The Man Himself
The Man Himself
‘I can hear the chains clanking from here,’ Joy used to tease her brother. ‘Johnnie, you’re a slave driver!’
John Stott worked very hard. Those on his team had to work hard too, to keep up. Was he a slave driver? Not really!
We have already learned a lot about John. In this final chapter, let’s just get a few more glimpses behind the scenes. They come from friends who worked with him at different points in his life.
Uncle John cared about international students. When he waved Robin and Val Wells off on their boat train to Cape Town, he made a mental note of when they would dock in Southampton. ‘I’ll surprise them,’ he thought to himself. John flew back to London shortly after his trip to Kruger National Park. This meant he arrived home several days before they docked.
On a dull and cloudy morning, Robin and Val lugged their cases off SS The Pretoria Castle, and onto the train bound for London. The cases were heavy, with a lot of books. (In those days cases had no wheels.) It was the Wells’ first time in the UK. Everything is new to international students. The houses, the climate, the food, the money... An hour later, the train pulled into Waterloo. Now, with their heavy luggage, they would have to find their way to their flat. Or so they thought.
‘Robin! Val!’
Stepping down onto the platform, they were amazed to hear a familiar voice. There was John, walking towards them. ‘Welcome to England!’ he said with a warm handshake. ‘I hope you’ve had a good voyage.’ They were very touched that he should meet them. ‘My jalopy’s just outside,’ he added. John picked up one of the heavier cases, and they made their way to his van.
London can be an unwelcoming place on a dreary morning. But a welcoming smile soon changes that. John’s little blue Austin was jammed to its limits. With one final heave, the back door clicked shut. John drove the Wells' to their flat.
John Stott often invited international students to the ‘Wreckage’. He loved it when they got in touch. Some, like David Gitari, stayed for a time if there was room. Others just called in. ‘Come and have an English cup of tea,’ he would say to his new friends as he travelled around the world.
Uncle John liked to be punctual, so as not to waste other people’s time. When John was in America in 1964 to speak to students, his guide and companion for the trip, which included many meetings in universities, was Keith Hunt (Mark Hunt’s father). While based for a few days at Cedar Campus in the state of Wisconsin, Keith and Mark took John on an early morning birding expedition. Uncle John had a meeting at 11am to discuss a new venture; so he needed to be back in good time to get washed and changed.
They set out early, with a canoe loaded onto the roof rack of Mark’s Volkswagen Beetle, to hunt for the nesting site of the Common Loon (known in the UK as the Great Northern Diver). They had already tried a few days before, tramping through a swamp and squatting mosquitoes, but with no success.
First they visited the nearby lakes, but no loon was to be found.
‘There’s another lake up in that direction,’ said Mark, pointing with a nod of his chin into the mid distance. Uncle John looked at his watch. ‘I daren’t risk being late,’ he said.
‘We’ll be fine,’ the Hunts assured him. ‘It isn’t far.’ John wasn’t keen, but he had been overruled. They set off again, up a track, Mark’s father in the passenger seat and John in the back. The track surface was poor, and filled with holes and rocks. Mark drove as carefully as he could but suddenly one of the tyres slipped off a large rock and there was a loud crunching sound. This was very bad news.
Mark scrambled under the car to find an engine mount had snapped, but the tyre was still intact. Could the car still be driven? The engine was continuing to run, so he got back in and pressed the clutch pedal. Now the engine raced. They decided to attempt their journey back to base. Somehow they managed to turn the car around. Each time Mark released the pedal, the engine slowed, but it was still going too fast for the kind of road they were on. As soon as they reached a better road, desperate to make up time, Mark pressed the clutch down again. Bouncing over holes, skidding around bends, and racing at terrible speeds on the better stretches, John was finally delivered back to Cedar Campus. It must have been terrifying!
‘We’re two minutes early, Uncle John!’ said Mark, thankful for their safety and hugely relieved at the time they had made up. Uncle John piled out of the car to wash and change as quickly as he could. Mark knew he should not have insisted on the last lake when time was short. Anyone else might have shown impatience and even bad temper, but John Stott kept quiet, and he never referred to the incident again.
Uncle John liked accuracy. Before Windows-based software, people used typewriters which had no memory. So if a change was needed, a whole page had to be retyped. If Frances spotted an error in something, she would often retype a page. Then in the 1980s a massive change came about. The word processor took the place of the typewriter. Lord Sugar’s new Amstrads appeared on office desks. No longer would a whole page ever need to be retyped again!
Frances remembers a letter she typed for Uncle John when he was eighty-five years old. He was writing to another elderly pastor. Frances was typing fast, and her fingers slipped, so she inadvertently added an extra character. As John was reading through the letter before signing it, she heard uproarious laughter. This is what John read:
‘I too am still preaching, although I am now 875 years old.’
Uncle John urged Christians to live simply, and he lived simply, as we have seen. If he had clothes he didn’t wear, he gave them away. He kept his wardrobe to a minimum. He would be smartly dressed for meetings, and put on old clothes at The Hookses, apart from on Sundays for church. There was a time when he had only one pair of respectable shoes; if they needed to be repaired, they were repaired on a Saturday. He never, ever, accepted a second helping of food at meals, and had a second slice of toast and marmalade at breakfast only on Sundays – he was always determined to control his appetite.
Uncle John was a lifelong birdwatcher until his sight started to fail. He saw 2,500 of the world’s 9,000 bird species, and was expert in photographing them. Ornithology is the study of birds, but John’s was the study of birds as part of God’s majestic creation. It was, he joked, ‘ornitheology’. He loved to teach theology from his birdwatching, and wrote The Birds our Teachers to do this.
Uncle John wanted his study assistants to grow spiritually. Toby Howarth was study assistant when Uncle John was in his mid sixties. The study assistants helped with research, but in addition they did many practical things for Uncle John, and as he got older, they would also travel with him. John had invited some people from All Souls around for a meal, and the menu was to be kebabs, purchased from a small shop around the corner, followed by ice-cream and chocolate sauce.
‘Have you remembered to buy the ice cream? John asked Toby that afternoon.
‘Yes,’ said Toby, with his mind on something else. In fact he had not bought it, and he made a mental note to do so. But Toby forgot to buy it, and when people finished their kebabs he suddenly remembered. It was too late... All the shops nearby were closed. So there was chocolate sauce, but no ice cream for it to go over. This was very embarrassing for Toby, and it was embarrassing for Uncle John as host.
The next morning Toby walked slowly up the stairs to apologize. They talked through what happened, and how our behaviour as Christians relates to the character of God. Then they knelt on the floor and prayed together. Uncle John never mentioned the incident again.
Uncle John loved The Hookses. The Hookses remained a very special place to John Stott. He made his final trip there, aged eighty-seven. It held so many memories for him: writing books, laughing with friends, hard physical work, enjoying the stunning birdlife and seascapes. Jonathan West had accompanied him on his final overseas trip, to China, in 2006. Now, in the late summer of 2008, Jonathan and Virginia were with him on his final trip to The Hookses. Frances was there too, and a handful of other friends. John spent much time in The Hermitage, enjoying memories of the way the Lord had helped him write as he sat overlooking the bay. In the evenings Jonathan wheeled his chair up the slope to the main house for supper together. This was where John had invited Roger Steer, his biographer, to meet a group of his friends earlier in the year. It was where he felt most at home.
Uncle John kept the main thing the main thing. At the age of eighty-one, John Stott was in India to help pastors in their preaching. His American study assistant, Corey Widmer, was travelling with him. While in Madras (also known as Chennai), the capital city of Tamil Nadu state, they had the chance to go birding on an afternoon off. That afternoon Uncle John tripped and fell, and cut his leg. Soon the wound became painful and swollen, and it had to be treated at a hospital. Corey was concerned, as it got worse rather than better. He eventually managed to talk on the phone with Uncle John’s heart specialist in London. Advice was clear: unless it improved straight away, they should fly home.
Corey relayed the message to Uncle John, and both of them realized the seriousness of the matter. Their conversation did not get morbid. Far from it! John talked in his usual light-hearted manner, despite his pain; he was light-hearted but serious. He knew Corey wanted to become a pastor, and he wanted to impart some advice from his own experience.
‘Above all, Corey,’ Uncle John said, ‘cling to the cross.’ John Stott would talk of the Apostle Paul being ‘obsessed’ with the cross, and he adopted Galatians 6:14 as one of his ‘life verses’. It was a verse to live by; a verse which should affect every aspect of his life. It reads:
‘May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’
As we know, Uncle John did recover, and he had more years ahead of him in which to preach and teach and write. His advice that afternoon to Corey, which, as far as they knew then, could be one of their last times together, made a deep impression.
Uncle John wanted to show the fruit of the Holy Spirit in his life – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal. 5:21, 22). He knew that this could come only from the life of God in him. We have seen how he read the whole Bible each year. Before his Bible reading in the morning, he would greet the day by greeting the Lord. He would say, ‘Good morning, Heavenly Father. Good morning, Lord Jesus. Good morning, Holy Spirit.’ It wasn’t a matey ‘hey there’, but it showed how close he felt God to be. He went on to say to each Person in the Trinity that he worshipped them.
Uncle John prepared sermons with great care. John Stott was highly experienced as a public speaker. Could he have entered the pulpit without much preparation? Yes and No. Yes, he could have spoken, and spoken well, without much thought. Like every schoolteacher, the more you teach, the less you have to prepare. But preaching is different. John Stott sensed the weight of his responsibility to teach the Word of God. As a rough guide, he reckoned on an hour’s preparation for each minute of preaching. That may seem a long time. He wanted his hearers to get the most out of the Bible passage, and there were no shortcuts to that, so he studied hard, read widely, and prayed, to give them the best.
Uncle John was a radical. John Stott’s ministry was one of service, not of lording it over others. He became a friend to thousands around the world, enjoying fellowship when they met, and following as much news of them as he could. He prayed regularly for many people.
In some cultures John would have a garland hung around his neck, to express honour. He often addressed large crowds of people, and received applause. But he always remained a modest man, living simply, and owning very little.
We have seen some of the difficulties he had to face. He struggled with sin like we all do. But he didn’t give up.
Radical means working from the roots. John Stott was truly radical. He worked from the roots, and he himself was firmly rooted. His days were rooted in Christ from the moment he got out of bed, and said ‘Good morning’ to the Holy Trinity. This was the secret of his effectiveness.
The friends we met in ‘Start here’ all knew a little about Uncle John. But none of them knew as much as you do now. Are you surprised he featured in TIME magazine’s list of Top 100 influential people?
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John Stott went to be with Christ on Wednesday, 27th July 2011.
‘Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.’ Daniel 12:3
What will John Stott’s legacy be to the Church? We will know better in thirty or forty years’ time, and we will know perfectly in heaven.