When Timothy Keller visited Rome in 2014, he addressed city pastors, gave an apologetic talk on the Italian Senate, and answered questions from students at Sapienza University of Rome, the most important university in Europe.
As a pastor who had planted a church next to Sapienza, I used to be struck by seeing Keller minister in my very own context. On that campus, my wife and I had distributed flyers, held picnics, engaged students, and helped a few of them pray for the primary time. Two years before, a crowd of scholars gathered within the university’s central lawn for a debate on the existence of God, during which I attempted my best to interact with an atheist professor and commend the Christian faith.
As Keller held an in depth Q and A session, responding to the hardest questions posed by the scholars, I admired the thoughtfulness of his answers. Then I used to be struck by his servant posture. Keller had rolled up his sleeves, served alongside local staff, and happily accepted questions from young, secular Italians.
That moment encapsulated the capacious, humble spirit that had gained the respect of many European Christian leaders. In Keller, they found theological robustness in an age of pragmatism and technique, a reconciling spirit in an age of division, and a rediscovery of the gospel in a time when preachers are tempted to cut back it to inspiring stories and practical advice.
“He was the premier North American evangelical statesman of his generation,” said Lindsay Brown, the previous secretary-general of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Keller’s death dropped at his mind words spoken at John Stott’s funeral: In 2011, the theologian Chris Wright paid tribute to Stott by describing Stott “as the best within the West and the humblest.”
“I’d say the identical about Tim Keller,” Brown said. “He exemplified the spirit of partnership. He was a person of conviction when it comes to biblical truth, nevertheless it was graciously and compassionately applied.”
Attentive Europeans could see the layers of European Christianity that had shaped Keller, from the Reformers and Puritans to the poignant preaching of George Whitefield, the evangelical spirituality of John Newton, the Dutch theology of Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper, and mid-Twentieth century Oxford writers akin to C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
When Keller felt daunted by the challenge of planting a church in New York within the Nineteen Eighties, he drew inspiration from the previous generation of London pastors who demonstrated that center-city churches consumed expository preaching could reach urban professionals.
John Stott’s All Souls, Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Westminster Chapel, and Dick Lucas’ St. Helen’s Bishopsgate inspired Keller very like how Redeemer Presbyterian Church would help Europeans feel hope that their very own cities could possibly be reached by the gospel one generation later.
For Pangiotis Kantartzis, pastor of First Greek Evangelical Church in Athens, Greece, missional church planting was a latest concept. “I had never seen in my life and ministry a latest church grow out of intention and never out of division or out of convenience,” he said. He confessed to becoming anxious in regards to the idea of growing a gospel movement that planted multiple churches, created an ecosystem that trained leaders, and served the needs of the Greek capital and the influx of immigrants.
Since then, First Greek Evangelical has helped birth churches for Greek professionals, Iranian immigrants, and the youth activists that populate Exarcheia, Athens’s anarchist-leaning neighborhood.
“Seeing what God was doing in New York and the evaluation of it through the assorted papers Keller wrote played a decisive role in inspiring and shaping me in how I develop a vision for a gospel movement in town,” said Kantartzis.
For Tiago Cavaco, a Baptist pastor and punk-rock singer in Lisbon, Keller’s vision and writings helped develop his approach toward cultural engagement. At that time, Cavaco was already hosting events and dialogues with non-Christian thinkers. “When I began following Keller, I noticed he had a way more mature and experienced approach that, although happening in New York, could apply to us in Portugal.”
Cavaco emphasized Keller’s listening posture as the important thing to engaging Europeans. “Keller was a rare example of a [successful] American preacher available to our common Christian European experiences of frustration, [who] was completely receptive to what being a Christian meant in a special place than his,” he said. “Zero patronizing, full attention.”
Keller encouraged fellow Americans to adopt the identical posture and learn from the worldwide church, even secularizing Europe and its numerically smaller Church. In Movements of the Gospel, a 2018 volume of essays by European church planters, he stated, “We must watch the European church and learn from its successes and failures because our own cultures are shaped by the identical secularism and materialism increasingly.”
“Keller believed that we Europeans are ‘on the frontline’ of a latest, way more secular and multireligious era. That isn’t only a practical perspective but additionally a really encouraging one,” said Tim Vreugdenhil, an Amsterdam pastor who pioneered a technique of interactive evangelism to achieve town’s secular professionals.
“He helped me to consider that our generation of theologians and church planters should not ‘the last men and girls standing’ however the pioneers of a special type of Christianity: much smaller in size and numbers but, God willing, more influential in gospel preaching.”
Keller’s experience and humility drew European leaders to learn from him at conferences organized by City to City, the organization Keller founded to equip the following generation of churches on the planet’s global cities. He seemed equally at home in a Paris cathedral or Krakow movie show.
Several other European leaders also remembered Keller’s visits to the continent.
In a tribute to the person he known as “a world point of reference for the evangelical archipelago,” Leonardo de Chirico, pastor of Breccia di Roma church, reminded readers of Keller’s Italian heritage.
“When he got here to Rome, among the many noises of town and the flavors he tasted, he confided that he felt an odd sensation: that of the rekindling of sounds and the reactivation of sensations that he had experienced as a toddler when he participated within the noisy and engaging ‘ritual’ of a Sunday lunch [with his] immigrant family,” de Chirico wrote.
Others felt like he helped them appreciate their very own contexts more fully.
“Tim Keller taught me to like Dublin,” said Seán Mullan, a church planter in Dublin. “He knew the gospel lands otherwise in several cultures and revered that.”
For Xavier Memba, who helped plant Ciutat Nova church, Keller helped him take a look at his ministry in Barcelona in a special light.
“Training with Tim Keller offered me a latest perspective on the church in the trendy world, highlighting the way it must adapt to its cultural and concrete context without forgetting the gospel message,” he said.
Northern Europe leaders agreed.
“Many of us here in Norway are deeply grateful for the wealthy legacy of Tim Keller – a legacy that each engages and challenges us,” added Lars Dahle, an associate professor at NLA University College Kristiansand. “He was gospel-centered as a preacher, unifying as a frontrunner, and strategic as a missionary.”
Keller’s passing on May 19 has been a deeply felt loss for a lot of in Europe. His commanding role as an urban missiologist, evangelical theologian, and reference point for global church leaders is hardly replaceable. But the network of leaders shaped by Keller has learned that it takes many churches to achieve a city and plenty of voices to refract Jesus’s ever-fascinating gospel.
“Our teams running evangelistic actions and discipleship projects in over 100 cities have benefitted from Keller’s material,” said Luke Greenwood, the Europe director of Steiger, a missions organization that reaches European youth in creative ways. “Tim’s heart for the lost and [his] willingness to personally engage within the difficult conversations has been a source of solid teaching and theological framework for what we do.”
In recent years, Keller has sought to be sure that the work continued after his death, said Tim Coomar, a church planter in Athens and leader inside City to City Europe.
“As we mourn the lack of Tim and wonder how we’ll proceed moving forward, I believe Tim prepared for his departure by ensuring that although nobody person could do what he did, all of us together could develop further and deeper what he began.”
René Breuel is the founding pastor of Hopera Church in Rome and the writer of The Paradox of Happiness.
