John Stott was one of the most treasured and respected leaders of the global Evangelical movement. When my girlfriend and I heard him preach at Calvary Baptist Church here in New York City half a dozen years ago, he was already in his 80s, but — though he appeared physically frail — his energy as a preacher of Christ was undiminished. An Anglican clergyman, he played a key role in keeping alive Evangelical vigor in the Church of England in some of that Church’s feeblest decades. (Indeed, one of the things he said at Calvary Baptist that impressed both me and my girlfriend the most was that it is very difficult — I forget, he may even have said “impossible” — to be a Christian without the church. This is not a sentiment I have heard stressed very often in U.S. Evangelicalism, and I am not even 100 percent convinced that it is correct, but I think it stands as a refreshing corrective to much of today’s conventional wisdom about religion.)
He leaves behind many books that are very useful and uplifting to Christian readers seeking to deepen their understanding of the Bible; they are intelligent but written for and easily accessible to the non-scholarly reader. (I recommend especially the commentary series “The Bible Speaks Today,” the books whose titles begin The Message of . . .)
John Stott, dead at 90. R.I.P.
When I was a teenager I first read "Basic Christianity" by Stott, and it was a great, simple explanation of the Christian faith. In 1995, while in London, I got to see John Stott preach at All Souls. He was not regularly preaching then, but they were celebrating his 50th year in ministry. It was a Sunday evening, the place was packed, and he delivered. I am so glad I was able to see him there at All Souls. RIP John R.W. Stott.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseInterestingly, Stott became a Christian in 1938, when he was 17. So, by the time of his death at 90, he had been a believer for 73 years. He also wrote more than 50 books, some of which are only available in foreign languages (a reflection, doubtless, of his deep concern for evangelism). His last book, "The Radical Disciple," was published just last year, just before his 89th birthday. Incredible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGreat book. Impacted me, too. Great man. He'll be missed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for mentioning his death, Michael. I think his two best books are "The Cross of Christ" (1986), his volume on the atonement, and "The Message of Romans: God's Good News for the World" (1994), his commentary on the Book of Romans, which is part of that series you mentioned (and which I'm almost half-way through).
Interestingly, he died exactly 3 months, to the day, after his 90th birthday on April 27.
Stott was right, by the way: it IS impossible to be a Christian without the church because Christians ARE the church. We are the body of Christ, and every true believer is a member. Biblically and theologically, there really is no such thing as "lone ranger Christianity."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou should have capitalized "church." It is indeed very difficult to be a Christian without the Church. Stott echoes a very basic beleief that is shared by many orthodox Evangelicals and other traditional Protestants alike - the Faith is shared through the Church. There may be disagreement and conflict and division but there must be a Church paired with the Faith.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for posting this, Michael: I'm not sure how soon I would have read the news otherwise.
The Boston Globe has a good obituary,
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I recently found out that a college friend and her husband have been members of his church (All Souls, London) and even met John Stott before he retired, and so I was thinking about dropping him a line, thanking him for his books which have proven to be so influential: an unbelievably time-consuming grad school project -- the last requirement in a master's program, scheduled to wrap up next week -- has caused me to put almost literally everything else on hold for eight months, and so that ship has sailed.
Or, more precisely, our meeting has been postponed. :)
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Only a year or two after having discovered C.S. Lewis in college (through the Screwtape Letters, which was referenced in a U2 music video) and after a very good Bible study, I asked my college pastor for his recommendations on books to read.
His suggestion was John Stott's The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, which is part of the series Michael here mentions: The Bible Speaks Today (BST), from InterVarsity Press, a series for which John Stott was the New Testament editor.
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It's the only book in the series devoted to a single passage rather than an entire book or two -- there's a related series, on Bible themes that presents surveys rather than chapter-by-chapter exposition -- and it really shines a light on the full ethical AND theological implications of Matthew 5-7. (Recall that Christ Himself taught that we're blessed for enduring persecution for Christ's sake explicitly.) It continues to be a book that challenges me in my own life, and its section on "turn the other cheek" is a useful corrective to the Christian Left's invocation of the passage to insist on strict pacifism.
(If there's one thing that I would say was a deficiency in Stott's writings, so far as I've seen, it's too much of a willingness to give Leftist politics the benefit of the doubt: there's a reason the Globe describes Stott's "evangelical emphasis on social responsibility." No doubt many people are sincerely concerned about issues like the environment, poverty, and materialism, but I'm not sure Stott ever fully appreciated that the Left's leadership likely invokes these causes primarily as Trojan horses for their radical statism -- but, then, I'm not sure such provocative-but-true analysis would have been appropriate, as the gospel itself is offensive enough to the fallen world.)
(And, Stott's work reminds me to avoid a knee-jerk overreaction to what the Left invokes, however deceptively, as its causes. I do disagree with their policies, and I question the true motives of its leadership, but we truly OUGHT to be good stewards and good neighbors, taking care of our natural resources and each other. I need to be reminded of that too often.)
As with the rest of the BST series, the book accomplished its stated goals of being readable as a work of literature for laymen rather than a reference work for clergy; of being applicable to today's world; and of taking the Bible seriously as God's revelation to man.
I ended up teaching from that book when assisting a high-school Sunday School class early in grad school, and now I am using the BST books as the primary outline for teaching a college-and-career class as we follow the church's schedule and slowly work our way through the Bible -- at least, I'm doing so whenever possible, i.e., not during this project.
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I've read a few of his other books, and Basic Christianity is a great little summary of, well, the basics. For certain intelligent, well-read unbelievers who are immersed in today's post-modern culture, it's a good *second* book for them to read to understand the faith, second after C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
(The authors of those two books are a lot alike: quite ecumenical and very serious Anglican Christians who are first-class thinkers and very talented writers -- the Globe is right in saying that Stott "explained complex theology in a way that lay people could easily understand." The layman Lewis tended to approach his works with reason and an uncommon common sense as a starting point, and the pastor Stott started from the teachings of the Bible; for that reason, I see Lewis' works as guiding people to Christ and Stott's more as an thorough explanation of what Christ taught and what is found in the Scripture He affirmed. The writers complement each other, I think especially if you go from Lewis to Stott.)
The Cross of Christ may be Stott's magnum opus, explaining why the cross is central to the church and Christ's own life and teaching by focusing on what the Bible teaches about what Christ's death accomplishes: it was an act of divine self-substitution, God becoming man (the Father sending the Son, the Son choosing to be sent) and dying to satisfy his own holy character in order to save us, to reveal His love, and to secure victory for Christ and for us through Christ.
After I finish this project next week, I'm getting a Kindle, and Stott's Understanding the Bible will probably be among the first ebooks I read. But it would be tough to top the influence of his BST books.
(Would that the Bible Speaks Today be available as ebooks! And I do hope that IVPress completes the series.)
All the BST books have been good, but especially good are the books that Stott himself wrote.
I taught from his commentary on I & II Thessalonians about a year before an unexpected death in my family, and I was able to draw tremendous hope and strength from what I had learned from I Thess 4:13-18. As Stott summarized it, when history is brought to an end, Christ will return, the dead in Christ will be raised, the living in Christ will be raptured, and all will be permanently reunited.
And his commentary on Romans... Stott introduced Paul's greatest letter by summarizing its influence on Augustine, Calvin, Wesley, and others. With help from his commentary, the letter has had a profound effect on me, too. It wasn't a point that was very heavily emphasized, but the discussion on Abraham in Romans 4 makes clear the difference between law and grace as they apply to one's relationship with God:
A relationship based on our moral obligations to God (the law) is doomed to failure because of our inability to keep the law, but a relationship based on HIS promises to US (grace) can only end in victory, because God is faithful to keep His word.
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We're scheduled to study Romans starting in September -- after I take our class to a minor-league baseball game a few counties away in Rome, Georgia -- and I'm eagerly looking forward to sharing what I've learned.
The obituary closes by quoting the current rector at All Souls, that John R.W. Stott "equipped pastors and lay people to become bible teachers themselves on every continent."
He did indeed. He will be missed, and his life's work in devotion to God is deeply appreciated.
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