Timothy Keller (1950 – 2023)

Who Was He?

Timothy James Keller was born on 23 September 1950 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a Lutheran family but did not come to a living faith until his time at Bucknell University in the late 1960s, where he became a Christian through involvement with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He went on to earn his Master of Divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and his Doctor of Ministry at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Ordained in the Presbyterian Church of America, Keller served for nine years as pastor of West Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Hopewell, Virginia, before joining the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary as Professor of Practical Theology. In 1989, against almost all human advice, he and his wife Kathy moved to New York City in response to a call from their denomination to plant a church in Manhattan.

Redeemer Presbyterian Church began with fewer than fifty people meeting in borrowed space.

Within a decade it had grown to thousands of weekly worshippers. By the time Keller retired as senior pastor in 2017, Redeemer drew over 5,000 people each Sunday to multiple services, had planted over one hundred churches in the New York metropolitan area, and had become a model of urban church ministry studied by pastors worldwide.

Keller’s books — including The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God — have sold millions of copies and been translated into scores of languages. He co-founded The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer City to City, which has trained church planters in global cities on every continent. In 2020 Keller was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which he faced with extraordinary faith and transparency. He died on 19 May 2023, aged 72.

A Great Answer to Prayer The planting and growth of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan is, by almost any measure, a remarkable answer to prayer. In 1989, New York City was not considered fertile ground for evangelical Christianity. The culture was aggressively secular, the pace of life brutally relentless, and the social pressure against religious commitment intense. Most church planting attempts in Manhattan had failed or remained tiny.

Keller and his wife prayed, studied, and prepared for years before moving to the city. They approached the task with theological rigour and cultural intelligence, trusting God to open hearts in what seemed like the hardest soil in America. God answered abundantly. The church grew from fifty to five hundred to five thousand — drawing young professionals, artists, academics, and sceptics who were encountering the Gospel perhaps for the first time.

Keller also testified that his battle with cancer, rather than destroying his prayer life, deepened and transformed it. He wrote that facing death forced him to be still before God in a way his busy ministry had never permitted. The cancer taught him that prayer is not a technique for getting results but an encounter with the living God in which the soul is remade. He faced his final years with a joy and confidence that many who knew him described as one of the most powerful testimonies they had ever witnessed.

Key Scriptures Matthew 6:6 — “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in s ecret will reward you.”

Philippians 4:6 – 7 — “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:26 — “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

His Words on Prayer “Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle — yet the way to reality. There is nothing more important, or harder, or richer, or more life-altering. There is absolutely nothing so great as prayer.”

“Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self -knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change — the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things He has for us. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.”

“We know God will answer us when we call because one terrible day He did not answer Jesus when He called. Jesus’ prayers were given the rejection that we sinners merit so that our prayers could have the reception that He merits.”

“Prayer is th e way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well — that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.”

“To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule — it is a failure to treat God as God.”

Prayer and the Word of God “Our prayers should arise out of immersion in the Scripture. We should plunge ourselves into the sea of God's language, the Bible. Listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in your heart — and then that response, offered back to God, is truly prayer.”

“What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God. Real prayer begins when God speaks first — in His Word, through His Spirit — and we respond.”

Prayer and the Holy Spirit “Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through His Word and His grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with Him.”

“A triun e God would call us to converse with Him, because He wants to share the joy He has always had within Himself. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God Himself.”

“Prayer turns theology into experience. The doctrines of Scripture must become the fuel for prayer, or they will merely remain knowledge in the head. When the Spirit takes truth and drives it into prayer, the fire is lit.”