It is unlikely that Redeemer City to City would exist today without the sermon ministry we now call Gospel in Life. Beginning in the early 1990s, Tim Keller’s Sunday sermons were recorded and distributed on cassette tapes. By the middle of the decade, Redeemer was shipping a staggering 25,000 tapes per year to 32 states and 17 countries.
The sermons were evidence that God was doing something in New York. Right in the heart of America’s most secular city, people were repenting, believing, and following Jesus. Pastors and denominational leaders from across the country and around the world took note. Many came to New York to see the work for themselves. They attended Redeemer services, met with Tim and Kathy in their home, and began to reimagine what gospel-centered ministry could look like in their own cities.
In some ways, City to City eventually took over the role of introducing pastors and church planters to the vision and values of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. As Tim Keller explains it in episode seven of the new podcast series, A Fire Is Lit, “The Redeemer City to City DNA is actually, you might say, the Redeemer DNA writ large.” The core commitments to gospel-centered ministry that have directed Redeemer Presbyterian Church and suffused Tim’s sermons are now embodied in the growing global City to City network. [] [1] To familiarize yourself with the Redeemer and City to City DNA, you can go to this YouTube playlist where you will find 18 short videos of Tim introducing the White Papers he wrote on 18 key subjects. Those papers were discussed, edited, and rewritten with input from global affiliate leaders. It was one of Tim’s last projects.
A Fire Is Lit: The Redeemer City to City Story explores how all this happened — and more. It foregrounds the voices of the people who lived that story, including Tim and Kathy Keller, the founding catalysts of City to City, and the networks of many global leaders. It’s a compelling account, populated by colorful characters. It’s a story of God’s gracious work to make himself known in the great cities of the world. And it shows what Redeemer and City to City’s DNA looks like in real life, applied to global crises and hard choices and in new social and cultural environments.
It’s a story of God’s gracious work to make himself known in the great cities of the world.
Subscribers to Gospel in Life may find it interesting to note how the stories of Gospel in Life and City to City intersect at several points. They have shared origins that began in the 1990s in Redeemer’s sermon tape ministry (which was originally led by a volunteer named Jim Irwin). In 2017, upon Dr. Keller’s “retirement,” he stepped down from the pulpit to focus full-time on the work at City to City, eager to scale the lessons learned in New York to other global cities. Finally, Gospel in Life joined Redeemer City to City in 2023. The sermon ministry and the ministry of training urban practitioners are together again.
Stewarding this story in this format has been a highlight of my tenure at City to City. I’ve been struck by the stunning persistence of the original vision and values over more than 35 years. While Redeemer, Gospel in Life, and City to City have restructured and re-organized many times over the years, they’ve never abandoned those central commitments. Instead, they’ve adapted to the ever-changing challenges of ministry in global cities with confidence that the gospel changes everything — everywhere in the world.
