CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

'I believe the single most important way for pastors or church leaders to turn passive laypeople into courageous and gracious lay ministers is through their own evident godliness. A pastor should be marked by humility, love, joy, and wisdom that is visible and attracts people to trust and learn from them. As a pastor, you may not be the best preacher, but if you are filled with God's love, joy, and wisdom, you won't be boring! You may not be the most skillful organizer or charismatic leader, but if your holiness is evident, people will follow you. This means, at the very least, that a dynamic, disciplined, and rich prayer life is not only important in the abstract and personal sense; it my be the most practical thing you can do for your ministry.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.288.

EVANGELISM

'...we will have an impact for the gospel if we are like those around us yet profoundly different and unlike them at the same time, all the while remaining very visible and engaged.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.282.

EVANGELISM

'To be missional today requires that lay Christians be equipped by their churches to do three things: (1) to be a verbal witness to the gospel in their webs of relationships, (2) to love their neighbors and do justice within their neighborhoods and city, and (3) to integrate their faith with their work in order to engage culture through their vocations.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.272.

DISCIPLESHIP

'In Christendom, you could afford to train people solely in prayer, Bible study, and evangelism - skills for their private lives - because they were not facing radically non-Christian values in their public lives. In a missional church, all people need theological education to "think Christianly" about everything and to act with Christian distinctiveness. They need to know which cultural practices reflect common grace and should be embraced, which are antithetical to the gospel and must be rejected and which practices can be adapted or revised.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.260.

CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE

'...the church is too deeply shaped by the sprit of the age, in both its conservative and liberal forms. In its liberal form, it has bought uncritically into a secular account of things, de-supernaturalizing the gospel so that the Spirit's work is seen mainly in secular movements of liberation, thus turning the liberal mainline churches into little more than social service centers where the language of secular rights activists reigns. In its conservative form, it has bought uncritically into the idea of religion as fufillment of individual consumer needs, thus turning the conservative church into something like felt-need shopping centers where the language of modern therapy and marketing reigns. People see Christ as a way to self-fulfillment and prosperity, not as a model for radical service to others. Both wings of the Christian church are, then, captive to the reigning idols of Western culture. They are failing to challenge these idols in their preaching and practice.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.255.

CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE

'This biblical understanding of our falleness - cursed yet still sustained by non-salvific grace - is crucial for relating Christ to culture. The world is inherently good and sustained by common grace - yet it is cursed. Christians are redeemed and saved - yet they are still filled with remaining sin. The battle line between God and idols not only runs through the world; it runs through the heart of every believer. So the work and cultural productions of Christians and non-Christians will have both idolatrous and God-honoring elements in them. Cultural products should not be judged as "good if Christians made them" and "bad if non-Christians made them." Each should be evaluated on its own merits as to whether it serves God or an idol.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.227.

SOCIAL ACTION

'If the church does not identify with the marignalized, it will itself be marginalized. This is God's poetic justice.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.224.

HOMOSEXUALITY

'I have had homosexual friends, both men and women, tell me that one of the the factors that made homosexual love attractive to them was how much easier it was than dealing with someone of a different sex. I have no doubt this is true. A person of one's sex is not as likely to have as much Otherness to embrace. But God's plan for married couples involves embracing the otherness to make us unified, and that can only happen between a man and a woman. Even at the atomic level, all the universe is held together by the attraction of positive and negative forces. The embrace of the Other, as it turns out, really is what makes the world go around.'

Kathy Keller in Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, p.182.

PREACHING

'...be very careful to think about your audience's premises. Don't assume, for example, that everyone listening trusts the Bible. So when you make a point from the Bible, it will help to show that some other trusted authority (such as empirical science) agrees with the Bible. Use it to promote trust in the Bible, saying something like, "See, the Bible was telling us centuries ago what science now confirms." That will help convince your hearers of that point so you can move on. By the end of the sermon, of course, you will be appealing only to God's Word, but in the early stages of the sermon you invite non-believers along by showing respect for their doubts about the Bible's reliability.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.177.

GRACE

'...we will...meet a lot of people who hold to other religions or to no religion who are wiser, kinder and more thoughtful than we are, because even after growth in grace, many Christians are weaker people than many non-Christians. When this surprises you, reflect on it. If the gospel of grace is true, why would we think that Christians are a better kind of person than non-Christians? These living examples of common grace may begin to show us that even though we intellectually understand the doctrine of justification by faith alone, functionally we continue to assume that salvation is by moral goodness and works.'

Timothy Keller, Center Church, p.168.