Gospel in Life is privileged to share stories from Redeemer City to City (CTC)—stories of gospel-changed lives and communities (like the one below). Redeemer City to City was co-founded by Tim Keller. CTC exists to multiply churches and Christian leaders committed to a shared vision for gospel movements in the great cities of the world. Through a worldwide network of regional affiliates, CTC accomplishes this by training, coaching and equipping local leaders and pastors to start and strengthen churches and initiatives that serve the flourishing of their cities. Please pray that God will continue to bring about gospel change through this worldwide network of leaders and trainers. To learn more, visit their website: redeemercitytocity.com.
Yves Grégoire was angry and confused. Angry at himself for not avoiding the accident. Confused that God had allowed it to happen.
He’d been serving God the day of his injury. He was always serving God. He served in church. He told others in his Morocco community about God. On the day he was injured, he was serving God by playing soccer as part of a strategic evangelism effort. Even after the accident, he encouraged the player who collided with him. Yves truly wanted the player to come to know Christ. Surely God should have been pleased with him. Surely blessing was coming his way. But his injury required surgery, and recovery was slow. He couldn’t work. Struggling financially, he and his new wife moved back to Yves’ home in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, but circumstances remained difficult. “I had resentment,” Yves said. “I served the Lord in his house. I preached, proclaimed Christ through evangelism. How could God allow these things to happen to me? Why do I now have financial problems? I have trouble in my work, in my marriage. Why, God?”
The God he had trusted didn’t feel so trustworthy.
The God he had trusted didn’t feel so trustworthy. Yves still had questions. He still felt betrayed. But he still served. If God was displeased with him, he needed to fix that. He and his wife were attending and serving in a church in Abidjan led by Pastor N’Dri Konan Isidore. They liked Pastor Isidore and found his preaching fine. But one Sunday, Pastor Isidore’s preaching sounded different. And it sounded different the next Sunday and the one after that. And it wasn’t just the preaching. “We started seeing the Christ-centeredness of his preaching,” Yves said. “It was really remarkable. And the lyrics of the worship songs were all about Christ and praising God for what he has done. Pastor Isidore was now more concerned about how to build the lives of the people in the church on Christ, more than focusing on the church’s day-to-day problems.”
Yves was intrigued by this shift in his pastor. He learned Pastor Isidore had attended a training event held by City to City (CTC) Africa. Pastor Isidore had participated in CTC training events before, but something happened when he attended this one: CTC Africa’s French language church-planter Intensive in March of 2025. As the modules unpacked the gospel through topics like sonship, idolatry, Christ-centered preaching, and more, Pastor Isidore experienced deep personal renewal that changed everything. After the training, a gospel centrality began to permeate his preaching, worship and church vision. He felt the gospel reorient every area of his life as a husband, father, pastor, and even as a man.
Pastor Isidore wasn’t the only one changed. With Christ centered and exalted in every sermon and every song, the power of the gospel began to soak into Yves’ heart and do its incredible work. God loved him. Not because Yves evangelized. Not because he served. God loved him as a son. The gospel message that Pastor Isidore had heard over and over again at CTC’s Intensive and that he now preached every Sunday began to reorder Yves’ relationship with God. Yves had tried to earn God’s favor through his service. How wrong he’d been! He didn’t need to earn it. He couldn’t earn it. It was a gift. He could rest in God’s love and simply receive his Father’s good gifts. “I now see God as not only a Father,” Yves said, “but as a Father I’m living with. I’m a child who depends fully on my Father, no longer afraid of punishment, but feeling at ease through his love and acceptance of me because of Jesus’ death on the cross on my behalf.”
Yves began to experience a joy in serving in church that he’d not experienced. He adopted this motto: Do what you can and let the Lord do what you can’t. The gospel held the power to change hearts and lives, not him. Even his street ministry changed. “Before, I was using a lot of words and saying a lot of things but not talking much about Christ,” Yves said. “Now I share the non-negotiables: Christ came, he died, he rose again. It’s not like before, when I was doing things, expecting God to reward me. Now it is with joy that I share the gospel. Even when I’m sharing the testimony of my life, I make sure at the end I share what is most important—the good news and the hope we have in Christ.”
Yves had the opportunity to put this new perspective to work when he met a man named Logah Désiré. Logah’s face was bruised and scraped. Yves learned Logah’s injuries were from a recent motorcycle accident. Logah needed money, food, and a place to live for him, his girlfriend and their baby. He asked Yves for help. But Yves’ employment was unstable. He and his family also needed a new place to live. He thought of Peter’s words in Acts 3:6, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have, I give you.” So Yves gave what he had: the gospel.
…all of us, no matter our social status, are loved.
“I started sharing the hope we have in Christ,” Yves said. “I told him how we are all loved by God. The wealthy are not more loved, but all of us, no matter our social status, are loved. I told him we need to be reconciled to God so that we can enjoy what God did through his Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross for us. I asked him to ask himself an important question: How will my life be if I’m reconciled with God and in a relationship with Christ? I invited him to try this new road, this way with the Lord and told him he would see the difference.”
Logah and his girlfriend began attending Yves’ church and heard the gospel again through Pastor Isidore. The people in the church were getting to know them, looking for practical ways to share the love of Christ. But it was all still new when, suddenly, Logah was falsely accused of illegal activity and sentenced to prison. His sentence wasn’t expected to be long, but Yves worried that it would all be too much for Logah. Yves had seen Logah start to respond to the gospel, but had it taken deep enough root to sustain Logah through this crisis, through this injustice?
Church members rallied around Logah’s girlfriend and baby, with one woman inviting them to live with her, and others asking for her help in small tasks and paying her for her time. The church helped to provide food and surrounded her with love and care. Before Logah went into prison, they prayed for him and encouraged him in the gospel. When Yves and a group from the church prepared to visit Logah in prison, Yves wondered what they would face. He remembered his own resentment toward God when circumstances weren’t going well for him. He was prepared to remind Logah of the gospel and of Christ’s love, but Logah needed no encouragement. In fact, it was Logah who encouraged them.
Yves was amazed. Tim Keller used to say that when the gospel is articulated or reflected upon, the power of God Almighty is released. And that’s what Yves witnessed as he visited Logah in prison. “He is the one now sharing joy with us,” Yves said. “He is in jail. We are out. But now he is completely different. Now he is sharing more joy, encouragement with us. We can see fruit. We can see that the gospel is holding him inside the prison—keeping him on the way until today.”
Seeing the gospel bring such radical transformation to his pastor, himself, and Logah gives Yves great hope, even in the midst of his ongoing job insecurity and financial struggles. “My hope is to keep growing in the grace of the gospel, in my marriage, in our family, our church, our community. I want to keep sharing the gospel, impacting the community around me. The gospel kept me until today, despite my imperfections, despite the questions I had in my heart. I want to keep building my life on the gospel.”
CTC Africa continues to journey with Pastor Isidore through an active ecosystem that includes coaching, collaboration, and ongoing gospel content.
