My advice, essentially, is to rip out the introduction (the fruitfulness stuff) and maybe chapter 10 (the “A” to “B” stuff) which sets up chapters 1 to 30 as the key to successful ministry, and read chapters 1 to 30 because most of them are really, really good. 

I was recently on a conference call with a group of ten pastors who are all members of my theological “tribe,” as we’re calling them nowadays. Each of us took turns updating one another, and I mentioned that I was in the process of reviewing Timothy Keller’s Center Church. Would they pray for me? The conversation turned to Keller’s overall ministry program. One brother said that Center Church was “one of the best two or three books” he had ever read “besides the Bible.” A second brother explained that reading Keller sometimes made him want to applaud, and sometimes made him want “to throw the book out the window.”

Everyone had something to say.

I don’t know what church circles you travel in, but this cellular brouhaha mimicked the chatter I have heard for years concerning Keller. Many church leaders treat him as the bee’s knees, a Protestant with ex cathedra potentiality. Others grimace and wince. To be clear, the wincers wince as you would with a teammate and not someone playing for the other side. But it is our disagreements with the ones closest to us that most quickly boil the pot and rattle the lid.

Center Church is Keller’s magnum opus. It offers a textbook summary of this amazingly gifted pastor’s philosophy of ministry. If you have been hearing or reading Keller for any length of time, you will have encountered its themes. But this book provides the most careful and comprehensive presentation of Keller’s views I have encountered. You can tell he has humbly learned from his critics, and moderated his views accordingly. For instance, where Keller once used the unintentionally misleading phrase “transforming culture” in reference to the church’s mission, I don’t recall him using it in this book. Furthermore, I genuinely mean it as a compliment when I say that it is as easy to read as your seventh-grade science textbook. Definitions are in bold-face. The arguments proceed logically over two-columned pages. And helpful summaries and charts are placed throughout.

Still, why the range of reactions to Keller’s theological vision? More than once conversations about Keller—I’m serious—have left me humming, “How do you solve a problem like Tim Keller?” as the priggish old nuns did with Fraulein Maria. Yes, I suppose that means I’m the old nun.

It is tempting to offer a Kelleresque “third way” for viewing Keller, a triangulated Keller for narrowing the space between the Keller critics and enthusiasts. To read Keller, after all, is to be trained in the art of the Aristotelian mean. This is his m.o.

True to form, Center Church has three sections, each of which offers church leaders a center place to plant their feet on a road between two ditches.

• The “Gospel” section, which examines the nature of the gospel, sets life-transforming grace in between religion and irreligion, legalism and relativism.
• The “City” center, which is a study of contextualization, can be located in between affirming and confronting culture.
• And the “Movement” center, which considers the church itself, locates a healthy missional church in between organism and institution, leaning slightly on the organism side.

Perhaps, in like fashion, we should search for a balanced view of the balancer himself?

Let me attempt just that by putting my own cards on the table: I think Keller is a gift to evangelical churches for whom we can thank God, and he has something that his critics should hear. And I think that Keller’s emphases leave certain imbalances in place that his fans fail to recognize, but that they would do well to avoid. In fact, I will spend most of my time with the latter since unpacking disagreements—I trust the reader understands—always takes more care, like pulling antique china from newspaper wrapping.

But here is what I am afraid of. I don’t want the critics to read my criticisms, feel affirmed in their pre-judgments, and fail to benefit from the book. In fact, they might be the ones who will benefit from it the most. All that to say, I hope readers will perceive me to be not a friendly critic but a lovingly critical friend, with the preponderance of my regard located in the noun. And I hope further that my critiques will be received in the spirit of respect and honor in which they are intended.

THE BEST OF MISSIONAL THINKING

Keller represents the best of “missional” thinking, which is a particular way of viewing the nature and work of the church that is suited to the pluralistic cityscape of the post-Christian West. The topics de jour for missional church practitioners like Keller are contextualization and good works. They root these conversations in theology, no doubt. God is a sending God, and the gospel produces good deeds. But these emphases are contextually driven. They result from looking into the sneering faces of our over-marketed urban neighbors and finding that any mention of Jesus’ name yields mockery and the political growl of an animal whose turf is threatened. So forget knocking on front doors like our Christian grandparents did. Forget inviting them to unassuming church services like our parents did. Instead, put on the native attire of city dwellers. Get into their world. Do good works. And win them by blessing them. That’s what the incarnate Jesus did, after all.

At its best, then, missional thinking is about helping the saints share the good news and love their neighbors; at worst it is the insecure immigrant kid who wants to be mainstream. Keller, as I say, is its best. Yet in all its varieties, missional thinking treats the church’s greatest challenge as knowing how to establish an interface with the world in order to reach the world. The book does not say this, but I believe that this is the primary problem that Center Church’s paradigmatic church is trying to solve: how can we reach the world? That is the revivalist in Keller (a label he seems to own), and, as I will suggest in a moment, many of the answers he gives to this question are good.

TWO HORIZONS, NOT THREE

Still, if I might presume to speak for a 9Marks perspective—if such a thing exists—I would say that we remain stubbornly convicted that “How can we reach the world?” is not the first question a church should ask. The greatest challenge for the people of God today is the greatest challenge that the people of God faced in the Garden, in the wilderness, in the land of Israel, in exile, in the early church, and in the last twenty centuries: how can we be faithful to our saving Lord and his Word?

This brings us to the first of two areas where I believe that Center Church should be read with caution. More than Keller probably realizes, Center Church encourages pastors to build their churches from the boardroom table of pragmatism.

In the book’s opening pages, Keller invites us into a conversation about how one should evaluate a ministry. The “how to” church books say that churches should be evaluated by the standard of “success.” The biblical church books respond that churches should be evaluated according to the standard of “faithfulness.” Yet Keller urges readers to take a third way, the way of evaluating and building a ministry according to “fruitfulness.”

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