John Piper

John Stephen Piper (born January 11, 1946) is an American theologian and pastor in the Reformed Baptist tradition. He is also chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Piper was born on January 11, 1946, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to a father who  was a traveling evangelist for over 60 years. According to Piper, he had a religious conversion at his mother's knee on a family vacation in Florida when he was six years old. C. S. Lewis was a profound influence in Piper's life, in large measure, Piper says, because of the "combination of rational precision with language, and profound poetic perception of reality."

Piper received his Doctor of Theology degree in New Testament studies at the University of Munich, Germany, and upon completion of his doctorate, taught biblical studies at Bethel University in Saint Paul, Minnesota for several years. In 1980, Piper became pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, and ministered until March 31, 2013. Piper became involved in evangelical Christianity after the publication of his book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist in 1986 and has continued to publish dozens of books further articulating his theological perspective. In 1994, he founded Desiring God Ministries