This Christmas break, I’m sitting down again with Tim Keller and his Counterfeit Gods. It is always refreshing to take in a story or message that’s well told. And that’s what Dr. Keller, lead pastor of Redeemer Pres in NYC does - tell great stories, share some great messages.

As Dr. Keller starts to put out a book a year (I’m eager to find out more about his next book which is apparently on suffering/evil), his unassuming style is being noticed by more and more people. You’ll notice that the buzz about #tk is constant in the Twitterverse. And yet some people can’t get enough of the messages he offers from the pulpit.

If you haven’t been tipped off yet, here’s some good news. Redeemer has released 150 doses of classic Tim Keller. You’ll notice that much of the content that Redeemer has chosen to give away completely free are great to share with friends — especially those that have questions about faith, the Church, and God.

The only issue anyone can have with this huge archive of free sermons from Dr. Tim Keller is that there’s no 1-click to download all 150 mp3 sermons at once.

But if you listen to just one sermon a day during your daily commute, workout, or daily devotion time, you’ll get to spend enough time with Dr. Keller over the next 5 months to the point where you will probably find yourself starting to tell some great stories…share some great messages. Doesn’t that sound like Good News to you?

It’s almost here. . .Tim Keller’s next book — Counterfeit Gods.

If you’re like me, you’ve already been to Amazon.com’s pre-order page for the book which gives the best deal ($13.46, 33% off now $11.66!) if you’re comparing prices including S&H.  Especially if you have Amazon Prime free shipping like I do.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djchuang/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

But waiting for October 20, just isn’t good enough for some.  Here’s something for you guys that are in this bucket — a free pdf download from the soon to be released book: (more…)

I’m excited to join the vidcast tomorrow of Tim Keller and the Leadership Summit people over at Willow Creek.

But in the meantime, take a look at this interview where Tim Keller talks about the 4 or 5 ways in which evangelism must be different today in order to be impactful.

One of Dr. Keller’s key points specifically applies to urban centers, such as Redeemer’s setting: NYC.  He talks about how critical it is for the Church to really provide the tools, resources, modeling and teaching to its people how to integrate their faith **in** their work.

IMHO, he is spot-on in that cities tend to have more vocationally focused people (people who live to work, vs. work to live), so building out ministries such as www.faithandwork.org is quite mandatory if there is to be any impact.

But the lesson can be applied to much broader applications.  The Church today can’t just teach objective knowledge about the Bible.  It can’t just focus upon spiritual praxis.  It can’t just just provide moral teachings as well.   Not anymore.

When non-Christians are exposed to the Church’s message, they really need to see how it looks like if they were to step into the light.

The only way to do that is to build communities where this intentional integration of the Gospel into vocation that Dr. Keller talks about is vibrantly embraced and highly visible.

The new rules and approach to evangelism now take on a wholistic ministry approach.  You do see that, right?

Tim Keller was recently featured as one of the headliners at this year’s Leadership Summit put on by Willow Creek.

Some of the other speakers on the list are favorites of mine too including Jessica Jackley (the best $25 you’ll spend this year if you try out Kiva.org), Dave Gibbons (Monkey and the Fish and if you’re ever in southern CA, you must visit New Song Church) and Chip and Dan Heath (awesome book! Made to Stick from the moment you see the book cover jacket in person you’ll understand why).

But back to Dr. Keller. . . (more…)