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To Be Continued… with Tim Keller is a captivating podcast inspired by the wisdom of beloved pastor and theologian, Dr. Tim Keller. The premiere episode features a conversation with Tim Keller. Subsequent episodes seamlessly blend archived Keller teachings with fresh dialogues featuring Christian leaders from across the globe. Through these conversations, "To Be Continued…" paints a hopeful picture of the global church, bridging the gap between timeless truths and contemporary challenges.
In partnership with Redeemer City to City, each episode showcases a dynamic exchange between two global leaders deeply shaped by the gospel-centered approach infused throughout Keller's work, delving into topics central to city ministry, but accessible to all.
Listen and discover that the best conversations don’t end… they continue.
Laura Sauriat:
Let's face it, cities are complex. In cities, you find more skeptics, more religions, more suffering. You also find more diversity in background, worldview and ideology. Cities are centers of much of the world's wealth, power, art, and innovation, all of which eventually shapes and informs non-urban lifestyles. It could be said that the future of the world is forged in cities. This is To Be Continued with, and without Tim Keller. And on this podcast, I'll be joined by dynamic City to City leaders. These city leaders have been shaped by the work of the late Dr. Tim Keller and have much to share about how the gospel can bring shalom and hope to our cities, our work, and our relationships. So wherever it is in the world that you find yourself, we invite you to listen in on our conversation, one that we hope will spark new ideas, curiosities, and questions. Because the best conversations don't end. They continue.
Tim Keller:
You really can't bring revivals about, and yet you really can prepare for revivals. Martin Lloyd Jones in his great book on revival, or it was actually a bunch of sermons on revival, points out that revivals are very much like what Elijah did on Mount Carmel. Elijah built an altar, but he didn't try to light it. He let God light it, and then fire came down from heaven. Now, here's the thing. He prayed and prayed and fire came down from heaven. If he hadn't built the altar, would God have just brought his fire down into a mud puddle? No. But on the other hand, he didn't have any sense that if he built the altar that he could light it. So when we talk about extraordinary prayer and small groups and rediscovering the gospel and trying to innovate ministry, when we talk about seeking to be the kind of leaders God wants us to be and caring about the poor, when you do that, you are building an altar.
Hear me? But on the other hand, there is absolutely no way without God responding to prayer and sending down the fire that you actually have a revival. So there is something you can do. On the other hand, there's another sense in which there's nothing you can do. You can prepare for it, but you can't ignite it, as it were. Extraordinary prayer, there's never been revival without people who pray, pray, pray, pray their heads off. And the reason I mentioned extraordinary is not just the normal prayers that you give your devotional life and praying at church, but I mean really, really saying, oh Lord, come down, melt the mountains and come down.
Laura Sauriat:
That clip from Tim Keller gives us a brief introduction to today's conversation on corporate gospel renewal. Today I'm joined by two leaders who find themselves in very different parts of the world, south Florida and Southeast Asia to be exact. But as you'll soon hear, Al Barth and Anand Mahadevan are close in heart and vision when it comes to today's theme. Hello, Anand and Al, welcome to our conversation on gospel renewal. I've been looking forward to this.
Anand Mahadevan:
Thank you, Laura. I'm Anand Mahadevan. I serve with City to City as the training director for Asia Pacific. It's always great to have people from different cultures talking about things, so looking forward to this.
Al Barth:
Well, I'm glad to be here as well and nice to renew relationships with both of you. My name is Al Barth and I've been working as a global catalyst for Redeemer City to City for the last 20 years or so relating to the cities of North America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
Laura Sauriat:
I'm wondering if you could explain how you think church communities versus individuals might experience a gospel renewal.
Anand Mahadevan:
Yeah, I'd like to reflect on the difference between how God renews individuals and communities. And first of all, I find it helpful to recognize that these two things are so deeply interconnected. And before we even think about the differences, it's helpful to appreciate how deeply interconnected these are. And I also think different cultures tend to place perhaps more emphasis on either of the two. The part of the world where I come from, and much of Asia, the communal aspect of our faith is so real and so celebrated. I think we tend to place a lot more emphasis on renewal and communal celebration, experiential faith. We tend to value these more than a more personal introspective, perhaps experience of our own faith. And so it's helpful to recognize that the things that each culture values have beautiful things in it, in mean that's in my part of the world, it's integral to our culture and there are beautiful things in it, but only that can also be limiting. And perhaps in the West, I would imagine perhaps there's a great appreciation of reflection, introspection, silence, solitude, and those are beautiful things as well, but also limiting in some ways.
Laura Sauriat:
Thank you. I wondered if there was anything you wanted to add to this Al?
Al Barth:
Gospel renewal is a supernatural occurrence. It doesn't just come about as a result of a certain methods being employed or that sort of thing. It's literally the Holy Spirit affecting people's hearts, either bringing them to real faith in Christ or renewing their faith, renewing their commitment to him, renewing a sense of repentance and commitment to follow him. It often really starts with individuals becoming very aware of their sinfulness or their flawed natures, which causes them to respond to Christ, asking him to begin to change them or to build their faith or if you will renew their faith. And that I think usually comes a result of two things. It comes usually when the word of God is preached very clearly and the gospel is explained clearly to people. The other thing that I think, and maybe this is even the earlier step, is when people begin to earnestly seek the Lord in prayer, both in their own lives but also for their communities, maybe for the world around them.
Laura Sauriat:
Well, that leads me into the topic of prayer. You greatly opened the door for me on that one, wanted to know about extraordinary prayer that looks outward and inward. And Tim says, you can't bring about revivals, but you can prepare for them. What might preparing for a revival look like?
Al Barth:
You can hope and pray for revival, but you actually can't produce it in relation to certain methodologies. So, when Tim makes that kind of statement or I make similar statements, I think that the basic pieces that prepare the way, that make it possible is a movement of prayer, a reemphasis on preaching the word of God, because the Bible itself says that the gospel, and in other places the word, is power. It's actually when that word hits the person's ear that penetrates the heart that the Holy Spirit does something, and then it's a recovery of the gospel itself. We often lose it either with moralism or some sort of relativism, and we have to return to what the gospel is really about and call people to respond, to make a decision to bring about changes within their lives. So I think prayer is really important, and I'm not sure I want to call it extraordinary. I know Tim uses that word. I prefer the term concerted prayer, both concerted in a number of different people praying, but also this earnestness of seeking the Lord's face and asking him to do things in our midst or through us. So I see prayer as being unbelievably important to any kind of renewal or revival. If we really want to change things, we need to get on our faces.
Anand Mahadevan:
First, I would say the effect of prayer in my own heart and the impact that prayer has in my own heart. The part of the world where I come from is a very performance driven culture. The de facto mode of existence is anxious and stressed. There's constantly pressure to keep proving yourself. Whether you're a professional or a minister, doesn't matter. You have to keep proving yourself. And the greatest needs, sole needs of a majority of people are success and security. What coming apart from Christ? So what prayer does first to my own heart is really calm my heart, is to help me anchor myself in Christ, to help me helping rest in Christ. And as I look back at 10 years of church planting, I don't think there's anything meaningful that's been accomplished without prayer. Also, I find it very helpful to distinguish between renewal and revival.
Renewal—both individual and in a church—is something that all individuals and all churches should expect to be happening all the time through everyone. It's slow, it's gradual. It's not seen, it's not powerfully visible in that sense, but it's happening. It's like a plant growing. You water the plant. If there's enough sunlight, there's enough nutrients, protection from pests, the plant will grow. It's slow. It takes time, but it will grow. Revival, on the other hand, is something very different. We don’t know when it comes. We don't know how long it's going to sustain. We don’t know where it's going to come and whatever methodology is or whatever we do, there's no guarantee it's going to come. It's a sovereign, mysterious work of God. It's like Elijah building the altar and our role in ongoing gospel renewal is to keep building that altar and make sure the altars is there.
But it's God who sends a fire. When he sends a fire, how he sends a fire is sovereign and mysterious. And so I think we are called to live with a sense of anticipation, with a sense of even holy discontent, especially the part of the world where I come from, where less than 3% of the 1.4 billion people who live in my country are followers of Christ. So to be able to distinguish between the two, I think I find very helpful. I have to add a story here, a recent experience. So during the pandemic at the church that I lead, we prayed for 30 minutes every evening for about eight months meeting on Zoom online. We didn't have an agenda, it was, we just felt that the most appropriate Christian response to the pandemic was to pray. So we actually met twice every day, first 30 minutes in the morning where we would meet together, we would read a chapter of the Bible together and pray together, and then we would meet again in the evening for another 30 minutes on Zoom and just pray as whatever needs we felt.
And we did that for eight months nonstop. Sundays were the only exception because we had the worship service online and after the pandemic, as we were hearing about churches, how it is hard to come back and all of that. And we experienced difficulties too, of course. But as we look back, we doubled in a few months after the pandemic in terms of size, our giving doubled. We kind of grew in every single parameter. And it as we keep seeing this, for many years, we were praying, God help us grow more, help us grow more, help us grow more in one sense. But after eight months of concerted prayer, we kind of found ourselves praying, God, we're trying to keep pace with all that you're doing. Slow down please so we can build structures to make sure that we steward this growth. And that's what prayer does.
Al Barth:
I very much agree with you, Anand. I think it is really helpful to talk more about renewal, gospel renewal than revival, because revival, as you were saying, we can't control that. The renewal piece, we can at least to a degree. So if the biblical characteristics of the church are present, then oftentimes we'll see the Lord renew individuals and renew that corporate entity. So I agree completely.
Quote from The Chronicals of Narnia; The Lion the Witch and the Wordrobe:
I don't think you'll get back in that way. You see, I've already tried. Will we ever go back? Well, I expect so. It'll probably happen when you're not looking for it. All I'm saying is to keep your eyes open.
Laura Sauriat:
Those who went to Narnia were forever changed, but they were often alone. Let's go back to our conversation with Al and Anand to talk about how the gospel can change whole communities. I wondered if aside from yourselves, anyone you could point to who might have lives marked by drastic conversion experiences, which led to more conversion experiences.
Al Barth:
So one of the stories that I enjoyed telling is, there was a young man that came to a church in the center of Budapest, Hungary, and it was a church that really had never had any gospel witness in it. It was built around the turn of the century, that is the last century, as a kind of a monument to modernism. And as far as we know, there was never a clear understanding of the gospel that was proclaimed from this. So he comes to this church, there's maybe 170 people in it, but it seats like, I dunno, 1200 or something, some huge number. And he's trying to figure out how do I bring about some sort of renewal in this church? And from what he could tell, none of the officers of the church were real believers in Christ. They were churched, of course, they believed in God, but there was no sense of being converted, personal change, that sort of thing.
And for the most part, he couldn't really figure out whether any of the people that were attending the church really had a lively faith in Christ. So we were talking about what could he possibly do. And one of the odd phenomena in that church was it is the most requested church in all of Hungary for weddings. It's right on the banks of the Duna River or the Danube. And it's a church that's built in the round. It has a round community table, and then the pews go out in a star shape. It's an absolutely gorgeous building. And then as you open the front doors of the church, you look across the parliament building, which is one of the prettiest buildings in all of Europe. So every year from April to September, they would do about 95 weddings, 95 weddings. So I was asking David, okay, so how does this work? And he said, well, the way it actually works on Saturdays is we have one at eight, one at nine, one at 10, one at 11, one at 12, one at one all during the day. And he said, two months before the couple is going to get married, they gather together and we assign them a pastor, we tell them what they can do, all those kinds of things. And then 8, 10, 12 weeks later, we actually perform the wedding. And I said, that seems like a golden opportunity that you could use.
Why don't you design a course, something like Alpha or Christianity explored that would over the eight weeks that they have before that month, you could basically expose them to Christianity. So he said, okay, he'd do it. So he actually quickly translated the alpha course into Hungarian. What happens is there were 44 couples that were to be married, 22 of them agreed to come. So they literally had 44 people that were attending those classes every Sunday night. But the result of that eight week course is by the end of it, 21 of the 44 people that came had come to know Christ. So he goes to the elders after this first run and he said, listen, I want to make sure that you guys know exactly what I'm doing. I've been teaching this introduction to Christianity course to the people that are going to be married.
And I think it'd be really helpful if each one of you sometime over the next year would come to the course and actually see what's taking place. Make a long story short, within I think it was 18 months, all the elders had come to Christ. And then the elders got excited about it and they said, oh, this is amazing stuff. We need to get everybody in the congregation to come to this course. So they began offering courses to the congregation. Bottom line, I think it was within three years, the church had gone from about 140 people to 450 in the morning and about 150 in the evening. And it was really just a result of using a pretty simple course to expose people to the truths of Christianity and it brought about renewal in the church.
Laura Sauriat:
I wondered, Anand, if you could speak to a similar experience of this sort of renewal.
Anand Mahadevan:
Yeah, I'll be happy to. But if I may, just to kind of add one more perspective to what Al was saying from our culture, parts of Asia, which are not Christianized cultures, when I hear stories like the once Al just shared what a beautiful story, what an amazing story. And I get really excited and I begin to expect the same. But in the context of our culture, it does happen. It doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes it's slow and sometimes like that. And so you have to go back. One common thing that I feel that I see is people feeling a sense of being unburdened. It's beautiful to watch that a few things can give me greater joy. Just see people feel unburdened. We are a performance driven work-based culture. You're blessed if you do this, if you do this, if you do this. But even economically, we are at a stage where everything is very performance driven. It's all works oriented. And so for someone who's been immersed in that culture and in carrying that burden, sometimes even for a lifetime to truly understand the gospel of grace, and that could be a nominal Christian experiencing it, that could be someone from a Hindu background coming to faith, whatever the context when they come to truly understand the gospel, that sense of feeling unburdened is just so, so beautiful to watch.
Laura Sauriat:
Well, that's wonderful. So the term spiritual emotions, what are they and how would we identify them?
Anand Mahadevan:
I find it really helpful to think about spiritual emotions. I find it really helpful to understand spiritual emotions by thinking of the opposite of it, which is fleshly emotions. Galatians, if you walk by the spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So the way I would articulate and understand and identify spiritual emotions, I think two characteristics. One, of course it's flowing from the gospel applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit. When the gospel is applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, it moves, deeply moves, powerfully moves the affections of our hearts, and that kind of gives birth to some of these beautiful emotions of love, joy, et cetera. But the interesting thing is Christians and non-Christians do experience joy. So what really makes an emotions spiritual for me in my understanding is, where the world would expect you to feel sorrow, a Christian will still have joy. Where the world would expect you would be anxious or stressed or worked up, when you still experience peace. So when these emotions are surprisingly counterintuitive that only a Christian can experience, that only the gospel can bring forth in our hearts. And so I find it helpful to see fleshly emotions as a way of to contrast fleshly emotions, to really understand what's spiritual emotions really mean, and to make sure, are they really counterintuitive? I mean, everyone can experience joy, but am I experiencing joy when the world would expect me to experience sorrow? So that's kind of the way I would frame the conversation, any conversation on spiritual emotions.
Al Barth:
Let me go in a slightly different direction, and this is not in response to what you were just saying, Anand, but one of the things that we've observed in any number of places, and a lot of this has to do with culture or subcultures, but there are certain cultures that are emotionally more expressive or effusive, and these are gross overgeneralizations, but the Brazilian cultures tend to be pretty emotional, or Latino cultures tend to be very expressive effusive emotionally. Same with Korean, which is really interesting. But then there's other cultures that are very emotionally reserved. So I even tell the story when we were first planting the first three daughters of Redeemer in New York. That here there were three guys planting churches. We were all, I would call emotionally reserved. So we had a certain way of doing church that wasn't going to be effective in many of the other subcultures or even socioeconomic strata within New York. But having said that, it's not necessarily about outward expression of emotion. It is what's taking place within the heart. So even though I may be emotionally reserved, I don't tend to raise my hands and worship, and I actually resist people pushing me toward that because that's not who I am.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not responding very much in my heart as I'm hearing this message, as I'm being cut to the quick and I'm responding many times with horrific sadness over my own sin, or I'm moved greatly by what's taking place in our world. The idea of spiritual emotions I think should be primarily viewed as positive. We should not see the expression of spiritual emotions as a negative, but the way we express them may be quite different. But if you are not moved emotionally by the gospel itself, you probably don't really understand it because it's an incredible story. And when you interact with the Lord God Almighty, and you begin to experience the depths or the breadth of his love for you, it often will move you to tears or it moves you to this great joy that is abiding. So I think that's how I would kind of go at the question.
Laura Sauriat:
A common question many people navigate is deciding between staying aligned with a group of people or a belief system and needing to pull away from that group because of shifting values. We even write songs about it. We face similar questions and decisions when it comes to church.
Song:
So you got, lemme know, should I stay or should I go?
Laura Sauriat:
I think perhaps our last question might be, what if your church isn't gospel driven? Should you stay and pray for corporate renewal or is it better to leave?
Al Barth:
Well, that's a question that has arisen over and over again in the US in relation to denominations. When a denomination gets off track doctrinally or that sort of thing, when do you stay? When do you leave? Can you bring about reform within it? On the individual church level, I think the answer becomes much more clear. I would tend to advocate for particularly local church situation is that your first reaction should not be to go out and create another church. We are called to unity in Christ. We're called to work out our differences and actually be able to tolerate a variety of different people within our churches. And I think church leadership has an obligation to try to create that atmosphere. I know in the churches that I planted, all of them were Presbyterian by the way, but we always wanted to make sure that people that were from baptistic backgrounds or charismatic backgrounds were welcome within the church.
Because my contention was the only real qualification for a membership in a local church should be that I know Jesus Christ and my personal Lord and Savior, I've repented from my sin, I've trusted in Christ, I've committed myself to follow him to the best of my ability. That's it. You don't have to agree with our view of baptism. You don't have to agree about our position on eschatology or any of those kinds of things. And that really should be the way that we relate to other churches in a city. We should find our unity in Christ in that shared understanding of the gospel. And yes, we may worship differently, so therefore we might need to assemble differently. This one might be characterized by a lot of either emotional expression like we were talking about before, or charismatic expression, and others would say, oh, no, no, that's not what we do.
And so we're going to worship separately, but we're going to regard each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. And I think through most of what City to City has done in the last 20 years, we've both promoted the idea of Christian brothers and sisters coming together, come around as idea of a biblical understanding of the gospel. Let's promote that. And even though we may disagree about different things, let's care for one another and let's work in a concerted way for the good of the gospel within that city, within that region, within that nation, within that part of the world. And that has occurred to a great extent.
Laura Sauriat:
And on those delightful stories, I just want to thank you Anand and Al for this very thoughtful and encouraging conversation. And it's just great to be with you this morning or this afternoon, Anand.
Al Barth:
Well, thank you Laura, and really nice re-meeting you, Anand.
Anand Mahadevan:
Yeah, thank you Laura, and great, great talking to you, Al. It's been a wonderful conversation.
Laura Sauriat:
This is To Be Continued with Tim Keller. I'm your host, Laura Sauriat. Thank you so much for listening. We hope today's episode inspires you to continue the conversation, which you can do by sharing this podcast within your own circles. City to City is a nonprofit whose vision is to see the gospel of Jesus Christ, transform lives and impact cities. To learn more, visit redeemercitytocity.com. Follow us on social media at RedeemerCTC. All of the above can be found in our show notes To Be Continued is produced in partnership with Redeemer City To City, our producers are Stephanie Cunningham and Rebekah Sebastian Audio Engineering by Jon Seale.
Stand clear of the closing doors please.