After Tim Keller presented the material in "To Transform a City", Leadership's Marshall Shelley asked Keller (pastor of Manhattan's Redeemer Church) and Bill Hybels (of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago) some follow-up questions.
How does your church understand "reaching the city"?
Keller: It's a combination of serving the city and converting the city. There is a tension here. We want to change people; we want to show them where they need to turn and trust Christ and turn from other things. That's a hard message for many people to take in. We also want to serve people whether they believe like we do or not. To reach the city involves both of those things. We're confronting and we're loving. Whether or not they listen to what we're saying, we serve and we call them to repent, to turn to Christ.
Hybels: At Willow Creek, we talk about redeeming and restoring. But it's the same basic idea Tim is describing.
Tim, if it starts with a contextualized biblical gospel, what's an example of contextualizing that you had to learn?
Keller: Well, here's one example: How much do I express my emotions when I preach? Some folks in the city have told me, "When I first heard you preach, I felt like you didn't believe what you were saying. You were too laid back, and in my culture that means you don't really believe it." On the other hand, if I expressed my emotions the way that resonates with those folk, I wouldn't be reaching the people I'm reaching. You have to be aware of those cultural differences.
Every preacher wants to present the whole gospel, but does your context affect the sequence?
Keller: Absolutely, because you can't say everything at once. You have to roll it out in a certain order, and the order has a lot to do with how effective it is with a particular person, particular temperament, particular culture.
For example …
Keller: I know of a Presbyterian missionary who, over here, doesn't talk about the sovereignty of God right away. With non-Christians here you usually don't lead with the fact that everything that happens happens according to God's will. They want to hear about God's love and grace.
But he found that in other parts of the world, with people in the lower strata—prostitutes, for example, in Asian cities—people with terrible self-esteem issues, he couldn't reach them if he told them, "God loves you, no matter who you are." They just couldn't believe it. They would say, "I'm sorry. If there is a God, he could not love me."
So the missionary would lead with the idea of God's sovereignty, because in that culture they didn't have a problem with authority figures having authority. And he'd say, "God opens people's hearts. And because he is sovereign, he has the right to do that. And therefore, if you sense yourself drawn to him, it's because he is working in you." And there, people responded to that.
Here in the U.S., if I led with that, people would resist, because we come from an incredibly democratic ethos in which people are suspicious of any kingly figure, even God. So I don't necessarily start there.
How you start and the order in which you unroll the truth, the whole counsel of God, is very significant.
Bill, the second layer Tim mentioned was forming a church network of multiple denominations within a city. What kind of leadership is required to develop that kind of coalition?
Hybels: Today we clearly heard that if we don't learn to pray together, across all the lines that usually divide people, then our ability to do something significant in the city is going to be compromised.
The only way networks of pastors actually work is when the key influencer pastors of an area initiate contact with leaders of churches that might be smaller-scaled and actually invite them, not into projects but into relationship. Into a conversation that says, "Look, I'm a pastor; you're a pastor. You're shepherding a group, and so am I, in the same city. Maybe we can help each other. Maybe together, God will show us some things."
That requires not top-down leadership, not bottom-up leadership, but "lateral leadership," relational leadership—influence without organizational control. You're not trying to get much done other than relationship, servanthood, humility, and a deeper understanding of what God is saying to those of us who lead churches in this city.
Keller: Bill's right. The generally more well-known pastors have to be the conveners, but then people are going to come, thinking, You're really, are you not, just trying to get customers for your church's programs and products?
In New York I think we broke that barrier a bit when Redeemer began to not only help people plant churches but sometimes gave ministry grants to people from other denominations. For about three years, everybody held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop: "Where's the string attached? What do you want from us?" Only when it was clear that we didn't want anything from them other than another vital church in New York, that was a breakthrough. And that kind of trust takes time.
Bill, you see a lot of different cities internationally. What have you seen in terms of pastors' networks? Is there a desire but not the mechanism? Or little desire, or …
Hybels: New York is so far ahead of almost any other city in the world. Perth, Australia, is the one other place where I've seen a tremendous gathering of church leaders. Only in checkered areas of the globe are pastors united.
In most large cities in the world—I say this to our own embarrassment—pastors not only don't know each other, they have little desire to know each other. And there aren't the kinds of convening rationales to change the situation.
At times it helps to have a third party convene the pastors.
Mac Pier did that in New York under the banner of "concerts of prayer" and The Leadership Center—coming together to pray and to help each other with leadership—that got leaders together. It wasn't coming together to push a theology; it wasn't about methods. It's about prayer; it's about relationship; it's about helping with leadership.
And I think that's what's going to change other gatherings of pastors around the world.
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