[Author’s Note: I started writing these reflections nearly two years ago and only recently took them back out to complete them, entirely independent of knowing about Keller’s declining health. Then, like everyone else, I learned how sick he was and then that he so quickly passed away, and thus I paused on publishing this. In light of his death, I would have rather written a more overt tribute to him, sharing my deep appreciation for his ministry. But maybe—when rightly understood—this post can serve as a kind of tribute to Keller’s ministry, specifically his writing ministry. The way he lived his “rule” and avoided the pitfalls that came with fame can serve as an excellent model for every believer, no matter the size of their platform.]

*     *     *

Despite what seems to be the case, all authors write far more words that do not get published than they write words that go viral.

And that’s okay. In fact, it’s even good for us. God has a good purpose for Christian writers in what often feels like the frustrating slowness of our progress in the craft and the expansion of our platforms.

Consider what God says to the Israelites in Exodus 23 about the way he will cause them to inherit the Promised Land. “I will not drive them out from before you in one year,” God says, “lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.” Instead, God tells them, “Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land” (Ex. 23:29–30).

This principle of slow-and-steady and providentially governed progress should temper a writer’s publishing angst, that anxious fretting many of us do about how much to publish and where to publish, who is reading us and how to get more people to read our work. This principle should also help us understand why books are often better written by authors without velvet fluff still on their antlers.

The young prophet Jeremiah had fire in his bones, but it would be years, even decades, before he understood what it meant to run with horses in the thicket of the Jordan (Jer. 20:9; 12:5). And consider young Elihu from the book of Job. Four times in just four verses the narrator tells us Elihu burned with anger. “Then Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God. He burned with anger also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, although they had declared Job to be in the wrong. Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job because they were older than he. And when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, he burned with anger” (Job 32:2–5). Despite all the burning anger, we’re told he “had waited to speak to Job because they were older than he” (32:4).

Although one wonders if Elihu should have waited longer than he did to speak up, perhaps waiting another few dozen years for his youthful angst, we would hope, to meld into wisdom. As it is, his juvenile berating became canonized in the best-selling book of all time. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child” (Prov 22:15).

These issues around when to write and how much to write lead me to consider what I’ve heard called “The Tim Keller Rule.” It’s a rule that haunts the conscience of many writers in the evangelical world, including mine. Do not publish a book until you are sixty years old, the rule goes. The government has rules about how old a person must be before they can work a job, drive a car, get married, enlist in the military, smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, and many other activities. Should Christian publishers have an age rule? Would we want it to be sixty?

A former understudy of Keller wrote a tribute to him in one of his books. “Tim waited until he was almost sixty years old to publish his first trade book,” he writes. “Humbly, he wanted to wait until he was old and wise enough to write the best possible book he could on any given subject. No doubt, his book writing pace since then has made up for lost time.” Keller’s understudy doesn’t state this so much as a rule but more as a description. The clear implication is that humble and wise authors should consider doing the same. One writer on Twitter recently referred to this as the Keller model rather than the rule.

Yet the word choice of publish in this tribute is key. Is sixty when Keller began writing? If Keller never wrote anything from high school to the age of early retirement, would his books be so insightful, so clear, and well-written? Could Keller have published a book every year from age sixty to seventy if he never wrote anything from his twenties through his fifties?

To be clear, God’s blessing has rested upon Keller in ways and to degrees no one could manufacture—even Keller himself. The full credit for Keller’s tremendous writing output and exceptional quality belongs only to God. I praise God for the benefits his ministry has poured into my life and the life of our church.

When considering Keller’s output, however, we are also beholding the effects of compound interest. When you squirrel away a few dollars here and a few dollars there in mutual funds, the money not only increases by addition but by multiplication. Keller may not have published before he was sixty, but he certainly wrote.

In the introduction to Hidden Christmas he writes, “In this book I hope to make the truths of Christmas less hidden. We will look at some passages of the Bible that are famous because they are dusted off every Christmas” (4). The Christmas story is not only dusted off by parishioners but also by pastors, which is why in the acknowledgments of the book Keller notes, “The ideas in this book were forged not in writing but preaching. Each chapter represents at least 10 or so meditations and sermons on each biblical text, delivered in Christmas services across the decades” (143). Keller was sixty-six years old when Hidden Christmas was published, but the seeds of the book were planted and watered long before the food was harvested and packaged commercially.

In Keller’s book Center Church, we read similar words when he mentions that the book has roots in lectures he gave to an international audience nearly ten years before the book was published (385), which were ideas and lectures, we assume and he implies, that had been written and field-tested the previous decade at Redeemer Church and beyond.

Perhaps some of the mystique about The Keller Rule comes from Keller himself. In an interview about the subject of young pastors writing books, Keller encouraged writing “essays and chapters, not books yet. Hone your craft through short pieces and occasional writing.” Then he warned, “But don’t tackle books yet. Writing a whole book takes an enormous amount of energy and time, especially the first one.”

In this way Keller encourages the “both-and” we find in Paul’s letter to Timothy. On the one hand, Paul instructs that someone in spiritual leadership “must not be a recent convert.” The command exists not because he won’t do the job well but because he probably will, and success may cause him to become “puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6). Yet, on the other hand, in the next chapter Paul tells Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth.” Timothy is instead to “set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). If Timothy was to set an example “in speech” among his congregation, surely he should also set an example, albeit a youthful one, in his writing.

Thus, aspiring writers need to hear the helpful warning of The Keller Rule about publishing words. Young writers often need their publishing ambitions chastened. But at the same time, young writers must not fear writing words. Indeed, those called to write should write, even if they only plod along at the pace of a few pages here and a few essays there. The literary version of compound interest can only happen when you squirrel words away in the bank, making regular and faithful deposits.

Returning to the idea of “little by little” in Exodus 23, if you’re a young or beginning writer, you probably can’t handle all the success you think you want right now. You probably can’t handle all the criticism that comes along with that success. The “wild beasts” mentioned in Exodus 23 eat famous yet immature authors for breakfast. If you had written Gentle and Lowly, you might have become brutal and haughty.

So take heart. The writer who sows words slow and steady, generously and obediently, will also reap generously—whether in this life or the next. Just as no one gives a cup of cold water to a needy person in the name of Jesus without a permanent divine accounting, no one who writes words for God’s glory does so without God’s notice. Your labor in the Lord, Paul says, is not in vain.

* Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash