The first time I heard Tim Keller was on bootlegged cassette tapes of sermons he preached on Ephesians 5. If you don’t know, Ephesians 5 is one of the most nuclear texts in the Bible, especially in our current culture. Keller managed to stay true to the text, to say something really profound, to be relevant to sceptics, and to preach the good news in the process. Who was this guy?

Twenty years later, Keller’s church has grown into a network of several churches, he is a popular published author, and I don’t have to bootleg tapes any more—you download sermons for free, or get a subscription from Redeemer (http://sermons.redeemer.com/store/).

When I heard that he was coming to Durham, I immediately wanted to share my enthusiasm for his preaching with everyone I could. I think he is, flat out, one of the best preacher-teachers at work today. Why?

Because he just talks to us. He never devolves into that preacher’s tone that is almost unavoidable in the pulpit. He is plainspoken and straightforward. I love the way he just launches into the text—no long or clever introductions from Tim Keller. He pays his congregation the compliment of assuming that they are interested and want to hear the truth. He knows that the truth is interesting. It doesn’t need adornment so much as it needs, simply, explaining.

Because he is relevant. God did the Christian world a great good when he called Tim Keller to New York City. The City keeps him on his toes, and on his toes Keller stands pretty tall. He reads and interacts with cultural elites and thought leaders. He never shows off his learning, but it’s clear that he anticipates and understands the most serious objections and questions that modern people have to the ideas of the Christian faith. Keller has been amazingly effective at engaging Christianity’s cultured despisers. A Keller sermon is relevant to believers and unbelievers alike.

Because he is planted. Keller came to New York City, somewhat reluctantly at first, in 1989. He is in some ways an unlikely church-planter for NYC—he is Midwestern to the core. But he had been deeply impacted by the missiology of Harvie Conn, who taught him to see the incredible potential of a city. And so the Kellers settled into New York and learned to make it their home. Their church has become a great center for good for the city, both in its own ministries and in the many satellite ministries and organizations that have been spawned by Hope for New York. When he is asked to speak about how Christians can be a blessing to their city, Keller has a lot to share.

Because he believes in the power of truth. All you have to do with the truth is to tell it. Keller knows how to do that. Ideas are powerful things, and Keller has the capacity to unpack an idea in a way that makes it shine. You know you’ve been in the presence of someone who paints the beauty of truth when you find yourself repeating and rehearsing that truth to yourself after he has stopped talking. A Keller sermon stays with me for a good while after I listen to it. One of my favorite rhythms is to listen to a forty minute sermon on my iPod at the beginning of my bike ride and then spend the rest of the ride ruminating on what I’ve heard. Good stuff.

Because he is balanced. Keller manages to hold together in a creative tension several things that are so easily torn asunder: word and deed, soul and body, justice and mercy, to name a few. His church is justly renowned for combining a radically evangelical message with a full commitment to social justice—a combination not often or easily maintained. And in the process, he has transcended some of the typical categories that Christians have gotten mired in. Without denigrating politics, he has refused to allow his teaching about justice to devolve into an argument about how one should vote. The Gospel, and only the Gospel, is the center; all else is held in balance on the periphery.

And because he always gets down to the Gospel. Keller is a miner of the deep veins of the Gospel strata. No matter what the text, what the subject, he can always find his way down deep into the Gospel. His summary of that Gospel is so famous that I hear many quoting him who probably don’t know the source: “In the gospel we discover that we are far more wicked than we ever dared believe, yet more loved than we ever dared hope.” 

I need to hear that, over and over, and I’ll be sure to be at DPAC on May 4 at 7:30 to hear it from the man himself.

Chip Denton
Headmaster, Trinity School of Durham Chapel Hill 

Durham Cares is spot on for Durham. An organization whose mission is promoting “a heart to help those in need” not only propels us forward toward a more hopeful future for our city; it also takes us back to the city’s beginnings and the amazing story of Durham. In a way, Durham Cares beckons us to “Become What We Are”-a city of philanthropists.

My name is Chip Denton and I’ve lived in Durham for eight years now. I travelled a great distance to get here, all the way across the Great Blue Divide, from Chapel Hill, but I attended Duke back in the 80s so this felt like coming home.

Over the last fourteen years, I’ve been involved with the founding of a new independent Christian school called Trinity, down at the end of Pickett Road, just at the boundary line between Durham and Orange Counties. We love being in Durham, and we are hopeful about Durham’s future. This past summer I thought that hopefulness might be better informed if I learned a bit more about Durham’s past, and so I read Duke History Prof Robert Durden’s The Dukes of Durham: 1865-1929.

The story of the Dukes and Durham is a story of philanthropy, generosity, habits of giving and serving, and small beginnings which grow into big stories. If we trace the amazing story of the Duke Endowment backwards, we find that James B. Duke’s phenomenal gift was inspired, at least in part, by his brother Ben’s steady and faithful giving to Trinity College, which started with a $1000 gift to a nearly bankrupt institution in 1887; both brothers learned the habit of giving from their father, Washington Duke, whose “tithe accounts” trace his giving back to the days before the family moved to Durham; and those habits of generosity were taught and instilled by the Methodist Church, to which the Dukes belonged. I’d say the Dukes are Exhibit A for Methodism’s founder, John Wesley’s famous dictum: “Gain all you can; Save all you can; Give all you can.” And this in the days before income taxes and the charitable deduction.

Durham Cares is spot on for Durham because it brings us back to these philanthropic roots and impulses. It challenges us to expand our generosity, invest in projects which benefit the common good, invest in small ways that may grow far beyond what we could imagine. And, perhaps most importantly, the mainspring of this giving is the Gospel truth which the Dukes learned in their Methodist pews: The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it; and it is better to give than to receive.

So here’s to a new wave of philanthropy, inspired by an old motive, all for a city with a great past and a promising future.