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Tim Keller's Spiritual and Intellectual Formation || Collin Hansen || SLP493 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you for downloading the Speak Life Podcast, episode 493.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thurrigood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and in this episode you will hear a conversation that Glenn had with Colin Hanson about his new book, Timothy Keller, his spiritual and intellectual formation.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of the listeners of this podcast will be very familiar with Tim Keller.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've listened to his sermons or read some of his books.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he, of course, died in 2023, went to be with the Lord, and I know so many of us, including myself, have been very blessed by his incredible life of ministry and proclaiming Jesus in a way that was very culturally engaged and accessible and incredibly rich as well.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I will hand over to Glenn and Colin.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's our great privilege today to be joined by Colin Hansen.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: He is the editor-in-chief of the Gospel Coalition as well as the Executive Director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and it's Tim Keller we're going to talk about today.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Colin has written the most fabulous book about Tim Keller.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Tim Keller, His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is not simply a biography of the man, but it is really about the influences on Tim Keller and what has made him to be the spiritual influence that he has been today.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Colin, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me, when did you first meet Tim Keller?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Tim and I met actually appropriately at the first Gospel Coalition conference ever.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was 2007.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the process of writing my first book, Young Rest is Reformed, and so I had asked him for some help in that project.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time you're talking 2007, so Tim doesn't start publishing his major books, The Prodigal God and The Reason for God until 2008.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he's well known, but not the way that we would have come to know him after 2008.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I knew enough about him to say, hey, he's an important person for me to include in this book, talking about the rise of this movement called the New Calvinism, but but not enough where I wouldn't have thought to I mean, I could still publish the book without him.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I asked for some help and he said, No, I don't want to do that.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: But then I but I said, Well, I I want to follow up on that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he gave me his email address, and I followed up and I said, Here are the questions.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then he just answered, yes, no, no, yes, no, no.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was useless to me.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So he obviously did not want to participate in that book.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then a little bit later, a friend and I had an idea of a of a series of books that were biblically rooted but culturally engaged, which we had been inspired by in part from him, and asked him if he would help to work on those books with me as the acquisitions editor.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he said yes.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so from 2008 on, he and I were working together, editing books together.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then by 2010, I had worked with him in a in a formal capacity at the Gospel Coalition where I've been ever since, which he had co-founded back in 2005.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how we got to know each other, and um, and then of course just continue to collaborate in a variety of ways over the years.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest was the New City Catechism Project, which he had worked on, and that I was the the publisher effectively uh for that, um, with with music and church programs and curriculum and and different things along those lines.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: But um, for all those years, Glenn, I just kept trying to encourage other people, especially in New York, somebody needs to write a book about Tim.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, in some ways, it just felt obvious.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody needs to document what the Lord has been doing in his life and in his ministry.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then we got tw 2020, we got the news about his cancer, and I realized nobody else had done that, and that's when the process started on this book.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't the most uh willing subject when it came to the Young Restless and Reformed book.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um was he any more willing when you pitched to him the idea of doing this book?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: The short answer is no.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I think I think Glenn, the difference in this case was the difference between me knowing him after working together for 15 years versus meeting him for the first time.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you had the experience of talking with with Tim, at least in the kind of professional context that I did, um I can't talk I can't talk about him as if we were friends for 60 years or something like that.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, he had different kinds of relationships with different people, but in a professional and ministry capacity, he did not like talking about himself, but he was very common, very eager to talk about others and people that he had learned from, what he what he'd learned in the past, what he was learning in the present.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as you pointed out, Glenn, earlier, that's probably where his interests and my interests aligned because my history is a lot of writing about evangelical history, evangelical figures, the broader movement in both a contemporary manner as well as looking back in time.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we had had so many of those conversations that when the publisher approached him with this idea, hey, let's do a book that's really not about you, but it's about your mentors, your friends, your colleagues, all these people that you've learned from.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, would you be interested in that?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I knew, hey, if you want to write about Tim, don't ask him to share his deepest, darkest secrets.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, don't ask to see his journals.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just ask him what he learned from Ed Clowney or why Elizabeth Elliott was such an important influence in his life.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when you put all of that together, you will see Tim Keller.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and people do see Tim Keller in this book.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a marvelous book, and it it really does him a lot of credit, but even more, I think it warms people's hearts um to see the way that Jesus has shaped him through so many different aspects, not just intellectual uh but pastoral and spiritual in in terms of the ways that he's he's been formed.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and you you get to know the man himself as well through through the whole thing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um I and I guess that was one um beautiful tactic that you used uh to make this not a hagiographical book.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um certainly in the UK context where I am, um, the great fear with any kind of spiritual biography is we don't want anything to be hagiography.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that that's that would be the worst thing if we kind of um exalted uh uh a human too much.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um and sometimes I think in in the UK people go a little bit far with that, and and and we can sometimes um rob ourselves of the benefits of of just rejoicing in what the Lord has done in in someone else's life.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: But how how did you try to navigate that yourself?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, doing his spiritual and intellectual formation and talking about the people who had formed him is one brilliant way of avoiding hagiography.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: But it it occurs to me that there was more to it than that in terms of uh how you kind of wal walk that tightrope.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: So tell me about how what what your heart was in that.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: I do think, Glenn, that Tim and Kathy are both um a little bit British in their sensibilities.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're um a lot of self-deprecating bent toward them.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you you'll see in the book a moment there where Kathy talks about the prayer letters that she would write for her denomination who supported them in their church plant, and she said, These were the whiniest, most pathetic prayer litter letters written in the history of the church.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a a self-deprecating aspect to that, or um the way she would describe himself herself as simply a a frumpy newspaper editor, and then the you know, and then the leader of the marching band, drum major of the marching band for Tim in there.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's a little bit of that sensibility to them, but I think the biggest aspect just came when I was talking to the people who loved them, and especially to their to their colleagues um at the church, there was a a consistent, a consistent theme with those colleagues that they would they would literally cry while they're on Zoom with me because they were so moved, they were so transformed by God's work through Tim in their lives.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then when they would notice me scribbling away and making notes and and making sure this was an important thing, they would they would sort of like reach out through the Zoom call to stop me and say, Hey, but you have to remember that when we were working for Tim, we were so angry at him sometimes.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: We were so frustrated with him sometimes.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't very good at this.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so it actually led to a conversation that Tim and I had where he said over and over again, I I'm just I'm just not a gifted leader.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, That doesn't make any sense by any rational assessment, any objective assessment, you are a good leader, but by that same mark, you're not a good administrator.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people who are good at what you're good at are not good at that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So the real question then became how willing would he be in the context of this book to be able to talk about his limitations, his weaknesses, his frustrations.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: But for Tim, because of the way he thought about really the way that he's he was humble, it it actually gave him an opportunity to commend others.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it gave him an opportunity to say, you know, I was not a very good administrator, but praise God.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm so thankful for Dick Kaufman when he came in as executive pastor.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm so thankful for Bruce Terrell, who came in later after another crisis as an executive pastor.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it really gave him an opportunity, Glenn, to do the same thing that he was doing with these historical figures.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually think, Glenn, that he his humility concealed his genius in the way that he talked.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So he would say things like, Well, you know, I'm just getting this from other people.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And people would stop and they'd say, Yeah, sure, I can see that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's just quoting C.S.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis here.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: But when you see the composite portrait of this book, you realize, oh no, that was not all that he was doing, and certainly not how he pieced this all together.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: But as a humble person, he was really trying to deflect from that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that part of that's what comes through in the book, but also just those moments in the book where people are frustrated with him, people are angry with him, where he's falling short, where he's doubting whether he should even stay at the church.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those kinds of moments, those those meant a lot.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And to the staff members, especially and people who who really knew Tim, that's one of the parts of the book that I hear about the most.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Kathy comes over so well in the book, and I I would love to meet her um one of these days.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I watched the memorial series.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good idea, actually.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love that.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I think we can arrange that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think that's a good idea you just uh dropped there.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: I would love I would love that.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um the memorial service.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: There were there were so many highlights from the memor memorial service uh for for Tim's life that was held over the summer here uh in in New York City, and she she was absolutely one of them.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um the other one we'll we'll talk about in terms of uh a member of uh uh the the Church in Hopewell.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um but but Kathy comes across so well in the book.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Why why were they like such a great pair?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: What what is it about the two of them that that sort of um complemented each other?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that is a good question, and it's probably deeper than I or anybody outside of the two of them could ever really describe.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Theirs was a deeply intimate relationship on on every level that you would be able to imagine in terms of their ministry lives were so intertwined, as they often are.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when you plant a church, that is a whole family affair.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of the the strength here is just the the vibrancy of Kathy's own relationship with God.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not mediated somehow through Tim's as if you know she depended on Tim for for that.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: A good example would be the decision of moving to New York, and where Tim comes back and he says, you know, I've been thinking about this, and I'm not sure this is good for you or for the kids, and so I think we're not gonna go to New York, we're gonna stay in Philadelphia, and Kathy just erupting in anger, saying, How dare you?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's my that's mine to take to God.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: You make a decision, you're the man, you're supposed to be the leader of this family, and I'll take it up with God.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that kind of tough talk in some ways was exactly what Tim needed.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and talking with um Liz Kaufman in particular, I mentioned her late husband Dick earlier, but talking with Liz Kaufman, she said uh Tim as a writer, um, his wife was like an editor in his head, and in his home, of course, in that situation, and in the front row of church, and so you you've got somebody who she's always giving him that feedback.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: She's you know, he's writing a book or he's going through a book and editing it, and she's right there with him in that process.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: She did also work professionally in Philadelphia as a as a book editor, and so their lives were so intertwined.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that I've thought about with Tim is that he didn't have hobbies, um, apart from reading.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of what he would be reading would be either ministry stuff that they could talk about or that they were living out, or it would be things like rereading Tolkien, which of course she had introduced him to originally, so and which and which they shared um a love for, or similar similarly there with Lewis.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, or or the vacations that they took.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's just so much overlap in their lives, and that's not the case for everybody.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think, Glenn, that it needs to be a paradigm, but it's simply a way of explaining that there is no chance anybody could have ever written a book on Tim Keller's influences and Tim Keller himself without Kathy being the top influence and getting major attention in that book.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: I just remember I think my first introduction to Tim's ministry was um the marriage tapes.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: So back when there were cassette tapes and they they were being passed around like it was Christian contraband.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: They were in kind of brown paper envelopes, it was sort of passed underneath the table.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: This is the these are the secret cheat codes for marriage.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: And they were being passed around.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the Q ⁇ A sessions, um I I I I seem to remember Kathy was in uh one one of these tapes, and and just the way he kind of spoke of his wife throughout ministry, it was just so um so integral, it it seemed to to the man that he was.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and there's a there's a point here that relates, Glenn, to your earlier question about that we where we discussed humility.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Notice that those marriage tapes are excellent.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Their meaning of marriage book, I hope, continues to be read for generations.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a a wonderfully insightful and gospel-centered book.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: But notice that there is not any parenting tapes out there.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the things that they were both pretty humble about was we just don't think that we were the best parents.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: We don't think in some ways we were naturally inclined that way.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Kathy was very adamant that she wanted me to include in the book the role that 20-something believers had played in their church in discipling and modeling faith for their sons.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: She was also very complimentary of how their sons um look looked up to their dad.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you saw that as well at the memorial service, uh, no doubt about it.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: But she just didn't, if she didn't think she was good at that, or that was something that she didn't excel in, or they didn't excel in, she didn't pretend to be a guru on everything.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: They they haven't pretended that, which is interesting for somebody who has written on such an incredibly broad array of subjects.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But one of them to me, I just kept going back saying, especially with three young kids, thinking, man, I really need a Tim and Kathy Keller book on parenting, but that that wasn't gonna happen.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: That is that is fascinating.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and another thing fascinating is that the the marriage sermons were were preached in the 90s, and I guess the the marriage book didn't come up until about 20 years after that or there thereabouts.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um Yeah, that was right.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Those were some quite I I I remember sort of Tim's kind of saying um I I guess he he did um uh publish uh the the book on uh social action.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: What was that called?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: A Ministries of Mercy.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Ministries of Mercy.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Call of the Jericho Road, yeah.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Call of the Jericho Road.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So he he he sort of released that, I guess he was m maybe in his thirties at that at that stage.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and then I I remember him saying, like, I wouldn't publish a book until I was fifty.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and I remember thinking to myself, how do you know you're gonna make it to fifty?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: But that's that's that's impetuous me.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I like I don't I don't bank on that happening, so I I just kind of shoot out any old nonsense in in my 30 seconds.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think Tim was pretty different than most of the rest of us.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: You you mentioned earlier my journalistic background.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um for journalists, if we write something, you see it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're not holding a lot in the tank.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: With Tim, it was even his voluminous writing is like an iceberg.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't even begun to see all that he did write over the years.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's why he was able to produce so quickly on such a wide variety of subjects, is because that was a common method of his pastoral leadership, uh was writing out very thoughtful papers on this.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other aspect here is this is pre-internet.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so he's doing this just for his local congregation, and and uh there isn't necessarily a venue for publishing all of that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, there's an iceberg of material out there that he's that he's produced that he was drawing from.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think some of that might see the light of day even posthumously?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I pray that it would.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even there's there's some things that um that would be very edifying that are even just only on the internet, but have not been uh promoted heavily as books that are very, very timely, very insightful.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I mean it's it's not my it's not my call.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have responsibility for those things, but I certainly pray that it'll be the case because I don't think we've um I don't think we've exhausted all that God intends for us to learn from Tim.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: There's gold in them there uh hard drives somewhere.
• 19:46
  unknown: That's right.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good one.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the book um gets into and we we we won't have time to go into all the the the various intellectual kind of streams that are flowing into Tim from you know and and as you mentioned, the the idea that he will um drop Lewis into a conversation, but he'll also bring him into conversation with Richard Lovelace, who'll bring him into conversation with R.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: C.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Sproul, who'll bring him into conversation with Edward Ed Edmund Clowney, um that that takes a real synthesizing genius to be able to do that.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think your book takes us through a lot of those stages and a lot of those intellectual influences on on Tim, and I highly uh recommend that people get into the book and and see those those various streams that are flowing in um to Tim and the way he thinks.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um But let's let's talk about the spiritual and the pastoral dimensions, and and maybe all we can have time for is really to take us to Hopewell, Virginia, and then take us to New York City as the two pastorates that that um uh where where Tim took churches.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hopewell was for nine or ten years, and then uh New York City was for for for much longer.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um you entitle your chapter about Hopewell, Virginia as uh it's the chemical capital of the South.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um paint us a picture of of Hopewell, Virginia.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I think there's a reason a lot of people have identified the Hopewell chapter as as perhaps their favorite.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was probably my my favorite to write.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: There was so much vivid imagery.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So painting a picture, there's um you know, you're you're back in the 1970s in in Virginia, and this is this is semi-rural.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not urban, it's not quite suburban, it's sort of semi-rural, small town or small city, Virginia, central part of the state, and you're cresting over this hill, and you look out, and all you see are these smokestacks, you know, bellowing out this yellow, this yellow smoke.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And this one woman who is uh from the city and older, she's sitting next.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: To Kathy Keller, and she says, Isn't it just beautiful?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Kathy's comment is, I uh I think we're all gonna die.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is not this is not good.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I I used that title for that chapter, and then I also made sure to have a picture so that I people could realize I wasn't making this up.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the chemical capital of the South.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all three Keller boys were born in those nine years in Hopewell.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just further context, you're talking here about a congregation where a number of the Presbyterian church members, their grandfathers had or fathers even, had had fought in the Civil War.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, grandfathers in particular, there.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you've got only two college degrees.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're both elementary school teachers.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most of the members had a sixth grade education.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: So just imagine being Tim Keller, who is very intellectually keen, teaching himself to read at age three, um, all the way through an excellent liberal arts education, an excellent theological graduate education.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: He excels in both.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he's from the north.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a time when those geographic differences are still fairly pronounced, pre-internet and and pre-mass culture in some ways.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you're and also he doesn't have a Presbyterian background at all.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then he ends up in that congregation and and also with no experience, and also not exactly with a whole bunch of um like personality to spare that that he would be able to step in as just a natural with this.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's an amazing backdrop that I don't think many people had uh before the book, and and certainly a lot of it that that I didn't know.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and I say that maybe this is the reason.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: People kept using this language.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: He learned how to put the cookies on the lower shelf for the rest of us, that we could understand the high, you know, that these complex ideas about God and about the world and about scripture.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I just mentioned it it wouldn't have mattered where.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: He needed to learn how to be a dad, how to be a husband, how to be a pastor, how to care for other people, how to love people in ways that they could appreciate.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: He had to learn how to preach 1,500 sermons in those nine years, three times a week.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: He had to learn all of these somewhere.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: It happened to be Hopewell, and perhaps it's the beginning of what we could see as his true cross-cultural genius, was because he first crossed that north to south into the old Presbyterian culture from a guy who was New England and Eastern Pennsylvania and Northern Evangelical Jesus movement background in there.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's Hopewell.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a remarkable, remarkable time for him.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh quite different in just about every way from New York.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very much so.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh during the memorial service, um a gentleman called uh Graham Howells uh gave just a very moving tribute, um, saying that very early on in Tim's pastorate, he uh ended up in Tim's office and had a marriage that was completely on the rocks, and uh he was not yet a a believer, and and uh and Tim sent him away with homework and hope in his heart.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that was just so such a lovely tribute.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's also it's also an interesting story there because he didn't Tim did not find that homework was very effective for the most part in Hopewell.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, he backed off it to a certain extent.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: But in that first person who walks into his door, he's got this early CCEF, Christian Counseling Education Foundation material, and he's and he's working through it.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I I talked to Graham about it, and he said, I mean, I still have it.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've got the photos of it now myself.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I still have that homework.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was the means God used to be able to change his life, and the and the keller stayed in his life in all these different ways, and you know, to the point where I mean, I don't know that I could say that anybody else other than Kathy was closer to Tim.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um there were other close friends that he had from different stages of life.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: You saw another one, Glenn Klanknect.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was his good friend there in New York.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but um that was a genuine, meaningful relationship.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so Tim's ability to connect with a lot of different kinds of people um was just absolutely one of the Holy Spirit's evident gifts in his life.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell And you don't get the sense that he kind of faked it with people.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: You don't get the sense that he he he put on any kind of different personality to be with people.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um he he still remained who he was, but but somehow that connected.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I the one the one example that I have from Hopewell, this is the this is the 1970s, and there's two major um um American football teams in the the Steelers and then Washington's football team, known at the time as the Redskins, now the Commanders.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Tim being from his wife was from Pittsburgh and his family was there, and R.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: C.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sproul was one of his mentors.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: He was, you know, he he kind of cast himself as a little bit of a Steelers fan, and there was this evening service where he takes off his you know his clerical garb and he's got this Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt underneath.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and the thing is people recognized how he was trying to speak their language, how he was trying to love them, but they also just it wasn't fake because they knew it was not him.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, that's a weird way to say it, but he wasn't like trying to do it on a regular basis.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: He really couldn't pretend, and they just appreciated the gesture.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: But um no, I don't there's and I think I think Glenn that continues into New York.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um he did become a more authentic New Yorker, but uh that developed over a long series of time and a long time of and who is an authentic New Yorker, except especially in Manhattan, except somebody who moves there.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right um and decides it's the greatest place on earth.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's one of those dynamics, but his I I'll just I'll I'll close my answer on this point.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: For the first what we what we often know Tim for his contributions, it's urban, global, and multicultural ministry.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: But what's interesting is the first half of his life, there was no global, multicultural, or urban ministry experience for those first 36 years or so.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's something, there's a takeaway there for us in ministry.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're always learning, you're always growing, you're always adapting, even if you're not good at something that's not a limit to God, and so we're faithful just to go where he leads.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: So fill us in between Hopewell and Redeemer, New York City, um, because that that wasn't a a straight journey, was it?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: He he went to um to teach as well.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if if we had only known Tim Keller as a as a professor, I think I think we probably still would have known who he who he was because I think he still he was very effective at it.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, he couldn't um it just wasn't a it wasn't big enough to contain all of his interests and and and all of his calling.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because even as he's teaching about preaching, he's teaching about the church over you know at Westminster, that was only a part-time job for him, even though it was full-time.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And also to set people's expectations here, uh Tim and Kathy had told me that he was working two part-time jobs, both of which were actually full-time, but combined, it was less stressful on them than pastoral ministry had been.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that just gives you some context of what it's like sometimes to be a pastor.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the other part, he's working on church planting, he's working on mercy ministry, he's training churches around the country.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: He became the scout for his Presbyterian denomination, planting a church in New York, which is kind of how he ended up in that position.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Even he's doing all sorts of ministry.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing ministry with the gay community in Philadelphia.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing apologetics with Muslims, he's advising 10th Presbyterian with all of this high-level strategic thinking upon their anniversary.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can just see as a professor, often what we expect of professors is that they're specialists.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: They focus on their area, they don't speak to other areas.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's really the other end of the spectrum from being a pastor.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: As a pastor, you have to be a generalist.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: All these different areas you're expected to know.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's just another way of saying that his time as a professor was confirming that he should be a pastor because um he just wasn't able to, he would never, I don't think, would have been able to focus on just one thing.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um that would have been perhaps an odd fit over the long haul for him at Westminster.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: But that was not the way that he was thinking at the time.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he was not the first choice uh for the lead pastor of this church plan.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, nor nor was he the the lead choice, not not himself, nor anybody else at the time.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is another area that that could be beneficial for us to focus on for just a second.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um they were trying to put together a pastoral profile for New York City, they had Dick and Liz Kaufman in mind.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a couple there.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um Dick is he's from the area, from New Jersey, um, both educated at Harvard Business School.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: They had planned their entire lives, I mean, through their 70s.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: They were just very driven.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were doing street evangelism in Philadelphia with Jack Miller.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: They were going from church to church doing revival ministry through Jack Miller.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when I talked with Liz about this, she said, yeah, we're just not intellectuals.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like we we are we are go-getters, we're leaders.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that was the thought about New York City was New York City is not an intellectual town.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's for Boston.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is a town for people who come, there it's for artists and for people who want to make a lot of money in banking.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so it has a little bit more of what you describe as a jocular atmosphere.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so you'd you'd identify Tim as central casting for somebody who could be at a place like Park Street Church, right there on the on the on the square in Boston, but not somebody mixing it up with the artists and also the investment bankers of New York City, and yet look what the Lord did.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so Mako Fujimura would tell me often, Tim just he doesn't he doesn't strike you as having all of the sensibilities of a New Yorker, and yet look what God did in his life.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that's an encouragement to to others as well.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: So what age is is he as as they move to New York City and and also paint a picture for us about New York City in the late 1980s?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: This was another thing I enjoyed doing in the book was just researching some of New York's history.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it might come as a surprise to a lot of people that in the 19th century, New York City would have been considered the Protestant and evangelical capital of America.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you have this trope that continues all the way through Billy Graham, and in some ways, of course, through Tim Keller himself, that any significant major American evangelist needs to go and do an event or a series of successful events in New York City.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh Dwight Moody had done that, you know, all the way to Billy Graham in 1957, his most important uh quote unquote crusades, as they were called back then.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was in 1957.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: You had Billy Sunday there in the middle.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: But by the time you transition into the 20th century, it you transition from the early part is the rise of Protestant liberalism and higher criticism.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so you get a real devaluing of the, you know, uh emphasis on the morals, but not the miracles of Christianity in New York.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that starts that decline.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: You also get mass um immigration, especially coming from places like Ireland, places from Italy, in other words, Catholic places, and the and the countries or the city's makeup just really dramatically changes by the time you get to the World War II period and the post-war period, the mainline churches are in significant decline, um, let alone the evangelical churches, which now this is considered almost like a Babylon, the paradigmatic, godless city.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I'm talking about Manhattan specifically here, because the boroughs is always a different situation.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: But specifically there in Manhattan, in the broader evangelical conscience, which is combined then with significant white flight that was fairly typical of a lot of cities, especially a lot of cities, including in the North, in that period of time.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this just isn't the place that you would have put on anybody's list.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for example, if you go look at Rick Warren or at Bill Heibel's, they're both planting churches in places where a bunch of evangelicals are moving in the 1970s, in the 1980s.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tim is doing the opposite.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: And even some of the places, Glenn, that you and I have visited back in the 1980s at that time would have been quite dangerous compared to the way they are today.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and then not to mention, I meant I alluded to this earlier, who can unite the artist group?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is Broadway, right?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the pinnacle of so much of the American arts, museums and ballet and opera and Broadway, of course.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: But then also with these investment bankers, these people do not hang out with each other.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: At least that you know, one group maybe pays for the others, um, you know, in their fundraising and things like that.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: But who would ever think to bring them into a church together?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not to mention there's really only a few evangelical churches, and Glenn, this is the biggest point.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: People kept telling me there may have been evangelical churches, but they didn't feel like New York.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: They felt like sort of outposts of a different part of the country, and that's where you see contextualization come in.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's just kind of the picture that you paint.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's in his late 30s, he's still got three young boys in that process.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have that urban experience.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't their desire.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they didn't have those connections to New York that you would that you would assume, and um, and yet they take that step of faith and and God certainly blessed it.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Aaron Powell And so is it in 2017 that he eventually steps back from Redeemer East Side from full-time leading that church?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um if that's the case, tell us from what what happened in those intervening 30 years?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like what give us give us some kind of sense of the growth of the gospel.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Well, at the time, keep in mind that all of these Redeemer congregations are still together in one church.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um subsequently they've now they've now divided in a healthy way with different with different leaders and autonomous leadership in there.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: But over that period of time, you see not just the the rapid emergence of one large congregation, and it was fairly quick, Glenn.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this is again part of the self-deprecating aspect that I think so many appreciate people appreciate about the Kellers.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Kathy told me, as she's told others, that if you want a successful church plant in a place like New York City, all you need to do is decide where God's going to send a revival, and then just move there a month ahead of time.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um they are they are very quick, and and I got a chance in this book to be able to tell the story of all these different leaders, uh, executive ministries and and um Nancy DeMoss and others, DeMoss House, that were so instrumental in doing ministry in New York throughout the 70s, throughout the 80s.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they weren't necessarily they started to see the spirit bear some significant fruit, but they led into what became Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was it was a it was a revival, it was an explosion.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about a thousand, two thousand people there within the first number of years.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, Tim is is casting this vision through the 1990s for not just being one big congregation, but just starting dozens, even hundreds of other congregations, starting there throughout New York, well, especially in Manhattan, then also in the boroughs, but then also then to the end of the earth, especially focusing on um major urban areas, recognizing that people are moving to cities.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is the whole mantra of Redeemer City to City that he also started, that people are moving to cities faster than the church is is moving to cities.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've got to prioritize that.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the easiest way to explain it, Glenn, is that if I had said in 1980 to any number of Americans around the country, hey, I'm moving to New York City, if they were evangelical Christians, they would probably be aghast.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they would be, how dare you do that?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna lose your faith.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: What's gonna happen?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: By the time the the 2010s and teens roll around, if you said to somebody, I'm gonna move to New York City, they'd say, You are so lucky, you'll get to go to Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a major change.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Tim would look at these at these um statistics that would show, and I'm gonna, these are not accurate, but something like 2% of the population was evangelical Protestant in Manhattan in the 1980s, but then it was four or six or something like that.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately they were praying and aiming for 10, because the thought was if it's 10%, then everybody in Manhattan will know that they know an evangelical Christian there.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they they could see the potential that for gospel ministry.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: But simply put, it's a very different city in a lot of ways from the church level, but Redeemer members would always tell you Tim's vision was never just for our church, it was for the city.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And in many ways, through 9-11, through so many other different tragedies and difficulties and time, they also saw a lot of renewal in the city itself by God's grace through the prayers of his people at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: And what do you put that down to on any kind of earthly level?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the Kathy Keller answer is the correct one.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um God decided to send a revival, and they happen to be the people who are in the way of it.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, he he sent it to that place through those people and not in other ways.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: So what what is there anything we can point to, anything we can learn uh about about why it happened and and how it happened through Tim and and the ministry there?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think we can, and um and I don't want this explanation to come across.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Lord uses means, right?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: So one of my one of my books is is called A God Sized Vision.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a a history of revivals, and I try to show the conditions that led to that revival and then the fruit that was born by those revivals.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: So in this book, Glenn, I'm really just doing the same thing with New York City.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I but I'll mention a couple different things that humanly speaking happen.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one of them is that finance laws were changed in the 1980s in the United States that made uh various forms of banking and investing much more lucrative and much more successful, that attracted young, successful people, many of whom were white at first, then later on, many of them were Asian American, coming into New York City, making enormous amounts of money, especially at a very young age.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's number one.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, of course, is that New York City continued to be that hub for the arts.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: One of the, you know, in the global scene, but certainly in the American scene.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the things that Tim realized early on, and this is even one of the things that he's talked with with you and me about, Glenn, was recognizing the biblical category of idolatry and the significance of that biblical category speaking to young people unattached, moving to the city, believing that their time in the city, whether it was short or permanent, would be that which would make their lives meaningful.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: It would it would lead to fame, it would lead to fortune, it would lead to them becoming whatever they were trying to become and prove something to whoever they were trying to prove themselves to.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, Glenn, the story of New York is not the story of success, it's the story of crushed dreams for almost all of those people.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: And idolatry was the bridge between the people who got everything they ever wanted and realized that it was actually horrible, that they were becoming horrible people, and all those people who went to New York City and they were watching their dreams die for their eyes, and all those idols of success and and money and fame were just crashing down on them.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was able to pastorally discern the moment.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: He was able to find the biblical categories with historical context to bring them to bear on his moment in a way that people could then hear and respond to biblical truth in ways that they might have been resistant to with some other messages.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think humanly speaking, that's what we're talking about there.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, Glenn, it's why he counseled us and the others with the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics to be trying to discern the same thing in our day.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's why he identified.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Identity as that issue in our own day that seems to have a similar level of resonance with people.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it also even makes me wonder if we're watching some of that unravel ourselves before our eyes in light of some recent world events.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I know I opened up a whole can of worms there, Glenn, so stick on script.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I love that question.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Humanly speaking, I think that's what was happening with Tim.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it it's a profoundly theological vision that is applied pastorally to the heart, which proves to be apologetically fruitful.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that order of thing is is interesting because I think so often with apologetics, we don't particularly necessarily think of the heart, and we might not go instantly to the sort of the high theological categories.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: But the way you've just unfolded it there, I think that is exactly what Tim was doing.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: It was a profoundly reformed theology of the, you know, the heart is an endless forge of idols that was applied to the heart.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think some of the Jack Miller stuff that you brought out about his time at Westminster and his the church experience that he had with Jack Miller and that that idea of sonship and adoption before the father and getting our identity.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus And David Pallison.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, David Pallison was on the same session with him in Philadelphia.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that, you know, The Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair, I mean those significant writings from David Pallison, that was also a major factor.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: And what was it so so that was so much of the content of his preaching?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought with Tim that he was absolutely one of my favorite preachers ever.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't always sure he knew why he was good at preaching.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought when I when I when I read or listened to Tim talk about preaching, it always reminded me of John Daly, the golfer, who was, you know, asked, like, how how do you just drive 300 yards down the down the middle of the fairway?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: He just says I grip it and rip it.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, well, you can grip it and rip it, John Daly.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: The rest of us.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Hack off into the rough.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think Tim was an absolute genius at preaching.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't always sure he knew why he was such a genius at preaching.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: What what what do you think enabled him to kind of grab people through the preached word?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I do think there's a a couple different factors.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking about a theological meeting I was just attending where somebody said, I've just been listening to some Tim Keller sermons.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't seem that impressive to me.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that's just the way preaching, part of that's just the way preaching works.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I will often tell people go back and listen to a Billy Graham sermon or read a Billy Graham book and see if you are as impressed as you're supposed to be with it.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Part of this, Glenn, is just unction, right?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is our doctrine of preaching with the work of the Spirit in people's lives.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: However, I will say that there was one substantial element and then one rhetorical element.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: The rhetorical element is an adaptation.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, this is what he said all the time, and this works with pedagogy in general.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: He said at the beginning, I want you so focused that you can't help but take notes.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're learning stuff, you're seeing things you didn't see, you're you're hearing things you didn't know.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, wow, that person really has some interesting things to say.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then he said, if by the end you're still taking notes, then I have failed you completely there.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's kind of an adaptation, Glenn, of um of what was actually Winston Churchill's methodology for rhetoric, which of course, you know, he was he studied this, he taught this, he wrote about it, and his method was threefold.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: First, it was tell everybody the the bad news.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: Second, tell everybody how you're gonna get out of it, and third, tell everybody end with a rhetorical flourish that inspires them.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I mean that that's kind of a modification of what Tim is is talking about in there.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the there's a rhetorical strategy, but second, maybe it's because I'm I'm a content person, but it's the content, it's the insight, and it's not just that he could connect with what was happening in the news or connect with what was happening on the New York Times bestseller list or in the leading academic and you know journals of the country and periodicals.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was more of what you've already said here a number of times, Glenn.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was because he understood the human heart.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if you go all the way back to Gordon Conwell, what connected him and Kathy with their best friends, David and Louise Midwood, was talking through talking about their hearts together.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just opening it in a very Edwardsian sense to understand, meaning Jonathan Edwards' sense of the the work of the spirit through their affections.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so Tim brought that to bear with with his pastoral instincts and through his his pastoral theology.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why when he went to New York, it wasn't just I'm gonna study a bunch of lyrics and plays and books and encyclopedias.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was I'm gonna sit down and talk to people, I'm gonna listen to people.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think one thing that people miss very much with Tim sometimes is yes, there's all the stuff that I emphasize about Charles Taylor and his understanding of social criticism, but really more than anything else, it was the active work of the spirit in his own heart, his own working through the gospel's power in his life, and connecting that through others.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can't really look structurally speaking and methodologically speaking beyond what I said about the rhetoric and and see what Tim is doing.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you can be a person of substance that way, and that's where the real power came from in Tim's preaching.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: Good word, good word.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um Colin, you've been very generous with your time.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: Let me ask you one last question.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's been it's been six months uh since Tim went to be with the Lord.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um tell me, when do you find yourself missing him, and what in particular do you find yourself missing about him?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like this question.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know it it's what you it's what you what anybody else has experienced in their grief.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um you'll sit there saying, Oh, I bet I should send Tim an email about this.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or I just finished reading this book.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in fact, Glenn, the the one that came to mind is the new book, um, The Identity Trap.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, oh man, he would have loved this book.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: He would have loved the way that a non-Christian author made these points that are so consistent with Christianity.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he loved nothing more in his preaching to be able to bring that authority in on something.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, he would have written so many different essays about this, incorporating these insights.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um he would have he would have loved that.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's thinking, boy, what I I want to read that essay from Tim.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to send him, I want to talk to him about this, I want to hear his thoughts.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just want his counsel on the phone about this thing, planning a retreat from the Keller Center.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: What would what would he recommend?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Who would he think that we should bring in to talk for that?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's just all those moments.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then just I think this is part of life just getting older.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when you get older, the people who mean so much to you they die.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: You think about your own mortality.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you just think in some levels, like I've lost some protection.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's always it's always comforting to know that there's somebody there who's more wise, more godly, more powerful in some ways than you are.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like we like some of us, if we're blessed, we think about our dads or about our grandfathers that way.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just miss that.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: I just miss having somebody that I could lean on.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because we get leaned on so much in ministry, it's part of the deal.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you just miss somebody that you could lean on.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, especially as I was spending so much of my summer in in in Great Britain, um, in Cambridge and London, and and I just kept thinking about, oh, I should ask Tim what he you know what he thinks I should do, or asked him where he thinks I should go, and and he would have loved to give me that advice.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: But um so that's what I miss.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I miss about him, and I think I'll I'll keep missing that about him for a long time.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, God was very good to give us uh Tim Keller, and uh and your book has been a great gift to us as well, Colin, to to meditate on all the the the ways in which uh the Lord has blessed us uh with uh Tim and Kathy's ministry, and uh I I heartily recommend that people uh go out and get Tim Keller, his spiritual and intellectual formation.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh uh Colin uh at the Gospel Coalition, um tell us what you're excited about at the moment and and how people can catch up with you.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you just find us at thegospelcoalition.org.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've mentioned a couple different times our work of carrying a lot of carrying on a lot of the best of what we've heard here about Tim through the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: Just go to the KellerCenter.org.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing we're all we're launching is the Carson Center for Theological Renewal.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I know that some people get uh squeamish about the names.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so were the the men that we um named these after, but neither one of these centers is focused on the person.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're focused on the work.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's just a way of being able to honor those people who've gone before us, who carried that gospel message to us all the way down through the generation.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's all that we hope to do in our day.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Be faithful, pass it along to the next generation, just as they did to us.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're doing through those two centers, and um, just come check us out at thegospelcoalition.org.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and do check out uh Colin's podcast.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you'll all subscribe to Gospel Bound, but it's an absolutely fantastic podcast and uh top of the top of the podcatcher of my choice.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I hope it's at this at the top of your podcatchers as well.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: Colin Hansen, thank you so much for joining me.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Glen.