Having been privileged to sit under the ministry of evangelical legend John Stott during my early Christian life, I see the centenary of his birth as a perfect opportunity to assess his legacy.
Turning the tide
His effect on my own life and ministry has been immense, though I have no wish to put him on a pedestal. In fact, in my humble opinion, he had one or two blind-spots. But don’t we all?
Yet it is surely appropriate, as we approach Easter, to honour Stott for his uncompromising focus on the cross and the authority of Scripture. Using his great intellect, combined with an ability to write clearly and concisely, he helped turn the tide of liberalism within the Church of England in particular. Some would say he saved it from terminal decline.
Humble and gracious
A prolific author certainly, but also a riveting speaker who held you spell-bound with his majestic, line for line exposition of the Scriptures. One of his most popular books was Basic Christianity, and I was enormously blessed to get it straight from the horse’s mouth nearly every week through the 1970s when I attended All Souls, Langham Place, in London’s West End, where Stott ministered throughout his life.
All Souls Church, London. Behind it stands the former BBC HQ (pic c/o Alamy)
I have never forgotten his exposition of Galatians 5 on the “fruit of the Spirit” and have sought to live it out ever since. He was such a humble man. He would kneel to pray for quite some time before entering the pulpit, and although I remember him confessing that he did not “suffer fools gladly”, he was always winsomely gracious as he chatted with this naïve young Christian on the way out afterwards. Another wonderful privilege was the benefit of being able (with others) to use his seaside cottage on the west coast of Wales for holiday retreats.
He encouraged me as I considered ordination, and it was while he was preaching on the importance of Christians entering the professions that I heard God’s distinct call into journalism – a full-time ministry of a different kind.
He apparently had a good relationship with fellow legend Martyn Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, although they clashed when the latter called on evangelicals to leave liberal denominations. Stott believed they should stay, and was somewhat vindicated in subsequent years when a fresh move of the Spirit did not bypass Anglicanism.
Charismatic movement
As the charismatic movement gained ground, Stott challenged the doctrine that an empowering of the Holy Spirit subsequent to conversion was necessary for exercising spiritual gifts. And when his curate, Michael Harper, testified to this experience and spoke in tongues in the early sixties, it caused tension and rift.
But he was less rigid on this issue than is perhaps generally thought, judging by the fellowship he once shared with Pentecostal pioneer Donald Gee, one of the founder members and most faithful attenders of a theological study group presided over by Stott.1
The charismatic controversy did not stop me, on moving north, from seeking more power in my life – especially after a brief, but shocking, experience of liberal Anglicanism when my vicar challenged me over the truth of the Second Coming and was incandescent when I informed him of my wish to get baptised by immersion. After baptism both in the Spirit and in water, I spent the next three-and-a-half decades in Pentecostal/charismatic churches.
Yet in recent years, God has led me back to a ‘reformed, conservative evangelical’ church without abandoning any of my precious post-All Souls discoveries. I so appreciate the solid Bible teaching of which Stott would have approved.
To the Jew first
However, the great man had a particular blind spot over God’s purposes for the Jewish people which, on reflection, was surprising in view of his constant call for Christians to apply their minds to the issues of the day. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, urges his readers to have their minds renewed (Rom 12:2) in the context of God’s overall plan for the chosen people (Rom 9-11).
Stott clearly believed in evangelising the Jews, as the missionaries we supported included a couple reaching out to the Jews of Ethiopia. But he apparently did not believe their return to Israel from the four corners of the earth was a fulfilment of Scripture! Yes, I know that’s hard to grasp, but it’s still the case for most of our (British) churches.
I have a friend in the United States who knew Stott better than me, regularly hosting him on his visits to America. She rebuked him on one occasion after he gave an exposition of Romans chapter 1 in which he had meticulously explained each verse – except, mysteriously, verse 16 which talks of how the gospel should be preached “to the Jew first”.
During my seven-year stay at All Souls, I honestly didn’t know it was an issue, and never heard John speak of it. In fact, the leader of the ‘nursery class’ for seekers and new Christians, a Stott-appointed position, was a lovely Jewish lady called Helen McIntosh, who insisted on describing herself as a ‘completed Jew’ since giving her life to Christ at Billy Graham’s 1954 Haringey crusade.
Authority of Scripture
Stott’s legacy was not only in emboldening evangelicals but also in encouraging evangelism. Led to Christ as a 17-year-old pupil of Rugby School, where he became head boy, he was forever afterwards a man on a mission, developing an international ministry as he preached on university campuses, the annual Keswick Convention, and around the world.
I have a signed copy of his book Understanding the Bible (not for sale!) on my shelves, reminding me of a man who helped me, and thousands more, to grasp what the gospel is all about. And I am profoundly thankful for that.
Yes, an appreciation of the Jewish issue could have spread more widely if he had grasped it, but his hard-fought fight for the authority of Scripture will undoubtedly continue to bear fruit – quite conceivably including greater understanding on Israel in the long-term.
Notes
1Charles Gardner, Tongues of Fire, Sable Publishing, pp 108-9
