Meet Pastor Kent Keller

Teaching Pastor at Christchurch Miami. Author. Mentor. Church planter. Doctor of Ministry. Lifelong reader. Major League Baseball fan. Functional zookeeper.

Kent Keller has been preaching, planting, and pastoring churches since 1994, and writing - for both popular and scholarly publications - for considerably longer than he cares to admit (which, depending on the audience, he occasionally does admit, with a grin). At Christchurch Miami he serves as Teaching Pastor, sharing the pulpit with Pastor James Drake as a co-equal preaching voice and a steady, scholarly presence in the life of the church.

If James is the coach on the sideline, Kent is the wise professor in the armchair - same gospel, two complementary angles, both grounded in a single conviction: that Christchurch is a faith family on mission to glorify God by helping people know, love, and serve Jesus, and that the Bible is more than capable of holding up under any honest question a person could bring to it.

Background and Calling

Kent was born in Kansas City. His father was an Air Force pilot, which meant the Kellers moved more often than the average family. They eventually landed in Birmingham, Alabama - and it was there, as a teenager, that Kent became a Christian. He has been working out the implications of that fairly significant Tuesday afternoon ever since.

He earned his B.A. and M.Ed. at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. From there he gave fourteen years to youth ministry - first with Youth for Christ in Ft. Lauderdale, then as a youth-staff member at Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church under Steve Brown (yes, the Steve Brown of Key Life Network, the one with the deep voice). Steve was Kent's pastor, mentor, and friend for a long stretch of years, and Steve's fingerprints - grace, candor, willingness to laugh at himself, refusal to shame the wounded - are all over Kent's preaching to this day.

In 1994, Kent stepped from youth ministry into senior pastoral ministry, and he has not stepped back since. He has been a church planter, a solo pastor, a Senior Pastor, and now a Teaching Pastor at Christchurch. Along the way he picked up a Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando and a Doctor of Ministry from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis - two of the flagship seminaries of the Reformed evangelical world. Both degrees are real. Both diplomas have been framed. Kent assures everyone, with a straight face, that this fact would come as quite a shock to his high school teachers and college professors. Especially the college professors.

Ministry: How He Teaches at Christchurch

Kent preaches in long, patient strokes. He'll open a sermon with a story - about being robbed on a bus in Mexico City, or watching a security dog train on the church campus, or hitchhiking at twenty-two and having a gun pulled on him - and the congregation will lean forward not knowing where, exactly, he is going. Then, somewhere around minute four, he ties the story to the text, and the congregation realizes (sometimes audibly) that he has been preaching all along.

He likes Greek word studies. He likes statistics. He likes Lee Strobel's probability calculations and Dorothy Sayers's essays on the Trinity. He cites broadly and reads broadly, and he treats his congregation like adults who can handle adult content from the pulpit - by which he means apologetics, archaeology, and the occasional tactful reference to a Greek word that, translated literally, is a brand of frozen drink.

What Kent really preaches, though, is grace. He has stood at the pulpit and told the church about the twenty years of his life when he wrestled with God; about his own hypercritical streak and the work of Ephesians 4:29-32 to break it; about the people he's reached out to in the past to apologize after years of silence. His vulnerability is not performance. It is the substance of the man preaching.

His three-point frameworks have become Christchurch shorthand: "God guides, He provides, and He abides." "Two kinds of people in the world - we're all sinners. Some of us care and some of us don't." He preaches Jesus as Lord, the Bible as God's Word, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and a life of discipleship that is at once intellectually rigorous and pastorally tender.

Kent leads communion at Christchurch with a level of consistency the church has come to count on. "This table is Jesus' table - not the church's, not the denomination's, not the pastor's." He invites those who follow Jesus to the bread and the cup, and is honest, every time, about who should not partake - those who don't know Jesus yet, those who aren't sure where they stand, and Christians living in willful unrepentant sin. It is one of the most-quoted moments at Christchurch month after month.

At Christchurch: Co-Pulpit Voice and Long-Form Writer

Kent shares preaching responsibility roughly evenly with Pastor James Drake. He is not a fill-in. When James is on Army deployment with the 20th Special Forces Group, Kent steps into a heavier teaching load. When James is home, Kent and James trade Sundays in a rhythm the church has come to deeply love - different angles, the same gospel, the same family.

He also writes the "Pastor's Corner" column in the weekly Christchurch newsletter when James is deployed - short, meditative reflections that occasionally quote C.S. Lewis or Tolkien and always sign off with "Your servant for Christ's sake, Kent." He writes long-form articles for christchurchmiami.org/blog under his own byline - pieces on church history, intelligent design, science and faith, and recurring posts that draw extended comment threads. Kent has also published a book - Random Observations of an Orderly Universe - a curated collection of his blog work, available on lulu.com.

Recurring Refrains

If you sit under Kent's preaching long enough, you will hear certain phrases come back. A short list of the lines Christchurch members tend to repeat:

• "Two kinds of people in the world - we're all sinners. Some of us care and some of us don't."
• "Do business with God."
• "Guilty, but pardoned."
• "The world at its worst needs the church at its best."
• "This table is Jesus' table - not the church's, not the denomination's, not the pastor's."
• "Your servant for Christ's sake." - How Kent signs every email and every "Pastor's Corner."

Family

Kent is married to Heidi. (Yes, both teaching pastors at Christchurch are married to women named Heidi; no, this is not a job requirement; yes, the staff has made every joke that can be made about it, and Kent has heard them all.) The Kellers have four children and one grandchild, which Kent will mention from the pulpit with the kind of joy that only a grandparent can manufacture. They share their home with four cats and one German Shepherd who, despite weighing more than the average household appliance, is fully convinced she is a lap dog. By Kent's own admission the household needs a zookeeper's license.

Theology and Preaching Themes

• The Bible is true, and it can take any honest question. Kent leans into apologetics and historical evidence as a pastor, not just an academic.
• Grace is bigger than the worst thing a person has ever done. Kent talks openly about his own past failures and points the church to the same grace that lifted him.
• The world at its worst needs the church at its best. A faith family on mission to a real city with real wounds and real questions.
• Belong before you believe. Seekers, doubters, and the spiritually exhausted are welcome to sit, listen, ask, and wrestle.
• Discipleship is a long obedience. Thirty-plus years of preaching, the same man on the same trajectory.

Off the Clock

In his spare time Kent reads. He follows Major League Baseball. He reads some more. He occasionally reads a book his wife Heidi has handed him with the words, "You'll like this one." (She is, more often than not, correct.) He has been known to throw small objects to the congregation during sermons to make a point. (John Calvin, Kent has noted, never did this.) He is, as the leadership-page bio puts it, in desperate need of a zookeeper's license. The license has not yet been granted. The animals do not seem concerned.

Recent Sermons and Articles

• Don't All Religions Lead to God? Why Christianity Is Different - Christchurch blog
• Should Christians Be Christian Nationalists? - Christchurch blog
• What Does the Bible Say About Anxiety? - Christchurch blog
• You Are Salt and Light: Why the Resurrection Still Matters - Christchurch blog
• Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead? - Easter sermon (1 Corinthians 15)
• The Shroud of Turin* - long-form research article

Find the full sermon library at christchurchmiami.org/sermons and the full blog archive at christchurchmiami.org/blog.

Frequently Asked Questions

Take a Next Step at Christchurch

• Plan a Visit → Sundays at 11 AM at 8485 SW 112th St, Miami, FL 33156
• Watch a Recent Sermon →
• Read the Christchurch Blog → Including Kent's long-form articles
• Connect Card →

Christchurch Miami is a faith family on mission - to glorify God by helping people know, love, and serve Jesus.

Your servant for Christ's sake, Kent.