Photo from timothykeller.com.
From Gospel Coalition editor in chief Collin Hansen’s perspective, Tim Keller is handing the next generation of apologists a half-finished painting.
What Keller has started through his own work as a pastor, theologian, and apologist is a portrait of how to share “an unchanging gospel with a changing world,” Hansen said. “In some sense, he’s handing us the brush and saying it’s for you guys to paint the rest. We’ve got an outline. We’ve got a sketch. We’ve filled in some of it, but it’s going to take all of us to fill in the rest.”
Hansen hopes The Gospel Coalition’s new Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics will be a place that continues the never-ending work. TGC launched the center earlier this month with a three-pronged goal: close the back door, open the front door, and send out the equipped.
Closing the back door addresses the large number of Christians who walk away from the church as they wrestle with issues of faith in the context of modern issues.
Opening the front door refers finding ways to communicate the truth and beauty of the gospel as the answer to man’s deepest longings — and to do so in a secular society that has little knowledge of God.
“In light of this secular turn from Christendom, you have an apologetic challenge that we’ve never seen before,” Hansen said. The mission to send out the equipped is to train Christians to defend their faith and reach the lost in a world that is at times hostile to them.
Hansen will be taking the lead on this venture as executive director of the Keller Center. He’s been personally influenced by Keller since around 2007 and says he’s learned first-hand from him how Christians can think through contemporary challenges.
Hansen has embraced that theme for much of his career, through the podcasts and books he’s been involved in, as well as at TGC which was co-founded by Keller. Most recently he completed a biography: “Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation.”
As Keller battles pancreatic cancer and the uncertainty that comes with it, this center will serve to continue the work he’s been involved in.
There is a need for people who are grounded in the truth of the gospel, who can understand the culture, and then communicate the gospel to it, revealing how it answers their deepest longings.
“What I saw with the book was an opportunity to keep the conversation going, not knowing if Tim would be here for days or weeks or years or a decade,” Hansen said. “I knew his desire has been to see the next generation of leaders identified, trained, supported, deployed.”
The book is one of the first offerings available at the center, but a variety of podcasts, articles, and other resources will follow — all targeted to a new generation — whether they be on Tiktok or YouTube.
With fellows from across the U.S. and other countries contributing, The Keller Center will provide a variety of perspectives and insights.
Because of Keller’s health, Hansen said there is a lot of uncertainty about the extent of his involvement in the center. It is set up to run without him, Hansen said, but for now we’re enjoying what contributions and input he can offer. “He’s been the visionary and the inspiration and the model, but he’s not responsible for our day-to-day operations.”
One role Keller did play in the early stages was to help identify potential fellows. The mix includes well-known names as well as some who are less familiar but are equally involved in the work. Hansen’s pleased that all 26 people TGC reached out to were willing to apply and that all have come onboard. “It just really feels like the Lord’s doing something that we couldn’t have done,” he said.
At 36, Derek Rishmawy, a Reformed University Fellowship minister who has written for numerous publications about faith and culture, is one of the youngest fellows. “The thing I’m excited about is learning from a lot of the other fellows to think better about how to reach students and reach our neighbors with the gospel in ways that are true and compelling.”
While he’s one of the least experienced of the group, Rishmawy brings the perspective of someone who works with students every day. What’s more, he has the opportunity of being a minister on the campus that he attended himself. He first arrived at the University of California Irvine in 2004 as an 18-year-old freshman eager to study philosophy.
It was, without question, a secular campus, but there was still a lingering knowledge of Christianity and the values associated with it. Today, 18 years later, he finds himself in a different environment. “Now I regularly run into students with almost no church contact at all, or very glancing,” he said. Students have next to no knowledge of God, the Bible, or even a moral law. “You have to start further back in the story. You’ve got to define terms. You can’t assume that they know who Adam and Eve are, or what kind of God you’re talking about.”
He hopes the Keller Center can help others who want to reach the lost but struggle to communicate effectively. “I hope that we are learning how to make some of the more beautiful points of our faith transparent, so that others can see the beauty and goodness and joy of the gospel in ways that have been obscured due to a linguistic, cultural, or experiential gap.”
Vanessa Hawkins is another fellow who will be contributing to the center. As director of community life at Redeemer Lincoln Square in New York City, she hopes to see the center used as a resource to strengthen the church. “There’s just a great need for spiritual formation work in our churches if we’re going to close that proverbial back door,” she said.
She has witnessed the trend of people leaving evangelical churches first-hand. “In particular in the last couple of years, I have seen more people wrestle with their own faith and what it actually means in relation to some of the broader issues happening in this culture.”
These people struggle with how the church does or doesn’t respond to issues and their own expectations. “That’s ultimately a faith crisis,” she said. “I have not seen so much of this as I have the last couple of years.”
She wants to meet that crisis with Scripture. While she has a natural affinity for the work of spiritual formation, she said, she has pursued a deeper understanding of apologetics in recent years. “My work and research have been in learning how to communicate well across cultural differences, particularly in hostile climates.”
As she works with TGC, she hopes to continue this growth personally and then use it to help others. “I think the church often struggles with speaking the language of the culture and particularly the language of highly secular people,” she said. So, there is a need for people who are grounded in the truth of the gospel, who can understand the culture, and then communicate the gospel to it, revealing how it answers their deepest longings.
She prays The Keller Center will yield good fruit. “My hope is that this cohort of teachers and writers and thinkers will continue to produce quality content that strengthens the church – that galvanizes our efforts and the church’s efforts to communicate to a secular age.
To be able to show Jesus as the one who is beautiful, who fully satisfies our deepest longings … I think that would be a powerful outcome.”
She knows it’s a challenge. “Without the spirit of the Lord, it is impossible work,” she said.
The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics is online at thegospelcoalition.org/thekellercenter/.