Members of the church founded by the Reverend Timothy Keller told Fox News Digital about the late New York pastor’s influence on their understanding of the Christian faith and how he was able to overcome the political struggle.
“The gospel says you’re more sinful and flawed than you’ve ever dared to believe, but more accepted and loved than you’ve ever dared to hope,” Keller often said, an aphorism that multiple sources told Fox News Digital was the most memorable thing he preached from the pulpit of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.
Keller, who died May 19 after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer, founded Redeemer in 1989 after being named director of church planting in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). He had also served a stint as a youth pastor in a small church in Virginia.
The Redeemer would eventually grow to more than 5,000 weekly congregants at various locations.
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Tim Keller, founder of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, died on May 19 after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. (Tim Keller/Facebook)
Redeemer City to City, Keller’s church planting ministry, spread throughout the world and helped plant more than 1,000 churches in more than 150 cities. He wrote 31 books that sold more than 6 million copies and were translated into 29 languages, the best sellers of which were “The Reason of God” and “The Prodigal God”.
“extremely humble”
Despite her international fame, Keller remained humble, said Jana Van Singel, who served as a deaconess at Redeemer.
“You would never know, meeting him at first, that he is this legendary minister who has written so many books and preached all over the world,” he said. “He was extremely humble, down-to-earth and, to me, the epitome of what a Christian leader should be.”
Van Singel believes that Keller’s intellect – he pulled quotes from Kierkegaard, Marx and many others to illustrate his points – made his sermons appeal to a large swath of young people and metropolitan New Yorkers who might not normally be attracted by a church environment.
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Keller often used philosophers to illustrate points in his sermons, one congregant said. (Rachel Martin/Redeemer City to City via AP)
“They would come and say, ‘This is like a philosophy lesson, but he’s relating it to the Bible,'” he said. “I could talk to so many different types of people from different genders and backgrounds.”
Despite her breadth of knowledge, Van Singel said Keller’s main message was about Jesus and God’s grace, which she said resonated with her “because I’m a sinner and I need grace.”
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“Sometimes I don’t feel loved, but I know someone as incredible as Jesus, who was willing to die for me, who loves me no matter what,” she said. “And I love that reminder. Every time [Keller] he said it, I knew he was talking to me. He was speaking to a crowd, but he was speaking to me. I carried Jesus in my heart, in me.”
“It’s not a political issue”
Beth Lefever, who was a member of Redeemer for 25 years, recalled crying during the first three Keller sermons she heard, overcome by his message of God’s grace and forgiveness. She told Fox News Digital that she is a pastor’s daughter who became a Christian at an early age, but had been hurt in churches where she and her family were abused.
“It was very different,” he said of Keller’s preaching. “It was much more about, ‘Yes, you’re a sinner, but God loves you so much more than you think.'”
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Keller emphasized that the Christian gospel transcends politics, according to several congregants who spoke to Fox News Digital. (Tim Keller/Facebook)
Keller’s kind demeanor helped his gospel message transcend political divides, which Lefever said he was careful to warn about.
“It’s fine to argue about it,” he said of Keller’s approach to politics. “But hating each other, turning on each other, or letting each other down was not. So it means that politics is not the most important thing.”
“For him, this was what the people in power wanted us to do, but he slowed down and said, ‘No, we don’t want to be like Christians here. This will separate us, and God wants us to be together. .'”
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“There was a sermon where he said, ‘I’m not going to preach on a certain side of the political spectrum, and I’m not going to pick sides,'” Van Singel recalled. “He said, ‘I’m just going to tell the truth. I’m going to tell the truth about Jesus, the love of Jesus, and it’s not a political issue with Jesus.'”
‘The Real Deal’
Keller’s emphasis on God’s grace also had a profound impact on Laura Pfortmiller, a musician who began attending Redeemer after becoming disillusioned with what she described as “righteousness based on works” of his upbringing in the Church of the Nazarene, a branch of the Wesleyan-Holiness Movement.
Pfortmiller told Fox News Digital that Keller’s preaching “was the first time I heard this perspective that God is grace, that we can’t be saved by what we do or how we act.”
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“I went through a period of time where I messed up a lot and made some pretty terrible decisions,” Pfortmiller said. “To come to understand that with God, there is no Plan B, it’s not like I was wrong and therefore I was in this second-class citizen trajectory, but I was a daughter of God, the king of the universe, that was the mind. – blowing at me.”
Pfortmiller said this idea was integral to every sermon Keller ever preached.
Keller founded the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1989 after being named director of church planting by the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). (Photo by Fox News/Joshua Comins)
“It always came back to grace and what God had done to draw us to him, and how the sacrifice of Jesus and his atonement was the direct line of Christianity,” he said.
When he first heard Keller preach in the early 1990s, Laura’s husband, Kyle, said he had become agnostic and was drifting toward New Age beliefs and practices after moving away from se of his Methodist background during university. When he met his future wife in New York, she challenged him to attend Redeemer amid his claims that Jesus was simply a great teacher.
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“I remember it to this day,” Kyle said of his first Keller sermon. “I had never heard anything like Tim Keller before, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is life-changing stuff.'” I had professed my faith before, but that was when the rubber hit the road and I said, “This is the real deal.”
What Kyle described as the years of spiritual attacks he had suffered stopped after hearing Keller’s sermon.
“After that night, it was gone,” he said. “That was pretty amazing.”
“God is in control”
Rob DeRocker, an economic marketing consultant who has attended Redeemer with his wife Melinda for decades, noted Keller’s 2004 sermon.Your plans: God’s plan”, as particularly memorable.
Drawing on passages from Proverbs 11 and 12, Keller preached that many cultures have historically believed that one’s destiny is subject to the whims of external, often impersonal forces.
DeRocker said Keller contrasted that worldview with many of the elite in places like New York City, who see themselves as “totally in control,” which Keller dismissed as false.
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Pastor Tim Keller emphasized that the grace of God is his sermons, according to several congregants who spoke to Fox News Digital. (José A. Alvarado Jr. for the Wall Street Journal)
“[He said] understanding of the Bible is neither of those two things, and it’s much more nuanced,” DeRocker said. “And then he goes on to say that, on the one hand, the choices we make, good and bad, absolutely have consequences. And you will enjoy the fruits or suffer those consequences.”
“But ultimately, on the other hand, God is in control. So even the worst choices you make that have bad consequences, God can redeem and use for His purpose and ultimately yours.”
“This is just one example that you don’t hear from many pulpits,” he added.
‘He pierced me’
DeRocker’s wife, Melinda, said she was raised Baptist in the Deep South, where she was instilled with the importance of “being a good girl” and reflecting well on her family name. She said Keller’s preaching transformed her when she first heard him at age 45.
“I’ve never felt such grace in my life,” Melinda told someone after hearing Keller’s sermon for the first time, which she said brought joy.
“For me, it was like living water, hearing him preach,” she said. “I couldn’t get enough.” He noted that Keller’s simple but profound presentation of the gospel was unlike the one he grew up in at his Baptist church.
“It still hadn’t hit me,” he said of the gospel. “Finally, at 45, it broke through to me.”
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Keller’s ministry offered hope for a broken city, country and world, said Georgetown University student Ben Ghatan, 19. (YouTube screenshot)
Ben Ghatan, a 19-year-old student at Georgetown University, told Fox News Digital that his Christian faith is “largely a result of Tim Keller’s evangelism in my life.”
“Growing up in New York in an agnostic household, my childhood was surrounded by skepticism about objective truth,” he said, adding that discourse at school has been “defined by a consensus that there is no there was nothing more in this world than what we see.”
Keller’s ministry offered hope for a broken city, country and world, Ghatan said, which helped him realize his own need for God in his life.
“We would miss Tim idolizing his life,” he added. “It is my prayer that his life will be a reminder to fix our eyes on Jesus’ love for this world and our need for his redemptive work in our lives.”
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According to Redeemer’s website, an online memorial service for Keller is scheduled to take place in the coming weeks.
Jon Brown is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to jon.brown@fox.com.
