Our colleague over at Christianity Today, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, has snagged an interview with John Piper that Ur-banites will want to read. Piper has been on an 8-month leave from ministry to focus on "soul check, marriage and family check, and recalibration of life."

John Piper also discusses the controversy that erupted when he invited Rick Warren to speak at his Desiring God Conference. Piper admits that he's still not sure the invitation was the right thing to do, but he feels Warren has "been slandered." When asked if Rick Warren exemplifies "thinking" (the subject of Piper's new book), he responds:

No, I don't think he exactly exemplifies what I'm after. But he is biblical. He quoted 50 Scriptures from memory. Unbelievable, his mind is Vesuvius. So I asked him what impact reading Jonathan Edwards had on him. What these authors like Karl Barth and Edwards do for him is give him a surge of theological energy that then comes through his wiring. What I wanted to do with Rick is force ...