“This is the Rev. Tim Keller, a Manhattan institution, one of those open urban secrets, like your favorite dim sum place, with a following so ardent and so fast-growing that he has never thought to advertise. He rarely speaks to the press. His reticence, though, is about to belong to the past. With the publication this week of his first book, ‘The Reason for God,’ Keller, who is 57, is in the midst of a dramatic change in direction. Once highly protective of his community’s grass-roots approach to growth – tell a friend, bring a friend – Keller is now pitching himself as a C. S. Lewis for the 21st century, a high-profile Christian apologist who can make orthodox belief not just palatable but necessary. To complement this role, Keller is also reaching out to young, urban Christians around the world, offering to help them build churches like his. To put it bluntly, Keller wants to be the Rick Warren of global cities. ‘It’s hard to say this without sounding snobby,’ says Keller in an interview, ‘but some of what we do at Redeemer, we feel would be good everywhere … We want to, as humbly as we possibly can, renew churches.'”
