Dr Tim Keller is founder and pastor of New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
He's also the New York Times bestselling author of the Reason for God. Since its
beginnings in 1989 Redeemer has helped start over 100 smaller churches in the
New York metropolitan area and in a 2006 survey of 2000 American church leaders
was named the 16th most influential church in America.
Word ministry and deed ministry go hand in hand
in fact I think that if anyone if one side outpaces the
other it it all falls apart. If you if you are if your church strictly does
evangelism and just does not care about the needs of your city people are going
to look at that outside people are going to look at that and say all they care
about is is increasing their tribe they'll see evangelism just as
recruitment and it and a an effort to accrue power on the other hand if you
only do deed ministry which is also in a sense easier without word ministry
because nobody's going to object to you helping the poor but when you try to
bring them together they actually interact with each other they stimulate
each other it's harder to keep the two together I think for the reasons we said
the world doesn't like evangelism on the other hand I do think there's a lot of
Christians that find eed ministry expensive distracting from word ministry
integrating the two are is very necessary it's not that easy to do weird
indeed ministry integrate best at the at the the one-on-one level if you are
reaching out to a neighbor and you're trying to talk to them about Christ
maybe bringing them to church and yet they've got any kind of personal needs
they've got a one family member finds himself in jail they they are
they're struggling financially just to be involved with those those folks as a
Christian friend means you're going to be bringing word and deed ministry
together so at the effort at the at the individual level and at the relational
level you can see why the two things just go together you can't
love your friend without talking about Jesus and you can't love your friend
without babysitting for her so she can go visit her son you know in jail and so
on it's only when we get up to the big massive level of institutional of
institutions trying to do massive projects I think it gets harder to keep
the two together but you'll see that God clearly wants them together at the at
that that one-on-one level I would love to put up on a board if I was talking to
some people and I was trying to help them in word ministry I put up on a
board a set of what I would call lay ministry behaviors which is a little bit
of a little abstract but a lay ministry it lay ministry means word ministry done
by laypeople not pastors not professional Christian workers and I
would I would start at a very very simple level I'd say the very first lay
ministry behavior as you let other people know you go to church just let
them know you go to church say something to your colleagues say something to your
neighbor let just let do you do that see if you don't do that and that you can't
do anything else and that's a pretty simple thing but it's actually pretty
important because sometimes you say I'm going to church to four people and one
of them later on asks you about it the then the next would be a behavior
like you simply let people know that you're a Christian and it means
something to you maybe a passing thing saying well let's just say you're a
woman you've been angry at your husband you're sharing with another woman who's
been angry at her husband and you say my Christian faith has really helped me
here just passing that's it let it go if she picks it up and says really how good
if she doesn't find but see first of all there are a lot of behaviors like
letting people know you're Christian letting people know that Christianity
means something to you letting people know you go to church that you should be
doing and they will lead in a very organic way to more extensive more
in-depth kinds of discussions but you should be doing the simplest behaviors
first loving people caring for people being a person of integrity letting
people know your Christian faith is there saying these kinds of things and
then it'll just bubble up naturally I think most of us feel like
I'm going to do word ministry and I'm a layperson
I need to find a way to get the whole gospel out in one conversation or get
into a debate about creation and evolution or something like that that's
not the way to go be simple cities are more diverse so there's more different
kind of people groups here I did read I think I read some article a year ago
saying that there's 192 different nations in the country and that the
London police have arrested 172 different national no you have criminals
172 nations out of 192 here right here in in London the big cities are so
diverse which means there is no one way to share the gospel you have to learn
how to share the gospel differently with different people it's the same gospel
there's still the same kernel of the gospel which is God and and sin and
Christ and your need to repent and believe but in in more homogeneous areas
one or two gospel presentations is enough you can standardize it everybody
memorizes a gospel presentation out you go and you're sharing your faith you
can't do that in cities you have to you have to honor the diversity of cities
which means frankly that you have to be more culturally sensitive and you also
have to spend more time talking with people to understand their culture and
that's what makes cities different so it's not just like you contextualise the
gospel to the city versus the countryside it's more like you have to
contextualize the gospel in the cities to so many different kinds of people and
therefore that's your challenge with urban ministry
well contextualization I think largely means different order I if you want to
think of the gospel as maybe 20 maybe let's just there's 20 essential truths
of the gospel but in what order do you roll them out and if you look at Paul
sharing the gospel with Greeks and Jews in Acts you'll see with with the Greeks
he goes to the resurrection first you'll see what the Jews egos the scripture
first there's clearly a different order now
that certainly I'm certain that Paul we know that eventually Paul has to lift up
a doctrine of Scripture he has to lift up the cross as well as the resurrection
but it's very obvious that with different cultures he he unpacks and
rolls out the gospel in different order because he thinks certain parts of the
gospel either will resonate or they will for example with the Greeks he works
more on the doctrine of God and doesn't get to Christ for a long time with the
Jews he he doesn't deal with that at all doesn't feel like he needs to he needs
to get to Jesus quicker so he the contextualization is not just a
different introduction the order of the points of the gospel in fact of the the
emphasis can be different nevertheless you have to eventually get the whole
counsel of God to a person but but in a different order I think the order in the
emphasis is probably key to what I think contextualization is I think that I've
found for my entire life I found that churches in cities of
different denominations and different traditions if they're in cities they are
more willing to work together than the same kinds of different churches in a
say a smaller town you go outside into smaller towns while these churches I
have almost nothing to do with each other this some time the city is so
overwhelming the needs are so great that it pushes I think churches together and
sometimes I've actually been told here's a here's a Presbyterian Church and I say
here's a charismatic church and they're part of let's say a denomination very
often I found that the Presbyterian Church in the charismatic church in the
city because its urban are really a little bit more like each other than
they are like their own other churches and their own denominations the city
sometimes makes you more racially diverse for example the city can do a
lot of it can really influence you and then the mission needs are so great that
I actually think cities are great places for churches to work together across
denominations and across traditions it just seems
we have to because the des needs are so big confidence in the gospel comes
through two kinds of personal experience I think in my own life there are there
there areas of fear there areas of a shame that crippled me until I came to
understand how faith in the gospel and what Jesus Christ has done applied by
faith applied in prayer was was the solution I have I had breakthroughs
because I realized my salvation by grace means I don't have to do this I don't
have to do this I don't have to be cowed by this I don't have to be bound by this
breakthrough I'm being very general because I want everybody to experience
this for themselves and I don't want to give you my testimony even though some
of you would probably like it it in order that I don't want anybody to say
well that's not me because I don't care who you are the gospel has to you have
to see breakthroughs through belief in the gospel in your own life for you to
get confidence the second thing you need to do is you need to see it through your
own ministry you need to see a couple people who just you know that they would
never have made it the marriage wouldn't have made it they never would have
gotten out of a life of incarceration they never would have overcome this or
that except for the gospel you need to see some people as well as need to see
yourself experiencing breakthroughs through the gospel then then you know
there's nothing more important than preaching it and ministering it but you
have to have some personal acquaintances yourself with the power of the gospel
Oh