Quoted from Joe Carter on the TGC Website.
- TGC serves Christians and the local church by promoting gospel-centered ministry and providing gospel-centered resources for the global church. TGC attempts to do this in 5 ways: (1) Centering the Church in the gospel of Jesus Christ, (2) gathering a fellowship of likeminded believers who want to do gospel-centered ministry, (3) equipping Christians with thoughtful, relevant content for life and study, (4) providing biblical materials and training for the global church, and (5) innovating through initiatives that integrate the gospel into daily life.
- The ministry of TGC consists of a council of pastors, a website (in English, Spanish, and French), a biennial National Conference, a biennial Women's Conference, various publications, a theological journal (Themelios), a dozen Regional Chapters, an International Outreach initiative dedicated to relieving theological famine around the globe, and much more.
- The original idea for TGC came about during a meeting at a Manhattan sidewalk cafe in 2002 between the co-founders, Don Carson and Tim Keller. In 2004 the pair started a Pastors' Colloquium, which formed the basis of TGC. This colloquium produced foundational documents—doctrinal confessions and a theological vision for ministry—which remains the banner over all TGC does. The organization was officially created in 2007.
- The TGC website was originally launched in 2007. Modeled after the Arts & Letters Daily website, the TGC site was set up to provide resources on gospel-centered ministry. In 2008, Justin Taylor moved his blog to TGC and Kevin DeYoung started a new blog. (They were later joined by TGC's other bloggers: Trevin Wax, Thabiti Anyabwile, Jared C. Wilson, Ray Ortlund, and Scotty Smith.) The pastors on the Council also provided their sermons from the last ten years to be posted on the site (approximately 45,000 expository sermons).
- Since 2009, 26.6 million people have visited the TGC website 64 million times and have viewed more than 127 million pages. The site currently contains over 80,000 audio, video, and text resources.
- In print, TGC partners with several publishers around the world to produce book series and group studies that champion the gospel on topics as diverse as preaching to parenting, theology to generosity.
- TGC partners with translators, publishers, and missions networks to resource local pastors worldwide with training and content in their languages. In 2013 alone, 83,000 books were translated into 10 languages (Albanian, Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, English, Italian, Khmer, Oriya, Portuguese, and Spanish). In 2013, through TGC’s international initiative, 307 international distributions brought 743 cases of resources containing more than 50,176 books to 56 countries. (Resources are available by the case at no charge to any person, church, or mission team who requests them for leaders overseas.)
- Several related, though independent, groups modeled on TGC have sprung up around the globe. As Don Carson has explained, when it comes to TGC's international vision, "We've been clear from the beginning that we don't want [overseas groups] to be American-controlled." Tim Keller adds that it's vital for such TGC-inspired partnerships to be and remain indigenous.
- From free mobile apps to free music downloads to story galleries, TGC champions projects that spread gospel-centered perspectives in fresh ways. With a commitment to innovation, TGC operates like a think tank to guide the church and champion projects serving a single goal: to mobilize people to live, teach, sing, work, and serve as ones reborn and regenerated by Jesus.