The Living Church - John Stott
I hope to grow up to be John Stott. Not that I could approach his level of scholarship or wisdom, but I hope that when I move into my ninth decade on the planet (should I make it that long or the Lord tarry, although I’m nowhere near as sure about my eschatology as I used to be, but that’s a whole other post), my mind will still be engaged with what is going on around me and that I will still be doing my small part in accomplishing the mission of God. I had the privilege of meeting Eddie Gibbs this past fall and was deeply inspired to grow into that kind of man of God. It wasn’t that long ago that I was working at a truck stop in Saskatchewan and I said to my new wife that I didn’t want to turn into an angry, cranky, old person.
“You should probably start now, eh.”
Stott declares early in the book that the marks of a church that is living and vital are learning, caring, worshipping, and evangelizing. He then goes on to discuss these in greater detail. Stott’s bias is that these marks are born into a church that is deeply engaged in listening to God through the Bible, and his bias is that strong biblical preaching is essential for this listening to take place. As a pastor and someone who invested his undergrad in Biblical Studies, this is my bias as well. I don’t believe that this biblical preaching must be tied to to the sermon act as we conventionally understand it, but the importance of the Bible cannot be understated.
I’m one of a group of Christians who could be called “emerging” and while that word seems to mean less and less all the time and the conversation has become sort of boring for me (at what point do we stop being the emerging church, and just start being the church?), I’m part of the generation for whom Stott is writing this book. He asks us to maintain our zeal for reform and change and transformation in the image of Christ rather than to cultural norms, while at the same time maintaining our connection to the roots and fellowship in the community of the saints as we seek to bring the good news to a new and old world. In the conclusion he makes and appeal for a new generation of Timothys:
“Some Christians fight the good fight of faith. They are great warriors for truth. But they do not pursue goodness, let alone gentleness.
“Others are good and gentle, but have no comparable concern to fight for truth.
“Yet others neglect both doctrine and ethics, and concentrate on their quest for religious experience.
“Why must we always polarize? All three of these are God’s purpose for us. Oh, for balanced Christians!” (p. 149-150)
I pray that for me it would be so.
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