Timothy Keller on Center Church

Timothy Keller, Shaped by the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016); Loving the City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016); Serving a Movement (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016).

These three books are essentially a reissue of Tim Keller’s Center Church, first published by Zondervan in 2012. For those who missed it first time round, or who struggled with the large hardback format and columns of small text, or would simply like to read it again (it repays a second read), this is a much easier way to access the material.

Keller’s vision is articulated around three core commitments, reflected in the titles of these volumes: gospel (proclaiming the gospel and its implications for the whole of life); city (exercising wisdom in how we contextualise the message, neither overadapting nor underadapting to culture); movement (the church engaging in mission as both ‘institution’ and ‘organism’, rooted in tradition and reaching out through its members).

In addition, each of the books contains reflections from two or more critical friends, to whom Keller then responds – a helpful reminder of the need for ongoing conversation in these areas.

Tim Keller on Church

I was asked to write six brief book notes for the November 2013 edition of EG, published by LICC. I’ve been posting them individually here over the last week or so. 

Timothy J. Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2012).

Tim Keller’s theological vision of a ‘center church’, articulated around three core commitments: gospel (proclaiming the gospel and its implications for the whole of life); city (exercising wisdom in how we contextualise the message, neither overadapting nor underadapting to culture); movement (the church engaging in mission as both institution and organism, rooted in tradition and reaching out through its members). The largest of Keller’s books published over the last few years, this one helpfully provides a comprehensive but eminently readable presentation of his insights.

Amy Sherman on Embracing Vocation in the City

Q Ideas has a 17-minute video here of Amy Sherman on ‘Embracing Vocation in the City’, highlighting themes explored more fully in her book, Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good (Downers Grove: IVP, 2012).

Here is the blurb for the video:

‘We spend most of our week outside of church – at our jobs, in our neighborhoods, with our families. How do we connect our faith with our vocations – with the work that we do in the world? Too often the church fails to deploy people’s unique vocational power strategically, creatively, and effectively. Amy Sherman challenges Christians to embrace a new vision for an everyday, integrated faith that will ultimately change workplaces, cities, industries.’

Tim Keller on Center Church

Timothy J. Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2012).

Courtesy of NetGalley, over my summer holiday, I’ve been reading the galley pages of this just-about-to-be-published book from Tim Keller, and think it is truly excellent.

It’s an exploration of what Keller calls a ‘Center Church’ theological vision in terms of three basic commitments – Gospel, City, and Movement.

Zondervan make a pdf excerpt available here, which includes the Introduction, in which Keller outlines the significance of what he calls ‘theological vision’ (that which lies between a doctrinal foundation on the one side and particular forms of ministry on the other side), and the first chapter in the section on the Gospel.

Andy Crouch on a New Kind of Urban Ministry

Andy Crouch, ‘A New Kind of Urban Ministry’, Christianity Today (28 October 2011).

‘This is Our City’ is a multiyear Christianity Today project spotlighting the ways Christians are ‘seeking comprehensive flourishing’ in six cities in the U.S. It looks very interesting, and I’ll be curious to see how it might play out in the UK context.

Andy Crouch has an excellent article here, which introduces the project by reflecting on what he calls ‘a new kind of urban ministry’.

He begins with what we know – that cities are thriving, that they are ‘the destination of choice for many young adults... and the hub of revivals in food, architecture, and entrepreneurship’, that even ‘many suburbs are now taking cues from the ‘social fabric of cities’, where the ‘markers of the good life are increasingly urban’.

There is, he says, a shadow side to these trends, that ‘not every city is thriving’, and that ‘thriving is in the eye of the beholder’. And yet ‘renewed cities, and our culture’s renewed interest in what makes for thriving places, are an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the biblical mission that is meant to prepare us for the city whose builder and maker is God’.

He notes the wide use of the biblical model of the exile for urban ministry, that ‘while the exilic prophets never gave up promising a return to the Promised Land, they also exhorted the exiles that exile was an opportunity for faithfulness and mission’ In this respect, ‘Jeremiah’s injunction to seek the peace of the city where God had sent his people (Jer. 29) has become a touchstone for a generation of urban Christians’.

And yet, as he points out, ‘there is one overwhelmingly obvious difference between the Hebrew exiles and Christ-followers in 21st-century cities: the Hebrew exiles were captives. Churches in every American city, on the other hand, are full of proud citizens and hardworking visitors, not captives. Most of us are not hapless exiles; we are purposeful arrivals.’

This, I think, is a crucial point to note in the current surge of enthusiasm for all things ‘urban’ on the part of many Christians.

As something of a personal aside, Christian have rightly been warned about applying the wonderful promises in Jeremiah 29 to themselves without taking account of the original exilic context; but I have been wondering recently whether a whole raft of readers are now in danger of unthinkingly applying to themselves and their particular ‘group’ the commission to seek the shalom of the city without also taking account of the original exilic context. Of course, this doesn’t mean Jeremiah 29 has nothing to say to urban situations today; only that we exercise due caution in how we appropriate it and the implications we draw from it– not least given the fact that salvation history has moved forward.

Crouch goes on:

‘Is there a biblical model, then, that describes better the situations of churches and Christians in cities today – that retains the valuable features of Exodus and Exile while accounting for our responsibility for our communities? Yes, and it is rooted in the 50 days that make us Christians – from Resurrection, through Ascension, to Pentecost. This story redefines our relationship not just to God but to our world. It is a story summed up in one word, Expectation, that keeps us rooted in and responsible for the flourishing of the world precisely because we have a hope outside of history in the usual sense.’

Resurrection, he says, ‘anchors this story’. ‘The exiles had Isaiah’s words of hope for future restoration. But in Jesus’ resurrection, the restoration of all things has already begun – it is not just future, but here in its earliest stages. It is not only possible, but achieved. Resurrection empowers us to live infinitely more boldly than exiles who wait to see whether God will come through.’

Furthermore, ‘rather than an imperial takeover, Jesus commissions his people for what has turned out to be a lengthy and thorough process of bearing witness to his lordship’. Hence, ‘when we say “this is our city,” then, we are staking a claim to a certain kind of Christian responsibility... Not the chastened diligence of exiles captive to an earthly power, but the eager investment of those sent to a place by the Spirit’s power, graced with more resources than they deserve and a longer view of the world’s story than anyone else could imagine’.

Tim Keller on the Five Ministry Fronts in the City

Q Ideas carries a piece by Tim Keller on the five ministry fronts of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

He begins:

‘Foundational to everything we do is the gospel message that God entered the world in Jesus Christ to achieve a salvation we could not achieve for ourselves.’

This good news, he goes on to say is grace-centred and kingdom-centred. And from this understanding of the gospel flows five ways to minister in the city...

(1) ‘We are a church that seeks to be highly effective in evangelism to skeptical people.’

(2) ‘We are a church that seeks to provide spiritual formation primarily through community.’

(3) ‘Redeemer seeks to minister in both word and deed.’

(4) ‘Redeemer seeks to help its people integrate their faith and work for the purpose of cultural renewal.’

(5) ‘Our church must be the catalyst for a major movement of new churches.’

Douglas Wilson on Five Cities That Ruled the World

Douglas Wilson, 5 Cities That Ruled the World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and New York Shaped Global History (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), xx + 236pp., ISBN 9781595551368.

I am working my way through – and enjoying – this recent acquisition from Douglas Wilson, looking at how critical moments in world history have been birthed in these five influential cities:

• Jerusalem – with its ‘complex history and its deep-rooted character as the city of freedom, where people found their spiritual liberty’.

• Athens – and its ‘intellectual influence as the city of reason and birthplace of democracy’.

• Rome – and its ‘evolution as the city of law and justice and the freedoms and limitations that come with liberty’.

• London – with its ‘place in the world’s history as the city of literature where man’s literary imagination found its wings’.

• New York – and its ‘rise to global fame as the city of commerce and how it triggered unmatched wealth, industry, and trade throughout the world’.

Anna Minton on the Twenty-First Century City

Anna Minton, Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City (London: Penguin, 2009), xi + 240pp., ISBN 9780141033914.

A well-researched but readable account of the modern built environment looking at the city, the home, and civil society. Minton argues that the creation of cities within cities, stripped of local history and culture, complete with up-market housing, gated communities and private security forces has generated a culture of authoritarianism and control, the effect of which is to make the city a more fearful place where the pursuit of profit threatens to undermine the quality of urban life.