Show Notes
How can the church stay ahead of rapid cultural shifts rather than constantly playing catch-up on the most pressing issues of our day?
Author and program director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, Michael Graham, returns to the Nuance podcast with host Case Thorp to pull back the curtain on the Keller Center’s mission. They dive into how the Center equips the church to evangelize in today’s culture before transitioning to a candid conversation about the integration of faith and everyday work.
Whether you are serving in vocational ministry or navigating the secular marketplace, this episode offers a compelling roadmap for building trust, practicing Spirit-led awareness, and engaging your culture with confidence.
📚 Episode Resources:
The Great De-Churching by Jim Davis & Michael Graham: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310147433/
The AI Christian Benchmark: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ai-christian-benchmark/
The Gospel Coalition Website: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/
The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/thekellercenter/
How to Reach the West Again by Tim Keller: https://redeemercitytocity.com/reachthewest
Tim Keller’s “Mere Fidelity”: https://mereorthodoxy.com/mere-fidelity-tim-keller-making-sense-god/
Gospelbound Podcast: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/
TGC Foundation Documents: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/about/foundation-documents/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
In the last episode of Nuance, we explored the findings of a new report from The Gospel Coalition called the AI Christian Benchmark. Well, today we turn to the broader work behind that study, the mission of The Gospel Coalition, and also one of its key ministries, the Tim Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and to the personal vocation of the man leading this work, and that is my guest, Michael Graham.
Friends, today, technology is accelerating in so many ways, and institutions are shifting. And so it is part of our call at The Collaborative to see that faithful men and women to Christ are well equipped for their work in the public square. And I can’t think of an organization that has a similar mission and does it so well than The Gospel Coalition. So, Michael, thanks for sticking around for another episode.
Michael Graham
It’s good to be here. Thank you, Case.
Case Thorp
So Michael’s a good buddy. He is serving as the program director of The Gospel Coalition’s Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He has served in pastoral ministry and is also the author of The Great De-Churching with Jim Davis. We had Michael here on a show about a year ago on that very book, and he’s working on another book with sociologist Ryan Burge that will look at the role of spiritual communities and the rate of growth or decline of spiritual faith across the country. We’ll certainly have him back for that. Well, so Michael, if you would tell us a little bit about your vocational journey and then what called you? Why did God call you? How did he call you to The Gospel Coalition?
Michael Graham
Yeah, so I’ve had a very roundabout path in work and ministry that’s had me both in the church and in nonprofits and as a missionary and also working in tech and finance. So I’ve always been somebody who’s worked pretty heavily in the intersection of operations, finance, tech, and church and missiology. So it’s kind of all over the, yeah, all over the place. And so I’m definitely more of a generalist than a specialist, which in the AI era, it’s good to be a generalist. It’s, you know, it’s the specialist jobs that the AI is kind of coming for. So, yeah, I’ve worked as an overseas missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ, now called CRU, had about 15 years in church planting or executive pastor work in the local church, six years as CFO of a tech company that wrote mobile software for the DoD and the VA, and then four years at The Gospel Coalition working at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
Case Thorp
Hmm. And they brought you in for that particular role, correct?
Michael Graham
Yeah, so my boss, Collin Hansen, who’s the editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, they wanted to create two new departments at TGC. One after each of our respective co-founders. Our two co-founders were D.A. Carson and then the late Tim Keller. So the Carson Center is the Carson Center for Theological Renewal.
Their focus is on biblical theology, which was D.A. Carson’s specialization as a New Testament scholar. And then the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics is the focus there is on how can we make the gospel clear and comprehensible and compelling to people, especially in the West and especially in highly secular areas. So the idea of cultural apologetics is you know, there’s kind of three questions that people mainly have about our faith. You know, is Jesus good? Is Jesus true? And is he beautiful? And so classical apologetics focuses primarily on the is Jesus true question. Cultural apologetics focuses a little bit more on is he good and is he beautiful? And all three of those questions, they all deserve answers. So it’s not like one form of apologetics, you know, is better than others. But sometimes, you know with the ebb and flow of culture and society, sometimes the questions, the nature of the questions that people ask kind of tend to change so the simplest way to understand the Keller Center in its relationship to TGC The Gospel Coalition is we’re essentially like the R&D department. So we take, you know, big ideas of the day and we throw them against the wall. We see what sticks in terms of how we can help the church. So the broader mission of the Gospel Coalition is there’s all sorts of things that churches, whether that’s their senior pastor or all the way down to just, I’m just a regular churchgoer. There’s all sorts of resources that churches can’t create themselves. These are resources that they don’t have the time to create or they don’t have the expertise to create or they don’t have the resources to create. And so what we try to do is we try to create resources that churches need urgently to be able to advance their evangelism and discipleship, but that they wouldn’t have the resources to create themselves in and of themselves.
Case Thorp
And has this mission remained the same since Keller and Carson came together? Or has it evolved to meet the needs?
Michael Graham
No, it’s exactly the same from the outset. So you can read our foundation documents that were published in 2007, that includes our statement of faith and then our theological vision. The theological vision is kind of like the hands and feet. So there’s the ideas and then there’s how those ideas played themselves out.
Case Thorp
So tell us about how they play themselves out, the specifics of TGC product.
Michael Graham
Yeah, so we create resources that are in whatever medium that people consume media, whether that’s articles, podcast audio, short form video, long form video, books, live interactive cohorts, and then in-person conferences. So everything from the URL to the IRL, you know, and all of that is we don’t ever want to be more important than somebody’s local church. Everything that we do exists to serve local churches all around the world. So, yeah, that’s our aim. And so the Keller Center is basically we’re the R&D department. And so we’re just trying to try to innovate. And one of the big knocks on evangelicals in particular is that we’re often 5, 10, 15 years behind on major conversations in culture and society. And so the aim of the Keller Center is to take us from being behind on those conversations, bring us up to at least current on those conversations. And then even other conversations that we think are maybe a year or two down the pike, we want to be bringing those conversations up today. So I’ll give you an example of that. One example is what we already talked about, AI.
I think we were right on time. I don’t think we were ahead of time on that. We were publishing on this in ‘23 and ‘24 a lot, but nobody read it. Another subject that would be a good example of something that we care a lot about is medical assistance in death. That’s like the politically correct way to say doctor assisted suicide or euthanasia.
Yeah, so that’s already the law of the land and has been the law of the land in the Netherlands for decades. It’s now the law of the land in Canada. It’s going through the House of Lords and House of Commons in the UK right now. And that conversation will probably come to America in the next one to three years. And so we would like, it’s one of those subjects where depending on how you frame it and when you look at the polling, it looks like about 80 percent of Americans would be supportive of this, including almost half of the people who go to church, which is scary because it’s not good. And we have all sorts of good reasons why this wouldn’t be good. But that would be an example of a subject that we care something deeply about where we want to get people thinking about these things before it’s a national conversation, before it’s politicized and these kinds of things so that we we can be ready with good answers that are biblically rooted, sound, grounded, ethical, before it becomes something that’s like a very polarizing wedge.
Case Thorp
When I was a pastor at First Presbyterian Baton Rouge, there was a woman in our church. She was an elder and a law professor at LSU. And over the course of my time there, she converted to Roman Catholicism. And you could imagine for our Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, she actually was from a well-known historic legal family. Her father, I believe, may have been on the state Supreme Court, but her conversion really resonated far and wide.
I asked her why, and she said, you know, Case, the differences over communion, baptism, hierarchy, these sorts of things didn’t weigh on me so much, but I’m just so grateful for the Roman Catholic literature, thinking, and approach to life issues. There is a broad conversation that’s gone on for centuries that now equips and feeds Roman Catholics to answer such cultural questions. And it made me realize, you know, from seminary to now, boy, I know a lot about abortion, but I’m not so equipped as a pastor when, and I’ve had this happen, couples come in and ask me if they should do in vitro and freeze 10 eggs and only use two. And euthanasia, like, I know what my moral conviction is, but I’m not so sharp and clear on my theology and pastoral care in that.
Michael Graham
Yeah, you know, those are challenges because it’s like, there’s like three eras of being pro-life. There’s beginning of life, pro-life issues, middle of life, and then end of life. And it’s good for us to have consistency across all three of those things. But I think in the, in among Protestants and evangelicals, you know, there’s been maybe not as much focus on middle and end of life. And those things will probably come home to roost for us in the years to come if we don’t play catch up.
Case Thorp
Yeah, so good. So over your time there, how have you seen the Keller Center shape and mold maybe not just its mission, but even its approach to this mission? Because you started it, right? And it is in year four, I bet it, you might not have imagined you’d be doing some of the things or thinking about some of the things that your fours you did year one tells us about that journey.
Michael Graham
Yeah, so I work underneath Colin Hansen. He’s our executive director. I’m our program director. And so I’m like operations and he’s like big picture vision. So there were a number of areas that before Tim passed that were areas that that Colin and Tim had discussed, areas of focus. A lot of these things you can find in Tim’s How to Win the West again document, you can download that for free from Redeemer City to City.
Case Thorp
We’ll put it in our notes.
Michael Graham – TGC
Yeah, put that in the notes. Tim also gave a couple of really helpful interviews right before he passed. One was with Mere Orthodoxy on their podcast, Mere Fidelity. I think nine areas that Tim had high hopes of where the church would, you know, projects that the church would lean into.
A lot of the things that we’re continuing to do are really downstream from some of those conversations that we had with Tim, you know, before he passed. Everything really just boils down to how can we help regular Christians be able to tell the gospel story as effectively as possible in light of how culture and society continues to evolve and shift over time. So, you know, the message doesn’t change, but culture and society changes. And so, you know, sometimes that means how we talk about those things in order to be understood by the people who we’re speaking to. Sometimes we have to talk a little bit differently so that people can actually understand what we’re saying. And so a lot of the work at the Keller Center is helping to bring people up to speed on how is culture and society changing, and what does that mean for us in terms of how we communicate the central tenets of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom of God?
Case Thorp
Tell us about some of your programs, how you help equip pastors and lay leaders.
Michael Graham
Yeah. So, you know, kind of the nerve center for the Keller Center is, you know, our URL and it’s a pretty easy URL. It’s just the Kellercenter.org. The Kellercenter.org. But what you’ll, the main mediums that we communicate are going to be long form articles and essays. So kind of in the style of the Atlantic. That’s one.
A second medium is podcasts. My boss, Colin, his podcast is called Gospel Bound. And what he does is he interviews authors who have written really interesting books recently. And he talks to them about, you know, kind of the, the themes and theses of those books and tells positive stories about, you know, how isit that people who are bringing the gospel to bear on important aspects of life, culture, society, these kinds of things. So podcast audio, long form articles, then we have something called cohorts. Here’s what a cohort is. Imagine, once a week for six to eight weeks, you’re talking about a subject that’s really interesting, urgent, but where you can’t necessarily go and take a class on it at a seminary or a college yet.
Case Thorp
Sure. I’ve done some of these. They’re great.
Michael Graham
And so, you know, some examples of that would be, you know, like later this year, we’ll do a cohort on artificial intelligence. We have a cohort that’s on six of the biggest cultural apologists in church history. So cohorts are basically really unique content, typically taught by one to six very well-known people, people who you’d probably recognize and you’re like, yeah, and who are sharp and good teachers. And all that’s done live over Zoom, it’s recorded for people who can’t make it live and wanna watch it asynchronously.
Case Thorp
And well equipped, I mean, experts.
Well, and I was shocked. I mean, thousands around the world. This wasn’t 12 pastors getting together. I expected a much smaller experience, but it was amazing.
Michael Graham
Yeah, but I mean, the cool part is, is yeah, you get the ability to, you know, to ask direct questions to people who you recognize or whose books that you’ve read or, you know, those kinds of things. And then there’s, you know, the in real life conferences that we have. So on even numbered years, like 2026, we have our women’s conference. So that’s in, in June, always in Indianapolis, Indiana. And then on our odd number years we have our national conference. And that’s not gender specific. And so we were always doing typically 20 to 30 breakouts or other very specific equipping sessions from just our department. That would be, you know, they’d probably have like 150 breakouts or something.
Case Thorp
It’s great. I love it.
Sure. And I love the book room. What do you call it?
Michael Graham
Yeah, the bookstore, yeah.
Case Thorp
I mean, it’s all the major publishers come and they lay out all their former and latest hits and for nerds like us I can just spend hours walking around looking at books. Is it gonna be Indianapolis again?
Michael Graham
Yeah, we’ll be in Indianapolis for the indefinite future.
Case Thorp
Ugh, come home.
Michael Graham
Yeah, those conferences used to be in Orlando. I loved it when it was here. So much more can be here. Although that being said, there’s all sorts of direct flights from here to Indianapolis that usually aren’t that expensive.
Case Thorp
Yeah, but it’s Indianapolis. Well, now we do talk about faith and work, certainly. Our emphasis is for folks in the marketplace and government and healthcare education, etc. But I also, for the years we’ve done the work of The Collaborative, have had a heart for people in ministry. Like you say, you were on work with Cru for a number of years. We would, years ago go out to Cru and Wycliffe and do different workshops and such. Because just because you work at a church or a Christian ministry doesn’t mean there’s still not the same issues of the workplace and the same issues of the worker and how he or she understands Jesus’ call and their gifts and their contribution to the kingdom. Sometimes it might be easier, it might be more explicit. Talk to us about your integration of faith and work.
What are some of the pressures that you experience and even how the Lord meets you in that?
Michael Graham
Yeah, I think sometimes the temptation can be to think that, well, people who are in vocational ministry, they don’t have to work hard to integrate, you know, faith and work, but you still have to do those things. You still get, you know, everybody who works in ministry, you know, you still got emails that you have to write and phone calls you have to make and, you know, and, and HR to deal with and spreadsheets and, you know, TPS reports, you know, all those kinds of things.
Case Thorp
What’s a TPS?
Michael Graham
That was my allusion to the film Office Space. The reports that everybody hated to fill out. Anyways, so, you know, and, and I’ve worked on both sides of the fence here, you know, of, know, having six years, you know, in, kind of startup land, you know, doing CFO work, you know, working with, you know, federal government contracts and, you know, doing, you know, kind of full stack accounting, both of those things require a lot of integration. It’s just the integration looks a little bit different. You know, when you’re working in a secular environment, the how you treat other people. Well, I mean, guess how you treat other people is really probably the the number one thing that’s downstream from living under the power of the Holy Spirit. So, I think the spirit filled life is the most important thing to the integration of faith and work, because if you don’t have the Holy Spirit in control of your head, heart and hands, things are not going to go well in terms of being able to integrate those two things. And then I think the first piece of fruit that comes from somebody who’s well integrated on these things is the fruit of the spirit and the fruit of the spirit comes across in how you treat other people. I’ve always been of the mindset that you can’t treat clients well until you’ve treated your teammates well. In other words, a different way to think about this as a, this is a core foundational principle for me. My teammates are my first clients. Okay. So, and if I don’t treat my teammates well, there’s no way I’m going to be able to treat my clients well. And so, so for me, you know, the integration of faith and work really is about first and foremost, am I treating my teammates and the people that I have to work with? And then flowing from that, then how do I treat the people who are external to the entity that I’m working for? Now, these same principles work in ministry too, because the people that I work with at TGC, do I want to make raving fans of clients? Yes.
But in order to do that, I need to make raving fans of the people who I work with too. And they need to have an amazing experience of, you know, what it feels like to work with me. And so I think it’s important to bring a pastoral quality into how we relate to other people to the extent to which those people are willing to relate to us. So I think that there’s kind of six key awarenesses that occur in the Christian life. And those six key awarenesses are first, God awareness. So, is the Holy Spirit in charge, sitting on the throne of our heart? Is He driving our thoughts, our emotions and our actions? The second thing is self-awareness. Are we in touch with our own story? Are we aware of that? And do we have people who are helping us?
Case Thorp
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Michael Graham
Yeah, everything. The next awareness is others awareness. So others awareness- are we paying attention to the story of other people and what’s going on in their life? The fourth awareness is awareness about how other people are experiencing us. So it could be easy to mix those two up, three and four. Others awareness is you’re paying attention to somebody else’s story. The awareness of how other people are experiencing you is the ability to read social cues as to how you are coming across to other people. OK. Yeah, this has been the most painful one for me over the years. And then fifth and sixth are emotional awareness and cultural awareness.
Case Thorp
Yeah, huge ones for me to learn over the years.
Michael Graham
And each one of these awarenesses are kind of like functions, like a Venn diagram where there’s overlap, emotional awareness overlaps with self-awareness. They all overlap with each other in some way, or form. But here’s what I find. And here’s why I rehearse those six things is when you possess those six things to some meaningful level, what happens is people experience you as being far more trustworthy. So, you know, the trust, like we said in the last episode in the AI era, you know, trust is the single most important commodity that there is.
And so, when it comes to having those six key awarenesses, when you are growing in each one of those areas, what happens is people experience, you experience you as being more trustworthy, which means they allow you to be more persuasive to them. And yeah, and it allows us to be better leaders. It allows us to be better in our work in the office. It also allows us to be more fruitful in the work that we’re trying to do if we have outward facing business activity.
Case Thorp
Michael, thank you. Your work is impacting tens of thousands, if not more, and will be enduring. So I’m honored to hear about it, and I know you’re a blessing to those listening and watching.
Michael Graham
Thank you guys.
Case Thorp
Friends, let me encourage you to go check out our show notes and there will be links to Tim Keller’s How to Win the West, as well as the different organizations we have mentioned here. Please share, make a comment, send this conversation to someone in your life that needs it and would be blessed by it. Join us at our website, wecolabor.com. Give us your email and we’ll send you a copy of Zeitgeist, our journal on faith, work, and culture. You’ll also find us across the various social media platforms. My thanks to Michael and Chandy Kelley for their support of this program. See you next time. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
