Why We Need Tim Keller's Theology
The Late Pastor's Approach to Culture is Still the Best Option
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One of the main traits of “celebrity pastors” is that a particular doctrine or perspective often defines their ministry. John Piper’s career has been spent illuminating the glory of God through the idea of finding our joy in Christ. R.C. Sproul spent his lifetime expositing Scripture in a way that brought the doctrines of election and predestination to the forefront of the biblical narrative. Today, John Mark Comer’s ministry is defined in many ways by his emphasis on a Rule of Life. While these pastors are undoubtedly deeper and their theology is broader than one doctrine or perspective, their fame seems to grow around one particular emphasis that fits the current moment.
Throughout the 2000’s, Tim Keller’s ministry in New York City became a model for Christians interested in engaging culture. Keller’s way of interacting with a post-Christian metropolis was laid out in numerous books and offered church planters a way of thinking about culture through the lens of idolatry. While Keller was much more than a one-doctrine mouthpiece, the recent book by Colin Hanson does an excellent job at explaining his formation, the focus on idolatry was a brilliant way to engage with post-Christian New York. Keller was able to articulate how our desire for glory, comfort, and love lead us in all the wrong directions.
A Successful Paradigm
Although it is not as well-known as his more popular level books, Center Church offers a comprehensive look into the Keller model. The paradigm Keller worked through was one of balance. For an evangelicalism that assumed conservatives were friends and liberal were enemies, Keller flipped the script. Instead of simply partnering with conservatives, the way the Moral Majority of the 1980’s and 90’s had done, Keller offered a “Third-Way.” In Keller’s mind, Christians were always trying to reach one of two kind of people: the younger brother or the older brother laid out in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Keller realized that Christians primarily focused on the younger son’s sins while almost entirely passing by the sins of the older brother. The younger son, the one who blew his father’s inheritance on prostitutes and partying was the sinner, the older brother who faithfully stayed with his father was the good guy. What Keller pointed out was that the older brother’s response to his brother’s return was just as sinful. When the young man returns and repents to his father, the older brother is enraged that they must now split the inheritance. If the younger brother was consumed by lust, the older brother was consumed by pride. Both are sinful impulses in need of redemption.
Keller Criticized
In the past few years, Keller has been criticized for his approach. Many today feel as though Keller was too soft on issues like abortion and LGBTQ culture. In addition, there has been a consensus of sorts that Keller spent too much time trying to “win over” the left. While many conservative Christians are constantly punching to the left, Keller spent more time punching to the right. Along with his skepticism of right-wing institutions, Keller seemed to make friends with the left. At different times in his career, he published pieces in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and was interviewed on CNN. In terms of breaking into the elite media institutions of the 2000’s, Keller came the closest any evangelical has yet to gaining widespread respect.
By the time of his death in 2023, Keller was sometimes seen as complacent to a culture taken over by the radical left. In some ways, the criticism here is fair. Keller spent very little time pushing back against the overreaches liberals. In other ways, however, these criticisms missed the mark. The prevailing view of Keller was that a ministry must fit its location in thoughtful and practical ways. Much of what Keller did was in the context of New York City. In this paradigm, a pastor in New York is going to engage the culture differently than a pastor in South Carolina or Texas. In addition, Keller felt particularly called to a ministry of the city were large amounts of people from different ethnic, political, and social background melted together. Instead of complacency, Keller’s work was simply contextualized to his time and place.
The Approach to Culture
In Center Church, Keller laid out the three overarching paradigms he viewed ministry through. The first is the Gospel. On one side of the paradigm is the legalist (older brother of prodigal) that is constantly trying to work their way to salvation. This is a losing battle and must be corrected. On the other side is the relativism (young brother of prodigal) who makes light of sin and pursues only pleasure. This also must be corrected with the Gospel. Keller’s main focus was showing people that they needed the gospel. In doing so, he spent time diagnosing the viruses of people’s heart regardless of their station in life. For Keller, an important part of this was showing the Wall Street banker that he had more in common with the drug addict than he realized. Both were pursuing idols and the gospel was the cure for both.
The second paradigm of Keller’s approach rests upon a theology of the city. As with most of Keller’s thinking, the middle way is best. On one hand a church can under adapt. In this sense, the church fails to consider the culture of the city and misses opportunities to engage. In my city of Columbia, SC, an example of this would be to underestimate how important Gamecocks football is here. A church must at least understand this cultural impulse to be approachable to unbelievers. Of course underadaption is not the only pitfall. A church can also over-adapt and become too worldly. Keller cautioned against this as well. Finally, Keller thought in terms of movement. This is his word for church structure and engagement with other denominations. On one hand a church can be too focused on tradition and organization. This creates an institution that is too inflexible to navigate culture. On the other hand, a church can also be too fluid and too eager to pursue unity (think American megachurch model). As with everything else, Keller pursues the balanced center.
Why We Need Keller Today
The reason that we need Keller’s theology of cultural engagement is that it is applicable to every situation in every age. Too often Keller has been criticized because it is assumed that his way of doing ministry in New York City is a model for other places in different periods of time. This is not the case. What Keller was advocating for was a deep, thoughtful approach to certain places in certain times with an unchanging gospel message. If anything was true of Keller, it was his belief that the gospel offered hope to every culture in every time period. Instead of his third-way operating as a complacent interaction with elite culture, it is a way to view mission through a thoughtful lens. The world Keller ministered into in post-9/11 New York is a different world than 2024 Denver, Colorado or Jacksonville, FL. The world of Birmingham, AL today is a different context than Burlington, VT. In these cases, the gospel is the same, but the people think differently. The thing that Keller understood is that these differences matter. In a world where evangelicalism was a packaged entity sold by thoughtless megachurches, Keller stepped in with a different message. The message Keller preached was that places matter, people matter, and the differences of culture matter. More importantly, Keller believed that the Gospel was the only source of life for this world.
Evangelicalism needs Keller’s theology today to help bridge the divide that has been created in the past decade. While some folks are eager to partner with conservatives, others are distrustful of anyone who supports the current Republican Party. Some evangelicals see the “woke” threat as the most dangerous virus opposing the church, others see racism as a continuous threat to the gospel message. What would it look like if the church committed to the thoughtful approach of Keller once again? How might it look if Christians did the hard work of cultural analysis and engagement instead of criticize Keller’s work from twenty years ago? I think it would be fruitful.
The church today must view the mission of spreading the gospel through the context of culture. This has always been the case. Without the printing press, the Reformation may have stalled out quickly. Without the populist fervor of the United States, the open air preaching of Whitfield may have been less successful. Similarly, the wealthy era of post-WWII America was the perfect breeding ground for Billy Graham’s crusades. The question today is what types of opportunities our culture has for the gospel?
One thing that is clear is that media must play a role. YouTube, podcasts, and platforms like Substack provide opportunities to reach mass amounts of people. What cannot be missed, however, is the continued value of the local church. The church will always be the heartbeat of the Christian movement as people can live together, comfort one another, and challenge each other. This is where Keller’s thinking is most important. While large media ministries are necessary, the way forward will be through local congregations living faithfully together. For this to happen, the cities and towns these churches function in must be taken into account. What the particular ministry looks like will take hard work, however. Here are just a few questions that might helpful in reaching your hometown:
What is the political vibe in your city?
In what ways does the gospel speak into the current values of the city?
What idols of your city must be challenged?
What sins in your city are often overlooked?
What types of people in your community have been left behind?
Where are some places God is currently working mightily in your community and how can you partner with these places?
These are just a few questions, but they are important. Despite the criticism of Keller, the questions he was asking are still relevant. While I wish that he had been clearer about abortion or same-sex marriage, his ability to combine the best of Christian history with the current day is unparalleled. In my opinion, his model for cultural engagement is still as relevant as it was twenty years ago, it just will look different.