Preface to the First Edition
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
Apart from my personal commitment to evangelism, both to evangelism through the local church and—since a mission in Cambridge University in 1952—to university evangelism, there are four particular experiences that have contributed to the writing of this book.
First, in 1968 I attended as an “adviser” the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Uppsala. Finding myself allocated to section 2 (“Renewal in Mission”), I was immediately plunged into the thick of contemporary debate about the meaning of mission.
Then, although I was not able to attend the Salvation Today conference at Bangkok in January 1973, I naturally followed it with deep interest and concern. When invited the following year to deliver the annual Baker lecture in Melbourne (in memory of Bishop Donald Baker, New Testament scholar and former principal of Ridley College, Melbourne), I chose as my theme “Salvation Yesterday and Today.” The substance of this lecture is reproduced with permission, and enlarged, in chapter four.
Third, the planning committee of the International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne in July 1974 asked me to give an opening address on the nature of biblical evangelism, and to seek to provide a biblical definition of the five words mission, evangelism, dialogue, salvation and conversion.
So when, fourth, Canon Jim Hickinbotham, principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, invited me to deliver the 1975 Chavasse Lectures (in memory both of Bishop F. J. Chavasse of Liverpool, who had been principal of Wycliffe Hall, and of his son Bishop Christopher Chavasse, who had been master of St. Peter’s College and chairman of the governing body of Wycliffe Hall), it seemed appropriate to take the same five words and elaborate what I had attempted to sketch at Lausanne. I am very grateful to the principal, staff and students of Wycliffe Hall for the kindly welcome and attentive hearing that they gave me, and for the stimulus of the question time that followed each lecture.
Although I have no wish to disguise myself or to conceal that I am a Christian of “evangelical” conviction, this book is not an exercise in party propaganda. I have no axe to grind, except to go on seeking to discover what the Spirit is saying through the Word to the churches. Nothing encouraged me more at Wycliffe than to hear the principal’s concluding comment that he thought I had been “scrupulously fair” toward those with whom I have ventured to disagree. This has certainly been my aim. Besides, if I am critical of others, I desire also to be critical of myself and of my fellow evangelicals. Life is a pilgrimage of learning, a voyage of discovery, in which our mistaken views are corrected, our distorted notions adjusted, our shallow opinions deepened and some of our vast ignorances diminished.
Perhaps the greatest need in current ecumenical debate is to find an agreed biblical hermeneutic, for without this a broader consensus on the meaning and obligation of “mission” is unlikely ever to be reached.
John Stott
April 1975