Rev John Stott – The World’s Most Influential Religious Leader
In April, 2005, TIME Magazine listed the results of their survey taken over the past year, of the one hundred most influential people in the world in a variety of fields.
Obviously we can all think of the newsmakers in politics like George W. Bush, President of the United States; Hu Jintao, President of the People’ Republic of China, Kim Jong Il leader of North Korea, and Ariel Sharon – Prime Minister of Israel. I was pleased to see recognised as one of the most influential leaders of countries, John Howard – Prime Minister of Australia.
Artists and entertainers included Clint Eastwood and Michael Moore. Showing the power of communication, the list included Steve Jobs, The Google guys, The BlackBerry guys and Rupert Murdoch. Others included on the list were Rick Warren, Peter Singer and Michael Schumacher.
Although Rick Warren is a minister, one was singled out as the world’s most influential religious figure in any religion. It was Rev John Stott of London. That pleased his thousands of Australian friends. Billy Graham, wrote the tribute in TIME to John Stott. Mr Graham, himself an icon, wrote of John: “My association and friendship with the Rev Dr John Stott began in 1954, when we were both young men. I was an unknown evangelist, and John and the church he led at All Souls, Langham Place, gave our team an unreserved welcome before our first crusade in London and helped with my ministry at Oxford and Cambridge. He became one of my closest friends, advisers and confidants.”
“In the early 60s, John created the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion. From the outset, it offered training scholarships in the West to potential future leaders in Asia, Africa and South America, many of whom took up high positions when they returned to their own countries. Today they are in charge of church movements with millions of members; John’s work is a significant factor in the explosive growth of Christianity in parts of the Third World.”
“Despite numerous opportunities to be appointed bishop, archbishop or to head some of the world’s finest theological seminaries, John Stott, 84, has held true to what he sees as a wider calling “the equipping of leaders in countries where resources and experience are limited”. His provision of theological books for these regions is financed in large measure with the royalties from his considerable and popular writings. The modesty of his lifestyle is evidenced in the simplicity of his living quarters, limited to a two-room flat in London’s West End, and a renovated farm on the Welsh coast, where he has written his books.
“I can’t think of anyone who has been more effective in introducing so many people to a biblical world view. He represents a touchstone of authentic biblical scholarship that, in my opinion, has scarcely been paralleled since the days of the 16th century European Reformers.”
John has visited Australia regularly and always to crowded meetings. I always try to attend as many of these as possible.
More than two dozen of his scholarly books are on my shelves. They are each a blessing. A quick word search of my sermons, show I have quoted him 94 times. For some years, through lecturing at ministers schools in connection with the Billy Graham Crusades around the world, and at the International Conferences for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam, and various evangelical leaders meetings, I have heard him often.
Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith, has written the definitive two volume biography (John Stott: The Making of a Leader, vol. 1, and A Global Ministry, vol. 2, Inter-Varsity Press, 2001. They were two volumes I enjoyed immensely.
John Stott was born into a privileged home, in 1921 to Sir Arnold and Lady Stott. He was educated at Rugby School, where he became head boy, and Trinity College Cambridge where he was a top scholar. John Stott trained for the pastorate at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He was awarded a Lambeth doctorate in divinity in 1983 and has honorary doctorates from schools in America, Britain and Canada.
CONVERSION
In 1938, Eric Nash (known as ‘Bash’) came to give a talk to the Christian Union at Rugby School. His text was Pilate’s question: “What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?” John later wrote: “That I needed to do anything with Jesus was an entirely novel idea to me, for I had imagined that somehow he had done whatever needed to be done, and that my part was only to acquiesce. This Mr Nash, however, was quietly but powerfully insisting that everybody had to do something about Jesus, and that nobody could remain neutral. Either we copy Pilate and weakly reject him, or we accept him personally and follow him. After talking privately with Nash and taking the rest of the day to think further, that night at my bedside I made the experiment of faith, and “opened the door” to Christ. I saw no flash of lightning …in fact I had no emotional experience at all. I just crept into bed and went to sleep. But from that moment on I had a clear understanding and a firm assurance of the salvation and lordship of Jesus Christ.”
John Stott has attended his local church, All Souls, Langham Place in London’s West End since he was a small boy. Indeed one of his earliest life memories is of sitting in the gallery and dropping paper pellets onto the fashionable hats of the ladies below! Following his ordination in 1945, John Stott became assistant curate at All Souls and then, unusually, went straight on to become rector in 1950. Twenty-five years later he retired, although he still preaches there several times each year.
In the words of his biographer, Timothy Dudley-Smith “John Stott has provided a model for international city-centre contemporary ministry.” John worked on five principles of city church ministry: the priority of prayer, expository preaching, regular evangelism, careful follow-up of enquirers and converts, and the systematic training of helpers and leaders.
Soon after his appointment as rector, Dr. Stott began to encourage church members to attend a weekly training course in evangelism. A monthly “guest service” was established, combining regular parochial evangelism with Anglican evening prayer, and follow-up discipleship courses for new Christians were started in people’s homes. All Souls offered midweek lunchtime services, a central weekly prayer meeting and monthly services of prayer for the sick. “Children’s church” and family services were established, a chaplain to a group of Oxford Street stores was appointed, and the All Souls Clubhouse was founded as a Christian community centre. John Stott took parish visiting seriously; he once even disguised himself as homeless to sleep on the streets in order to find out what it was like.
His role as a wise, prayerful and caring pastor with an incredible ability to remember names and circumstances has been for many people his most significant contribution.
NATIONAL INFLUENCE
When John Stott began his ordained ministry, evangelicals had little influence in the Anglican Church hierarchy. John sought to raise the sights and morale of young evangelical clergy. From a founding membership of 22 of his friends, that clergy society grew to over 1,000 members by the mid 1960s. Out of this movement grew many initiatives, most notably the two National Evangelical Anglican Congresses of 1967 and 1977, which Dr. Stott chaired.
Dr. Stott was also chair of the Church of England Evangelical Council from 1967 to 1984 and president of two influential Christian organizations, the British Scripture Union from 1965 to 1974 and the British Evangelical Alliance from 1973 to 1974. Dr. Stott combined his commitment to evangelism and his fostering of future Christian leaders by involving himself in the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship where he was president four times. He has also served as a chaplain to the Queen from 1959 to the present.
John Stott founded The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity in 1982 to “offer courses in the inter-relations between faith, life and mission to thinking Christian lay people.”
Significant commentators say that John Stott is the most influential clergyman in the Church of England and that the growth of post-war English evangelicalism was attributable more to John Stott than any other person. I would add, however, with the exception to Billy Graham.
INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE
Following his retirement as vicar of All Souls John Stott travelled widely. He spends about three months each year fulfilling speaking engagements in all parts of the world with a hectic schedule. He spends a further three months spent at The Hookses, his Welsh writing retreat on new books.
John is constantly a popular speaker with university students, especially in the United States. He has led over 50 university missions in Britain, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Asia.
One of Dr. Stott’s major contributions to world evangelization was through the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization held at Lausanne, Switzerland. John Stott acted as chair of the drafting committee for the Lausanne Covenant, a significant milestone in the evangelical movement. As chair of the Lausanne Theology and Education Group from 1974 to 1981, he contributed strongly to the growing evangelical understanding of the relation between evangelism and social action.
WORD AND DEED
It was in this regard, I will always be appreciative to John. In 1984, along with fifty other church leaders, evangelical theologians, and professors, I was invited to spend eight days in Grand Rapids on a special consultation on Evangelism and Social responsibility convened by the World Evangelical Fellowship. There was tension among evangelical leaders and missional leaders especially in the third world about the priorities of the church: is our first task to win people to Jesus Christ, or is it to help the needy with food, medical supplies and education? Good arguments could be made on both sides. Some of the theologians from North America and Europe took a hard line in their insistence on the fact that nothing was more important to mission than saving souls.
Various scholars wrote learned papers, and people, usually from the third world wrote formal responses. I responded to a paper from Professor Peter Beyerhaus of Tubingen University in Germany in a very critical manner. He was devastated and depressed with my hard hitting response. In many senses this polarized the entire consultation. But John moved among all the leaders as a pastor. Instead of prioritizing such important issues one ahead of the other, John spoke of how evangelism and social responsibility were like two wings of a bird, or two blades of a pair of scissors. Everyone realised how both were necessary and both inter-dependent.
I had always admired John’s writing style. He would be one of the finest writers of English prose in the world. I thought it a marvellous gift. Then I had to work with him on our final communiqué. All day we worked on drafts, and then the others of us went to bed, but John sat up all night, writing and re-writing. The following morning we had a magnificent response, but I realised that his writing came from careful revision and amazing self-discipline.
Through his contact with pastors in the Majority World, John Stott became increasingly convinced of the need to help in the provision of books and scholarships. This work has taken up much of his time recently. He set up the Evangelical Literature Trust in 1971, funded largely by his own book royalties, in order to send theological books to pastors, teachers and theological students. In 1974 a bursary fund was established to provide scholarships for intellectually able evangelical scholars from the Majority World to earn their doctorates, and then to return to their own countries to teach in theological seminaries. Now the Langham Partnership International raises money in Australia and other wealthy countries to fund this advanced educational work all over the world and John continues as its founder-president.
Perhaps John Stott’s greatest international contribution has been through his writing, which is clear, balanced, biblically based and intellectually rigorous. John Stott’s writing career has lasted over fifty years. He has written over 40 books, and hundreds of articles and other contributions to Christian literature.
John Stott’s best-known work, Basic Christianity, has sold two million copies and has been translated into more than 60 languages. Other titles include The Cross of Christ, Understanding the Bible, The Contemporary Christian, Evangelical Truth, Issues Facing Christians Today, The Incomparable Christ, eight volumes in The Bible Speaks Today series of New Testament expositions, and most recently Why I Am a Christian.
John never married, though according to his biography he came close to it on two occasions, and he acknowledges that with the responsibility of a family he could never have written, travelled and ministered in the way he has.
Finally, I could not write about John without mentioning his hobby as a bird watcher and photographer. He takes his binoculars and camera with him on all his travels. He has seen around 2,700 of the world’s 9,000 species of birds; his book The Birds our Teachers, illustrated with his own photographs, was published in 1999.
Billy Graham calls John Stott “the most respected clergyman in the world today,” and John Pollock described him as “in effect the theological leader of world evangelicalism.” John Stott’s biographer, Timothy Dudley-Smith, writes: “To those who know and meet him, respect and affection go hand in hand. The world-figure is lost in personal friendship, disarming interest, unfeigned humility—and a dash of mischievous humour and charm. By contrast, he thinks of himself, as all Christians should but few of us achieve, as simply a beloved child of a heavenly Father; an unworthy servant of his friend and master, Jesus Christ; a sinner saved by grace to the glory and praise of God.”
GORDON MOYES