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Pastor Tim Keller didn't feel fear until months after the terrorist attacks on September 11. Staff members at his church, Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, say Keller seemed impervious.

Hearing that three church members had died in the World Trade Center disaster, Keller dispatched a prayer team. Over the next few weeks, as urgent phone calls for counseling outstripped the church's resources, Keller raised money for more counselors. And when the seemingly worst news came—he was diagnosed with cancer—he simply weighed medical treatments.

"I was stoic. I couldn't communicate to myself how dangerous my situation was and how scared I had become," Keller told Christianity Today.

Numbness overcame many New York religious leaders at the time. Marcos Rivera, pastor of Primitive Christian Church, recalls that he put aside his initial emotions after the towers collapsed. "At first I locked myself up in the church to pace up and down. I was weeping and crying. Then I clicked into autopilot. I started giving orders: 'Food, chairs, tables for the refugees!' I was very succinct, sharp. This didn't stop with the day of 9/11."

But 14 months later, church leaders are settling into a difficult new reality. The familiar sound of bagpipes preparing for a funeral is gone. The smell of decay coming from the World Trade Center rubble is only a memory.

New York's church leaders have worked overtime to understand 9/11. Redeemer's Keller encountered two kinds of courage. "There is short-term defiance. 'I won't let anyone scare me!' " Keller says, adding that a more valuable type of courage is based on hope. "With God there is hope. Your own fate ceases to be the reason for your courage."

Meanwhile, the Keller family has faced many personal trials. Keller's wife, Kathy, found out in March that she had Crohn's disease, a debilitating inflammation of the bowels. Twelve weeks later on June 11, Keller was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Kathy Keller says, "We cry at everything, laugh at everything. 'Lord,' we say, 'not one more thing!' "

"We had no choice," Tim Keller recalls. "We had to put down deeper roots in Christ or perish." One continuing difficulty has been managing rapid change. Redeemer had a huge wave of new visitors after 9/11, and has kept about 30 percent of its newcomers. Many Manhattan churches have had a growing demand for counseling, food, clothing, and housing services, but outside funds have dried up.

One survey of 500 elderly people in lower Manhattan found that two-thirds report being extremely fearful. "I still see the plane hitting the floor where my son was at," one family member told CT.

On a positive note, some congregations are performing more marriages than ever. Charles Drew, pastor of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, reports that he has "married a ton of people" in the past year.

Sherman Lee is a New York police officer who thought he was going to die in the collapse of the North Tower. His longtime girlfriend thought so, too. When he survived, the pair renewed their faith and deepened their relationship.

"I realized that you gotta do things," Lee says. "Time is short."

The troubled economy has hit New York harder than the rest of the nation. One-fourth of the elders at Redeemer are unemployed. Although dozens of major financial firms that were damaged have left lower Manhattan, churches are staying and are coming together in new ways.

Out of 9/11's Ground Zero Clergy Task Force, Primitive Christian's Rivera and other clergy have forged a new, multiethnic Metropolitan Clergy Network. The New York Concerts of Prayer and the Renaissance Corporation have drawn together African American and Anglo church leaders for prayer and faith-based community mission.

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November 18 2002, Vol. 46, No. 12