As I previously alluded to, this is the first installment in what will be roughly nine posts in which I summarize and reflect on the contents of Tim Keller’s Center Church. With this first post, I merely want to look at the introduction and Keller’s notion of “theological vision.” Each of the following eight posts will deal with the eight “parts” of the book, which span the three larger sections of the work: Gospel, City, and Movement.
Tim Keller elicited (to put it mildly) strong reactions, both positive and negative. Indeed, he still does, even after his passing in 2023 (RIP). An influential pastor and writer, Keller was able to do the seemingly impossible: blend confessional Presbyterian theology with apologetically-potent sermons and a generous, world-affirming posture toward culture. For some, he was the exemplar of faithful contextualization in the twenty-first century, blazing a trail for church leaders to follow into the future. For others, he was squishy on biblical truth, a cautionary example of someone toning down the rough edges of the gospel message to make it more palatable to secular New Yorkers.
Now, I have little interest in assessing Keller’s ministry overall, or arguing about whether we should “evolve beyond” Keller to some other model for cultural engagement. What I am interested in is this: Gleaning from the deep wisdom found in Keller’s magnum opus, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (2012). Because, regardless of where you stand on Keller, I believe Center Church forces us to ask the questions that all ministry leaders (and, frankly, all Christians) should be asking in our contemporary context.
As Keller explains in the Introduction of Center Church, many “church growth” books and other resources written for church leaders fall into one of two primary categories: 1) general biblical and theological principles that apply to all churches; or 2) practical “how-to” books that focus on the specifics of how to “do” church in a particular way, often patterned after an influential, “successful” church. Keller, while acknowledging the benefits of both types of books, sets out to do something different. In Center Church, he wants to help church leaders develop what he calls “theological vision.” By this, Keller has in mind something that sits in the middle—and mediates between—a person’s doctrinal beliefs (i.e., creeds, confessions of faith) and their ministry practices (i.e., programming, ministries, worship styles, etc.).
Keller defines theological vision as “a faithful restatement of the gospel with rich implications for life, ministry, and mission in a type of culture at a moment in history” (20). Later in Center Church, he clarifies the concept further, saying that a theological vision is “a set of biblically grounded, contextual strategic stances and emphases that help bring sound doctrine to bear on the people who live in this particular cultural moment” (374). Or, finally, a theological vision is “a contextualized way of expressing the biblical teaching about the gospel and the work of the church” (348). In other words, theological vision is about how your doctrinal beliefs intersect with—and gain traction within—the actual time and place in which you live and minister.
In order to develop this kind of theological vision, Keller suggests that, in addition to deep reflection on Scripture, you must have some understanding of “when” you are—that is, some recognition of your cultural location and unique historical moment. Having these powers of cultural discernment allows the church leader to know what in the culture can be affirmed and what must be challenged or rejected. Indeed, Keller suggests that a theological vision includes “implicit or explicit readings of culture,” which necessarily impacts many of the most important decisions we make about ministry expression. He offers the following questions to facilitate the development of a theological vision:
- What is the gospel, and how do we bring it to bear on the hearts of people today?
- What is this culture like, and how can we both connect to it and challenge it in our communication?
- Where are we located - city, suburb, town, rural area - and how does this affect our ministry?
- To what degree and how should Christians be involved in civic life and cultural production?
- How do the various ministries in a church - word and deed, community and instruction - relate to one another?
- How innovative will our church be and how traditional?
- How will our church relate to other churches in our city and region?
- How will we make our case to the culture about the truth of Christianity?
Two things are worth highlighting with this list of questions. First, the person who subscribes to a certain confessional document—the Westminster Confession of Faith, let’s say—will receive almost no help from that document in answering these questions. Second, the answers to these questions will profoundly affect how people experience a church, even to a degree that’s difficult to overstate. This is why, as Keller points out, theological vision is such a crucial category in understanding “many of the conflicts in local churches and denominations.” He continues,
Our doctrinal statements of faith and confessions do not tell us what in our culture can be affirmed and what can be challenged, nor do they speak directly to our relationship to tradition and the Christian past or reflect much on how human reason operates. Yet our ministries are shaped profoundly by our assumptions about these issues. When we see other people who say they believe our doctrine but are doing ministry in a way we greatly dislike, we tend to suspect they have fallen away from their doctrinal commitments. They may have, of course; yet it’s equally likely that they haven’t strayed but are working from a different theological vision. Unless we can make these assumptions more visible and conscious, we will misunderstand one another and find it difficult to respect one another. (19)
This helps to explain, at least partly, the dynamic Keller summarizes a couple pages later: “Two churches can have different doctrinal frameworks and ministry expressions but the same theological vision—and they will feel like sister ministries. On the other hand, two churches can have similar doctrinal frameworks and ministry expressions but different theological visions—and they will feel distinct.” I have seen the truth of this statement demonstrated countless times.
This, then, is one of the great benefits of Keller’s concept of theological vision: to make more visible and explicit the assumptions undergirding our various “readings” of culture. When Aaron Renn offers strategies for faithfulness in our current moment, it’s rooted in his historical interpretation of the three worlds of evangelicalism. Obviously, his historical interpretation is contestable, as are his imperatives for what’s called for in response. Similarly, Rod Dreher’s influential “Benedict Option"—even though many of his prescriptions were rather mundane—was still rooted in a particular reading of the times. The point in every case is that such “readings” of our present moment are not straightforward applications of biblical truth to culture. They require complex judgments that arise from many competing intuitions, assumptions, prejudices, and so on. Theological vision, in other words, helps explain the great fracturing of evangelicalism that’s taken place in recent years. These disputes have rarely been over doctrine; rather, they root in deeper apprehensions about culture, the historical forces that have brought us to this point, what threats loom on the horizon, the status of secular sources of learning, the general posture toward the world and the cultural artifacts that have their source therein, and so on.
In an essay in praise of idiots (properly defined), Alan Jacobs argues that the call to “read the signs of the times” has largely been a distraction for Christians. Jacobs is writing in response to (who else?) Rod Dreher, who counsels that drastic measures are called for in light of how dire things are for Christians in America. Jacobs, meanwhile, thinks that—whether Dreher’s interpretation of our situation is correct or not—the call to faithfulness remains the same, unchanged by these (or any?) circumstances. As he puts, “We would do better to ignore the so-called signs of the times in order to focus on what Jesus demands of every Christian everywhere, without exception.” There is, to be sure, much wisdom in Jacobs' counsel. We would be far better off with more idiotic church leaders (perhaps I should have said differently idiotic church leaders), who focus on their small little field and plow away regardless of what’s going on in the wider world.
Yet, I do think Jacobs' view—which is, after all, offered in a blog post and not meant to be the last word on the topic—requires to be supplemented. For, as sympathetic as I am to the idea that we ought to faithfully toil away at the most necessary things regardless of present exigencies, I do think there is an inescapably contextual element to our discipleship. Learning to faithfully inhabit time means learning to see the unique temptations and unique opportunities afforded us in the present. This, I think, is where Keller’s notion of theological vision can help us get our bearings a little bit. As Brad East notes in a programmatic essay on church and culture, there are various “postures” that the church must adopt (e.g., resistance, repentance, reception, reform). Which one is needed at a given moment, or even which combination of postures is needed, “depends entirely on context and content.” If you don’t believe we live in the negative world as Aaron Renn does, then you probably don’t think his solutions are very helpful or necessary. And if you don’t think Christianity is under assault in America in quite the way that Rod Dreher does, then you’re likely not enticed by the Benedict Option. But, obviously, both authors do think they’re reading the signs correctly and, thus, they do think their warnings ought to be taken seriously. With the benefit of some historical distance, the contextual nature of our calling is even easier to discern. Take, for instance, German Lutherans under Hitler and the Third Reich. That situation, obviously extreme, called for something more than simply “business as usual”: namely, costly and prophetic resistance. Of course, the church, then as now, should have faithfully sought to carry out its normal duties (worship, preaching, sacraments, prayer, catechesis, etc.). But, there was a specific burden that the church in that time and place was called to carry. Discerning what that burden is today is a responsibility that we dare not abdicate.
No one will be able to formulate a “perfect,” universally-applicable theological vision. Our readings of culture, happening on the fly and in the middle of things, are always going to be limited (at best) and regularly wrong. In the majority of cases, people are often seeing something real, though partial, that leads them to a certain “meta-reading” of our current situation, with all its attendant prescriptions and what not. Those whose experiences match the cultural reading will find it plausible and, therefore, will opt to “sign on” for it. Those whose experiences don’t match up will reject that reading and go in search of a different one.
Nevertheless, there is great wisdom in seeking to develop a theological vision that draws deeply from the wells of Scripture and the great consensual tradition of the church, even as it seeks to “project” that vision onto the canvas of modern culture. How will the church take shape in this time and place, out of the raw material of this culture? That is the challenge of theological vision.