In 1998 I moved to NYC mainly because Cru’s Metro Team at the time had formed a partnership with Redeemer Presbyterian Church and I wanted to be a part of that partnership. I had been spending my summers starting in 1995 in NYC for the summer project’s there and every Sunday attending Redeemer to listen to Tim Keller’s teaching.
At that time he was teaching twice a day for a morning and evening service – different sermons for each one – as well as doing a Q&A after the morning service for an hour. I soaked it all up. And wasn’t even disappointed when at times his wife Kathy would fill in for him at a Q&A.
From ’98 for the next decade I sat under his teaching. And it was from his fruitful “field” of thinking that grew my ministry in the Arts that is still going to this day.
I could not overstate how much Tim Keller’s teaching has had on me personally and in my ministry. Each time I read something about him or by him I am grateful to God for his moment in history.
I find this article—The Moral Universe of Timothy —interesting as Keller and the interviewer seem to focus in on the thinking side of our humanity. Yet without discounting, but certainly reducing, the place of emotions. Which, in my opinion, have instigated much of the fire in our cultural discourse over even the simplest things. Emotions are human, and therefore part of the image of God. But, when not tempered by even the most basic reasonable thinking they can ride a tide that becomes a wave that many times can cause not only disdainful division but also wanton destruction.