Tim Keller, Church Planting, and Watergate: A Tale of Sovereignty

Tim Keller is on of my favorite pastors, and perhaps the most culturally relevant and winsome in the United States. I am truly greatful for his ministry and am a student of it because of how Christ-centered, Biblically faithful, and God-honoring it is in an incomparably wise way. Here is a rather fascinating tale that he relates parts of in two different sermons. Tim Keller started Redeemer Presbyterian in NY because of Watergate; sort of.

1. Tim Keller planted Redeemer Church because he entered a Presbyterian denomination that encouraged church planting.
2. Keller entered that denomination because in his last semester at seminary he took two courses with a professor who convinced him to adopt Presbyterian theology.
3. Keller sat under that professor because at the very last minute the professor arrived at the seminary after having bureaucratic visa problems. (The professor was British.)
4. While that professor was having visa problems, the seminary dean prayed one day about how he didn’t know how they were going to get the professor to arrive, and his prayer partner happened to be a seminary student named Mike Ford.
5. Mike Ford happened to have some clout to get them through the bureaucratic snag because he was the son of Gerald Ford, the sitting President of the United States.
6. Gerald Ford was President of the United States because Richard Nixon resigned.
7. Nixon resigned because a bunch of burglars broke into Watergate and were caught.
8. The burglars were caught because one of them happened to leave a door unlatched to an office they had just bugged, and then a night watchman just happened to walk by and notice the unlatched door.
9. So “if that [burglar] had latched the door,” Keller half jokes, “if that door had been closed just two more inches, we wouldn’t be here tonight. Even Watergate happened for you.”

Andy Naselli comments: Keller’s point is that you can’t muck up your life. There is no plan B. We may perceive one of about a billion reasons for an event. Very seldom do we get a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a glimpse of how God is working all things together for good for those who love him, but He is.

Thank God that He is in control and He is working all things [on a level realized only by what we call omniscience] for the good of those who love Him (Rom 8:28). There is a reason this verse is so quoted, and its because of the stories like the one above. I am ridiculously comforted by meditation on this wonderful truth.

Soli Deo Gloria!
 - The Reader