Joel Beeke

Joel Robert Beeke (born December 9, 1952) is an American Reformed theologian who is a pastor in the Heritage Reformed Congregations and the chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

Joel Robert Beeke was the fourth of five children and the third son born to John Beeke (1920–1993) and Johanna (née Van Strien) Beeke (1920–2012) on December 9, 1952, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Beeke’s father, John Beeke, was born in Krabbendijke, the Netherlands, and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was seven years old.

John and Johanna Beeke were devout Christians and raised their children in the Netherlands Reformed Congregations.

John Beeke worked as a carpenter and served as a ruling elder in the Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Kalamazoo for forty years.

According to Beeke, when he was nine years old, he first sensed the presence of God when he felt the powerful comfort of God answering one of his prayers.

From that time, Beeke began reading books authored by the Puritans that he found in his father’s bookcase, beginning with John Bunyan's Life and Death of Mr. Badman.

Instead of playing sports with his brothers after school as he was accustomed, Beeke read extensively over the next six months.

Although he felt conviction for sin at this time, Beeke’s initial interest in theology and spirituality began to wane.

In 1967, when Beeke was about fourteen years old, he defended the existence of God before an atheist teacher at Milwood Junior High School in Kalamazoo, but he became troubled that he had no personal relationship with the God whose existence he defended.

That summer, he joined his brother and his brother’s friend on a road trip to the western United States, hoping to experience a sense of God’s presence by admiring nature.

In Yellowstone National Park, while Beeke’s brother and his brother’s friend were searching for lost car keys, Beeke went into his tent and prayed desperately for a sense of God’s presence.

When he finished praying, he felt a hard object under his knees and noticed that the keys were under the sleeping bag on which he was kneeling.

According to Beeke, “For the first time in my life, I felt contact—real contact—with God.

It was like God was right there in the car, and right there in my heart.

And what instantly happened was I truly became a lost sinner before God.

The whole seven hundred miles [to Iowa], and from Iowa all the way home, I was just weeping, weeping, weeping over my sins.

I was lost, and I felt like I was going to hell.”

Upon returning home, Beeke informed his closest friends that he could not spend time with them until he found God.

He spent almost every evening reading the Bible and theological books.

Beeke declares that he read every Puritan-authored book in his father’s bookcase.

When he was about fifteen years old, Beeke became convinced that he was reprobate, and that he had no hope of salvation, often crying himself to sleep.

In May 1969, when he was sixteen years old, the Kalamazoo Netherlands Reformed Congregation called a new minister, Arie Elshout (1923–1991).

Before Elshout arrived in Kalamazoo to begin his pastorate in August 1969, Beeke wrote to him and informed him of his spiritual struggles and his desire to hear the preaching of the gospel.

Through Elshout’s ministry in Kalamazoo, one of Beeke’s brothers experienced conversion.

Beeke and his brother began to regularly talk, pray, and weep together as they discussed God and the Bible.

After arriving in Kalamazoo, Elshout visited Beeke’s immediate and extended family.

He spoke to Beeke’s maternal grandfather, who had struggled with assurance of faith his entire life.

As Beeke’s grandfather expressed his spiritual struggles, Beeke recalls Elshout saying, “For you too, Mr. Van Strien, there is a way of escape in Jesus Christ through faith in Him!” Beeke declared that Elshout’s words pricked his heart “like a lightning bolt.” According to Beeke, "God spoke those words into my heart with power and authority, and for the first time in my life I could believe the gospel, embrace the gospel. . . . I saw with vivid clarity that Jesus Christ suffered for me, died for me in His passive obedience, had taken my place to pay for my sins, and that in His active obedience He obeyed the law for me, so He was perfectly righteous, and there was nothing I had to do but simply receive Him. . . . I was just overwhelmed with the gospel—its freeness, its fullness, its glory, its beauty. . . . My hands were up in the air; I was just praising God and the tears were streaming down my face."

Almost immediately after his conversion, Beeke lost his natural shyness and began to evangelize his neighbors door-to-door.

Beeke described how he first sensed a powerful inward call to preach the gospel in the summer of 1969, though he initially tried to resist this call because of his young age and shy disposition.

Beeke has also taught as adjunct faculty at Reformed Theological Seminary and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (now Cornerstone Theological Seminary); he was an adjunct professor of theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1993 to 1998; he lectured in homiletics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido, California from 1995 to 2001; and he has lectured at dozens of seminaries around the world.

Beeke founded Reformation Heritage Books in 1994.

He was the president and editorial director of Reformation Heritage Books from 1994 to 2022 and has been the board chairman since 2022.

He is the editor of the Puritan Reformed Journal and The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth magazine, the periodical of the Heritage Reformed Congregations; he is the president of Inheritance Publishers, a ministry that republishes sermons in the Reformed tradition from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries; and he is the vice president of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society.

Beeke has written extensively on systematic and historical theology, particularly on the Puritans, Calvinism, holiness, assurance, and the doctrines of grace, as well as on pastoral ministry, biblical family life, and Christian living.

Through his preaching, teaching, speaking, writing, and seminary leadership, Beeke promotes the experiential piety and preaching of the Puritans as well as the Reformers, the seventeenth-century Scottish Presbyterians, and the Dutch divines of the Nadere Reformatie.

Under the oversight of the Heritage Reformed Congregations, Beeke helped found Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in 1995, where he served as president until he assumed the chancellorship in 2023.

He teaches there as the professor of homiletics, systematic theology, and practical theology.

In recognition of Beeke’s contributions to the church and the academy, particularly his impact on the renaissance of interest in Puritan theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a Festschrift entitled Puritan Piety: Writings in Honor of Joel R. Beeke was published in 2018, including contributions from Richard A. Muller, Chad Van Dixhoorn, Michael A. G. Haykin, Sinclair B. Ferguson, and W. Robert Godfrey.