Michael Luo has written an article about Timothy J. Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. Redeemer and Keller have seen steady growth in the last 16 years as a city-centre church. Three notables from the article. 1. Keller, a former seminary professor, has made understanding the urban culture and the worldview of his listeners a priority for the church. And 2. The church has made equipping and mobilizing its members for volunteer service work in the city a priority. And 3. Rather than take up an extensive speaking circuit outside the ministry of his congregation, Keller has focused on Church-planting and the equipping of other pastors for urban mission.

A few quotes from the article:

The 600 or so who braved the snow for the evening service got what they had come to expect — a compelling discourse by Dr. Keller, this time on Jesus’ healing of the paralytic, that quoted such varied sources as C. S. Lewis, The Village Voice and the George MacDonald fairy tale “The Princess and the Goblin.” It was the kind of cogent, literary sermon that has helped turn Dr. Keller, a former seminary professor whose only previous pulpit experience was at a small blue-collar church in rural Virginia, into the pastor many call Manhattan’s leading evangelist.

Dr. Keller “has grasped the strategic significance of the city, of the urban culture and the need to engage that very diverse culture at every level,” he said. “Our culture is urban-driven.”

The Rev. Stephen Um, whose church in Boston, Citylife, began four years ago and now attracts about 500 people every Sunday, said he and other pastors had embraced Dr. Keller’s emphasis on delving into the prevailing culture almost as much as into the biblical text. Along these lines, Dr. Um is just as likely to cite a postmodern philosopher like Richard Rorty or Michel Foucault in his sermons, as he is, say, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. “This is Tim’s thing,” said Dr. Um. “He said, ‘You need to enter into a person’s worldview, challenge that worldview and retell the story based on the Gospel.’ The problem is evangelicals have always started with challenging the worldview. We don’t have any credibility.”

His church’s main goal, Dr. Keller said, is to teach pastors how to truly love the city, rather than fear its worldly influences. Unlike many evangelicals, Dr. Keller advocates an indirect approach to change.

“If you seek power before service, you’ll neither get power, nor serve,” he said. “If you seek to serve people more than to gain power, you will not only serve people, you will gain influence. That’s very much the way Jesus did it.”

As a result, one of Redeemer’s hallmarks has always been its focus on charity, something it emphasizes in its training of urban pastors. It operates a program called Hope for New York that arranges volunteer opportunities for people from Redeemer with 35 different partner organizations. Last year, 3,300 people from the church volunteered their time.

You can take this link for the whole article.