Review of John Stott: A Summary of his Teaching

Naturally, the book begins with a chapter on God. Stott works through the Trinity, dealing in turn with Humanity, the Cross, Holy Scripture, Salvation, The Church, Preaching, (Stott was the master preacher), The Sacraments, Mission, Discipleship, The Kingdom of God, Ethics, the Last Things and Orni-Theology (Stott was a life-long bird watcher)…

…Stott was a solid, unapologetic, Anglican evangelical who was comfortable sitting down with Billy Graham or with Martin Lloyd Jones with whom he publicly disagreed over leaving the Church of England. Graham and Stott’s friendship was foundational for the First International Congress on World Evangelization in July, 1974. Over 2,400 participants from 150 nations gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, for what TIME magazine described as ‘a formidable forum, possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held’. I was privileged to attend this gathering with Malcolm Muggeridge, England’s celebrated Christian journalist…

…Stott claimed that expository preaching is extremely rare today. He set himself the task to convince his readers of the necessity of conscientious biblical preaching. He sought to relate the gospel to the modern world. His I Believe in Preaching was published in the same year in the US as Between Two Worlds: the art of preaching in the twentieth century. In the Contemporary Christian, Stott addressed the question of how to apply God’s word to the concerns of the present time. It requires entry into the worlds of thought and feeling of our contemporaries. If we believe that the gospel of Christ is the answer to these questions, we must preach Christ, the contemporary Christ, he said…

…In one other area Stott experienced significant change. A vigorous evangelist, Stott always maintained the priority of evangelism, but years later in Christian Mission in the Modern World, Stott expressed himself differently. While maintaining the priority of evangelism, he wrote that social responsibility was among the things Jesus commanded. “The actual commission itself must be understood to include social as well as evangelistic responsibility, unless we are to be guilty of distorting the words of Jesus.” Stott went on to develop the relationship between evangelism and social action.