Leadership Journal

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, recently spoke to New York City church leaders about something that concerns them all: reaching the city for Christ. Leadership editor Marshall Shelley was there, and after you read this article, read Shelley's interview with Tim Keller and Bill Hybels "Leadership in the City." This article is a condensed version of Keller's remarks. The complete talk can be found at http://movementday.com/604162.ihtml

It takes a movement to reach a city. Reaching an entire city takes more than having some effective churches even having a burst of revival energy and new converts.

Today, in almost every city in the world, some churches are growing. Some may be growing rapidly, and it's right to feel that God is doing great things in those churches. People are coming to Christ.

But it's another thing to ask: Is God reaching that city? If a few churches are growing, for instance, but the overall number of Christians is flat, is that city being reached for God?

Church growth often happens through "church reconfiguration," people from less vital or hurting churches going to more vigorous congregations. Now this isn't bad, because often in those more vigorous churches, Christians are being more well deployed. Perhaps a strong Christian woman is going to a hurting church—she loves her church, but there are fights and difficulties—and she can't bring her non-Christian friends to that church because the atmosphere is so unhealthy. So finally, with a heavy heart, she leaves and goes to the growing church in town, where she brings a non-Christian friend who finds faith in Christ at that church. That's all good. And yet, is that reaching a city? No.

What it takes to reach a city is a city-wide gospel movement, which means the number of Christians across the city is growing faster than the population, and therefore, a growing percentage of the people of that city are connecting with gospel-centered churches and are finding faith in Jesus Christ. That will eventually have an impact on the whole life of the city. That's what I mean by a city-wide gospel movement.

A city-wide gospel movement is an organic thing. It's an energy unleashed across not only the city but across the different denominations, and therefore, there's no one church, no one organization, no one leader in charge of it all. It's bigger than that. It's the Holy Spirit moving across the whole city and as a result the overall body of Christ is growing faster than the population, and the city is being reached. And there's an impact for Christ made in the whole city.

There are three layers to this kind of influence. At the core of this kind of movement is the first layer: a contextualized biblical gospel theology. Where do I get this? From the Book of Acts, from reading the history of revivals, and from my own experience here in New York. By "a biblical gospel," I mean a God-ordained third way between legalistic moralism and licentious relativism. When Paul writes to the Romans and rolled out the gospel, he first clarifies, "Look at the Gentiles, the pagans, who are living according to their own desires. That's not the gospel." Then he says, "And look at those who are living according to the Law of Moses. They've missed the gospel too."

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