According to a media release obtained by ANS, Dr. Stott will also be moving home from his flat in Bridford Mews, London, where he has lived for more than 30 years, to a retirement community for Anglican clergy in the south of England which will be able to provide more fully for his present and future needs. Dr Stott has made this decision with the strong belief that it is God’s provision for him at this stage.
A biography posted to the Langham Partnership website says John Stott was born in London in 1921 to Sir Arnold and Lady Stott. He was educated at Rugby School, where he became head boy, and Trinity College Cambridge. At Trinity he earned a double first in French and theology, and was elected a senior scholar.
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. Although Stott was confirmed into the Anglican Church in 1936 and took part in formal religious duties at school, he remained spiritually restless.
Stott writes of that time in his life: "As a typical adolescent, I was aware of two things about myself, though doubtless I could not have articulated them in these terms then. First, if there was a God, I was estranged from him. I tried to find him, but he seemed to be enveloped in a fog I could not penetrate. Secondly, I was defeated. I knew the kind of person I was, and also the kind of person I longed to be. Between the ideal and the reality there was a great gulf fixed. I had high ideals but a weak will. . . . [W]hat brought me to Christ was this sense of defeat and of estrangement, and the astonishing news that the historic Christ offered to meet the very needs of which I was conscious." (1)
On 13 February 1938, Eric Nash (widely 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?”
Stott recalls: "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, Stott explains, "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. For weeks afterwards, even months, I was unsure what had happened to me. But gradually I grew, as the diary I was writing at the time makes clear, into a clearer understanding and a firmer assurance of the salvation and lordship of Jesus Christ." (2)
Preaching ministry focused on church he attended all his life
John Stott has attended his local church, All Souls, Langham Place in London’s West End (www.allsouls.org) , since he was a small boy. One of his earliest life memories is of sitting in the gallery and dropping paper pellets onto the fashionable hats of the ladies below! Many years later, and following his ordination in 1945, John Stott became assistant curate at All Souls and then, unusually, went straight on to become rector in 1950. He became rector emeritus in 1975, a position which he continues to hold, and he still preaches there several times each quarter.
His website biography states that 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 and slept on the streets in order to find out what it was like.
All Souls Church grew numerically during the 1950s and 1960s, the site says. John Stott continually pleaded with people not to dismiss other, closer evangelical churches just to be a part of the congregation at All Souls. Like one of his mentors, Charles Simeon of Cambridge, Dr. Stott turned down opportunities for advancement in the church hierarchy and remained at the same church throughout his ministry. 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.
When John Stott began his ordained ministry, evangelicals had little influence in the Anglican church hierarchy. Through personal initiatives such as the reinvented Eclectic Society, Dr. Stott sought to raise the sights and morale of young evangelical clergy. From a founding membership of 22 of his friends, the 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.
Stresses vigorous intellectual pursuits
John Stott often bemoans the anti-intellectualism apparent in some Christians. In contrast he stresses the need, in his words, “to relate the ancient Word to the modern world.” It was this conviction that led to his founding The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (www.licc.org.uk) in 1982 to “offer courses in the inter-relations between faith, life and mission to thinking Christian lay people.” He served as its first director and then as president from 1986 onward.
Stott says key words in his thinking are “integration” and “penetration.”
"I think evangelical Christians, if one can generalize, have not been integrated; there is a tendency among us to exclude certain areas of our life from the lordship of Jesus, whether it be our business life and our work, or our political persuasion. That sort of integration is crucial to the Institute’s vision; the second is the penetration of the secular world by integrated Christians, whose gospel will be a more integrated gospel." (3)
In 1970, Michael Baughen’s appointment as vicar of All Souls allowed John Stott to travel more widely. Since then, Dr. Stott has been able to spend about three months each year fulfilling speaking engagements abroad (with three further months spent at The Hookses, his Welsh writing retreat). He traveled regularly to the United States, and his prominence within North American evangelicalism was reflected in his role as Bible expositor on six occasions at the triennial Urbana Student Mission Convention arranged by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (www.intervarsity.org). John Stott’s links with students worldwide were strengthened by his leading of some 50 university missions between 1952 and 1977 in Britain, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Asia, and he was vice president of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (www.ifesworld.org) from 1995 to 2003.
Strong international influence
Perhaps John Stott’s greatest international contribution has been through his writing, which is characterized as being clear, balanced, biblically based and intellectually rigorous. John Stott’s writing career started in 1954 when he was asked to write the bishop of London’s annual Lent book. Fifty years later, he has written over 40 titles 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. A comprehensive bibliography of his work was compiled by Timothy Dudley-Smith in 1995.
Pursues ornithology and photography
For all his ministry accomplishments, Dr. Stott maintains his avocational interests with exceptional passion. From an early age, he has been a keen bird watcher and photographer, taking 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. John Stott encourages all Christians to take an interest in some form of natural history and has been a strong supporter of A Rocha: Christians in Conservation (www.arocha.org) since its inception in 1983.
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.”
The media release says: "Dr Stott will greatly value your prayer for him in the challenges and opportunities involved in this transition. John Stott is also happy to reassure his friends that the Langham Partnership International (or John Stott Ministries, in USA), is well prepared to continue its work, even after his retirement."
