The Connective Tissue that is the Gospel of Grace

By Christina Stanton

In October 2024, Redeemer Presbyterian Church congregants and attendees at a pastor’s conference gathered at the Church of the Advent Hope on East 87th Street, a Seventh-day Adventist Church. The two groups were present to witness the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the ministry and legacy of the late Timothy Keller, a minister with the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA).

Commemorated on the plaque are these words:

“With deep gratitude, Church of the Advent Hope gives thanks for the gospel-centered ministry of Timothy J. Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which held its first worship service in this building on April 9, 1989. Though Redeemer now gathers across New York City, its enduring influence in making the Gospel clear is felt around the world and resonates within these halls and in the hearts of those who worship here.”

Keller rented space in this Seventh-day Adventist Church as the first meeting place for Redeemer Presbyterian Church and prospered in that space with the help of Hannibal Silver, the assistant pastor at Advent Hope at that time, and Hannibal’s wife, Cybele. (Cybele has continued to work tirelessly for Redeemer ever since, and at present serves on staff at Redeemer East Side in their new church building.)

Redeemer moved on to Hunter College in 1993 as it outgrew the 400-seat space (even after holding four services a Sunday). But Keller and Redeemer continued to influence the Adventist community, especially through the work of Pastor Todd Stout, who spearheaded placement of the plaque as a way to honor a man and a church he believes greatly influenced Christian witness in New York City.

The son of an Adventist preacher, Stout attended seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and began his preaching career in Indiana. He moved to Manhattan with his wife, Sarah, in 2008 and began serving as the urban outreach coordinator at Church of the Advent Hope, one of approximately 200 Seventh-day Adventist churches that serve 60,000 to 80,000 people in the Greater New York City area.

Seeking additional training to help him acclimate to his new physical and spiritual environment, Stout signed up for City Labs, a City to City (CTC) initiative, studying subjects such as church planting in general, church planting in an urban setting, social justice, and faith and work. 

Stout says he found these courses very helpful, especially as he transitioned into a senior pastor role at Church of the Advent Hope, which had grown to about 200 members and was emphasizing a collegiate ministry. “Being rooted in a gospel community during college is important,” he says. “Even in such a transitory city as New York City, it’s important to find a community.”

Because Stout found City Labs so helpful, he decided to pursue further education at Redeemer, despite the differences in doctrine and practice between his Adventist church and Redeemer’s Presbyterian theology. The roots of the Adventists were planted in the 1860s, and the denomination currently has about a million followers in the United States. Adventists, who were known for their abolitionist stances and progressive views on social justice issues in the nineteenth century, worship in austere spaces on Saturdays instead of Sundays, observing a 24-hour period of worship that begins on Friday at sunset. There are about 26 million Adventists worldwide, and the denomination is especially popular in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. “The biggest difference,” explains Stout, “is that we come from an Arminian branch of Protestantism. Our history is connected to Wesleyan Methodism.”

Despite the denominational differences, Stout believed Redeemer’s success in New York City could be used as a template for his own church, so in 2017, Stout joined with a group of pastors who took weekly training classes directly from Keller through CTC for the next six months. The classes were centered around evangelistic preaching, based on Center Church, a book that discusses ways “to make good decisions on how to worship, disciple, evangelize, serve, and engage culture in their field of ministry — whether in a city, suburb, or small town.”

Stout says the experience transformed him. “Tim talked about what it meant to preach the gospel and that the hero of the story has to be Jesus, and not some articulation of what we were supposed to be ‘doing.’ He emphasized God’s work, and not our work,” Stout says. “I went home and started changing my sermon format to reflect my new understanding of how to better communicate being saved by grace. As a result, I started preaching more intentionally, talking more about God’s work — not how to be a better Christian.”

…the gospel and that the hero of the story has to be Jesus, and not some articulation of what we were supposed to be ‘doing.’

Justin Adour, pastor of Redeemer’s East Harlem congregation, attended Keller’s preaching classes with Stout, and says the course’s diversity — cultural, ethnic, racial, and theological — inspired and encouraged him. “There were consistently Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and even Seventh-day Adventists gathered to grow in their ability to better communicate and embody the Gospel in their ministry contexts — ministry contexts that were themselves also diverse,” Adour said.

“This diversity proved that there is more that binds the Church in NYC than separates us and that the connective tissue was the Gospel of grace. Tim’s ability to keep that central, provided the opportunity for me, and others, to get to know leaders like Todd,” he said. “Presbyterians and Seventh-day Adventists do not often find themselves in a community like that, but I am grateful for the opportunity to see how God is at work all throughout this city we love.”

Church of the Advent Hope
Church of the Advent Hope

Since attending City Lab and Keller’s preaching classes, Stout has taken on new roles in his denomination and has helped create the Urban Ministry Network and Advent Hope Ventures, an incubator for innovative ministry projects in urban settings. He also serves on the board of Adventists for Social Justice and represents Advent Hope in the Adventist Peace Fellowship.

Wanting to provide an educational opportunity like the one he received in his CTC classes, Stout created the two-day October conference that was hosted and spearheaded by the Church of the Advent. Opening the conference to participants from all denominations, Stout advertised it in spaces including Christianity Today. Forty pastors from around the country gathered on October 28 to hear speakers such as Adventist Pastor Sam Leonor and Collin Hansen, who wrote a celebrated 2023 book considering the influences Timothy Keller drew on.

According to Stout, the conference focused on “what does it mean to preach the gospel, what does it mean to be gospel-centered in our preaching, and how to do it effectively.” Breakout sessions allowed the participants to debrief with each other, and the participants found insight and encouragement.

This diversity proved that there is more that binds the Church in NYC than separates us and that the connective tissue was the gospel of grace.

Stout hopes the conference will become an annual event and is open about his inspiration for the event: “City Lab and the preaching classes were the impetus behind this conference. If I hadn’t attended those trainings, the conference wouldn’t have happened.”

As Keller and his work were the inspiration for Stout’s conference, the event provided the perfect setting to unveil the plaque dedicated to Keller. A few dozen Redeemer members joined the pastors at the conference for the dedication.

“It all started here,” Hansen said as he looked around the church during the dedication ceremony. “It would be easy to attribute this growth uniquely to the person of Tim Keller, who was an especially gifted preacher. … But that’s certainly not how Tim encouraged his congregation to see this work of God. He wanted the entire congregation to understand their church together as a special work of God. It was a revival built on the foundation of grace. The power of God to save sinners.”

The plaque will be placed outside the entrance of this Upper East Side church as a nod to the history of this building and the history of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. But the plaque is not just a record of past events; rather, it also celebrates how the legacy of Tim Keller lives on through pastors such as Stout and hundreds of others across a multitude of Christian churches and denominations.

And while acknowledging the extraordinary influence Keller had on his life and his ministry, Todd Stout repeatedly gives ultimate credit to the ultimate source, reminding all that it is God who is doing the work.

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