A few weeks ago, the TGC Norden Council was enthusiastically preparing to welcome John Piper to Gothenburg, Sweden, for a conference. We’d sold out the 500 tickets, booked his hotel room, and lined up Nordic leaders eager to spend time with him.

Then, seven days before the conference, we found out he was experiencing chest pain that would prevent him from traveling.

Should we cancel the event? we wondered. Would everyone who signed up to hear Piper ask for a refund?

By God’s grace, only 50 tickets were returned. And the Real Joy Conference was held with 450 attendees. I believe it was one of the largest broadly Reformed events held in northern Europe in recent memory.

In this providential turn of events, we saw God challenging our dependency on specific leaders and helping us lean more on him and his Word.

We Need Leaders

Piper is part of a generation of Reformed leaders—which also includes Don Carson, Tim Keller, Voddie Baucham, and John MacArthur—who fought fearlessly for the gospel. We’re losing so many of this faithful generation.

Sometimes it seems the younger generation has an aversion to the status of “great men” of the faith. We know this in Europe all too well. We have an intrinsic skepticism of the big show visiting from the English-speaking world.

But we must admit our pessimism can be a form of disbelief in what God can do. God gives his church teachers to serve and shepherd and herald (Eph. 4:11–12). We need these men speaking at our conferences, on our podcasts, and in our churches.

In lieu of Piper, we were so grateful to hear from David Mathis, and later from Collin Hansen at our TGC Norden Conference. Neither of these events went as we’d planned—with Piper’s temporary international travel ban, technical complications in Copenhagen, and all the joys of last-minute conference scrambling. But they went exactly as God, in his sovereignty, planned. And God was honored as his Word was proclaimed, the brothers and sisters had important face-to-face encouragement, and our churches were strengthened.

How will God raise new gospel leaders in the post-Christendom age? Maybe not as he once did. Even the timing of our two events, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and Wes Huff’s rising prominence, reminded us that God raises leaders in new ways in this new age. Influence that could once only be earned through preaching and writing with ink and pen can now be earned through tiny screens pumping video clips, posts, and podcasts.

We Need Each Other

A few months ago, Evangelium21 (E21)—an organization of German-speaking Reformed Christians—hosted its first conference without an established speaker from the English-speaking world. The continuing role of the Spirit was openly discussed in good-faith debates. We’re encouraged and inspired by our German neighbors.

“[We] think it was one of the best E21 conferences yet,” wrote Ryan Hoselton and Ron Kubsch. “It’s certainly great to benefit from the gospel ministries of renowned preachers and authors. But the depth and clarity of the talks from ministers throughout German-speaking lands displayed encouraging fruits of God’s work over recent years to multiply laborers for the gospel harvest in Europe.”

In Sweden, God was honored as the many attendees in Gothenburg were graced with the severe mercy of not being able to meet their spiritual hero, but looked to one another for the same inspiration and fervor they signed up to receive. In TGC Norden, we hope we can learn from our German brothers by inviting and honoring our international heroes while doing all we can to raise up European teachers and leaders.

We Need God

In the end, a visit from Piper would have been a grace (maybe we’ll still have a visit from him in the Nordics!), but having a visit from Mathis and later from Hansen was also a grace.

Serving God in one of the wealthiest and happiest places in the world is a grace. But so is serving God in one of the most secular and slow places on earth for ministry. It’s all grace upon grace.

As John describes the gospel in his magnificent first chapter on Christ’s incarnation, “From [Christ’s] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:16–18).

There is a way in which the law is given through men like Moses and our modern leaders after him. We receive a “punch in the spiritual gut” when we listen to Paul Washer. Matt Chandler awakens our conscience when he raises the timbre of his preaching. David Platt inspires us to radical discipleship.

But all these preachers and bringers of conviction point only to Christ, in whom we receive grace upon grace—the grace of conviction and the grace of justification.

Redemption is accomplished and applied only when we see and savor Christ’s face. In the end, it’s God the Father who makes the Son of God known by the Spirit’s power. We lay our plans at the feet of your redemptive plan, Father. May you make him known.