The Eudaimonia Blog

I’m in Calgary currently as my son Calvin chases his dream of a Nationals championship with his club volleyball team. Tomorrow Calvin’s team is one of eight teams out of the original thirty-two, to have a shot at the Nationals championship. It’s been an exciting, even exhilarating week, but my heart is also heavy today as we lost an exemplary leader and man today. Pastor Tim Keller is with the Lord after a cancer battle took him at the age of seventy-two.

I don’t know what it is about age that brings more experiences with disappointment, but one of my disappointments in life has been seeing leaders turn out to be different than what they were advertised to be. I went to seminary back in the mid-90s to study under one of my “heroes” of the faith, only to discover once I got close to this man, that he was actually quite arrogant in a lot of ways and had unceremoniously left a church I would later work for, causing a lot of harm to people in his wake. In the early 2000s, I had come to admire a pastor and movement leader serving in one of the most underserved parts of the world, only to later discover that this pastor and his brother who ran a large ministry, were not particularly men of high character. In more recent years, without going into the details, I lost a mentor and friend I had high hopes of growing late into life getting to know well.

I’ve tried to learn the lesson of not making leaders into heroes or even worse, idols; after all, there is only One Perfect Man and Saviour. And perhaps it was a gift that I only learned from Tim Keller from afar. In my 20s, I told Tanya that really only two callings I believed would take us out of our then place of service, either one to the west coast or if the opportunity ever opened up to work alongside Tim Keller in New York. Maybe it was a gift that the former came to pass and not the latter, that I didn’t rub up too close to maybe my last contemporary “hero” of the Christian faith. One of my seminary professors Dr. Steve Brown used to say, “if you are going to make heroes out of men, make sure they are dead.” Well, I made something of a hero out of Tim Keller while he was alive (sorry Dr. Brown), and I even told him back in 2010 when I met him at one of our denominational gatherings called, General Assembly, that his ministry had deeply impacted my life, and I was so grateful for it. Keller seemed genuinely touched by my approaching him and sharing my gratitude for his ministry. In light of all the disappointment we’ve seen among evangelical leaders in recent years, Tanya said to me earlier today, “we don’t always know the heart of leaders when we aren’t close to them, but it really seems that Keller ran a good race and was faithful. It certainly seems that way, and I’m hopeful it was.” Keller remained a hero to me while still living, and knowing what I know, I can now heed Dr. Brown’s advice all the more as our brother, pastor and teacher now reigns with Christ in glory. R.I.P. Pastor Tim. I’m grateful.