Special Guest Tim Keller! Is the Church Called to Be a Moral Voice in Culture?

What's up everyone? My name is Ben Pierce, and you're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. The episode that we're about to play for you was recorded a few years back with none other than doctor Tim Keller. Obviously, sadly, he has since passed away, and this continues to be one of my favorite conversations I've ever had on this podcast. We talk about how to preach the gospel in a very secular world.

What does it look like to be both bold and relevant? And of course, as someone who spent years preaching the gospel and leading a church in New York City, Doctor Tim Keller was very, very qualified to answer this question. So I hope you enjoy this podcast episode, and I wanna just remind you that this is part of a larger missions organization called Steiger. And the reason why we have conversations like this is because our mission is to reach people who would not walk into a church. There are people in your life, sons, daughters, friends, coworkers, neighbors who fit this category.

They might be spiritually open but they're skeptical of institutional religion. And like Jesus, we need to go to them. We need to be in their places, love them, and tell them the truth. That is the entire reason our podcast exists. That's the entire reason our mission exists.

And conversations like this just amplify and move that mission forward. So we want you to get involved. If you go to steiger.org, s t e I g e r 0 r g, you can find out more and you can plug in. Lastly, if you enjoy this podcast, we have conversations like this all the time. And we get to interview some of the most incredible guests throughout the Christian world.

Dallas Jenkins, Lee Strobel, pastor Matt Chandler, Jenny Allen, Philip Yancey, Max Lucado. The list goes on and on, and I promise you are gonna love these conversations. They are gonna inspire you in your faith. They're gonna push you outside of the church to use what you have to reach those who are lost. You're really gonna enjoy the Provoke and Inspire podcast.

So consider subscribing, consider sharing it with those that don't yet know. That's it. I hope you enjoy this amazing conversation that we got to have with the late doctor Tim Keller. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. Welcome to the Provoke and Inspire podcast.

We have an incredible guest for you. We have none other than doctor Tim Keller. Thanks for being here. You. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. You can pound the table now if you'd like to. Exactly. Mhmm. Normally, I tell the guys not to make sounds and noises like that because it makes my job really awkward, and the transition tends to be weird, but I can only do so much.

Couldn't refrain from doing that. Yeah. The excitement overcame them. Anyway, we are so grateful that you're here. There are so many different things that we wanna talk about.

We've narrowed it down to a few critical things. There's actually a discussion that we have a lot with our listeners in our community, and the whole heart of our podcast is how to be radical followers of Jesus in secular culture. How can we be obedient and faithful in the real world? So naturally, the topic of evangelism comes up quite often, and it it tends to have some tension with it. There tends to be some contentiousness to it.

So as someone who has lived in a very secular context for so many years and preached the gospel, what insight, what understanding can you give us, in terms of how can we effectively communicate the gospel in a twenty first century secularized urban context? What insight can you give us? Well, first of all, I think those kind well, maybe you already know this. The conversations have to be organic, unscripted, has to be deeply relational. I I think, the West is a mission field.

So for example, in in India, you don't expect that most of the neighborhood is gonna show up for your Christmas Eve candlelight service. Right. You don't expect that if you even invite them to church, they would even wanna come. Mhmm. You don't expect them to be coming to events in which you're having some speaker give a testimony.

The in a in a mission field, the people around the church are either find find the church either incomprehensible at best or, offensive. And therefore, the only way that people are gonna hear about the gospel is through interactions with people that they respect and like. And, actually, this sounds really weird. The sociology of knowledge, which is a, you know, about a 80 or 90 year old discipline, basically says that people tend to find most plausible the views of people that they would like to like them. And, therefore, what that means is if you're, basically an admirable person, if you're someone who somebody feels like, hey.

You know, you do care about people and you care about me and you are, you're a person of character in in many ways that I really respect, then you can have an you can have you can talk about Christianity. But unless you are that's the sociology of knowledge that we're not as rational as people like to think we are. So, we we tend to find most plausible the views of people who we admire, we respect, and who actually would like to like them to like us. And, so I would I would say that that's the very first thing that that traditionally evangelism happens by experts. It happens through apologist.

It happens through events. It happens through, seeker services. It happens through all these things that I think increasing in the future. It will not. It really will be it'll happen through friendship.

And and there's a particular kind of friendship. I'll just say that, then I'll try to try to keep my answers shorter so you can follow-up and go where you wanna go. There's a kind of evangelism that happens where you, you're friendly and kind in order to evangelize them. Mhmm. And then there's the kind that happens where you evangelize them in order to love them.

In other words, it's not like I'm I'm loving them in order to get them to open up so I can convert them. It's that I'm actually only sharing my faith because it's the most loving thing I could possibly do. I care about this person, and, actually, I don't see any way forward to really loving them the way I should and helping the way I should without at least talking about my faith. So when evangelist becomes not an end in itself, but a means to an end of loving people Mhmm. Then then it it's I think there's a a an integrity to it.

First of all, it's an integrity. It's not immoral. It's not manipulative. And, frankly, it's a whole lot more effective. Weirdly enough, I think it's, you know, the old saying, aim at heaven, you get earth thrown in.

Aim at earth, and you'll get neither. Aim at love, and you'll get evangelistically evangelistic effectiveness thrown in. Aim at evangelistic effect effectiveness, and you'll get neither. What you're describing is religion in the first place. Right?

If you if you look to evangelize somebody, that's kind of a religious thing. But if you have God's heart, you're gonna love people, and then it's gonna cause you to wanna talk about Jesus just because you love them. Right? Yeah. That's exactly right.

And, I mean, evangelism, you're it's it's perfectly fair for you. You're using evangelism in a negative way. You're saying, right. And I do think that's fair because there's plenty of people that evangelism is actually a kind of sales pitch. It's a or it's a it's a it's coercive or it's superior or it's, it's my duty.

There's an evangelism that happens out of just out of duty, not out of love. There's an evangelism that happens that is largely just trying to increase my tribe rather than really help the person. So for all those reasons, it's fair to say, yeah, this isn't evangelism. This is actually friendship. You know?

In other words, another way to put it is there is no such thing as friendship evangelism. There's friendship. And friendship means well well, I I usually say, if you're a friend and you're not deliberately hiding your Christianity, then somehow it's gonna get out. If you're deliberately hiding it, I think you have to ask questions. Does that in deserve integrity there?

So I usually say if you stop deliberately hiding and just be a friend, then you're gonna talk about it. And if you're gonna talk about it, it's gonna be, you know, it's probably gonna have some impact on the person, especially if they especially they have admiration for you in any way. But is there another side to it where there's an article I really appreciated you posted on, I think it's the Redeemer website where you talk about, preparing to go tell. And and you compare the go tell with the come see. And some of what I understood from it was just that aspect of realizing that if it's just relationship, if it's just, waiting for people to come and and and be in that place where they can gradually hear it won't happen, and there's a need for us to go tell today.

And Yeah. I'm just wondering how that works because, I mean, we we did a lot of the sort of proclamation stuff as a mission. We're quite strong on the evangelistic side, going out to people. Good. And sometimes and we try to do this a lot in relationship with the local church.

But often we'll get, local church leaders saying, oh, that's great you guys are doing that, but we we believe in friendship evangelism, and that's what's working. And so, it's that often that they use that as a thing to say that they don't wanna connect with what we're doing. So would you be able to speak into that? Okay. Listen.

I agree. I mean, here's the point though. The bridge, of course, you're in Poland. Yeah. Luke.

And, and you're from The UK. In The United States, up until fairly recently, the, the bridge between getting people to hear it publicly proclaimed and for you know, the bridge was a short bridge between inviting somebody. Hey. Would you like to come? I I even use an example, of the, you know, would you like to come to our candlelight service?

Would you like to come to something like that? And it wasn't that hard. Most there were three things about most Americans up until recently and actually most Europeans, further back. And those three things are, in the West, people, number one, felt some social pressure to go to church. They felt a certain amount there was some social pressure.

We had Peter Drucker, who was Austrian and who was a business guru. I remember, he's gone now, but he was a became a Christian. He's he told us how when he moved to Hoboken, New York Hoboken, New Jersey, because he got an appointment to teach at NYU back in the thirties, '19 thirties. He was trying to get a mortgage on a house. Now he was a European.

He was trying to get a mortgage on a house, and he went to a bank. And the bank said, where do you go to church or synagogue? And he said, what's what's that got to do with getting a loan? He said and the the banker said, why would I give you somebody a loan who didn't go to church or synagogue? How would I trust your moral character?

So that's the way it was. And so number one, people felt some social pressure to go to church. Number two, when they got in there, they all they almost all of them believed in a personal god, and they believed in a heaven or hell afterlife, and they believed in a moral absolutes, and they and they had some sense of sin. So when they Yeah. First of all, they they would come in, and it wasn't that hard to get them there.

You invited them or maybe your banker threatened you with not giving a mortgage. So all sorts of what you would they would come, and they were prepped. And even if they weren't religious themselves, they were positive about religion. Mhmm. So they they came, they were prepped, and they were positive, which meant that the the the bridge from inviting somebody to church or bringing somebody along to an event where the gospel is being proclaimed And getting to that event was a very short bridge.

Now all I'm saying is not listen. I'm a preacher. I'm a public proclaimer. I mean, if I really thought that there wasn't a place for that, I would have, you know, stepped down years ago and just talked to people, you know, on the street or or in my my apartment or something like that. But I'm just saying that now people are not coming, and they are not prepped, and they're not positive.

Mhmm. And what that means is that there's much, much, much longer bridge before you get to Yeah. To the place where they can hear it proclaim without being completely either turned off or even just not understanding what the heck you're saying. That's all. Maybe the the heart of the tension is that we find that in a Christian art scene, it is very rare, if not completely nonexistent, to explicitly share the gospel through art as a Christian artist.

It's often done very coded. It's very you could easily replace God with a woman, and you would not know the difference within the context of the lyrics. Yeah. I know. The old, the Amy Grant crossover songs.

Do you you know who I'm talking about? Yeah. One is that whole way kinda grew up out of that, and and so the tension we tend to find is where is the role, not just for artists, but for believers in general to just share the plain gospel. I mean, you you even look at Paul, and and he talked explicitly about avoiding eloquence and and lofty speech, lest the cross be empty of its power. So as artists or otherwise, where's the role of just the simple presentation of the gospel?

Yeah. Well, now first of all okay. Oh, I'm let's I agree. I mean, I always thought that that the, the crossover songs from Christian artists, which they weren't talking about God or Jesus, but you could read it between the lines. They're talking about loving and all that, and you could read it two ways.

It could be a Mhmm. It could have been Amy Grant talking to her boyfriend. It could also be talking to Jesus, and wasn't that cool? And then, of course, it was a little easier for radio shows. Radio back then, for a radio station to play it because it didn't seem like it was, Christian it was it didn't seem like it was Christian rock, but it really was.

It wasn't that cool. I'm not sure I don't know how that helps anything. I agree. I agree with you. Yeah.

And and listen. Two things. One is the explicit fine. Yeah. I was in a parking lot.

I was in a parking lot in Saint Louis some year a year ago or a year and a half ago with Lecrae. And because I was at a meeting with him, and we were in a parking lot, and there were two young African American guys who were, you know, were valets, and they were parking the car. And I don't know if you ever met Lecrae. He's pretty hard to miss. He's really tall and built, very athletic looking.

And so one guy walks up to him and says, are you LeCray? And LeCray says, yeah, brother. And he just, you know, gave him a handshake. And he says, you know, I'm not a Christian at all, but I love your stuff. I utterly love your stuff.

And and they and I actually at that point, I was actually getting I didn't hear the rest of the conversation, but, LeCree is very open about his Christianity. This guy knew exactly where he stood, and yet admired him tremendously, which, of course, puts him in a position where where he could, I think, that that young man probably could be brought along to something. Maybe where LeCrate or somebody LeCrate recommended would be actually talking about it. So I'm I'm fine with all that. But, when when Paul talks about not using wise and persuasive speech, that's in in in, first Corinthian yeah, first Corinthians two.

In first Corinthians one, he talks about it as well. He's talking about three things because he was talking about Greek rhetoric. And Greek rhetoric had a there was a a lot of people who didn't like Greek rhetoric because it wasn't it wasn't basically bringing out the truth. There were three There was there was a high style, a middle style, and a low style. And the high style were put put emphasis directly on the will with a really coercive, overbearing, domineering.

In other words, it was a kind of speaking. It was like Hitler, frankly. Very, very intense in just pushing people. Another style played on their prejudices. I mean, there there were Greek rhetoricians that actually played on people's prejudices and their fears in order to, you know, get them to agree with you.

And then there was just the emotions. I was just telling stories that really, just tugged at the heartstrings. And in every case, what Paul was saying, these were, the the language he uses, the Greek language he uses in chapter one and two of first Corinthians, he says, I'm not I'm not a rhetorician. I'm not using rhetoric, which was all public speakers did that. He says, I'm just telling people the truth.

But if you go if you look at acts, go go through and look at how he talks to Jews in acts 13, how he talks to, blue collar pagans in acts 14, how he talks to philosophers who didn't believe in the gods and who are very intellectual in acts 17. They are radically different radically different. He he doesn't he doesn't roll out the cross and the resurrection and the sin. He doesn't roll it out in the same way. In Acts 13, he grounds everything he says in scripture.

In Acts 17, he does not. And so on the one hand, when you read first Corinthians, it looks like he's saying, I just tell people the truth. I just I don't even think about trying to find the most persuasive way. I don't try to couch my language in a way that that, will be most compelling to them. I just tell them the truth.

That's not what he's saying in first Corinthians one and two because that's not what he does in the book of Acts. He actually does contextualize. But having said that, of course, he's direct. I mean, there was almost a riot in every time every time he preached, there was almost a riot. So I I'm I'm halfway to where you are.

Right. That coding it and getting it in between the lines and all that, that's not the thing to do. But some of what you just said sounds like you're maybe a little more skeptical of the need for contextualization and and finding the proper way of of persuasion than I would be. Maybe maybe not. Well, I think I I think we actually, you know, we attempt to go to great lengths to really speak into the culture, the language that God has called us to.

I totally believe that. We have a principle that talks about showing people who Jesus is first before telling them because if I go to a secular context and I say I'm here in the name of Jesus, all these negative ideas go into people's heads because they are rejecting a version of Jesus I don't believe in. Probably what you're feeling for me is that within Paul, the motivation was never in doubt. It was motivated out of love, but it was direction was that people would find the truth, and then he would contextualize that to whatever audience he happened to be speaking to. Yep.

To me, I feel like things have become so imbalanced now where we may use those reasons to sort of defend our silence, but in in reality, I think it has more to do with fear or an unwillingness to look foolish. If we were seeing this nice balance of, yeah, I'm telling people sometimes, but I'm not sure I'm doing it right. At least from my estimation, people hardly ever say anything. And so I think that's maybe where the overemphasis is coming out. No.

I totally agree. And listen, I there's, there's a big difference between I'd say younger younger Christian adults are definitely feeling a lot more headwinds. That means they they are they they are feeling a hostility. There is a fear, and they are definitely more afraid of opening their mouths. When I said a minute ago, I said, if you're a friend with somebody and they you never talk about Christianity, it's because you're deliberately hiding a key part of who you are.

That's my way, frankly, of working on their conscience to say the only reason why you wouldn't be talking regularly to people about faith, non Christians about faith, is if essentially you're chickening out. Right. Again, you'd have to be hiding it because or unless Jesus isn't really the center of your life. I mean, you know, if Jesus is in the suburbs of your life as opposed to downtown, then then he's really not part of the way you make decisions. He's not really part of the way in which you he doesn't shape the way in which you live your life.

But if he actually is important to you and you have a non Christian friend, and I hope you have non Christian friends, then then I don't know why in the world you wouldn't be talking to them. And I do know why they're not talking. They're scared. I know. And and we're scared they're gonna be asked a question about sex, frankly.

Yeah. And so there we go. No. I agree with you on that. And nobody wants to live in the suburbs.

Least of all Jesus. Yeah. Don't tweet that, please. Yeah. Something that's been on my heart a lot recently, I've been going through again, some of, Martin Lloyd Jones' stuff on revival and on the Holy Spirit.

And one of the things that hit me so much just this week reading through it, I mean, him speaking from the fifties, and he was talking about the reality we live in today. When he describes it, it sounds so much like what we're experiencing now, and that was already in the fifties in terms of people being, like you were describing, apathetic to the church, negative, not, you know, not being ready to come. And his response, at least in that context of talking about revival, is saying, you know, yes, we gotta use apologetics. Yes, we gotta preach the gospel and speak. But above all, we need a move of God because otherwise, we're just in a state where none of those things are gonna be enough for people to really hear today.

And he talks about how there's gotta be a demonstration of God's power and a move of God, and that's what we should be praying for. And that's just been speaking to me a lot. I heard you speak just recently on the the pod the, call that we did for the Revive conference here in Europe that, Sarah and Renee are putting together. And, and it was just encouraging, yeah, to think about that again. And do you see a place an importance for praying for revival and for God's power to move for this to this to be reality today?

I know those lectures. The the, Martin Lloyd Martin Lloyd Jones's book on revival, which was a series of lectures he gave in nineteen fifty seven nineteen fifty seven because it was the one hundredth anniversary of the of the the revival in Wales in Northern Ireland. And Yes. We actually had a revival, the Fulton Street revival, which was a massive revival in Downtown New York City, same year. It's very weird how that stuff happens.

You know, there was a revival in Wales and in Korea in nineteen o four. I'm you have to wonder, is there is there any scientific way to explain those things? And the answer is no. But here's here's something interesting. I totally agree.

The the, I would say if there's any, years ago when I was a young man and I was at Gordon Conwell Seminary, I took a course with Richard Loveless on the history of awakenings and revival. So just an entire course on it. It. And one of the things we try to do is we try to say, you know, what do they all have in common? And the the things that all the revivals have in common, I'll give you three, frankly.

I'll give you four. K? Four I'll give you four things they always have in common. The things they did not have in common was method. So Right.

You know, one revival was outdoor preaching. So, you know, the seventeen thirties and forties, Wesley Whitfield, outdoor preaching. Then you get to the the eight the the Fulton Street Revival in eighteen fifties was, lay led noonday prayer meetings in the business district. Had nothing to do with preaching. And they start with one and they're doing something.

Yeah. That's right. Youngstown Revival. Ten or 15,000 businessmen, then women too. I read something like there was something like, there's a guest at 80,000 people.

There was 800,000 people living in Manhattan at the time. About 80,000 people joined the churches of Manhattan over a two or three year period. That's 10% of the population, probably. Crazy. You know, it's always hard to know how many people became Christians, but I'm just saying 10% of the population joined the churches, which means got baptized and joined the churches.

Probably crazy. And that had nothing to do with street street preaching. So what are the things that are always the same? Number one, I'll give you I already gave you the one. The one is innovation.

That no revival is quite the same as the last revival. There's always some methodological difference. You know, as as, Aslan told the the kids, you don't get back into Narnia the same way twice. Okay. Secondly, prayer and extraordinary prayer.

Not not normal prayer. More corporate, more compelling, more sustained, more unified. Okay. Number three, repentance. Some kind of repentance.

My favorite, you know, the Korean Pentecost was, the major revival that got the Korean church off to the ground in nineteen o four, '19 o '5 was mainly marked by repentance, which we all love praise. But, actually, when I look at across the the the years, it's it's the it's the weeping and the silence and the confession, repentance. It's a real mark of a move of God. Deep repentance. And then lastly, I guess, I would say, so you have is innovation and you have extraordinary prayer and you have, repentance.

I guess the fourth thing is some recovery of the gospel. In other words, there's some way in which, people get routine about the gospel of grace, and they just get routine. Yes. Of course. I believe that.

Jesus died for my sins. There has to be some new way. It's just hitting people. And, so, yeah, I would say that when it comes to a movement of prayer, that is absolutely critical. I you know, there's only a the I I here's the fifth thing quick is when you have a major movement anybody can become a Christian anytime.

It's a miracle. But a major movement usually means God does something in the society. So right now, there probably is a revival going on in The Middle East amongst people who grew up Muslim. And there are I think there are cultural reasons why God, part of the a lot of the violence that's happened in The Middle East has has opened a lot of people who were raised Muslim, has sort of opened people to other other things. Something has to same thing happened in Korea.

The Koreans were under the boot of the the Japanese. They've been humiliated, and they were, they had been conquered by the Japanese. And so very often, something happens in society that opens you know, God does something in order to really open the, you know, seed the ground or something like that, fertilize the ground. It's hard to say. Right.

Yeah. So I'm I'm still a person that says it's not methodology methodology. It's not if you if you have the right sketch, if you have the right music, if you preach the sermon just right, if you have the right, gospel presentation, that you're gonna see a revival. It's gotta be move of God, but you can build the altar. The altar is prayer, repentance, a rediscovery of the gospel, and then you have to ask God to send down the fire.

I think whenever you become imbalanced in one way, then you get off track. So when it becomes just about the method, as you said, or there's no that that, well, it has to be perfectly stated or if I live a perfect moral life, then they'll accept it. You can become imbalanced in that direction. But then also to say that if I just present the simple gospel message, every time people will get saved, and that's all I need to do. That's an imbalance as well.

Jesus Agreed. Was both clear and relevant, loving and bold. It wasn't mutually exclusive, and I think when we lose that tension, then we are less like Jesus than we should be. Totally. But then like you said, ultimately, it's gotta be broken motivated by a broken heart and fueled by God's power because that's otherwise ultimately, it's about me converting someone to my sales pitch, and that's not the gospel.

That's religion of some kind. So Yeah. Anyway, I don't wanna take any more of your time. We are so incredibly grateful for your ministry, for your books. I know I've been mostly influenced by Oh, go over it.

So, Nigel, do you know Nigel? He's your number one fan. Which Nigel? You know, I I have so many so many people in United United Kingdom are named Nigel, and so many people like to be there. That is Yeah.

It's like, you know, it's like John Smith. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I know.

I know. Narrowing it down at all. I know. I'm sorry. He just goes by Nigel, but he wanted to know if I could ask you a question.

Is that okay? Yeah. So he has an initiative called releasing lions into urban areas. And so, you know, you live in New York, and so I'm wondering how you would feel about that if you would support his initiative. If if there was some way in which this would further the gospel, I would consider it.

So you're so you are a So on record, you are So you are for it then. I No. No. No. I said if I if you have to show me that it support.

For if if if if you you can show me that in some ways, it furthers the cause of the gospel, I will consider it. That's the reason. You're what let's say you're walking through Central Park, and all of a sudden, you know, you're not sure if a lion's gonna attack you or not. Wouldn't that increase your prayer life or your wanting to ask serious questions about life? You know what I mean?

What do you I think Yeah. And I and one of them might be Aslan. That's the other thing. So yeah. Do you know I because my wife became a Christian through, the Narnia Chronicles.

Oh, wow. So we have picture we have pictures of lions around my house. So actually There you go. There you go, Nigel. Just keep in mind that I am Did you know that CS Lewis well, did you know that CS Lewis was also British?

That's a Oh, man. Thing. Luke triggers me all the time, and I he's doing it right now. Yeah. By by the way, Luke, I've heard he was Irish, but now it's scary.

Oh. Oh, no. I heard it here first, people. Absolutely. Yeah.

Not to mention, Luke, you're kind of a fraud anyway. You spent most of your life outside of The UK. But anyway, believe me, if I let this go any further, we'll be here all day. So thank you so much, doctor Keller. This has been a huge privilege for us.

Thank you so much. Yes. Yeah. We, we have really enjoyed this conversation. Hopefully, you have as well.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. I had a lot of fun.