Tim Keller and TGC’s Next Decade

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Sandy Willson
Don, it’s been a exciting 20 years plus, really, since you and Tim met in a cafe in Manhattan. And when you all met to talk about today’s problems in Evangelical Church and the culture, there was also a personal relationship that developed, you all fit together in a nice way. Can you tell us more about what that was about?

Don Carson
Tim? Is the sort of pastor that everybody thinks of is their pastor. They wouldn’t be so crass as to say that I’m one of Tim’s favorite friends. But that’s what they’re thinking.

Sandy Willson
How many 1000s?

Don Carson
Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly right. And I think there’s something of that even in the New Testament, John calls himself to disciple whom Jesus loved. I think that’s the way he felt. But I don’t think he was so crass as to think Jesus loves me more than he loves Peter. I don’t think that’s the way it works.

Sandy Willson
I think you do wonder if Peter thought that?

Don Carson
That’s exactly right. Or in John 21. He, he acts as if he should have thought like that. But that’s neither here nor there. Tim had many friends in different sectors. His his, his life, in the last 10 years, revolved around for full size, as far as I can see, Redeemer, of course, and with it, Redeemer city to city and his writing, and nestled in there is preaching in different parts of the world. And TGC is was part of that as well. And for those working in one part of this spectrum, they might not have known that much about what he was doing in another spectrum. He and I weren’t, we’re never the kinds of friends that would spend a lot of time talking about baseball, or current events unless they had theological wage to the but on the other hand, in terms of talking about the gospel, and evangelism, cultural apologetics understanding our times, reforming the church and so on, we talked frequently, endlessly at length. I remember once about, oh, eight years ago, he had just been doing evangelism at Oxford. And I had just been finishing up a week of evangelism in Melbourne, Australia, we got back the same weekend, ie to New York and me to Chicago, and promptly got on the phone and gave each other a report. And we both enjoyed ourselves and been challenged. Enough, we both not not quite seriously, but but there was some point to it, wondered if we should quit our current ministries and give ourselves entirely to evangelism in in one fashion or another, that we obviously didn’t do it. But it shows how our hearts were beating along the same line as a sort of a missional relationship, but it was a missional theological, cultural reading relationship. Where were we were talking about texts, but also about people and needs. And so in that sense, we became very close.

Sandy Willson

Well, it was obvious, you know, to those of us who were on the founding group with you, it was obvious that this was a duo. So the two of you decided to invite 40 pastors, all 40 showed up. And when you look at the schedules of those men, you said before, it was a miracle to have 40 out of 40 show up for three days carved out of their schedule, busy schedules. You and Tim have tremendous convening power, especially when you put the two of you together. So that might explain some of that. I don’t think just anybody could convene those 40 people 4440. So you and Tim had a tremendous synergy working together beginning you from theological biblical side, especially Tim from a cultural apologetics and evangelistic side. And being an active pastor, you being an active, active recommendation, it was just a wonderful match. So here we are. And this is the year 2023 that we’ve kind of been dreading waiting for Tim’s health to get to the point where he left us. All of us who knew and worked with Tim feel feel diminished. What do you feel diminished?

Don Carson
Tim said in my hearing quite a number of times that his favorite meeting every year was the gospel coalition council because it was a place that fostered, give and take and disagreement. And he was clearly an important figure. But he wasn’t the only important figure, you took a look, look around the room at our council meetings, and there was an amazing group of guys there.

Sandy Willson
Yes. And some of those men are published broadly. Some of them have huge ministerial networks. So it really has been a coalition of networks, not just network of networks, in some ways.

Don Carson
That’s correct. And so it was refreshing, it was challenging. But but it’s not as if I feel diminished in the same sense that I felt diminished when my brother died in December. It was a special kind of ministry connection. And, and then there was a sense of that, when which said that was, was a healthy distinction to make. I’m grateful for the fact that the whole of the gospel coalition never did depend solely on him, or for that matter on me or any other single party. From the beginning, it was an attempt to build a coalition. When we got together in our group of 40. And then eventually 50. We we sat around a big square, and Tim and I always sat next to each other at the corner, so that we could co chair things and prompt one another, and so on. And one day, when we were in the midst of discussing something rather, he turned his laptop to me, and he was chuckling, giggling and wondered what had caught his fancy on on the tube. And I looked at and there, it was obvious that something Tim had said 15 minutes earlier. In the context of relative security, we say what we think and try to be honest, and and so they anyway, one of the other guys in that group of 40, emailed some of his off ciders saying, Do you know what Tim Keller just said? Was it good or bad? The Outsiders. It was an opinion that they didn’t expect from him. And one of his outsiders posted it online from his website. And one of Tim’s off ciders, picked that up on email, and email, Tim, and said, Tim, did you really say this all in 15 minutes. And that’s what was coming up. And as you know, and when Tim saw this, he laughed, and started with a giggle and became a hearty laugh. And I’ve often thought that if that had been somebody else, he might have been deeply offended that he lost security. And he had to be more careful about others.

Sandy Willson
No question that part of the magic of Tim Keller was his grace and humility, and he let things roll off his back. People were accusing him of all sorts of things, distorting his views, misunderstanding him as a person as character. He just kept plodding right straight ahead.

Don Carson
And he knew how to take criticism and learn from it so that as a result, if he saw some validity in the criticism, he corrected, what needed to be corrected. He wasn’t defensive, he wasn’t jealous for his own reputation in any way shape, or when some institution would renege and remove the prize, they were going to give him a steal, agrees to go and give the lecture and it was one of the better lectures. It was terrific.

Sandy Willson
Well, from the beginning. Till now, there have been some surprises, some disappointments give us two or three of those,

Don Carson

There are two or three generic surprises we we envisaged that this could grow. If this was really of the Lord, it could grow pretty quickly and reach a lot of people and so on. But none of us, neither of us had any inkling that it was going to be as big and as far reaching as it is today. We hadn’t thought about how it would grow. So the fact that it grew in part by people coming to us, and asking for us to help them. It’s surprising only that we hadn’t thought of it, but we hadn’t. We hadn’t thought of it. And one of the reasons why it turned out to be surprising is because we were two or three years into this before we took the principal decision of going primarily digital. And by taking that decision that meant that things are being circulated all around the world much faster than if it had been by print. And, and so the people that we never heard of would listen in their country, often in translation and contact us to to help out and so in some way And we’re operating now with 19 languages. And in I don’t know how many countries but but in no case did we plot to go there, it’s people have have come to us and asked for help to do some of that surprised, you know, that was a suppressor the viral nature of it. But but that was partly because because we took the decision to go digital, right. And we we hadn’t foreseen ourselves what entailments that were to that.

Sandy Willson
Okay. So, with the digital, you get rapid growth, you also get instant responses. So did this eat your lunch as a New Testament? Professor? I mean, what happened?

Don Carson
Your, your, your daily schedule, as a result, one of us had to put a lot of time into it. And I put more time into it then. And then Tim did. But but we hired one or two people who were very good at responding as well. And, and they took a lot of that load off me. I have always been someone who I hope in a useful sense, not just an arrogant sense, doesn’t really care what people think of me. That’s helpful itself most of the time.

Sandy Willson
Yeah, unless it’s your wife.

Don Carson
Yeah. And, and depending on what the issue is, too. But the most things, you just have to let roll off your back. And, and Tim had that in spades. I had it to some extent. And so what what I then discovered, which was another surprise, I didn’t see this one coming. And then I realized I really had to change something. Some of our younger guys, we had so many workers so quickly, who were under the age of 30, we had to in their 40s. And everybody else was less than one person was added in his 50s. But this meant that most of our workers doing the the techie stuff, but also responding to a lot of people and so on. They were 27 or 28. And they would show something to me and said this is coming. We’ve had 100 voices along this line, what are we going to do about it? We’ll look it over it’s nothing. Most things you don’t you aren’t worthy, your responses or if they’re worthy responses you they get to a certain level of acuity and, and then it’s worthwhile giving it serious thought

Sandy Willson
someone’s complaining about something petty, and you respond, you’ve just increased the platform. Exactly right.

Don Carson
So but that meant that some of these young guys are carrying big loads, that I was too slow to spot, then eventually we put some systems in place to try to handle that sort of thing. And they became as hard bitten as I am.

Sandy Willson
Well, it’s the problem of every entrepreneur whose business is growing rapidly. We had to move quickly on those things. As we move forward, what are your chief concerns about tgts ministry going forward next 10 years,

Don Carson
some concerns arise out of what most would view as success. When we started out, we were the only ones talking vociferously and constantly about the importance of gospel shaped ministry and gospel shaped exposition and gospel shaped evangelism and this sort of thing, where we had concrete understanding of what the gospel is and how it ties to biblical theology and, and brings together the whole Bible and so on. But But nowadays, the success, for lack of a better word of this emphasis means that there are a lot of people are using exactly the same vocabulary today without necessarily the same theology or the same, the same convictions. So we have to have better ears for what’s going on in the culture. And seeing where we use the same terminology seeing where we go after the same cruise but in a slightly different way. Or, or that’s, we could we could lose things simply by presupposing, that we’re all on the same page, because we’re there more of us using the same language. But it’s more complicated in that, well,

Sandy Willson
if you go back to 2000 2004, or five, when TGC was founded, one of the chief sort of Christian evangelical heresies was the Emergent Church is an expression of post modernism in Christian clothing. I think that probably was pressing upon us as much as anything. At that time, you may think of others. What do you see now? That means that TGC really has to up their game and engage thoughtfully

Don Carson
I wrote one of the books responding to Yes, you did, the Emerging Church, and today it’s virtually not selling it because the movement has passed on.

Sandy Willson
That was It wasn’t it. I mean, it just seemed like yesterday that it was growing, it grew

Don Carson
very fast. There’s a handful of things that are, that are in various stages of acceleration or deceleration, the new Atheism, for example, it’s it’s still pretty widely spread, but it’s weakening. There are more and more people who are not connected with a conservative confessional woman who think that the new Atheism has gone too far. And it’s a bit silly at points and historically naive and so on. But that’s still around and the entailments of it are going to flap in our faces for quite some time. It means that the way you do evangelism is different today than the way you did it 25 years ago. On the other hand, I would argue that it’s actually slightly easier today to do University evangelism than 25 years ago. Why is that? For two or three reasons. One is 25 years ago, there were still a lot of students on our university campuses, who were in reaction against some sort of Christianized background now they’re mostly so bone ignorant about Krishna nice background, they have nothing to react against this is really news. Yeah. So that if you articulate the gospel respectfully and have discussion and so on, you can you can go a long way with serious discussion. And, and so far from feeling terrorized by the new Atheism. It’s, it’s it’s almost more more fun today more, more challenging, more interesting than 25 or 30 years,

Sandy Willson
you don’t get a knee jerk reaction with the anti of oh, you there

Don Carson
is a knee jerk reaction that’s that’s culture driven, you know, Christians, they’re those people over there, that is stereotype of it. But if they get to know you a little bit, it’s it’s amazing how far you can get what

Sandy Willson
other trends? Do you see emerging? What do you what do you think the next five years we’re gonna be dealing with?

Don Carson
We’re still on the ascendancy to some extent of sexual identity issues. But that one is beginning to crest in the last two years in particular, there are more people that are that are challenging this and saying it’s gone to it looks a bit silly. And so I don’t know where that’s going. It won’t surprise me if that one comes down fast. There

Sandy Willson
really are different groups, non Christian secular groups are warring with each other. Oh,

Don Carson
yes, they are. That’s right. They’re harder with each other on on each other than they are on us. Yeah. And that’s new. That’s, that’s six months, a year, year and a half. There there is a deep seated, multifaceted suspicion of authority of every kind, police family

Sandy Willson
coming from

Don Carson
sin. I mean, it is it is so endemic, that it’s not one issue. It’s, it’s across the field. And somewhere along the line, some of our evangelism needs to poke punctures in the hot air of self justification that that is bound up with anti authoritarianism, because in fact, it’s not. It’s not so much anti authoritarianism. It’s anti your authority over against my authority. Everybody wants their own authority. So so we need to think through carefully and at length, how to come through with the authority of Christ and what that means why it’s a good thing. When

Sandy Willson
Tim was asked not too long ago. What how do you feel about the future? I mean, are you discouraged about the future? He said, Well, I’m with regard to the country I’m passing muster with regard to the church. I’m an optimist. Yeah. Would you agree with that? And if so, why?

Don Carson
I would agree with it, not on the grounds of reading culture a certain way, but on the grounds of what I take to be biblical theology. And we’re having this conversation at TGC 23, we’ve had two or three plenary addresses, and we just had one, in fact, that talks about the importance of, of turning to God of focusing on him instead of being fearful. How Can Christians be be fearful all the time if they really do believe that Jesus is on His throne, and he’s coming back and he’s holding the nations to account and, and even if it means a period of suffering and so on, well, well, from a theological perspective, that the church is on the winning side, what on earth are we frightened of? So so there’s a theological commitment to Tim’s constant reiteration of of that it’s what do

Sandy Willson
you think we are fearful of what why is there so much panic and anger?

Don Carson
I think it’s several things. Why in some parts of the country, there is so much Christianity around Christianity is that around, that as it diminishes as its threatened, we feel threat. And it’s not that you’re just disagreeing with me you’re threatening my world. You’re you’re taking away my Jesus and I don’t know where you’ve laid him. And

Sandy Willson
the nuns that you know, NES. Yes, they used to be kind of standing with us. Yeah, sort of culturally, they’re not standing us anymore. So now we’re a smaller island than we used to be. But

Don Carson
But again, a bit of a study of church history, and a bit of familiar familiarity with what the church faces and other parts of the world should alleviate some of that. I know parts of the world where Christians expect to get beaten up. And we don’t really expect that now we have to have a big sob story and pity party when that happens. And there’s a sense in which some of these trends are stiffening the backbone of the church, it’s becoming a little clearer. Who’s a genuine Christian? Who’s in it for the politics or who’s in it?

Sandy Willson
I think the lines are being drawn. That’s right. You know, what’s been interesting and TGC 23 the sermons that that we’ve heard, they really have focused us on your way, on the great God that he is. And what you haven’t heard, is any of the mentality of victim status, self pity, self pity. When we focus on God, that stuff, apparatus, is the answer to all the self pity that we’re dealing with now.

Don Carson
And so far, all of the the plenary sessions that we’ve had so far, have said that in different ways, said that same thing. They’re reinforcing each other. It’s been wonderfully refreshing. It

Sandy Willson
has, there’s nothing like a vision for God. Yeah.

Don Carson
Behold your King. Amen. See Jesus. Well,

Sandy Willson
with that done, just as your friend, I want to say thank you, as I’ve said, to Tim, and you before, for starting this organization, it’s a wonderful organization. I don’t know another one like it, where you, you and Tim convened fellow pastors, Christian workers, who are in the trenches, and asking them to coalesce and to lead together to do something significant for the whole evangelical church. I don’t know anybody like it. Thanks for that. Well,

Don Carson
thank you for your word of encouragement. But I would quickly add, the lovely thing about it is that although Tim has gone, that doesn’t mean half our strength is gone, because Because strength has been built into more and more people, people like yourself, and so many others have several different generations who are who are picking up the torch and running on the next lap.

Sandy Willson
I think that’s exactly right. And I think just as the children of Israel were tested in the wilderness, when one of our great champions leaves us, I think we’re all tested. And we’re all seeing well, is it a coalition under Christ? Or was it two champions who had a flash in the pan? And I think you’re right. I think this is a movement of God, among a lot of people. And it’s been great to see it, but this this is an important time for the gospel Coalition for exactly that reason.

I think that’s right.