate in the first quarter of 2013 and officially finish his course as a local-church pastor on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013.

Here’s an except from his final Advent letter to the church. We thought this section in particular might be of interest beyond the local congregation.

Memory has a way of simplifying things. It strips away a few million details that at the time seemed major, and it leaves only the big outlines. Of course, God was in those details. It was he and not I who wove them into the tapestry t…

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¿Habla Español también? A major focus at Desiring God in recent years has been getting our resources into Spanish. Next to English, Spanish is the second most accessed language version of our website. We now have over 600 Spanish resources. And our freshest initiative is a Spanish-language Desiring God page on Facebook and Twitter.

Our desire is to make it as easy as possible for non-English readers worldwide to be able to access and interact with our content, and then spread it among their peers through their social networks. Increasingly, the way content is consumed and spread on the Internet is through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. According to one recent report, in …

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In January 1999, Desiring God was four years old and in a growth spurt. Our office was partly in two old Sunday School rooms and partly on the balcony of Bethlehem Baptist Church's vacated (and now demolished) old sanctuary. We had eight staff members, growing demands, and new dreams. But we needed someone with serious organizational horsepower to help us before things got out of hand.

And the Lord sent Bill Walsh.

Bill joined the DG team at the beginning of February of that year as our Production and Distribution Manager. Mainly it meant he made things run. And he did it really well. As DG grew, so did his job. Pretty soon he was Director of Operations.

But by 2006, the Lord h…

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Update 5/4: Reaching the Muslim World — On the Web

Our vision at Desiring God is increasingly global. If you've had the chance to read John Piper's blog post from last week, you might recall that one of the things he mentions is this highly encouraging statistic: in the last 12-months we've seen a 40% increase in Website visits from outside the United States.

For those who might be interested, here is a country-by-country ranking, and how it compares to historical data.

From April 25, 2010 to April 25, 2011, we had 2,848,264 visits from outside the United States

From April 25, 2011 to April 25, 2012, we had 4,063,757 visits from outside the United States

Most notably, we sa…

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Update 4/24: My Future at Desiring God.

Bethlehem Baptist is one step closer to commissioning John Piper from the local church pastorate to greater involvement with Bethlehem College and Seminary and to a wider ministry nationally and internationally through Desiring God.

The Bethlehem elders are announcing to the congregation their candidate for Associate Pastor for Preaching and Vision and, God willing, John Piper's eventual successor as the church's senior pastor.

Jason Meyer, 36-year-old Assistant Professor of New Testament for Bethlehem College and Seminary, is the elders' recommendation for congregational consideration and vote at a special May 20 all-church meeting. Meyer …

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Update 4/24: My Future at Desiring God

Increasingly, our vision for Desiring God is global. The Internet is our main way of spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. And the Internet is global. We are continually amazed who is downloading articles and messages.

Jesus has global goals for his church. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. No inch of the planet is not his! And he promises that his gospel will reach all the people groups of the world as a testimony (Matthew 24:14). And he commands that we teach everything he has commanded to all these groups (Matthew 28:20). So we see our Internet presence as bearin…

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