Tim Keller, who died a few days ago, is now experiencing the truth he articulated – that ‘all death can do to Christians is make their lives infinitely better’!

He was a good friend of the Proclamation Trust, speaking here in the UK, at the annual Evangelical Ministry Assembly, on five different occasions between 2005 and 2015 – our most frequent and popular visiting speaker of the 21st century.  Our back catalogue shows that thousands around the world have listened – and re-listened – to those talks.

Indulge me for a moment with two very personal memories of his influence.  In one of his early visits, he exploded open the category of ‘idolatry’, and many of us then became more thoughtful in our preaching about contemporary idols, moving from the simplistic (‘what are our idols today?’) to explore the subtle motivations and desires that lie behind (as Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5 suggest). 

Secondly, Tim impacted my preaching.  He thoroughly championed expository preaching, of course: if it provides the main diet of preaching for a Christian community, then God is setting the agenda (Preaching [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2015] p.27-46).  We want, he said, a ‘pulpit-centred, not pulpit-restricted’ word ministry.  But his expository preaching had a strikingly different style: he sounded like a preacher for a new generation.  He was always engaging, his talks were packed with exegetical insights and stimulating ideas, but it was all delivered in a way that sounded so chatty and, well, normal.  I don’t think I ever had a one-to-one conversation with him.  But the way in which he preached genuinely made me feel he was in dialogue with me.  And that’s why his influence on me felt so personal.

Amongst the many tweets of his pithy aphorisms in the last few days, here’s a good one for preachers everywhere: ‘a good sermon is not like a club that beats upon the will but like a sword that cuts to the heart’.  We will miss his skilled pulpit surgery as we mourn with Kathy and his family.