Tim Keller is one of the hottest names in evangelicalism right now. He is the founder and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and a prolific apologist for the Christian faith. Over at the Atlantic, Eleanor Barkhorn interviews Keller about his ministry and his new book The King’s Cross. Here is a taste:
In 1989, Timothy Keller moved from rural Virginia to New York City with his wife and sons to start Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The church started small but in the past two decades has grown to 5,000 weekly attenders, attracting attention from the New York Times for its ministry to New Yorkers after the September 11th attacks and New York magazine, which called Keller the “most successful Christian Evangelist in the city” in 2006. Keller’s influence began to extend beyond New York in 2008 when he published The Reason for God, a rational defense of belief in God that became a New York Times bestseller. Keller spoke with The Atlantic about how his success as a writer has affected his church and the process he went through to write his latest book, The King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, which comes out this week.
It’s interesting to hear you say that writing books is part of your calling as a Christian minister, since in the past you’ve said you think you’re a better preacher than a writer.
Well, I struggle to be a writer. If you ask me to go someplace and speak after all these years, yes, I can pull that together, I can do that. Writing is much more difficult for me. … I am a better speaker than a writer, but basically I felt like over the years there are certain messages I wanted to get out there, and I felt that the written word is one way to get them out that can’t be gotten out any other way.
I was reading some article—I can’t remember who it was, it was a book reviewer for the Washington Post, I thought. Basically, it said a book is a textually created world. … When you give yourself to a book, you essentially let the author take you into a world for a while. Even if it’s a non-fiction book, the author is basically saying, “This is how I see what’s going on in the world.” … It has an effect on you that simply listening to a 30-minute talk or an address, no matter how compelling, I don’t think does.
I found in the last three years that people are affected by the books in ways I don’t think oral communication can do. So I made that effort, and it’s not easy.
What’s your writing process like?
It works best if I have spoken on it because I can hear myself saying it, and then I write it. The other thing that you might find interesting—though I don’t know if I can keep it up—is what I’ll do is when I’ve written a chapter or two or three, I’ll read them to my wife, out loud. And as I do that, we’ll both say, “Well, do you want to put it that way or that way?” I understand what I’m trying to say better if I actually read it aloud to her, and she would actually rather I do that even though it’s a bit tedious, you know, to have someone read aloud to you for an hour. She would rather do that than actually look at it on the page.
I think partly it’s because when you’re reading something I think you do say it in your head. And so I want to hear what it’s going to sound like in the people’s heads. And the best way to do that is to read it out loud. So, I usually have to speak it, then I write it, then I speak it to my wife and make corrections that way.
You’ve been a minister for a while, and you’ve led Redeemer for more than two decades. What made you decide to start writing books for a wide audience now, rather than earlier in your career?
I’m 60. I’ve been here for 20 years. I’ve had almost 40 years of ministry. I waited deliberately to write for a few reasons: One is I wanted to get pretty much mature in my thinking. In other words, I’ve pretty much come mostly to my conclusions. If I were a man in my 30s or even my 40s writing, then I would be afraid that I’d evolve on past what I’d written down.
Also, I’ve got a lot more material because I’ve been working this stuff through. I’ve probably preached the whole book of Mark five times in my life. And so I feel like I’ve got, you know, more stuff. I waited for that reason: I felt like it would be better stuff if I waited...
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