I highly recommend New York City pastor Tim Keller's first two blog posts:
The "Kingly" Willow Creek Conference
He describes Willow Creek as "kingly", Reformed as "prophetic", and emerging as "priestly." I agreed with him–giving a couple lengthy comments–trying to show that the "kingly" has particular strength with regard to evangelism.
I had previously interacted with Keller about large church vs. small church ecclesiology in the comments of David Fitch's blog in December THREE QUESTIONS FOR THE ATTRACTIONAL PRACTICIONERS WHO QUESTION THE FRUIT OF MISSIONAL: A Response to Dan Kimball
His second post encourages pastors to be involved doing pastoral care and not just preaching.
Preacher-Onlys Aren't Good Preachers
He writes
I pastor a church with a large staff and so I give 15+ hours
a week to preparing the sermon. I would not advise younger ministers to spend
so much time, however. When I was a pastor without a staff I put in 6-8 hours
on a sermon. If you put in too much time in your study on your sermon you put
in too little time being out with people as a shepherd and a leader. Ironically,
this will make you a poorer preacher.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Keller's thoughts on preaching at
Gordon Conwell's PulpitTalk – Volume 5. Spring 2007 – Preaching to the Heart.
- Preaching to the Heart by Tim Keller. Pastor's Builders Series- Audio Resource.
- Unintentional Preaching Models by Tim Keller. Notes from Pastor's Forum Seminar.
- Reading and Preparation by Tim Keller. Notes from Pastor's Forum Seminar.
There he talked about how he plans sermons far ahead of time, reads lots of newspapers and books, and believes it takes 3,000 sermons to become a good preacher. He says he did less preparation in his early years of preaching. He only decided to make his preparation more tight after he had to preach multiple times the same sermon. He talked about liking:
Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon by Bryan Chapell (Hardcover – Mar 1, 2005)
but likes to put the theological aspect at the end of the sermon after the application.
They have also just recently announced that 150 Keller sermons are now available on the Redeemer website for free. Free Sermon Resource.
The June cover story of Christianity Today profiled Keller: How Tim Keller Found Manhattan
The pastor of Redeemer Church is becoming an international figure
because he's a local one. By Tim Stafford | posted 6/05/2009 09:47AM
He has three books:
The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller (Hardcover – Oct 30, 2008)
The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller (Hardcover – Feb 14, 2008)
