When The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics began in 2023, Tim Keller outlined two goals that would define the center’s success. First, the center would help the church become more effective in evangelism by raising up a new generation of younger thinkers, ministers, scholars, and writers who can do cultural apologetics in our post-Christendom context. Second, the center would assist the church in formation by engaging in counter-catechesis, that is, equipping believers to identify and resist the cultural narratives that lead us away from Christ.

I’m excited to introduce the next class of fellows at The Keller Center to help us accomplish these goals. Beginning in 2026, these six pastors, scholars, and marketplace leaders will collaborate alongside our other fellows in the work of “connecting the dots” between the eternal gospel and our present moment. Get to know them below and pray for their work. You can also support their work by donating to the center. Along with advancing important public projects, these resources help us host our annual New York retreat, where we pray, present, discuss, and plan together.

Alex Harris is an attorney and author. Sons of homeschool pioneers, Alex and his twin brother, Brett, created The Rebelution and wrote Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations as teenagers. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Alex worked as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Anthony Kennedy and was named in Forbes 30 Under 30 for law and policy. He and his family live in Denver and are members of Fellowship Denver Church.

Timothy Paul Jones (PhD, Southern Seminary; PhD candidate, Stellenbosch University) is C. Edwin Gheens professor of Christian family ministry and chair of the department of apologetics, ethics, and philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Understanding Christian Apologetics, Did the Resurrection Really Happen?, and In Church as It Is in Heaven with Jamaal E. Williams. He also serves as a preaching pastor at Sojourn Church Midtown, writes at his website, and cohosts The Apologetics Podcast. Timothy and his wife, Rayann, live with their four daughters in Louisville, Kentucky.

Matt McCullough (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of The Cross of War, Remember Death, and Remember Heaven: Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime. He’s married to Lindsey, and they’re the parents of three boys.

John Starke is the lead pastor at Apostles Church Uptown in Manhattan. A former editor for The Gospel Coalition, he’s the author of The Possibility of Prayer and the award-winning The Secret Place of Thunder. He also contributed to Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and Faithful Endurance: The Joy of Shepherding People for a Lifetime.

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker (PhD, Cambridge University) is associate professor of history and Western civilization at Australian Catholic University. She was a junior research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University. She is the author of several books, including Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire and Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age. Sarah and her husband, Johnathan, have three children and live in the Hawkesbury region outside of Sydney, Australia.

Walter R. Strickland II (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is teaching pastor at Imago Dei Church. He teaches theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he cofounded Aptree Learning. Walter also serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition. He and his wife live in the Raleigh area in North Carolina, and they have two daughters and a son, and a daughter named Hope who is waiting to meet them in glory.