The following article is part of a series of articles that will traverse church history to examine the preaching of great preachers.

John R. Stott (1921-2011) served as the Rector of All Souls Church in London from 1950-1975. He went on from there to have a worldwide ministry, writing over fifty books, being named one of Time Magazine’s one hundred most influential people in the world. Yet, I suppose he would be more controversial now than ever. For the informed, this seems like an odd statement given his penchant for being a consistent peace-maker between disparate groups. I say this, then, because Stott led with humility, listening, and nuance; unpalatable traits in our modern age of binary reductionism. This is not to suggest that he was not also articulate in contending for the faith. He preached with theological precision and cultural alertness. His was an “intelligent faith.”  But he practiced his ministry for Christ in the servant-like manner of Christ. I do not always agree with the totality of his theological conclusions, but I do find in him a personal model for ministry, particularly as a preacher.

Here are three ways that John Stott serves as a model for contemporary preaching today.

Expository Preaching: Stott contended that all true Christian preaching is expository preaching.[1] By “expository” he meant more than a mere running commentary on successive verses in a book of the Bible. Expository preaching is bringing out of the text what is there and exposing it to view.[2] According to Stott this can happen with a single verse, a sentence, a word, or even an entire book of the Bible. He writes, “Whether it is long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly, without addition, subtraction, or falsification.”[3] Moreover, Stott argued that expository preaching demands integrity from the preacher. In other words, are we making the Bible to mean anything we want, or are we adhering to the original intent of the divinely-inspired biblical author? Stott denounced the indifference many preachers regularly give to the Bible, choosing exploitation over exposition. Conversely, he saw in expository preaching a great source of confidence. He writes, “The Church needs to listen attentively to His Word, since its health and maturity depend upon it. So pastors must expound it… Whenever they do so with integrity, the voice of God is heard, and the Church is convicted and humbled, restored and reinvigorated, and transformed into an instrument for His use and glory.”

Ethical Preaching – An influential (and controversial) aspect of Stott’s ministry was his understanding of the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility. The implications of his views were far reaching, as he articulated biblical solutions to ethical challenges. He often spoke of taking “the whole gospel on a whole mission to the whole world.” His reference to the “whole mission” was his attempt to fuse together a holistic, biblical understanding of the character of God, the nature of human beings, the model of Christ’s mission, and the responsibility of the Church. He writes, “Wherever we look, then—at God or Christ, at human beings, salvation, or the Church—we see this healthy fusion of soul and body, word and deed, faith and works, witness and service, light and salt, the individual and the community, evangelism and social action. We must not separate what God has joined.”[4] He regularly addressed ethical dilemmas faced by his congregation, including subjects such as care for creation, human rights, gender roles, homosexuality, work, poverty, abortion, euthanasia, political engagements, etc., endeavoring to help them meet the spiritual and physical needs of those in their care.

Evangelistic Preaching – On Sunday, February 13, 1938, Stott attended a teenage “Camp”  put on by Eric Nash, who was affectionately known as “Bash.” Nash asked Pilate’s question from the Scriptures, “What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?” (Matt. 27:22). Stott recalls that at the end of Nash’s talk, Stott approached him with several inquiries about the nature of Christian faith. Nash took Stott for a drive in his car, answering his questions and explaining to him the way of salvation. Nash put no pressure on Stott for an immediate decision. Stott later wrote the following in a diary, reflecting on that day:

With the benefit of hindsight, I can say that the correspondence between my need and Christ’s offer seemed too close to be a coincidence. So that night at my bedside I made the experiment of faith, and “opened the door” to Christ. I saw no flash of lightning, heard no peals of thunder, felt no electric shock pass through my body, 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.[5]

This personal conversion to Christ shaped the tenure of Stott’s life and ministry. In addition to being a pastor, he was an evangelist, having led countless university missions as well as several global crusades in the developing world. Stott was not content with teaching only the Bible. His central aim was to help people see, in the Scriptures, the glorious salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ. His passion was for people to experience the new birth, being adopted by faith into the body of Christ.

Thought I never met him, John Stott has become a ministry hero to me and I pray that we see a generation of new “Stott-like” pastors emerge, armed with biblical revelation to take on the crucial challenges that face Christ’s Church in the days to come.

If you want to learn more about John Stott, I recommend the following three resources:

Expository Preaching – John R.W. Stott, Between Two Worlds (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 1982.

Ethical Preaching – John R.W. Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today, 4^th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), 2006.

Evangelistic Preaching – John R.W. Stott, Our Guilty Silence: The Church, The Gospel, and The World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 1967.

[1] John R. Stott, Between Two Worlds, 125.

[2] Stott, Between Two Worlds, 126.

[3] Stott, Between Two Worlds, 126.

[4] John R. Stott, Christ the Cornerstone: Collected Essays of John Stott (Bellingham, WA: Lexham

Press 2019), 125.

[5] Timothy Dudley-Smith, John Stott: The Making of a Leader (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 94.

Clay Smith serves as the Senior Pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia, and is a PhD student in Preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.