By Collin Hansen, TGC. (image credit: Gospel in Life – screenshot YouTube)
6 Recommendations Drawn from Tim Keller’s Ministry
In his lifetime, pastor Tim Keller was most often compared not to any pastor but instead to an academic and novelist, C. S. Lewis. It’s easy to see why––apart from Scripture, no one’s words showed up more in his talks and writings than Lewis’s. Both men had a knack for connecting with people’s hearts and minds. But unlike Lewis, who poured his apologetic genius into beloved novels like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, Keller stuck to nonfiction, sharing his insights through sermons and books.
If we’re looking for a closer match to Keller’s style, two earlier pastors come to mind: Augustine and Jonathan Edwards, both of whom deeply shaped Keller’s thinking.
Take Augustine’s idea of “disordered loves,” which Keller leaned into heavily in his book Counterfeit Gods. The idea is simple yet profound: When we love anything or anyone more than we love God, it throws our hearts out of balance. Only by putting God first can we love others and the world around us in a healthy way. Keller often pointed out that when we let something other than God define us, we end up hurting the people or things we cherish most. He had a saying that went something like this: “Show me what you daydream about, and I’ll show you what you think you can’t live without.” It’s a gentle but powerful way to get us thinking about our priorities.
Keller also drew inspiration from Edwards, a pastor who blended deep theology, heartfelt spiritual revival, and thoughtful engagement with culture. For Keller, the best, most biblical ministry weaves together these priorities. Without confessional theology, our apologetics has no stable grounding. Without spiritual revival, confessional theology becomes dead orthodoxy. And without cultural apologetics, our spiritual revival becomes easily co-opted by the predominant narratives of our time, such as (especially in our day) the primacy of the self.