Truth Unites - Lessons From Tim Keller's Ministry with Collin Hansen

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

In this interview I discuss what Christians can learn today from Tim  Keller's ministry with Collin Hansen, author of Timothy Keller: His  Spiritual and Intellectual Formation.   Buy Collin's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Keller-Spiritual-Intellectual-Formation/dp/0310128684/truthunites-20  Another book referenced is Chris Watkin's Biblical Critical Theory: How  the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture: https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Critical-Theory-Unfolding-Culture/dp/0310128722/truthunites-20   Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief  of The Gospel Coalition. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has  written and contributed to many books, including Rediscover Church: Why  the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York  Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News,  NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He is an adjunct professor at  Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics done in an ironic way. And today I'm talking with Colin Hansen about his fantastic new book about Tim Keller's life and ministry. If you're interested in the book, there's a link in the video description. Let me encourage you to buy the book, review the book, talk about the book. I think it will be widely of interest. Even for those who aren't interested in Tim Keller per se, it opens up all kinds of questions about the state of the church right now. the state of the culture right now. How do we reach the culture? So I think people point it fascinating and helpful. I just want to encourage people to check it out. So I want to start with just probably the most

generic question to ask any author. So forgive me if it's an annoying question to field. But where did the idea of this book come from? What led you? What's the backstory? I'm really curious about that. Well, Gavin, I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to convince other people to write a biography of Tim Keller, I didn't think I'd have the time to be able to write it. I also thought that I would be too close to him in a lot of different ways. And then 2020 rolled around, had the pandemic, and a few months later got the diagnosis from Tim about his pancreatic cancer. And at that point, I think the idea took on increased urgency because I thought there should be some record where Tim himself got to speak into the questions. Why did he do things a certain way? Why did he not do

these things? What was he thinking? This is what I'm guessing you were doing. Is that correct? Or is it not? It's not just Tim, of course. It's all these people who've known Tim. The only member of his immediate family who's left is his sister. So it's being able to interview these people and also being able to get permission to interview them. So the good news was that Zondervin, the publisher, and Tim turned out they were interested in this idea and had actually invited me to be able to write it. And the angle that I decided to take that hopefully will be of interest to people is that it's really not like a traditional biography in the sense of telling his full story, especially about the difference that he's made, but primarily,

about those people and ideas and events that have influenced him. So you're reading a book about Tim Keller, but you're really getting a lot of information about, say, Ed Clowny, his only ever personal mentor, who's the president of Westminster Theological Seminary. You're learning about Barbara Boyd, the first staff member for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Stacey Woods, the first staffer for InterVarsity in North America.

So it's really an exploration of 70-plus years of North American and British evangelical history told it through the life of Tim Keller by the influences, the people that he's been reading, the people that he's been quoting this whole time. Yeah, it was so interesting. Early on in the book, when you cast it as this, as it's about his influences rather than his influence. you mention that he's not the kind of person who really wants the spotlight. And I'm just curious, you know, in the time of kind of celebrity pastors that we live in, where there's so many people who are who do fall into scandal, you know, prominent ministers fall into trouble in some way or another, what do you think Tim has done differently that has allowed him not to fall into scandal or disrepute in some way? As you were asking that question, Gavin, I was thinking about Billy Graham.

And both Tim and Billy Graham had tremendous influence, a strong connection to New York. Maybe the most famous crusade of Billy Graham's career was in New York in 1957. But personality-wise, they could not be more different. Billy is definitely somebody who could have excelled in Hollywood, in politics. he believed that his celebrity could be beneficial to being able to help introduce other people to Jesus. And I think in many ways he was right. That was the case. But sometimes when you read Billy Graham's books, they lack the unction.

I think that his preaching does. And I think it's because that's just not his medium. And I don't think Billy Graham was ever considered an intellectual or a particularly deep thinker, highly intelligent. But his intelligence was manifest in other ways. Whereas Tim Keller is definitely more of an intellectual, definitely a deep thinker, an extraordinarily wide reader, which is why I took the approach that I did in the book. But I think it's really important to observe that Tim is just personality wise. It's just not the center of attention. He's just not really comfortable with that kind of attention.

He does not like talking about himself. And when you go back to the early days of Ligeneer Valley Study Center, founded by R.C. and Vesta Sprole, Tim was there in those early days, but Tim wasn't the kind of person that you would go out of your way to identify as a really promising young minister. He was, Kathy describes him as kind of like, you know, Tim was the marching band leader. She was the frumpy newspaper editor. They just didn't really impress a lot of people. And then for Tim's first 10 years, nearly in ministry, he's very much out of the way from most attention in Hopewell, Virginia, in a small town, in a small church. And so I think in a lot of ways, Tim is just not particularly drawn towards celebrity.

And I think I would also say that going back through Tim's whole life, he has a very sensitive conscience. And of course, I think we all hope that we have a sensitive conscience. but one consistent pattern you see is a strong willingness to battle against sin, and in particular the sin of pride. Now, I want to ask about that season in Hopewell. This is in part three of the book called Trial by Fire. There's so much in this book, so much information that people can't find in other places because of all the research you did.

And this season, boy, I remember I was actually on a flight to Birmingham, where you live, when I was reading this. And I'll never forget reading about that season and Hopewell, a long season. of ministry where he's just faithfully serving, faithfully pastoring in a relatively obscure place. And God used that season, my impression is, God used that season to prepare him for what was ahead as well as to bear fruit during that. I'm curious if you would see that as a good model for other pastors to go to be a senior pastor in a relatively smaller context before, you know, trying to do anything bigger or being at a big

church. Do you see that as a healthy pattern for other pastors? Gavin, I'm so glad you asked that question, and I'm going to throw a change up at you. I don't think so. Let me explain why. First of all, Tim was nearly burned out. It was really rough. One of the things he talks about in the book is that there were no Christian counselors anywhere in his vicinity. So all of the counseling load, he said at any given time, he was doing marriage counseling

for three different couples. Now, this is only a church that went from, like, say, 100 to 250 to 300 while he was there. But it was still overwhelming. All the, he talked about the sweet 16 parties that he would go to. He talked about the father who would leave,

abandoned his family. They didn't know where he went, and he'd be the person tracking them down. In some ways, this sounds almost romantic, almost like Eugene Peterson. He was really living the life of the pastor. And while I would commend so much of that, I just want to make sure people understand. It was overwhelming. Gavin, three messages a week. Then he had three distinct messages per week, 1,500 messages in nine years.

This was very difficult. all three boys of the Kellers were born in Hopewell in those nine years. Here's the other thing, though, Gavin, that I'm not sure makes this a great model. Back then, Tim had a huge assist. That was that even though he was moving to Hopewell, Virginia in the 1970s, other PCA pastors in the area had really taken difficult stands on race and politics that made it possible for a Yankee like Tim to be able to come down there and to thrive. So he wasn't, he wasn't on his own. He had Kennedy Smart in town. Before that,

he had Bill Hill, and the Bill Hill stories are great. Check them out in the book. But a lot of times now, the politics and culture war and things like that are so difficult for a pastor that there can be a really bad misalignment between a young pastor coming out of seminary and a smaller, in some ways maybe rural church. And they're just often not a good fit where, I mean, they can be, but I just would say, be careful. Yeah. So I want to just go ahead and say, yes, do this.

But, I mean, we've got to be, I think Tim himself would offer some cautions. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Well, as a pastor with five young kids serving in a rural context, I can really appreciate the potential dangers. It's just interesting to me that the arc of his ministry, I want to ask you about what pastors can learn about patients in their ministry, but I want to quote from page 266 of your book, you say,

among his generation, no one did more than Keller to prepare evangelicals for the global multicultural urban future. And yet, for the first half of his life, Keller showed almost no familiarity with global, multicultural, or urban ministry. He didn't gain widespread recognition

until relatively late in his career during his 50s, rising generations can do no better than to patiently build out their rings as they wait on the Lord, end quote. What lessons would you draw from the overarching arc of Tim's ministry about the value of patience? Yeah, so, I mean, I'm glad you went right to that. So the kind of dominant metaphor of the book is rings on a tree. Tim himself used the that explanation in a video with John Piper and Don Carson for the Gospel Coalition. And it made so much sense, Gavin, because precocious young pastors will often become really fixated on certain ideas or authors or trends. But it's almost like they treat them like lily pads, like jump from here to here to here, to

here, to here. It's kind of getting into and having these, they're almost like fads. Well, Tim did as well, where he would be reading George Whitfield, nothing but George Whitfield for a season, or nothing but Charles Spurgeon for a season, or only listening to Dick Lucas' sermons, and Kathy would have to say, Tim, you need to knock it off, you sound just like Dick Lucas.

You've got to cut it off in there. But what happens with the rings on the tree is that you maintain a core. You maintain a core of gospel, of Bible and Jesus, and then over time you're able to act, add to that, but you never lose the core. You never lose that core. And I think what happens sometimes, Gavin, is that young ministers, because we're not willing to be patient, we jump ahead and we don't build out those rings. In other words, like, we start to hollow out. We lose those first gloves. We don't,

we don't have those building blocks. And I think especially young ministers who are looking to Tim Keller, I think sometimes they see his later rings, and they don't go back to his inner rings. The patience is building out that my ministry is on the foundation of Jesus, his gospel, and God's word. That's the patience that Tim displayed in his ministry. Yeah, this makes me want to jump ahead to another question that just pops into my mind here. when I read your account of the founding of Redeemer in 1989, what struck me so much is the role of prayer. Prayer was so key there.

And I think a lot of people, they want to learn. How did you do it, Tim? And they want a technique of some kind. And all of that can be good to learn from. But sometimes we don't think about the role of prayer as much. Yeah. Go ahead. Kathy has got a great line, Gavin.

about that. She said, if you want to plant a successful church, just find out where the Lord is going to send revival in a month and then move there. And one of the, I also love this about Kathy. She's such a dynamic, fascinating figure. She said, no church in the history, in the history of the church has ever been prayed for more, especially by women as a Redeemer Presbyterian church. That's claim. And she said that in part it's a response to what she self-described as the winiest, most pathetic prayer

letters of all time of this mother with three boys and big old bad New York City. And she said all these Presbyterian women in the South felt so bad for her. They just dropped $5 to take the kids to McDonald's and prayed and thank to God that they weren't the ones in

New York. So absolutely, I mean, Gavin, there were Tim will talk about the revival that experienced at Bucknell and the revival again at Redeemer in 1989, the early 1990s. And you're absolutely right. The members of the church would come together in part by the Korean style of revival. So during the 1991 first Gulf War, there were all-night prayer meetings for the members of Redeemer. And interestingly, Tim was not a part of it. the work of the Lord was going out well beyond what Tim himself or Kathy were doing.

But yeah, absolutely. I mean, Tim has himself written a book on prayer. It's been an emphasis of his ministry. But regardless, I don't think it's one of the first things that people would probably identify about Tim, but it should be. Early on in the book, you mentioned issues of justice in the church, and particularly apathy about issues of justice being a stumbling blot. for Tim when he was a college student. And so, you know, the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., people who were opposed to these things were, this was a concern for him early on.

And then throughout his ministry, a concern for social engagement has been one of its characteristics. And now today we live in a time where issues of justice are so polarizing and volatile. As you look at the church today, which concerns you more? Christians focusing too much on issues of justice or too little? Well, I guess in my age as being a classic Keller sense, just say both. It depends on if we're focusing on it because that's what God demands, and we're doing it in a way that scripture commends,

and we're doing it in a way that the gospel is shaping, then you can't focus too much on justice. I mean, there can't be too much holiness. There can't be too much righteousness. There can't be too much love of your neighbor. Our world is not full of too many good Samaritans. It's just not possible. But I think what Tim himself would identify and what Kathy has written about as well, is that when we don't do so as Christians, we're likely to pervert justice. So he would certainly say, and I would agree that you can go wrong in both directions by acting as though scripture has nothing to say about justice, or acting as though scripture has nothing to critique

the way that some people have divorced justice from God's righteousness. But I do think that if we're looking biographically at Tim, and by the way, Gavin, Philippiancy's story is very similar. we have to recognize the problem when the church does not live up to or live out its ideals our youngest most conscientious members our own children are watching and it does become one of the biggest stumbling blocks of genuine faith when they when they get to a point where they realize wow my parents and my pastors were lying they were wrong this is not what scripture teaches is a major challenge for Tim before he became a Christian in 1970.

This kind of brings up the issue of his third way approach to culture and politics, and I thought it could be helpful for us to get into this a little bit. Tim takes criticism from people more conservative than him, particularly on sometimes for being not militant. I mean, he takes criticism in both directions. He takes a lot of criticism from people in the more progressive side of things. But some people think this third way approach is not militant enough to meet the times right now. I wonder if sometimes people misunderstand what the third way approach is.

They think of it as though you're just slicing down the middle on any given issue or disengaging from culture and politics. How would you describe what is Tim's third way approach? Well, I think people would probably benefit in this case to look at Christopher Watkins' new. book, Biblical Critical Theory, and look at his concept of diagonalization. Essentially, what he argues there, and Tim wrote the foreword for that book, Tim was very much involved in the process of composing that book. So he would argue that the world will often give you two seeming dichotomies, that this is what we have to do, and that this is what we have to do. But the Bible will diagonalize them. The Bible shows that both sides have something that's right.

and both sides are missing something apart from the Bible. So you could take that on economic issues. In kind of the less helpful way, you could say capitalism is a little bit right, and socialism is a little bit right, so why don't we just get some of both? I think that's what people often think that Tim is trying to say. He's not saying that. He's saying that capitalism appeals to certain aspects of life and the world and human nature, Socialism has some aspects to it that are aspiring to something beyond.

There are echoes of good things in terms of the desires. But apart from the Bible, apart from God's plan, neither one of them can succeed. And he would argue that both of them essentially, because they don't address the human condition, just get bogged down and destroyed by selfishness. then capitalism may be a better system because it may be true to our human nature, but unless it's guarded and grounded in biblical faith, it ultimately is not something that we can put our faith in. So I think people get, they get confused and they get frustrated because they'll say, well, he's going to, he's being too hard on capitalism because we've seen the evils of socialism.

No, it's not that. It's just that there's no worldly system apart from the gospel. that is a perfect embodiment of God's righteousness. And even things that we don't agree with, in some ways, at least, in many cases, point to something beyond. So essentially what he would say is the gospel will commend or critique any culture. And I think that's what he's trying to get at when he's talking about the third way. But yeah, I think a lot of people just think that it sounds like moderation.

But instead of moderation, it's more of that concept of. diagonalization. That's helpful. I'll put a link to the Watkins book in the video description as well. People might be interested in that as well. As we kind of work out Tim's legacy and what we can learn from his ministry, another word that's come up that is kind of a buzzword is the word winsomeness. What does it mean to be winsome? And this is sort of controversial for some, unfortunately. I want to read a quote from Center Church, Tim's book, Center Church, that I think brings some clarity to some of the misunderstandings about this, and then I'll just pause and see what you'd like to say about this issue. In Center Church, he writes, contextualization is not, as is often argued, giving people what they

want to hear. Rather, it is giving people the Bible's answers, which they may not at all want to hear, to questions about life that people in their particular time and place are asking in language and forms they can comprehend, and through appeals and arguments with force they can feel, even if they reject them. That helps me because I think some people think, oh, winsome, that just means doing whatever you need to do to get a favorable response. I don't think that's what is in view in Tim's mind with winsomeness. What would you like to say about winsomeness?

Do you see misunderstandings of this? How do you think Tim's ministry can bring clarity to that idea? I love that quote, Gavin. In fact, it's a quote that I use in my first class on cultural, apologetics that I teach at Beasts in Divinity School. So for exactly that reason, to try to clarify what we mean by contextualization and what we don't mean. In a lot of ways, contextualization is merely an exercise in clarifying the confrontation of the gospel, clarifying what we should be offended by. One of the things that stood out to me in Tim's ministry is how confusing he's

been to people. So for example, people at Redeemer would say, we've never heard someone before who's quoting Woody Allen, the New Yorker, and Madonna, and then ends with a stirring defense of penal substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone. It just doesn't seem to go together very much. But really, it's just contextualization. It's clarifying the offense of the gospel. what should truly offend us in our sins when we're dead in our transgressions, which is also that proclamation and clarifying the offense is the very thing that God uses to call those people to life with the aroma of salvation. And so I think that Tim is a gentle personality.

I've rarely heard instances of him being upset. about something. I can confidently say that in any conversation I have ever had with him, I've never heard him criticize someone else, which is remarkable to say. He doesn't like conflict. He's kind of eager to avoid conflict. Sometimes I've worked with him for a long time. I understand how that plays out. And he would say that sometimes he has a fear of man. But I think when you look at things in the aggregate to be preaching for decades in a place like New York City, a gospel that is recognizably biblical, historical, reformed, and holding to any number of positions that are certainly not in fashion. This feels a little old-fashioned, Gavin, but the most controversial thing at Redeemer

that they preached in the early years was just not upholding of teaching against premarital sex. I mean, it's just something as simple as that, but the church never wavered on its views on that. And so I think part of it's just trying to persuade. I think the basic disagreement, Gavin, that I see is a difference between trying to persuade people on the other side and trying to rally your side to, and kind of calling your side to arms. most of politics right now is not persuasive. It's calling your side to arms, but evangelism is by definition trying to persuade people. And I think that's the major difference that you see in most of the winsome discussions these days. On the subject of evangelism, one of the things I found really

helpful in your book is the discussion of Martin Lloyd-Jones' influence on Kelly, and how evangelism for the non-Christian and the edification of the Christian flow together. They're not in competition. They support one another. That was so interesting to me. I'm curious for you to comment on that, especially in how have you seen that in Tim's ministry? So a lot of that view came from Tim looking for models of preaching to largely secular audiences, and he didn't find a lot of those models in the United States in the 1980s. And so he was looking back in history to the UK and to London with Martin Lloyd-Jones. And so exactly his mantra edifies, you evangelize, evangelize as you edify. What that really touched on, this was before Tim had ever heard of, as far as I know, heard of or read Charles Taylor

and his philosophy and sociology. But essentially what Taylor argues is that in our secular age, everybody believes now through doubting. Everybody's cross-pressed. Everybody is challenged in their beliefs. So essentially, Tim was recognizing this at an early time in a more secular environment, recognizing that due to the conditions of pluralism, everyone who believes is still challenged in what they believe. They're still tempted to doubt, and in some ways, they just don't understand. They're pressured in new ways. And so essentially, he was just recognizing that as you're doing apologetics, You are building up the church. You're not just appealing to the non-Christian. You're building up the church because many of the questions you attribute to non-Christians, actually Christians have those same questions themselves. And when you evangelize to a room that's mostly Christians, they say, huh, maybe we should be inviting our friends. I've got a friend who would love to hear this. We were just talking about this the other day. So in some ways, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

if you preach to people that you want to be there and encourages members to invite them. So, yeah, that was a model he picked up from Martin Lloyd-Jones. And I think it's much more, you'd probably agree, Gavin, is much more prominent now than it was in a lot of preaching in the 1980s and 90s. You mentioned apologetics, and I want to ask some questions about this. This will be the final thrust of the interview. I just want to dig into Tim's approach to apologetics. This is my great passion in life right now, is thinking about apologetics.

You obviously do a lot of teaching in apologetics at Beas and Divinity School. Here's the first question I'm so interested to ask is, I was so interested when Making Sense of God came out in 2016, the differences between that book and the reason for God in 2008. And within those eight years, it seemed as though Tim saw some new things that he wanted to speak in a little different way. Could you say anything about the difference? Are the needs different in 2016 than in 2008?

What's behind the changes there? Yeah, absolutely. That's the theme of my whole last chapter in the book was that shift. And so, Tim, through the leadership of and the example of James Davis and Hunter, began in the mid-2000s, a whole new reading list in the social critics. We're talking here about Alastair McIntyre, Philip Reef, Robert Bella, Charles Taylor, and some others. And he just was not, had not been reading at these levels of social criticism before. So he'd been accustomed to answering a lot of the most common objections to the faith, largely based on science and miracles, a lot of evidentialist kinds of concerns.

So the reason for God, which is, this is amazing, Gavin. I couldn't believe this. This is in the book. When Craig Ellis, Tim's assistant, told me that there's no chapter on sex in The Reason for God. I said, that's not possible. Of course there is. I mean, Gavin, there's no chapter on sex in that book. By 2010, certainly by 2012, it's the only thing people wanted to talk about was sex. And so making sense of God is one of the places he doesn't do this in making sense of God, but in another book right around the same time period, his book on preaching. He recognizes that it's not just about what does the Bible teach about, say, homosexuality, or what are the reasons why homosexuality is, say, for example, bad for your health or bad for society. The main way he decided to approach it is because homosexuality is part of an embedded Western understanding of self and identity. So that's where he gives. I'll let people look this up

themselves, his famous story of the Anglo-Saxon warrior. How would we counsel somebody a thousand years ago versus today when it comes to violence and homosexual desire? So it's just recognizing that what's changed is that the questions are all stemming from an underneath, often subconscious, value system that has been really circulating for hundreds of years, but has really come into full fruition here in the late modern age of the 21st century that is about the self and about identity. And that's the primary shift, is that essentially we have to do pre-evangelism. to connect some of the dots and help expose these assumptions before we can even get to answering the questions. Yeah, yeah. Well, I have so many questions about this in case I can't get to all of them. Let me just encourage people watching this. And I'll have several more here. But to encourage people watching this to, if they get the book, read starting at page 248 and just work through in that final wing of the book,

how you're describing and fleshing out the kind of apologetics approach that's needed. right now, which I think is, people find that very interesting. Let me ask you about one of the things I've heard Tim say recently is Augustine's City of God gives us a blueprint or a model for the kind of apologetic we read right now. What do you, why do you think he identifies that book particularly? Well, I think the parallels here are that we're really dealing with challenges of a civilizational level. and Augustine is dealing with the late Roman Empire, the collapse of the Roman Empire, and Christianity is in a lot of ways ascendant. It's strong. It's not like the early church. It's very strong, politically powerful in some ways, but that makes it a target. That means that people are eager to

blame Christianity for what's going wrong, even though they don't really know whether this was to be reaching back to some sort of past or to some kind of alternative future. And I think think that's what Tim sees as a lot of the parallels with Augustine is that we're speaking not only to individual desires and pursuits that Augustinian sense of the restlessness that we have until we find God that God-shaped whole that we have in our hearts. But it does, and again, the sense to turn good things into ultimate things. But this really is happening, Gavin, at a civilizational level where we don't really know what we stand for. We don't really know. We don't really know what we want. It's easier to know who to blame than it is to know how to solve those problems.

And so Augustine deals with those questions at that major civilizational level. And I think that's why he points to Watkins' book, Biblical Critical Theory, because it's trying to do that. It's trying to help say, this is the story that modernity is passing along, but here's how it falls short. So this is what Augustine is trying to do himself with the Roman stories. This is the story, but this is why it doesn't work on its own terms. That's the key, on its own terms. But then he identifies the desires, the hopes, and says, those are good hopes. Those are good desires. But they can't be realized in the city of man. They can only be realized in the city of God. So that's what Watkin is trying to do, say, use a biblical theological storyline to be able to say, but this is the true story that

makes sense not only of your fears. It makes better sense rationally, but actually it is the fulfillment of the hopes that you have, whether explicit or latent in your life. And it tells an even better story. So I think that's what Tim is trying to commend. And I think as far as he's concerned, and I think you and I are on the same page with this, Gavin, we can. can't get enough of this right now, of course, re-narrating, restoring our culture, which seems to have lost the plot. You used the word pre-evangelism a moment ago. Maybe we can flesh that up with some specific examples. I always think my favorite book of all time is that hideous strength by C.S. Lewis. One of the things that happens is there's two characters who have to have their defenses broken down

somewhat before they're really ready for an encounter with God. Could you flesh out, what do you think pre-evangelism looks like practically? Well, I think, Gavin, a lot of people think they know what Christianity teaches and they hate it. But they actually don't know what Christianity teaches or how their longings are only fulfilled through what Christ has promised, which is a confrontation. with their mistaken views and ultimately their sin, but also a fulfillment of these hopes that are even greater than they ever imagined. It's that concept right there.

So much of evangelism now is not just saying, I see that in every way you are religious, let me show you the fulfillment. It's, I see that in every way you think Christianity is the source of every problem that exists today. But let me just sort of explain to you that you think, think that you're a reasonable person and that faith people, you know, people who have faith are irrational, let me help you to see that all of us, all of our greatest hopes and assumptions

are founded on faith. And therefore, we need to consider whose faith is more beautiful, whose faith brings more goodness, and ultimately whose faith is built on truth, is built on facts. but most people, when you just want to talk to them about Jesus, their notions are utterly befuddling of what they actually know about Jesus or certainly what they associate with the church. And of course, Gavin, I'm not just blaming the world for this. I think Christians themselves, we do plenty to confuse people about that. And let me clarify something real quick.

Gavin, this is just part of our media age to a certain extent. We're just exposed to so much more, especially bad news, that there's just a lot of work that has to be done to kind of clear the way before somebody even is willing to listen to you. And one last point, the best way to do this is to ask questions because we are all constantly being barraged with messages. Somebody who comes to you and shows a genuine interest and asks you questions and respects what you think, even if they disagree with you, none of that makes sense. and how people think today, and that's how you get their attention to ask you what you believe and why. I want to ask about the role of imagination in apologetics and appealing to the heart. On page 60 of your book, you're talking about the influence of Tolkien on Tim Keller and

Tolkien's idea of myth, and you quote Keller is saying, we are so deeply interested in these stories because we have intuitions of the creation, fall, redemption, restoration, plotline of the Bible. Even if we repress the knowledge of that plotline intellectually, we can't not know it imaginatively. And our hearts are stirred by any stories that evoke it. Could you comment on how do we access the power of that, of imagination and of the longings of the human heart as we do apologetics? Now, this is interesting, Gavin, because it's an aspect of my research. where I realized that Tim and I, I guess, have some different strengths, maybe some different convictions.

I'm not quite sure. But only recently, and especially in connection with this book, have I begun reading more of this kind of fantasy fiction? It's just not been a part of my – I just didn't seem like I was that kind of person. I've been much more inclined, as I know you have in some of your apologetics, toward the realist novels. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, I use a lot of Pontoppedon from Denmark. I've just been drawn a lot more to those kinds of literature, but one of the things that Tim argues, and I think he's got a good point here,

is that the fantasy and science fiction can imagine worlds where our rules don't seem to apply. And that's more consistent with what we actually see in the Bible, is that the world is more than we imagine. It's more than our senses. there's something beyond what you can see and touch and feel and hear and smell. And I think being able to draw people's imagine, you know, to expand their imaginations and to be able to stir their affections and to stir their hopes and to help them to desire

the new Jerusalem that they may not even know that they wanted and to help them to desire that thing to be true before they come to believe that it's true, I do think there's a lot of imagining work that can be done there in apologetics and in our preaching. I think there are ways that we can evoke those desires, those longings. One of the things that Tim loves most about C.S. Lewis is his word pictures, his metaphors. There was some analysis that he saw sometime that showed that compared to Tim's own work, Lewis had something like, I don't know, four times as many word pictures as he has. So Tim has always been pushing himself to be more evocative, imaginative in his preaching. But Lewis is the unquestioned master at that in his apologetic writing,

whereas Tolkien is the unquestioned master of that in his world building, in a world that we long to be a part of that is almost in some sense more real than our own, even though it's a fantasy. That's interesting. Two more questions. One is on Acts 17, you mentioned Paul saying, I see you are very religious as he's in Athens. It's interesting how different his approach is there than when he's in the synagogue, where he's quoting from the Hebrew scriptures. There he starts so much further back. He's starting with the doctrine of God. What do you think are good starting points for us in our culture right now where we can get traction? Because if we start, if we'd right in talking about sin and the cross, you know, a lot of people don't have much context to latch on to that. What do you see as the starting points for as we have conversations with our non-Christian friends that can get us into gospel conversations? I think Gavin, the starting point is the social activism. It's the desire for justice, but it's to help people to realize that it's dangling, it's hanging.

There's no connection to anything beyond. There's nothing to keep our injustice from flipping right around into injustice. My wife is a big fan of Charles Dickens' writings, Tale of Two Cities. She loves just sort of reading about revolutionary France. And I think when you compare some of that to say Christopher Nolan's Batman films,

you see a starting point. in there of people's desire for a better world, a desire for justice, a desire for change that would better the world for all people. But the historical narrative is clear that apart from Jesus, the people who clamor most for justice become the most unjust of all and cause the greatest amount of evil. And so I think the best starting places that I see right now are with folks like Tom Holland, who are trying to argue through his book, Dominion, trying to argue that these things that are built into Western culture that we love and that we want to preserve are not possible apart from Christianity. Now, here's the catch, Gavin. The challenge is that there are now

significant challenges from the right, a post-Christian, not necessarily an anti-Christian, but a post-Christian right that argues that those Western values are actually bad. So that's where I go right now, because that's exactly where left and right are fighting this out right now, is a right saying, no, no, no, we've gone bad from the beginning. This Western culture that Christianity has built is fundamentally flawed, whereas the left is trying to have the benefits of that Western culture, but without any of its anchoring in Christianity.

So that's the best starting place I see right now because those debates are raging. They're underneath everything right now in our debates over culture and politics. Fascinating. Last question. As you look at the world right now, we're living in challenging times. And the state of the church right now, we've got a lot of obstacles in our pathway, it seems. a statistic that is coming to my mind from memory that might be wrong. Feel free to correct me if this, if you have a more accurate sense of this.

But my memory is that when Tim founded Redeemer in 1989, about 6% of the entire U.S. population would be in the N-O-N-E-S nuns, those who have no religious affiliation, and about 24% of Manhattan. Today, it's about 25% of the whole population. So that those without religious affiliation, disaffiliation, what New York was then is now the entire country. So that's kind of the changes. It gives people some sense of what we're facing. Here at our church, I've encouraged and challenged our people to give a specific focus on praying for a revival. I think that that's a wonderful way to direct our hearts, is to pray for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As you think about

Tim's ministry, and then you think about where we're at now and we're looking forward, going to into the mid-21st century. What do you think we can learn from Tim's, and I'm going to include Kathy, Tim and Kathy's ministry and their legacy, that can mobilize us and stir us to charge into the future in the way that God would want?

Well, I think this is one of the things I love about your ministry, Gavin, as well as your family's ministry going back generations, is that focus on revival. And the beautiful thing about revival is that there's never been, been a revival that you expected. That's kind of the whole point. It does not come when you expect it. It does not come saying, all right, so here we go. We've got the government. We've got the

media. We've got Hollywood. All of them are on our side. Now, now's the time for God to send revival. It's not how it works. There's never any story like that. It's always, oh, man, what's going on with the kids today, what's going on with this? And then the Lord blesses, who in the 1970s could have seen what the Lord would do in New York City in the 1980s? Who in 1989 would look back in 2010 or 2017 when Tim Keller retired and could look around at all of the different churches around Manhattan, not to mention the growth of churches throughout the boroughs, not to mention the immigrant churches especially, not to mention the movement that Redeemer City to City became of spreading all over all over the world in global cities. Who could have seen any of that coming? That's the whole point,

is that the story that God is writing is not usually, certainly not always, the story that we think that he's writing. And when we think we have to have all the conditions right, that doesn't seem to be how God works. And when you look at Tim and Kathy's life specifically, You see this in many different times, but I know this is a, I know a revival near and dear to your heart and to your family's heart. It's the Jesus movement of the late 1960s into the early 1970s. Tim and Kathy are both clear beneficiaries of that revival. I think Tim Keller himself is about the most stereotypical or prototypical convert of that revival that you could find. That was exactly his milieu there from 1968 to 1972.

So I would just encourage people watching and listening, Gavin, to think about what the Lord, or what was happening in the world in 1968. You know from the book that I do this. I say, these are all the things that happened in 1968 before the Beatles song, Hey Jude, hits number one, and Tim Keller starts college at Bucknell. In 1970, May of 19. the Kent State shootings, the escalation by President Nixon, in response to President Nixon, protest,

president's escalation of the war in Vietnam. I don't know that there's ever been a more tumultuous four years to go to college in the 1968 to 72. And that's when the Lord saved Tim Keller. That's when he brought this huge revival to Bucknell Interversity Christian Fellowship. And look at all the fruit that's come from that. I hope people's experience reading this book is to hope, glorify God for what he's done and what he is doing and ultimately what he's going to do. It's just fascinating to see what he's going to do. Who knows? Amen. Well, thanks for writing the book. Thanks for talking about it. It's a fantastic book. I will ask this question as well. Any future projects? Anything you're working on right now? What are you thinking about and reading about

these days. Oh, man. Well, the major project is, I mean, there'll be more coming out about this eventually. And Gavin, I'm sure you'll be have opportunities to talk about it as well. A lot of my reading is focused on cultural apologetics and how do we equip church leaders around the world, the next generation, to be able to do this work. not to go back and copy what Tim Keller did the 1980s or 1990s, but in some ways to build off what we can learn from him and what needs to be and how we need to apply these things, ultimately from God in our own day, in our own changing circumstances.

So that's really kind of, if you look at my bookstand right now, it's stuff, I mean, it's why we are restless by the stories. It's Josh Butler's, new work on a beautiful union, on sexuality, and approaching those issues from an apologetics angle. It's the new biography coming out next summer, I think, from Crossway on Elizabeth Elliott, who was a mentor to the Kellers. That's what I'm working on now is just trying to help take some of these themes that we're discussing and build a more systematic effort in the church to be able to equip the next generation to do this work. Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to

continuing to think about this with you because this is a great passion of my life as well. So thanks again, Colin. Thanks, everybody for watching. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe. Also, don't forget to buy the book. Check it out in the video description. We'll see you next time.