mgpcpastor's blog

My review copy of Center Church should be waiting for me when I return home from Zimbabwe.
I look forward to reading Tim Keller’s exploration of doing Gospel centered ministry in cities and beyond.
Keller writes of the reasons for writing the book at the Redeemer City To City blog.
Here’s the first and last couple of paragraphs.

One reason I wrote my new book Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City is that I believe there is a common misunderstanding of the relationship between doctrine and ministry.
Let me illustrate. A puzzling but common sight today is that many churches share the same doctrinal foundations, yet go about ministry in radically different ways. For example, consider two Presbyterian churches that both subscribe wholeheartedly to the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms. The first church uses contemporary music and very little discernible liturgy, employs lay ministers to lead meetings and ministries as well as pastors, and deploys the latest marketing and media strategies. The second church operates in almost the opposite way, using classical music, traditional liturgy, and emphasis on the ordained clergy. They also vigorously criticize the methods of the other church as a betrayal of the Reformed faith, and perhaps even of the gospel itself.

It has become clear to me that while most Christian leaders do very deliberate, conscious study and thinking to arrive at their doctrinal beliefs, they are almost blind to the process of developing a theological vision. They often just “catch” their convictions about culture, reason, and tradition without really thinking them out. They come upon a ministry that they admire or that helps them personally and then they adopt it wholesale without recognizing the presuppositions, convictions and decisions that went into it.
To be faithful and fruitful, more Christian leaders should pay attention to this “middle space” between believing doctrine and choosing methods. The vast majority of resources on “how to do church” discuss either the Biblical basics of church belief and practice or specific ways to adopt certain ministry programs. I don’t know of any book that, instead of asking “what should our doctrine be?” or “what should our programs look like?” instead asks “what is our theological vision for ministry in our time and place?” That’s why I wrote Center Church.

In reading this I’ll be interested to see how Keller engages the notion that the expression of a church either nurtures or undercuts it’s theological principles and what sort of thought process helps to evaluate new forms and their long term helpfulness.
Read the whole piece here, and look for a review of Center Church on this blog in the last third of September.