Show Notes
Tim Keller’s impact, whether locally in New York City or on churches across the globe, has been addressed by a number of pastors, theologians, and even secular journalists since his passing last year. On this episode of Nuance, Case had the honor of interviewing two of Keller’s friends and co-laborers in ministry, Katherine Leary Alsdorf and Yvonne Sawyer. They witnessed Keller’s early years of ministry in New York, spent time with his family, and launched ministries with him.
Join Case for a moving conversation on Keller’s faithfulness, legacy, and how we can expand on the work that God accomplished through his life.
Resources from the episode:
The City for God: Essays Honoring the Work of Timothy Keller: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B396YS46/
Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594632820
A Catholic Cardinal’s Appreciation of Pastor Tim Keller by Cardinal Timothy Dolan: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/05/89014/
Still, There Is Hope for the City – Article on Yvonne Sawyer’s work in New York and Miami: https://commongoodmag.com/still-there-is-hope-for-the-city/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://collaborativeorlando.com/
Get to know Case: https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Welcome to today’s episode of Nuance. I’m Case Thorpe. If you would like and subscribe our video today, however you’re getting it, or if it’s a podcast version, it really helps make a big difference. So friends, it’s a new day for the Collaborative. We’ve gone through some transition and very excited for the next steps in this ministry. Widening our focus a bit from faith and work out to cultural renewal.
But faith in work is certainly still a vital and important part of our work and our impact in the public square. And that’s our aim on this podcast is to help Christian professionals make an impact where they are out in the world. So Nuance has been nuanced a bit. Rather than go the seasonal route, we’re going to hit in a bi-weekly fashion every other week.
We’re going to have guests who are experts and people who are very, very thoughtful about faith and life, about leading in their industries, in their companies, those who are pursuing the common good.
We’re also adding to our rotation of content a new program, a Nuance-branded program called Formed for Faithfulness. Spiritual formation is so very important and a part of our growth as Christ followers and so these 10-minute episodes will be released weekly following the liturgical calendar of the Christian year. I encourage you to watch for those and may they help be a blessing on your heart.
Now that’s a great lead-in to today’s guests because I have recognized the value of spiritual formation in the discipleship process and our two guests today very much reflect that and teach that.
So I’d like to welcome Katherine Leary Alsdorf and Yvonne Sawyer.
Thanks so much, friends, for being here today.
Yvonne Sawyer
You’re welcome.
Katherine Alsdorf
Our pleasure.
Case Thorp
Our topic today is on Tim Keller, the pastor, academician, and great philosopher of the age out of New York City that planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church. It went on to be so very successful in its growth and its impact. He authored quite a number of books and was picked up by the national media and other environments because his voice was so clear and so resonant on what it means to be a Christ follower, who God is, and how we make a difference.
And he passed away earlier this year. In fact, I pulled this out. If you’re watching visually, you can see this, the bulletin from his funeral. And I know Katherine and Yvonne were both there. My goodness. What a powerful time that was. And I have appreciated reading so much about Tim Keller’s impact, his legacy, his leading voice and really sort of creating the faith and work movement, his investment in church planting and how even his greater denomination, even mine, have been so inspired and guided by his convictions and his theology.
Well, I wanted to ask Katherine Yvonne to come and let’s look a little bit behind the curtain and about Tim Keller the man. In some ways we can hero worship folks, but you know, he put his pants on the same way as everybody else.
He was a dad and a husband and a colleague and a friend. And so I thought, who better to have come and be with us but these two fine individuals? So I know your great bios, but I’d love to have you tell us, Katherine and Yvonne, just give us a quick summary of who you are and how your journey through the years with Tim overlapped. Katherine?
Katherine Alsdorf
I think Yvonne should start. She met him first.
Case Thorp
Ah, okay. Go Yvonne.
Yvonne Sawyer
Okay, well I moved to New York like practically everyone else for professional success. I came with a book contract and a job in marketing and very quickly got connected to the church because I knew as a believer the first thing you do is find a church and find connection. It was the coldest December in 40 years. My new apartment was three blocks away from Redeemer. So when I started visiting, I never went anywhere else. So that, 1989.
Redeemer had just gotten started for a few months, but my wild dream of moving to New York fell apart within a very short period of time. So when Keller got up on a Sunday right before Christmas and said we’ve grown enough to open an office, I said, okay, let me find out about this job because I needed to pay the rent.
Case Thorp
Ah, and help me, was it meeting in an apartment at the time or in a public space?
Yvonne Sawyer
No, it was at the Church of the Advent Hope. I believe the first morning service was September of 89. I moved there in November. So it was already going in a church building.
Case Thorp
And so what was the particular job opportunity that attracted you in the office?
Yvonne Sawyer
They just needed to open an office. And I had lots of administrative office skills and a ministry background. So although this was definitely a redirection of my career, I had the same token. I was like, okay, let’s do it. Let’s interview.
Case Thorp
Okay, so you served in that role and then eventually you were tapped and you led the building out of hope for New York.
Yvonne Sawyer
Correct. That was one of Tim’s core values. When he was coming to plant the church in New York City, talking to New Yorkers, he saw this was something New Yorkers were really concerned about. He had written that Ministries of Mercy book for the denomination. So he was feeling from his research, this was gonna be a core part of what the church was gonna do.
Case Thorp
And the this, the thing New Yorkers were concerned about exactly, named that for me.
Yvonne Sawyer
Serving the poor, serving the marginalized, volunteering, community service, ministries of mercy, whichever phrase you choose.
Case Thorp
OK. And so you got that up and running, which my goodness is a tremendous work. Tell us today where hope for New York is in terms of its reach.
Yvonne Sawyer
Well, I’m not as in touch with them as I probably should be, but I know that they’ve grown exponentially, having all kinds of ministries that they’re interacting with, both raising money, helping to recruit volunteers, connecting those ministries of mercy to professionals who could help them build their capacity to, which was one of the core values initially when we got the thing started.
Case Thorp
Mm. And then they sent you as a missionary to Miami.
Yvonne Sawyer
Not exactly. That was my own mission. I always wanted to have a family and I met this pastor who came to one of the Redeemer weekends and moved to Miami because it was easier to move me than he and his five children.
Case Thorp
Ah, my goodness. So you instantly became a mother of five children. God bless you. Wow.
Katherine Alsdorf
And started Hope for Miami.
Case Thorp
Yeah. How did that come about? Was it with your husband and through y’all’s church?
Yvonne Sawyer
Not through the church. Again, I didn’t have a Redeemer in Miami. So we had to start from scratch with a slightly different model. And that brings me to one of the core things that I think Tim taught us, is that contextualization of the city where God places you is very, very key. So hope for Miami is different than hope for New York.
But there’s obviously some similarities of serving God with community or mercy ministry.
Case Thorp
Well, when I first met Katherine, who has been such a great friend and mentor for the growth of the Collaborative and our Gotham Fellowship, I remember she made the point, Katherine, this was at Princeton during one of the training sessions, that New York’s weird. It’s strange. It’s different. Please do not go and try to create a cookie cutter replication of what we’re doing here in New York. Rather, to your point, Yvonne, that Tim encouraged: What’s your context? What’s your environment, your situation? And I thought that was so important. And so Yvonne, now you are in Asheville, what’s your life look like?
Yvonne Sawyer
Well, we’re pandemic refugees like lots of people, figuring out that we could work remotely. So I’m still on the team at Hope for Miami, but looking forward to the full transition to the whatever next step God has for me.
Case Thorp
Wonderful. So Katherine, tell us about your journey.
Katherine Alsdorf
Yeah, I think I connected to Redeemer about the same time, December or the fall of 1989, but I was not a believer and became a believer in the first three years of Redeemer’s meeting. So I went to the church and usually walked out angry. Yvonne went to the church and said, this is my home. So I wrestled and struggled.
But one of the stories I wanted to tell about Tim at that time—he really, I just can’t imagine a pastor working harder to meet individually and talk to the people that were coming. People like Yvonne, who were committed and maybe more mature believers and people like me who were 100% skeptics. So he met with people day in and day out.
And my first meeting with him was filled with questions like, well, how can intelligent people really believe in hell? Isn’t that just a carrot to get people to be good, well-behaved people? And I pummeled him with questions like that. And he responded in a way that I can’t imagine a better response for someone like me.
He said, “You know, Katherine, I really don’t think you should be worrying about all that. Just stop and let, listen to God and be open to what he’s doing in your life.”
And I thought, okay, I can do that. That’s not so hard. If he’s not doing anything, we walk away. If he is, okay. And I think that was echoed even in his sermons for the first decade, probably.
He would always address the person like me in the pew that was sitting there judging every word that he said. And he would say something along the lines of, if this is not resonating with you, just be still and say, all right, God, if you’re real, show me, open my eyes to see it. And I thought I could do that too.
His focus, and I think the excitement of the people in the congregation at that time, was that people who didn’t believe were coming, people who had walked away from their faith and needed a major reawakening were coming, and people who had been longing for a church like this in New York City were coming. I wasn’t the core. Yvonne sort of walked into the core.
I was on the periphery more being drawn in by that excitement and obviously the teaching, which was enough to make you angry, which I think is significant, enough to make you have to wrestle.
Yvonne Sawyer
And let me interject because I’ve been a believer since I was nine years old. But the way that he preached and pricked the heart through the Holy Spirit was nothing short of amazing. I would go sit in the balcony at that first church because, you know, as a staff person, it’s a whole different atmosphere when you’re on duty. But I would go up in the balcony and weep because he was able to communicate the truth of the Gospel to people like me.
Katherine Alsdorf
But he was also geeky. To your point, Case, he knew he needed to get to know New York better in order to preach New York. I think that’s partly why he met with so many of us. He did research, he met with people who weren’t Christians. He met with the cardinals of the Catholic Church and the pastors of other churches. He humbly recognized his suburban background was not preparing him for the dynamics of New York City. And I think we were all feeling that and we responded to that humility and that desire he had to learn about us. And then he spoke to us and pulled out the idols underneath that we had been basing our life on.
Case Thorp
You mentioned the cardinals of New York. We heard there at the funeral that he was the first Protestant allowed to have a funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Like, that is significant. That’s significant, and Cardinal Dolan, of whom I’m a big fan, was present at the funeral, gave an opening word and stayed the whole time. And I think that’s a testimony to him as a person.
Katherine Alsdorf
Yes, the respect and the mutual respect and the partnership that they had as believers in the city, I think, was reflected in that.
Yvonne Sawyer
Well, and Cardinal Dolan wrote a tribute that was published and said that Tim Keller had read more Catholic authors than he had because of his open-mindedness and his willingness to cross some of those barriers.
Case Thorp
Wow. Well, we’ll put, we’ll find that article and put it in our show notes for folks to go and enjoy.
So friends, the idea for this podcast came from the fact that when I get up to New York, I try to connect with Katherine and John and I said, “Oh, let’s get dinner.”
And she said that we’re having a few friends over to the apartment. Stop by. So I stopped by.
And let me tell you, it was one of the top five spiritual moments of my life. Friends, you’ve got to imagine this setting. It’s an apartment with a living room filled with, I don’t know, 25, 40 friends, people spilling over into the adjacent rooms. And these are all folks who were there at the founding of the church, many of whom served for decades on staff.
Katherine was MC and went around the entirety of the room and even into the other rooms where people were standing. It’s like that scene of people trying to get into see Jesus and just invited people to share and folks told amazing stories of the earliest of days and of the challenges through the years and of the journey and there was laughter there were tears and I kept thinking, “What on earth am I doing in this room?”
I felt like such an interloper. In fact, I don’t know if you remember when you got to be in the circle. I went, “I’m from Orlando and I’m supposed to be here. Keep moving.”
But I just thank you for that gift. And and I think about like all y’all have read and seen in the wake of his death about his legacy. What’s something we don’t know or haven’t really what’s something we don’t know or haven’t really heard about?
Katherine Alsdorf
You know, I think a lot of what you heard there was how dramatically these people’s individual lives were changed and continued to be changed for decades after. That’s why there were thousands of people at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They weren’t people that just admired him as an intelligent preacher, but people who really felt like his teaching changed their lives.
But that group you saw were probably more personally acquainted with him than people 25 years later. And some of them had been in his Bible study even before the first service. Some of them had been there in the first couple years. Some like me hadn’t been to church in decades and some came to faith, some from a Jewish faith. So there was a wide range of mixes, mix of people and a lot of different beautiful stories. I think for those of us who were there in the beginning, he wasn’t a hero then. We were, I think he had a way of pointing to the gospel, not himself. And while we were aware that he was giving us that in a in a particularly profound and compelling way, him as a person was a little geeky.
Two things about the early years that I would like to point out. One is, he lived in his head a lot and he spent most of his time preparing sermons, as you could tell from the quality of them. So, leading an organization was not his bent. And the good thing about that, I mean, there was a bit of chaos, but the growth of the church was organic. There was not a strategy, there was not a, you know, the plan for growing a church. It was unleash these young, energetic people to form a church that serves the city.
And I think the mantra was we’re not a church for ourselves, we’re a church for the city. So create things that either, on the faith and work side or the mercy and justice side, that would change and help and love and serve the city.
I was part of that chaos. So one story I wanted to tell was that Yvonne was one of the people that was reeling me in and enabling me to be a friend as I was exploring the truth of what I was hearing. And one of the things she reeled me into was a comedy night.
And this was of course a totally organic grassroots kind of a thing that involved 50 people at least, and hundreds of people came to it, including Tim and his family, five little boys at that point and his wife, Kathy. And there were some people that made incredible fun of Tim Keller. There was one guy, Yvonne, you tell the Ellery’s imitation of Tim preaching.
Case Thorp
What sort of room are we in? What’s the setting?
Katherine Alsdorf
in the church. Not a high production value.
Yvonne Sawyer
Evening service.
You know, the video we took is terrible quality, but it’s all good. It was written by people from the church. Now, obviously you have actors and writers and people with real skill, but skits, including making fun of Tim Keller, how he folded his Bible and his cheap suits and his, scratching his head, his mannerisms.
Katherine Alsdorf
And he’d go up and down on his feet in the beginning.
Yvonne Sawyer
I mean, I don’t know too many other people who would tolerate those kinds of things. The other crazy, and like I said, I got Katherine involved because she’d had a little bit of a background in musical theater and I knew she’d have some fun with it and she did.
We also did a birthday celebration of him. I asked his mother to send me his childhood photos. We made a slideshow of his life and had a voiceover that was completely made up. It had no connection to the real Tim Keller, just to make fun of him for his birthday, where we presented him with a good suit and a new Bible. Stuff like that was allowed. Not only were people encouraged to be taking up leadership roles, leading small groups and starting ministries and using their gifts for the kingdom but also some silly fun things like these comedy shows and things where we could be a family that you know people later on in the Redeemer years would have no idea those kind of things that we did.
Case Thorp
Now, you speak of leadership roles. Clearly, Tim had a high regard for female leadership. And in a denomination that does not ordain women to the office of teaching and ruling elder, what was that like, especially for you as women who had careers and come from strong leadership backgrounds?
Yvonne Sawyer
Absolutely. You wanna handle that one, Kath?
Katherine Alsdorf
Well, Yvonne was the first one. And for a long time, I think the only woman in a leadership role on the staff. And she was, Yvonne was the great connector once the church started growing that really helped pull people in. She broke the ice there and really had a blank sheet of paper to start that ministry.
So one of the things that I always look back on and appreciate is a lot of professionals in New York did not grow up in New York. They came to New York to make it. And so they didn’t have deep roots. So her strategy contextualized to both the people of the church and the city was to find ministries to partner with and come alongside as opposed to start our own naively thinking we were the saviors of New York City.
So I think that was an extremely critical, important move that she just had the freedom to do. I came along on, I was at Redeemer. I then moved to, I was still working in tech running companies in the tech world, Luxembourg, then I moved to California.
So I was gone in the later 90s and came back in early 2002 and was hired to start a faith and work ministry. So similarly, I had a blank sheet of paper. I think I’ve often said to Tim, I think you would have been happy if I just ran a class on faith and work. And instead we, built out this really exciting and powerful ministry, in part because the demand was so great, but also people were looking to be involved. And it was a place that they could bring their skills from the marketplace and their gifts that the church wasn’t using as an usher or as a communion giver and help them start running groups and classes and things that lay people in the congregation could take responsibility for. So I think that freedom we had was wonderful.
Case Thorp
Well, he hired great people that knew what they were doing and set them free.
Katherine Alsdorf
Sometimes, and maybe we were just lucky.
Yvonne Sawyer
Yeah, I think God put us there in the place and time. But back to his view of women, I don’t know that people really understand the partnership that Tim had with his wife, Kathy, that it was often her gifts that were—you didn’t necessarily see her up front, but her relationship, his value of women comes from the strengths and skills of his own wife, who is heavily involved behind the scenes at Redeemer. And I think she paved the way for us because he had no qualms about allowing women to use their gifts.
Like you said, in a denomination where the first time I went to a general assembly of the PCA was a little shocked at the general assembly because I had Tim’s complete blessing. I think Katherine would say the same thing. He just said go make it happen. And we did. And that has been replicated, both the Faith and Work movement and the sort of Hope for New York movement replicated across the country, across the world, across denominations. And he allowed us to do that in some ways that I think God is pleased.
Case Thorp
You mentioned Kathy and I just met her once briefly, but I was so moved by her comments at the funeral service and the sons that spoke. Talk to me about what you observed with for Tim as a husband, Tim as a dad.
Yvonne Sawyer
Well, I think people would often remark that Tim’s eyes would light up and his demeanor would change when Kathy called him on the phone. He loved her so deeply and appreciated her gifts and her support of him in ways that I wish every husband and wife could have that kind of gift. It was amazing.
We had a chance to go visit Kathy when we were in New York over Thanksgiving. And again, I’m sure this transition is very, very hard for her, but I also continue to see her involved with Kingdom work at Redeemer through Gospel in Life and the other assignments that God has given her.
In terms of being a dad, most of us had the opportunity to babysit the Keller boys, one time or another in those early days. And they were rambunctious little boys. We all have lots of memories about them, which I don’t think is the focus of this call. But yes, again, they would tell stories about their kids in the sermons and in your interactions with them. Moving from the suburbs into the city was not easy on their family. They made it work and the boys themselves can tell you what it meant to be on their own riding the subway as teenagers in the city and how different that was than what they had grown up with in the early days.
Katherine Alsdorf
And I’ll just add, by the time I got there in 2001, Kathy was having a lot of health problems. So she had to pull back from coming to the office, being as involved on a day-to-day basis. She had run communications for the first number of years of Redeemer and they wrote together and she was often his editor.
She was involved in things behind the scenes, but from a health perspective, I think that was a really hard time for them. I got there shortly after 9-11, so that was a hard time for the city as a whole and with her health issues. And then at some point in there, he had thyroid cancer.
Certainly the first years were wonderful growth and God’s protection. A lot of people praying for God to protect this shoot of a church in its early life. But the early 2000s, there was a lot of challenge for Tim in his leadership role and for them as a family with their health issues.
One of the things that I observed is his willingness to let God be sovereign over what was happening. So some notable things were sometimes somebody he invested a lot in would leave and go to another church, usually giving or move out of town even.
He’s, you know, heartbroken, but he took a posture all the time of go to the church that God is leading you to. He gave a blessing as people left as opposed to wallowing in self-pity, which is what I would do in that circumstance. There was a generosity and I know he was crushed often when people left, but there was a generosity and a trust in, if this is a church God is building, God will build the church. And he would steward it as best he could, but this was in God’s hands. And so that’s been and continues to be an example for me in going through challenges, disappointments, frustrations.
Case Thorp
Take us, if you will, to a time when maybe both of you were present to one of those challenges. Take us to a time when there was that growth challenge and what was, how did he manage it? How did he handle it? Maybe there was a, a growth challenge where y’all failed on something. What did you observe?
Katherine Alsdorf
We didn’t overlap on staff. So, as friends we overlap, but not on staff. So we probably have different stories. You wanna go, Yvonne?
Yvonne Sawyer
I do. Here’s one that I can think of. He studiously avoided media appearances for years. He studiously avoided writing books. He wanted to invest in what we were doing without the distractions of answering media inquiries. And at some point, obviously, that changed.
But I remember, you know, because in the early days, I was there in the office and I knew about these people calling, wanting to sort of feature what we were doing. And they were very, very careful and deliberate about that. So at one point, I think God changed his mind and said, okay, let’s try this. In fact, I think the first article that I saw published was actually published by the PCA. They had a magazine at one point and they published an article, and I guess he thought it was safe because it was just our people, that sort of thing. But right after that was when the first New York Times article. And they made, and I can’t remember the year it was—
Katherine Alsdorf
It was Michael Lua’s article, I think.
Yvonne Sawyer
Yeah, you might remember better than I do, but I do recall that it’s kind of like once that switch was going on, it changed the trajectory of what we were doing, added some pressure, but also brought more people to the church, which I think was probably a good thing, but also a challenge because then you had to deal with lots and lots of visitors that just wanted to sort of see whether it—people of faith that were visiting New York and wanted to like check it out, or it was the curious non-believers who were like, huh, this looks interesting. So that was an interesting, unanticipated challenge from my days.
Case Thorp
Oh, sure. How did he handle fame?
Katherine Alsdorf
I think it’s an important question. He was interviewed by Christianity Today on the Mars Hill podcast. After the whole series was done, they did an interview with him. And people were saying, how did you stay humble? How did you avoid getting caught up in a spiral. And typical Tim, he said, well, you know, part of it’s my personality. I’m an introvert. And I really, I can’t take much credit for it. I just really wasn’t interested in those things. And, you know, I think that’s true. But I also think he had spiritual disciplines.
He admired John Stott, who used to really be steadfast in his avoidance of praise. And I think Tim was uncomfortable around praise. As a matter of fact, when people wrote about him, this book that came out called The City for God, which is a tribute by a lot of people, it’s specifically about how people’s work was influenced by Tim’s teaching about the faith, as opposed to about Tim in particular, because he didn’t want to point to him. And you can see that in his service. He wanted to point to Christ, not to him.
So I think he was very disciplined about avoiding the temptation or responding to the temptation in prayer. He would say, in conversations with his wife she could take him down a few pegs. It wasn’t just his personality. He took concrete intentional steps to avoid it. And as Yvonne said, people were begging him in the early 90s to go on the radio or on television. And he was like, no, I’m looking to create a church here that serves the city. We don’t have any good examples of that. This is going to take my full attention. And I think that was helpful too.
Case Thorp
For our listeners, especially leaders, there are always professional goals that are left unmet, even organizational goals left unmet. So were there any dreams of his personally or through the church that never unfolded?
Katherine Alsdorf
Oh, I’m sure.
We all wish he had another 20 years. And while he had worked very hard to transition the church from a church that was dependent on him to one that had, now there’s four, almost five churches that are led by other pastors, most of whom he groomed in some way—
Case Thorp
And for folks that may not be familiar, he actively worked to take the mothership and break it into those four different independent churches.
Katherine Alsdorf
Yeah, I mean, he never wanted a big church. He always tried to have churches spin off and become smaller churches of their own. But when you’re as good a preacher as he is, it was hard to tell people not to come. But certainly for almost eight years prior to him stepping down as senior pastor, he was very diligent about trying to have the church break into four. And so obviously COVID took a toll on that, but I think all of them are strong, solid churches that are going to continue to serve with the focus on being a church for the city, not for themselves. Focus on the power of the Gospel to change their lives, people’s lives and their relationships and the city.
The DNA of Redeemer is deeply embedded in those churches, even as those pastors step down and new pastors take over. But God is sovereign. Tim would be the first one to say I did what I could do and God’s in charge of the rest. I think the loss, I mean, I feel obviously a personal loss when, even after I was no longer employed by him, I was serving, advising, speaking in certain different ways. But when I would have some question, I’d run across some denominational debate over something that concerned me, I could write it and say, can you give me a perspective on this? I’m hearing people are talking about Christian humanism. Would you point me to the best resources to read up on that? I think the loss for the world grieves me as much as my own loss. That he had reached a point where he could lift his head up from a daily service and being responsible for a church to being able to meet with leaders throughout the city and thought leaders in all kinds of fields.
He did invest in them in the last few years, but oh my goodness, what could have been done with another 20 years? He partnered with Jonathan Haidt in doing talks of the importance of God or the righteous mind. He co-wrote a book with John Inazu, who’s a lawyer, who’s a strong influencer in the area of living as a Christian in a pluralistic society. And he was moving in that direction of greater influence in the public square. God’s sovereign, but it seems to me we would have really benefited if he’d been around another 20 years.
So that’s in addition to the personal loss.
Case Thorp
Yvonne?
Yvonne Sawyer
Katherine said it all.
Katherine Alsdorf
Case, I wanted to go back; I didn’t really respond to some of the struggles. So one particular time we had hired an executive pastor because, once the church grew, there was not a good investment of Tim’s preaching gifts to have him be the person that was running the organization of the church. So we were all psyched up. This guy was going to come and last minute he pulled out. And I think that was one of the times I just saw desperation. In a conversation between us, I said, Tim, unfortunately the bus stops there with you, and you’re gonna have to change your plan for the next six months until this is over. And I can relate to the pain of what that was like. But we eventually got somebody and all worked out.
Case Thorp
Well, last question. So for any pastors that may be listening, we can’t all be Tim Keller, the orator, for sure. We can’t all write such books or grow such institutions or have such legacy and impact. What would you say to pastors today are something they can emulate from who he was as a shepherd?
Yvonne Sawyer
I would say letting the gifts of your people be set free.
Case Thorp
Clearly seen in both of your work in Center for Faith in Work and Hope for New York.
Katherine Alsdorf
I think he opened our imagination to what a church could be and what loving a city could look like.
That area of vision in church leadership, I think is so important. And so if you are equipping people to have a bigger vision and you’re giving us the faith grounding to move out humbly and lovingly with that vision, I think that the congregation can surprise you with what God will do through them. Somewhere along the line, early on, and I think it probably drew me to his church in the beginning, he talked a lot about the church is a priesthood of all believers. We are to be equipped to go out and be the church in the world. I think Yvonne and I both do some coaching and teaching pastors on the importance of that and how to go about it. Today, I think it’s a passion that both of us have in our different aspects of that vision.
Case Thorp
Yvonne, any closing words?
Yvonne Sawyer
Oh, this was fun. You know, Katherine and I have done a lot of talking about these issues over the years in our personal conversations. And I think we both feel incredibly fortunate that we were there in the right place in the right time that the Holy Spirit could use us and could help expand the Kingdom and could be a small part of the legacy that Tim had and the gift that he was to the world.
Katherine Alsdorf
And I think we still, and everyone you saw gathered at that service, feel that call to, in essence, be stewarding what we were given to help other churches thrive, to serve in what capacities we can, even at different stages and ages in life, to serve in whatever capacities we can, with a lot deeper grounding than we could ever.
Case Thorp
Katherine, Yvonne, thank you. Thank you so very much for this peek into your lives, into his life, and for the life and witness of Tim Keller. Thanks be to God.
Katherine Alsdorf
Thank you for this opportunity.
Case Thorp
I’d like to thank our listeners for being with us again. Please share, like, and subscribe so others can enjoy. You can visit us at collaborativeorlando.com to sign up for our bi-weekly blog. See some of the resources we have there about living your faith in the public square. We’re also all over the social media channels.
Again, look in those notes so that you can get links to the various things we’ve talked about. There’s also a great new article that features Yvonne Sawyer and her work in Common Good magazine that we’ll put there. Listen for Formed for Faithfulness, our weekly devotional podcast, and I’ll be back next time with a special guest.
I want to thank the sponsor for this episode, the Magruder Foundation, for helping us make things happen.
I hope to see you next time on our episode of Nuance. Blessings as you pursue faithfulness to Christ in the public square.
