Tim Keller (1950-2023)

Even though I never talked with him personally, Tim Keller was a significant influence on my life. I feel like I knew him. I will greatly miss him. Here are the top ten resources from Tim Keller that profoundly shaped me:

1.) Very soon after I started pastoring, someone gave me some lecture notes by Keller entitled “Ministry in the New Global Culture of Major City-Centers.” I read it and re-read it and marked it up and shared it with leaders in my church. [a lot of this has found its way into Center Church, which I assign to all our pastoral apprentices and have reviewed here]

2.) I had the blessing of being at the very first Gospel Coalition conference in 2007 held at TEDS. Keller’s talk – “What Is Gospel-Centered Ministry?” – completely rocked my world!

3.) Before Andrea and I had kids we listened to Keller’s talk – “It Takes a City to Raise a Child.” It set our convictions about raising kids in the city and now with 5 kids between 16 and 6 years of age, I can say it has all proven true.

4.) Keller’s little book Prodigal God is a wonderful explanation of the gospel. There aren’t just two ways to live, but three – irreligion, religion, and the GOSPEL!

5.) The book Counterfeit Gods was really helpful to me in showing the sin behind every sin.

6.) His little booklet – The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness – massaged the gospel down into my insecure heart.

7.) The old Redeemer Church Planter Manual is filled with gold!

8.) I think The Reason for God is the best apologetic work of our generation (especially if read with the prequel – Making Sense of God). It has been helpful multiple times when engaging with intelligent non-Christians. And at least once I’ve personally seen God use it to bring someone to faith. I remember hearing him talk about the book at the University of Chicago in a masterful way that truly engaged unbelievers and thinking, “He’s taller than I thought!” He was truly a towering figure.

9.) I picked up Keller’s book titled Prayer thinking it would be one thing, but it turned out to be something very different. Yet it wowed me with the wonder of meditating on Scripture.

10.) Several people from our church went to hear Tim speak here in Chicago for The Gospel and Our Cities Conference in 2018. There was a palpable silence in the room as we knew we were listening to uncanny wisdom and cultural analysis about the need to have a missionary encounter with Western culture in North America. Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

Honorable Mention: The Meaning of Marriage is a great book for couples. Every Good Endeavor is really helpful for people in thinking about work. We’ve used the Gospel in Life video curriculum several times in Small Groups too. I could go on and on…

Really, anything you can read or listen to by Keller will edify you! I listened to countless tapes of his early sermons at Redeemer. Thankfully they’re all available here.

Praise God for gifts to the Church like him!!

A Pastoral Prayer on the Sunday after an Attempted Coup

Most High God,

We bless You because Your dominion is an everlasting dominion

and Your kingdom endures from generation to generation.

We saw this week as an insurgent mob successfully scaled the walls of the Capitol Building

and stormed into the halls of political power

that the United States of America is unsettlingly unstable.

But we turn to You and are grateful that we have received from You a kingdom that cannot be shaken,

through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we have come here today to worship You with reverence and awe,

to declare that our citizenship is in heaven,

to set our minds on things above,

and to set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us when Christ returns.

You alone are worthy of our praise, our trust, our allegiance, our hopes.

You alone are eternal.

You are the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

We acknowledge that no human plot against You could ever succeed,

that Your heavenly throne room is the only truly sacred temple,

and that it is impenetrable to the raging, lunatic schemes of any other power or authority

or our puny attempts to overthrow You or overturn Your decrees.

You who sit in the heavens laugh at such deluded notions.

But you love those who come humbly in the name of your Son to your throne of grace

and welcome us in.

We acknowledge that this earthly nation we inhabit is not only impermanent,

but it is also immoral, corrupt to its core.

While it was founded by your common grace on some good principles,

it was also conceived out of some godless ideas.

It was built on racial injustice and has perpetuated it.

It is filled with greed and materialism.

It prizes individualism and autonomy.

It has come to proudly celebrate sexual confusion, perversity, and all kinds of sensuality

while devaluing the life of the unborn, the elderly, the poor, the helpless, the other…

It has a legacy of violence.

America is full of: envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

This country is comprised on the right and on the left of:

gossips, slanderers, haters of You, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, the foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of You, having the appearance of godliness with churches dotting the landscape, but denying its power.

And we – WE – are all part of this.

We are all complicit in it in various ways.

None of us are righteous, not one.

Lord, we ask for humility

and for Your Holy Spirit to awaken our own hearts to our own hatreds and sins.

We want to disavow all self-righteousness and throw ourselves entirely onto the righteousness of Christ.

We are not here now to be smug and point the finger, but to lift high the name of Jesus,

the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

We are the mob that cried for his crucifixion,

but by the faith You have graciously given us each of us is also Barabbas,

the insurrectionist who went free because Jesus went to the cross to be executed.

Oh Father, we lament how the name of Jesus and his cross

have been grossly misunderstood, misrepresented, and misused in recent events.

We grieve the confusion of Christianity with nationalism.

We pray that you would help us to avoid idolatry and syncretism and stay clear on what the gospel is.

Because of the gospel truth, help us to be people of truth,

to have discernment to see through propaganda,

to not pass on lies,

to not twist facts to our own ends,

and to boldly and lovingly hold out the truth of the gospel to our city.

Give us love for our neighbors because of the inexplicable love you’ve shown us.

We even pray for our enemies.

Give us empathy and a desire to understand and a compassion for those who are suffering in any way.

Sovereign Lord,

you urge us to make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all people,

for kings and all who are in high positions,

so that we may lead peaceful and quiet lives,

godly and dignified in every way.

You tell us that your desire is that all men would be saved;

order instead of chaos, freedom instead of oppression,

stability instead of volatility, the rule of law instead of the reign of terror

is often the best arena for the gospel to go forward.

And so we pray now for President Trump:

You ordained for him to be our leader for the last four years.

We thank you for the good that he did; it is truly a grace.

We ask that you would humble him.

And please protect us from his foolishness these next 10 days and beyond.

We pray for President-Elect Biden.

Please allow him to do good, like restoring civility and decency.

We ask that you would humble him, convict him of his errors and grievous sin before You.

Please protect us from his bad policies and government overreach.

For the sake of the gospel and your Church.

….

We come to You and ask all these things in the name of Jesus.  Amen.

What I Said Before the Prayer Time During our Service Today

My family and I were gone all this last week on vacation, trying to be cut off from the world, but it was impossible not to hear about the latest flare up of the disease of racial injustice that plagues our society.  It was a uniquely eventful week.  And so I wanted to take some time to briefly address this and give some guidance on how we should respond.

What can we do?  Facebook posts can only do so much.  We must do more.  But we can’t change Dallas or Baton Rouge or Falcon Heights or our whole nation.  So what can we do?

We can pray.  And that is what we are about to do together in just a moment.  We can go to the only One who can ultimately help.  And he hears us.

In our prayers we can lament, grieve to God, pour out our sadness, mourn.  Beg him to move.

And in our prayers we can repent.  If we have hatred and unrighteous anger, we can confess that.  If we don’t care, we can confess our apathy, confess our lack of love for the Other and ask God to change us.  We can ask for forgiveness for ways that we have been complicit in the problem through sins of commission and/or omission, and ask God to give us the right heart.

And then in addition to praying, we can think biblically about these matters.  We must work hard to get the right biblical categories in our minds for how to approach matters of race and institutional sin.  We can’t let the world define our terms and shape our hearts and set our agendas, but the Word.

The Bible tells us that we all have different callings in the world.

Some of you may be called to contribute to the righting of wrongs through political or legal action – organizing, policy making, lobbying…

Some of you may be called to law enforcement in some way.  We’ve had a member of our church become a cop and we need more good cops who truly serve and protect.

Some of you may be called to educational reform.  We’ve had members working in CPS, which is a less than cushy school district, in order to seek the welfare of a city ravaged by racial inequalities.

Some of you may be called to economic investment.  We need more real jobs in neighborhoods that are racially segregated.  We need more felon-friendly jobs, so people have a way out.  This requires entrepreneurial risk and creative thinking from those who have capital.

There are tons of different ways to address the systemic and complicated issues that we’ve been reminded of again this week.  Some of you are called to do something about the problem in some of these ways.

But let me remind you what all of us are without a doubt called to do.  Every Christian is called to give him or herself to the local church.  That is the most important thing we can do in response to these events.  Government is not where our hope finally lies.  Education, the economy… God can work through those institutions in a general way, but the clearest location of God’s special, redeeming work in the world is the church.  Here is where God is reconciling people to himself and to each other for ever.  The church is a foretaste and preview of the coming New Creation where every tribe, language, and nation is gathered around the throne of God.

As we drove back into our neighborhood last night, after spending a week in parts of the country that are by and large oblivious to these sad realities, I was reminded of how exciting it is to be the church here in the UIC Area, with such diversity yet disparity.  What a place to do the long-term work of preaching the gospel and making disciples and living sacrificially for others.  It’s all right here within a few blocks of where we sit right now.  It’s all right here.  Let’s not miss it.

So with all the national news swirling that highlights the problems, let’s recommit ourselves to this specific church and our mission to this neighborhood.  What can we do?  Let’s be the church, be the people of God assembled under the Word of God, demonstrating to the world the supernatural power of the gospel to make enemies of God adopted sons and daughters of God and true brothers and sisters to each other through the cross.  Let’s help this body continue to reflect God’s kaleidoscopic kingdom.  Let’s dig in deeper to each other’s lives, loving one another deeply from the heart and seeking to bring our neighbors in on that.  We can, and must, all do at least this.

Prayer and Preaching

From David Helm’s new little book in the 9Marks Building Healthy Churches Series, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 68-69:

There is an intimate connection between the revelation of the identity of Christ – seeing him as the fulfillment of the Scriptures – and moments of prayerful quiet.

Luke makes this connection on a number of occasions. When Peter responds to Jesus’s question, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ with ‘the Christ of God,’ the readers had just been told that Jesus was praying alone (Luke 9:18-20). In other words, Luke wants his readers to know that Jesus was revealed to Peter in the context of prayer. The transfiguration, when Jesus was revealed in his glory as the Son, the Chosen One, follows Jesus taking Peter, James, and John to go to the mountain and pray (Luke 9:28-36). Back in the beginning of the Gospel, aged Simeon and Anna are both identified as pious people of prayer – statements that immediately precede God’s revealing Jesus to them (Luke 2:27, 37; cf. Luke 2:28-32, 38). Even when God reveals the identity of Jesus at his baptism, Luke records that the heavens were opened and that God spoke, claiming Jesus as his Son. Luke records that the heavens opened just as Jesus was praying (Luke 3:21-22).

Luke could not have been any clearer: God reveals Jesus to people as a consequence of prayer. And so, if we really want Jesus to be revealed in our preaching – if we really want to uncover Jesus as the very center of all the Scriptures – then we must begin with prayer in our preparation.

Church Growth

I recently received a mass ministry email that began with this question – “Do you want your church to grow?”

Then it explained that so-and-so has worked with over 2,000 churches and has found there are 5 systems that if deployed correctly, will grow your church. Here are the five:

• Volunteer system: Gaining, training & inspiring volunteers
• Outreach system: Advertising & outreach system to reach new people
• Administration system: Internal processes & systems
• Follow up system: Following up with givers, guests & new Christians
• Communication system: How to communicate with your church clearly

I have no doubt that these systems are important and beneficial for churches. But why no mention of the supernatural? Of the fact that the Lord builds his church (Mt. 16:18)? Of the priority of prayer and the ministry of the Word (Acts 6:4)?

‘Once-ers’

Our church just moved its Sunday Evening Prayer Meetings to a different time slot – the first Wednesdays of the month at night – in hopes of broader church-wide participation. Last night after Prayer Meeting I came home and was reading a little in D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Preaching & Preachers. He was talking about people who only attend one church service each week.

“They generally attend on Sunday morning only; they have become ‘once-ers’ as they are called.”

“What do we say to such people?” Lloyd-Jones asks.

He answers:

We must convince them of the importance of being present at every service of the church. Every service! Why? The first answer… is that if they are not present at every service they may well find one day that they were not present when something really remarkable took place….

So I say to these ‘once-ers’, if you do not come to every service you may live to find a day when people will tell you of an amazing experience in a service on a Sunday night or a Sunday morning – and you were not there, you missed it. In other words we should create this spirit of expectation in the people and show them the danger of missing some wonderful ‘times of refreshing… from the presence of the Lord’ (Acts 3:19).

That should be followed by a question: Why is it that any Christian should not long for as much of this as he can possibly get? Surely this is quite unnatural. It is certainly un-scriptural. Take the way in which the Psalmist in Psalm 84 expresses his misery and sorrow because he could not go up with the others to the House of the Lord. ‘How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!’ ‘My soul longeth, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.’ He thinks then of those who are having the privilege: ‘Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee.’ He things of them with envy because he cannot be with them. Nothing is comparable to being in the House of God. ‘A day in thy courts is better than a thousand…’ Surely this ought to be instinctive in the true Christian. There is something seriously wrong spiritually with anyone who claims to be a Christian who does not desire to have all that can be obtained from the ministry of the Church.

From D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching & Preachers: 40th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 165-66.

Back from Camping

We arrived back in Wheaton last night after a week of camping in Iowa near Andrea’s grandparents’ farm. All of Andrea’s family was there. Here’s a video of me catching a whopper!

We got to visit with some good friends in Waterloo on the way back. He’s a pastor and we were able to visit his wonderful church.

Here’s another great quote I read this week that I’ll share with you:

The gracious and most excellent assistance of the Spirit of God in praying and preaching, is not by immediately suggesting words to the apprehension, which may be with a cold, dead heart; but by warming the heart, and filling it with a great sense of the things to be spoken, and with holy affections, that these may suggest words. Thus indeed the Spirit of God may be said, indirectly and mediately, to suggest words to us, and indite our petitions for us, and to teach the preacher what to say; he fills the heart, and that fills the mouth…. But since there is no immediate suggesting of words from the Spirit of God to be expected or desired, they who neglect and despise study and premeditation, in order to a preparation for the pulpit… are guilty of presumption.

By the way, that’s from Jonathan Edwards.

Two more weeks of sabbatical! I can’t wait to get back and get caught up with everybody!

We Need to Pray

Just read this today from Anthony Burgess (a Westminster Divine; d. 1664) on prayer:

Why in these latter days [is it that] the Word preached makes no more wonderful works? At first propagation of the gospel, so many fish were caught in the net that it was ready to break. And at the first Reformation out of Popery, the kingdom of God suffered violence, but now he that is profane is profane still, the blind are blind still, the proud still proud. What is the matter? Is not the Word of God as powerful as ever? Is not the Lord’s arm as strong as ever? Yes, but the zeal of people is grown cold. There are not such fervent prayers, such high esteems of the means of grace. Men do not besiege heaven, giving God no rest day or night till he come with salvation into their souls, and truly the Spirit of prayer is a sure forerunner of spiritual mercies to be bestowed.

I look forward to getting back to Immanuel and seeking to increase our corporate prayer life this fall. But it would be cool if corporate prayer took off and flourished even this summer while I was gone! I’ll be praying for that…