Grace Changes Everything and Remembering Dr. Timothy Keller
What makes for an excellent mentor, coach, spiritual director, or friend? Timely wisdom shared in a moment of crisis? Do they carry a deft competence always knowing the right next move? Are these folks built with the uncanny ability to show up with loving presence, comforting words, and other-worldly wisdom when the sky is falling?
I’m not sure how you would answer this question. It has many layers and could be examined from multiple angles. But when I think of the friends, mentors, coaches, and spiritual directors who have influenced my life the most a particular word comes to mind: permission.
These saints gave permission to believe things I couldn’t believe for myself. Permission to stumble around and be angry and question and feel all the feelings. Often, these mentors granted permission to attempt things everybody else said was foolish. A permission to be yourself.
I’ve been fortunate to have many friends and mentors who gave room to ask hard questions even when this curious mind was inarticulate and the ideas half baked. And yes, permission to be myself and try things when onlookers said, this will not work. Permission to believe in things so life altering the masses would only turn away with laughs and sneers. But not all…
This permission granting mentor recently passed away on May 19th, 2023. A mentor I’d only met once in person (more on that in a minute). This man primarily worked in the shadows of my life through his books, manuals, teachings, and sermons (and one brief conversation). Despite having a distant relationship cultivated mainly through written words, the impact will last a lifetime. Not only for me, but for countless others.
Dr. Timothy Keller was a pastor and author who gave permission to believe in ideas much bigger than me. Permission to dream about what’s possible amid the naysayers. Tim gave permission to ask hard questions and “doubt my own doubts.” He gave permission to believe in love and justice and grace and treat people with kindness despite cynicism and complaint and anger being the air we breathe. This distant mentor gave permission to be the best God-imaged and God-gifted version of myself, and to not worry about cultivating some cardboard cutout replica patterned after anemic views of success or the good life.
I first encountered Keller in 2002 while working at a church in southern California. Our church experienced miraculous growth and our leadership team considered starting a new church about ten minutes up the highway. I was the young pastor being considered to assemble a team to start this new work.
The problem was I knew nothing about new church development and “church planting” was not a common idea in church vernacular. Few churches started other congregations and, let’s say, outside the Bible, the literature was miniscule.
Enter Dr. Keller.
By divine providence, I found on the internet which wasn’t much of anything in the early 2000s, a pastor in Manhattan, New York, planting churches amid skeptical and secular people with much success. Much like the Los Angeles area. He was selling a church planting manual through his church's website for $20. I sent in the money, received the spiral bound manual, and I’d never be the same.
What I found in these pages were not the ABCs of how to start a church. I found something more like a treasure chest. A chest, when opened, would upend how I thought about the Christian faith, new and fresh ways to articulate this faith in a skeptical world, and the importance of urban ministry when the church prefers the suburbs and small towns of America.
And one of the greatest gifts and unexpected treasures from this manual on church planting… grace changes everything.
I came to Keller’s manual looking for help in starting a new church, which I had no business doing. What I found was a friend, mentor, coach, and spiritual director giving me permission to believe in something bigger than myself. Permission to not go down the typical track of what works, and what’s cool, and what will get results. Instead, to travel the road less traveled, which brings hope and life and love when most are unaware. Oh yeah, and grace DOES change everything.
My almost twenty-five year relationship with Keller was like going to a grocery store and searching for what’s on your list. Buying what’s familiar and safe. But then you show up to the store and realize the shelves are full of foods and options I never noticed. Aisles and aisles of delicious treats not on my list. Keller’s writing, thinking, and teaching showed a whole other buffet for exploring the world of grace. And inviting others to come and eat.
This happened while reading Reason for God. Keller is masterful in taking big concepts of the Christian faith and the existential questions we all ask, and synthesizing them down to understandable appetizers. He showed the credibility and reasonability of the Christian faith in language most could understand (including myself). I came to the book looking for tools to help my skeptical friends understand the gospel, and I came away with a deeper and renewed faith.
Later in my life during a season of questions and doubts and running on empty, I encountered The Prodigal God. Many people are familiar with the story in Luke fifteen about the prodigal son running away from home and squandering the father’s inheritance. After losing it all, the father throws a party and welcomes the wayward son with open arms. But in typical Keller fashion, he helped me see the older son in the story. The one who never rebelled and yet refused to celebrate his wayward brother come home.
Keller would say the younger and the older brother need grace. One is more obvious in their sin and running from God in their disobedience. But the older brother is harder to spot and is also dodging God. He is running from God by his obedience. He is the “good” one and does everything right, but is bitter and can’t receive the father’s love.
Both brothers are running from God. Both need grace. And the father offers grace to both.
Sometimes these stories get so familiar they lose their weight and profundity. Keller’s depiction of a God with unlimited grace and love was a message I needed to hear in my dark malaise. I came to the book probably to work on a sermon and what I encountered was the God who is Love. I still haven’t recovered.
Keller’s genius was not in saying something new and profound. Rather, retelling the “old” message of the good news of great joy in ways people who are resistant, skeptical, hostile, or already part of the family can understand. Tim looked at secular New York and believed the gospel was good news to skeptical people. He believed New York wasn’t an unreachable city. Keller believed this not because of some insider knowledge, prophetic imagination, or because of his competence or skills as a teacher, pastor, and evangelist. Tim Keller believed the power and grace of God found in the gospel of Jesus could soften any stony heart.
My interactions with Keller were mostly from afar. Books, sermons, and a conference. But one time in the early years of starting my congregation, I received the invitation of a lifetime. Tim arranged a visit to Kansas City and invited senior pastors from the local area. Somehow, I was on the list. I spent an evening with Keller and about fifty other pastors to ask him questions and hear him speak. He was the real deal.
I remember one question in particular. Someone asked the moderator who had worked with Tim, have you seen him change with all the success of his books and growing church? Without hesitation, the moderator said: Tim has not changed, but he prays more.
The moderator and former colleague said Tim never ran after success. He wanted to be faithful and fruitful in his life, family, and ministry. But he’d seen so many “famous” Christian pastors and authors fall into the success trap. Prayer would be the only viable solution to keep himself humble. Tim didn’t start a church or write books, hoping to make money or being famous. He did it because of the grace he had encountered and wanted others to experience it, too.
Grace changes everything…
That was all I needed to hear. I can be cynical like the next guy. You meet your heroes and assume they’ll disappoint because many are arrogant knuckleheads. What I saw in that room and in his responses and the brief interaction I had with him was a genuine, humble man who loved the Jesus he preached about. Keller was not a perfect man, and from what I can tell someone who was fully aware of his sins, but even more enthralled with the grace he’d received.
He loved to say:
“The gospel says you are simultaneously more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope.”
From what I read about Tim’s last days on earth, he was still excited about this grace and hope found in Jesus. He knew to be with Jesus was better and despite a body riddled with cancer, he wanted others to know the treasure he’d found. Few people are models for living and dying well. Tim lived and died well.
Dr. Timothy Keller finished his race well. He was madly in love with his wife, kids, and grandkids, and all his friends said he was the real deal. But at the top of his loves was reserved for the God who made him, gifted him, loved him, and saved him.
I don’t know what you consider to be an ideal friend, mentor, or guide. We all have opinions. But I’m going with those who give you permission. Those that give permission to believe in things bigger than yourself.
Permission to believe grace changes everything.
Thank you Timothy Keller for your life and witness and for being a champion of grace. You’ll be missed!