what would Keller do
We’ve all had situations where someone let’s us down and doesn’t come through with fulfilling a responsibility. This is all the more exacerbated in a church context when a pastor/ leader / coach is overseeing volunteers, and has to breach the subject of a difficult conversation. Grace in the City noted this brilliant disarming remark:
That night, Steve came back from a meeting where a church leader asked Tim Keller, the pastor of Redeemer, how to deal with team members who were not complying with whatever program requirements.
“I’ll tell you the first thing you do,” he said. “The first thing you do is forgive them.”
That’s not what I was expecting him to say. But it’s right on.
And then what? I’d love to know what the rest of the steps are!
On a separate but related note, I heard 3rd hand about Tim Keller‘s reading habits, allegedly revealed during a Q&A session at Gordon-Conwell’s 2006 National Preaching Conference. He reads magazines regularly, and book summaries and reviews like those found in Books & Culture. This quelled the rumors of the notion that he’s a voracious reader of many books; he certainly does a splendid job at understanding the mainstream cultural narrative and deconstructs it with Gospel-centered preaching.
Yeah, but I recently listened to a plenary session he did for an arts conference and he worked through The Rise of the Creative Class like a pro. That’s not exactly light reading and not exactly easy to synthesize for a 40 minute talk. I was impressed. He broke it down, made it make sense for Christian artists and what it means for the future of urban centers, etc.
I have a feeling Keller is one of those folks that takes in a ton of information, but doesn’t really realize how much information he takes in. Kind of like you DJ!
I’ve found myself asking, “What would Keller do?” when preparing for sermon. In every passage, he will eventually get you to the Gospel. That’s the easy part. The hard part is answering, “How the gospel would change me…”