Photo courtesy of Redeemer Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Tim Keller speaks at the Entrepreneurship Initiative Forum.

June 1, 2010 | “God is an entrepreneur.”

I’d have cringed at those words once, as would many academics and pastors. But I recently had the opportunity to hear the Rev. Tim Keller’s presentation on that theme at Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Entrepreneurship Initiative Forum. It left me convinced of the truth of those words.

Keller has a kind of sneaky, unpretentious brilliance about him, which largely accounts for his church’s growth from a church plant in a living room in 1989 to 5,000 Manhattanite members now and 2,000 more in church plants around greater New York. Media accounts of Keller, even sympathetic ones, misrepresent his gifts by describing him as professorial. But professors are hardly, as a class, given to filling auditoriums with volunteers. Keller’s charisma has more to do with wisdom, humor and profundity.

These attributes were on display as Keller addressed an audience at the fifth of Redeemer’s annual gatherings for investors and entrepreneurs who are part of what Redeemer calls a “movement of innovative, gospel-centered, culture-renewing institutions and ventures.” Participants are gifted in starting and sustaining businesses, nonprofits and art ventures, and speakers included financiers, politicians and business wonks.

But Keller was clearly the megastar, and theology the chief topic of interest. He defused the tension deftly after his long walk to the podium.

“The applause stopped before I got up here,” he said. “That’s never good.”

Entrepreneurs, he argued, are creators. And if they are to create as the triune God creates, they should do so informed by the story of God’s creation, the human fall and divine future redemption. In his address, Keller argued his audience into new, more beautiful ways of viewing the world. I found this four-part schema to be elegant, biblical, expansive and potentially life-changing.

First, he said, creators working in God’s image do not do so to achieve something: power or status or success. That was why the builders of the Tower of Babel created. No, it is simply good to bring order out of chaos. That is reason enough to create: “God didn’t have any reason to create. We do so because we’re reflecting our creator.”

Keller contrasted the biblical creation narrative with that of other ancient cultures. In most stories, the world comes about as a result of violence between gods. Similarly, modern naturalistic accounts portray the world’s deepest nature as one of arbitrariness and violence. But the biblical God has no rivals who could make him fight. God wasn’t forced to create, nor did God do so by accident.

Second, those who create like God do so for the sake of others. The triune God has an orientation directed toward others, first among the divine Persons, and then among the others whom God created. God wants these created others to enjoy and love him as the divine Persons, Father, Son and Spirit, eternally do. God creates so others will have space and share his goods. And human creators should do as well.

Those who create like God, third, do so in full knowledge of the risk and the cost. God was not surprised by humanity’s fall in Genesis. And God knew full well that he would take flesh and go to hell to bring about the salvation of his sisters and brothers. So, too, human entrepreneurs create knowing there will be risk, and in imitation of a God for whom that risk was infinite.

Keller’s fourth point was that Christians know that, despite this risk and cost, creating will have been worth it. “God didn’t just perform one great act of entrepreneurship.” There was a second one, described in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” To create a new humanity of reconciled sisters and brothers in his Son, God was willing to create anew. So, too, do Christian entrepreneurs create in full knowledge of the difficulties, and in full confidence that the reward will be worth it.

And here, Keller said, Christian entrepreneurs have a leg up on secular social entrepreneurship. For Christians, even if a venture fails, it will not be forgotten by God.

The church as entrepreneur

In some ways, the most impressive entrepreneurial initiative at the Forum was Redeemer itself.

In the world of church plants it’s relatively old, dating from the late 1980s. But in terms of the church on the North American scene, it’s almost unheard of: a growing evangelical church in the heart of one of America’s most secular cities. Keller sees Redeemer’s work as an effort to show his fellow evangelicals that the city is no place to be feared. Sure, it’s full of conflicting perspectives on faith and all manner of other things, and it presents opportunities to fall far from one’s faith. It also presents opportunities to fall more deeply in love with Jesus. And it offers what evangelicals have to love most: opportunities for evangelism.

“Georgia and South Carolina have 16 million people in them. New York City has 18 million,” Keller has written. “Now where has your denomination concentrated more of its efforts?”

Many successful church planting stories trade on having a founding pastor with manic networking skills. Church growth Keller-style is quite different.

One can see the fruits at Hunter College on the Upper East Side: several thousand people pile into the auditorium seats, eager for a half-hour sermon stripped of light shows, movie clips or entertainment of any sort. There’s just Keller, a small music stand and rapt attention.