Christians reflect on 'legendary' church founder Tim Keller's emphasis on grace, rising above politics

Members of the church founded by the Rev. Timothy Keller recounted to Fox News Digital the late New York pastor's influence on their understanding of the Christian faith and how he was able to rise above the political fray.

"The gospel says you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, but more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope," Keller would often say, an aphorism multiple sources told Fox News Digital was the most memorable thing he preached from the pulpit of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Keller, who died on May 19 following a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer, founded Redeemer in 1989 after being appointed as the director of church planting in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). He also had served a stint as a young pastor at a small church in Virginia.

Redeemer would eventually swell to more than 5,000 weekly congregants at multiple locations.

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Redeemer City to City, Keller's church-planting ministry, fanned out through the globe and helped to start more than 1,000 churches in more than 150 cities. He penned 31 books that sold more than 6 million copies and were translated into 29 languages, the bestselling of which were "The Reason for God" and "The Prodigal God."

‘Extremely humble’

Despite his international fame, Keller remained humble, said Jana Van Singel, who served as a deaconess at Redeemer.

"You would never know upon meeting him at first that he's this legendary minister who's written so many books and has preached all over the world," she said. "He was just extremely humble, down-to-earth and, to me, the epitome of what a Christian leader should be."

Van Singel believes Keller's intellect — he would pull quotes from Kierkegaard, Marx and many others to illustrate his points — made his sermons appealing to a large swath of young, metropolitan New Yorkers who might not typically be drawn to a church setting.

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"They would come, and they would say, 'This is like a philosophy lesson, but he's relating it to the Bible,'" she said. "He could speak to so many different types of people from different genres and backgrounds."

Despite his breadth of knowledge, Van Singel said Keller's primary message was about Jesus and the grace of God, which she said resonated with her "because I'm a sinner, and I'm in need of grace."

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"Sometimes I don't feel loved, but I know somebody as amazing as Jesus, who was willing to die for me, that he loves me no matter what," she said. "And I love that reminder. Every time [Keller] said it, I knew that he was speaking to me. He was speaking to a multitude, but he was speaking to me. He was bringing Jesus to my heart, to me."

‘It isn’t a political issue'

Beth Lefever, who was a member of Redeemer for 25 years, remembered she cried during the first three Keller sermons she heard, overcome with his message of God's grace and forgiveness. She told Fox News Digital that she is a pastor's daughter who became a Christian at an early age, but had been hurt in churches where she and her family were mistreated.

"It was just so different," she said of Keller's preaching. "It was so much more about, ‘Yes, you’re a sinner, but you're so much more loved by God than you realize.'"

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Keller's gracious demeanor helped his gospel message transcend the divisions of politics, which Lefever said he was careful to warn against.

"Arguing about it is fine," she said of Keller's view toward politics. "But hating each other, turning on each other or putting others down was not. So it means that the politics aren't the most important thing."

"To him, that was what people in power wanted us to do, but he put the brakes on and said, 'No, that's not where we want to be as Christians. That will tear us apart, and God wants us to be together.'"

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"There was a sermon where he said, 'I am not going to preach on a certain side of the political realm, and I'm not going to pick sides,'" Van Singel remembered. "He said, 'I'm just going to speak the truth. I'm going to speak the truth about Jesus, the love about Jesus, and it isn't a political issue with Jesus.'"

‘The real deal’

Keller's emphasis on God's grace also had a profound impact on Laura Pfortmiller, a musician who started attending Redeemer after having grown disillusioned with what she described as the "works-based righteousness" of her upbringing in the Church of the Nazarene, an offshoot of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement.

Pfortmiller told Fox News Digital that Keller's preaching "was the first time I'd heard this perspective that God is grace, that we can't save ourselves by what we do or how we act."

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"I went through a period of time when I messed up a lot and made some pretty terrible choices," Pfortmiller said. "To come to understand that with God, there is no Plan B – it's not like I had messed up and was therefore on this second-class citizen trajectory, but was rather a daughter of God, the king of the universe – that was mind-blowing to me."

Pfortmiller said such an idea was integral to every sermon Keller ever preached.

"It always turned back to grace and to what God had done to draw us to him, and how Jesus' sacrifice and his atonement was the through line of Christianity," she said.

When he first heard Keller preach in the early 1990s, Laura's husband Kyle said he had become agnostic and was drifting into New Age beliefs and practices after falling away from his Methodist background during college. When he met his future wife in New York, she challenged him to attend Redeemer amid his claims that Jesus was simply a great teacher.

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"I remember it to the day," Kyle said of his first Keller sermon. "I had never heard anything like Tim Keller before, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is life-changing stuff.’ I had professed my faith before, but that was the moment where the rubber hit the road for me, and I said, ‘This is the real deal.’"

What Kyle described as the years-long spiritual attacks he had been suffering stopped after hearing Keller's sermon.

"After that night, it was gone," he said. "That was rather amazing."

‘God is in control’

Rob DeRocker, an economic marketing consultant who has attended Redeemer with his wife Melinda for decades, pinpointed Keller's 2004 sermon "Your Plans: God's Plan," as especially memorable.

Based off passages from Proverbs 11 and 12, Keller preached that many cultures have historically believed that one's fate is subject to the whims of external, often impersonal forces.

DeRocker said Keller contrasted that worldview with many of the elite in places like New York City, who see themselves as "totally in control," both of which Keller rejected as false.

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"[He said] the understanding of the Bible is neither of those, and it's much more nuanced," DeRocker said. "And then he goes on to say that on one hand, decisions we make – good and bad – absolutely have consequences. And you will enjoy the fruits or suffer from those consequences."

"But ultimately, on the other hand, God is in control. So even the worst choices that you make that result in bad consequences, God can redeem and use for his purpose and ultimately yours."

"That's just an example that you don't hear from many pulpits," he added.

‘It pierced me’

DeRocker's wife Melinda said she was raised Baptist in the Deep South, where she was inculcated with the importance of "being a good girl" and reflecting well on her family name. She said Keller's preaching transformed her when she first heard him at 45 years old.

"I have never heard grace like this before in my life," Melinda told someone after first hearing Keller's sermon, which she said prompted joy.

"For me, it was like living water, hearing him preach," she said. "I couldn't get enough of it." She noted Keller's simple, yet profound presentation of the gospel was unlike what she grew up with in her Baptist church.

"It just hadn't pierced me yet," she said of the gospel. "Finally, at 45, it pierced me."

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Ben Ghatan, a 19-year-old student at Georgetown University, told Fox News Digital that his Christian faith is "largely a result of Tim Keller's evangelism in my life."

"Growing up in New York with an agnostic household, my childhood was surrounded by skepticism to objective truth," he said, adding that the discourse in school has been "defined by a consensus that there was nothing more in this world than what we see."

Keller's ministry offered hope for a broken city, country and world, Ghatan said, which helped him realize his own need for God in his life.

"We would be remembering Tim wrongly by idolizing his life," he added. "It's my prayer that his life might be a reminder to set our eyes on Jesus' love for this world and our need for his redemptive work in our lives."

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An online memorial service for Keller is slated to take place in the coming weeks, according to Redeemer's website.