“I saw a connection between the ideas in The Keller Center in its desire to bring together various thinkers, pastors, and academicians and my own desire for gospel renewal and spiritual formation within the broader global church,” she told RNS in an email.
The center’s work will be informed by a national survey of people who have left churches, conducted in partnership with political scientists Ryan Burge, a Baptist pastor and professor at Eastern Illinois University, and professor Paul Djupe of Denison University, who both study the changing religious landscape. The findings of that study will be published in a forthcoming book, “The Great Dechurching,” co-written by Keller Center staffer Michael Graham.
Hansen said he hopes the center will help churches create space where Christians and their neighbors can meet and build friendships.
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The launch of the center reflects a larger concern among evangelicals about their ability to connect with Americans in the 21st century. Along with political polarization, exacerbated during the Trump presidency, and the growth of the so-called nones, who claim no religion, there’s been a loss of faith in institutions, including organized religion.
Evangelical leaders are fighting back broadly, in efforts such as the billion-dollar “He Gets Us” ad campaign, which includes television commercials — including a pair planned for the Super Bowl — and billboards around the country that relate the life and teaching of Jesus to modern day.
Ed Stetzer, director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, who consulted with the “He Gets Us” campaign, called the ads “pre-evangelism,” establishing a familiarity with Jesus that pastors and other evangelists in the past could expect in nearly any American.
“The more distant Christian memory becomes in culture, the more you will need apologetics centers and pre-evangelism ad campaigns, he said.
Stetzer said Keller’s reputation for ministering in a secular urban setting makes him an apt model for the center that bears his name. “As the rest of the country becomes more like New York, they are going to want to hear from someone who has been in a similar situation and has been effective,” he said.
Hansen said he hopes the center will help people see the scope of changes that churches are facing in the culture. The loss of faith in institutional religion, he said, affects congregations across the Christian spectrum.
“We need all hands on deck,” he said. “We need to raise the awareness and urgency around this transformation.”
This article originally appeared here.
