Tim keller and timothy keller and redeemer presbyterian church and gordon conwell theological seminary

Ever since I met Tim Keller at theological seminary 30 years ago through a mutual friend, John Palafoutas, who has since gone on to become the chief Washington lobbyist for the American Electronics Ass'n, I was convinced that Tim possessed what Jonathan Edwards called an "admirable conjuction of diverse excellencies" that would some day be recognized by a very broad and appreciative following. Tim was smart, indeed very, very smart; theologically astute, practically-oriented, pastorally committed and, on top of it all, personable. If he possessed the vicious edge of some of his fellow Pennsylvania Presbyterians, he concealed it much better than they did.

Nevertheless, I knew that he believed, like many guys in those days, that the "big" Presbyterian Church (the "Northern" church, officially known as the "UPCUSA") was not responding well to the challenges of the 1970s and that renewal in the denomination was probably not going to happen. Just a year or two before we met, a split had developed within the (Northern) Presbyterians over the issue of women's ordination to the ministry (whether, in fact, a person had to agree with the ordination of women in order to be himself ordained to the ministry in the Church), and in the controversy over the issue the fledgling Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) was born. The PCA would not ordain women to the ministry or even to the offices of elder or deacon, taking literally some of the biblical exhortations about not permitting women to have authority over men.

But the PCA, despite its adherence to this positition, as well as its reception of the 17th Century Westminster Confession of Faith as its chief statement of belief, really aspired to be a very modern church. One could scarcely descry a glimmer of theological difference between the PCA and its cousin denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, founded in the mid 1930s, but the PCA guys (and they were all, guys, of course) didn't want to identify with the OPC. The OPC had hammered out its identity in the fight that tore apart Princeton Theological Seminary in the early 1930s, and somehow the militant and separatist spirit of that denomination didn't fit the call to cultural renewal which was always part of the Reformed Theological Tradition and would characterize the PCA. And so Tim, and many other friends at the time, joined the PCA. The "big" Presbyterian Church, which year by year becomes smaller, thus lost an entire generation of thoughtful and talented, though quite conservative, male leaders.

Oh Yes, Redeemer

But the vision of the Church that was noised about at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where we first met, was nurtured by a number of potent ingredients that affected many of us. The Church needed to be an engaged church, a Church were social justice was important. The Church needed to have scholarly pastors who were literate in the biblical languages and the Reformed theological tradition as well as fully conversant with the culture in which it found itself. The Church needed to be an instrument of renewal, not simply in individual lives or in the life of the community but in the cities in which it found itself. Since God was a God who controlled and directed every sphere of life, no sphere was outside of his influence. Therefore, the Church needed to define a Christian approach to the various spheres of life that confronted each of us: work, home, play, the arts, and the broader culture of which we all were a part.

In the language of H. Richard Niebuhr, the Church was called to engage the culture, to be an expression of "Christ Transforming Culture," for the sake of the Kingdom of God. But, we were also very Reformed in our understanding of human sin and the corrupting and corrosive influences of human self-centeredness (including our own) on the very institutions we were trying to renew. This awareness then would lead to humility and cooperative labor with others of like mind in the huge tasks of renewing the church and reinvigorating the culture. And, make no mistake about it. We were people who wanted to be "biblical Christians," and the one thing we knew above all about the God of the Bible is that He (and no one said God was anything other than a "He") was one who knew how to deflate the pretensions of arrogant humans. Thus, this God was not one who easily would baptize or approve dominant American values. God would take down America just as soon or as well as he would take down any other worldly power that set itself up as the measure of man. Jim Wallis, a person whose name is a sort of household word among a lot of Christians today, was nurtured in this sort of environment, only that his seminary education (in the Midwest) wasn't tinged by the high commitment to the Reformed Theological tradition that characterized us at GCTS.

Yes, Redeemer

So, when I was in NYC yesterday I decided to go to Redeemer Presbyterian Church to worship. Started in 1989 with Tim as the person sent to nurture a small group of Christians in NYC, the Church grew rapidly so that by the early 1990s it moved in to Hunter College's main auditorium, which seats 2100, and still meets there today. However, it now has several meeting places around the City, and estimates that more than 9,000 people congregate weekly at one of its NYC locations for worship. Redeemer now is planting Churches in the NYC area, and, in my judgment, will soon become a national movement, and may within a decade rival Vineyard Christian Fellowship and the Calvary Chapel movement as the most significant new Protestant denominational/chapel movements in our day. All the elements of the Church that we discussed 30 years ago while Star Trek was playing in the background in the Main Hall Lounge at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, are present at Redeemer: (1) focus on the transformative nature of faith; (2) importance of fellowship and personal study of faith; (3) a critical approach to the culture of which you are a part but which you want to influence; (4) an adherence to the traditional beliefs of Presbyterianism as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

It was the experience of worship, however, that further engaged me.

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