5 Two "Timothys": Mark Labberton and Corey Widmer
Two "Timothys"
Mark Labberton and Corey Widmer Mark Labberton and Corey Widmer were two of John Stott's many "Timothys." The following reflections are excerpted from Portraits of a Radical Disciple: Recollections of John Stott's Life and Ministry, edited by Christopher J. H. Wright
(InterVarsity Press, 2011).
The Sermon on the Carpet by Mark Labberton The most memorable sermon I heard John Stott preach was not delivered at All Souls or at a large gathering in Asia, Africa or Latin America, or at a church or theological institution. Without a pulpit, surrounded by mud, and standing only
Problems of Christian Leadership on a small piece of carpet honorifically brought forth for him, John preached on this occasion to a handful of people in a dark, dilapidated courtyard, surrounded by small fire pits, blackened pots and a set of simple homes.
This spontaneous sermon occurred as the outcome of a favor asked for by an Anglican priest serving in Burma. "Would it be possible," the priest wrote, "for John Stott to pay a pastoral visit to my elderly mother the next time he is in Madras, India?" Since the man served so far away from his mother, he wondered if John might well not get to her before he could, since she might not have long to live. He added, doubtless for extra motivation, that his mother was poor, declining in health and "her teeth are falling out one by one."
On his next visit to Madras, John indeed took the scant information he had, more like the designation of large neighborhood than a house address, and set off with two of us to find this elderly lady. After a couple of hours searching, passing under and through various layers of shacks and structures, we arrived at the door to the woman's home. She eventually emerged from the shadows, frail, nearly toothless, but
Two "Timothys"
smiling with a tearful joy. She knelt at John's feet and kissed them, and then she and John spoke through our translator for a few minutes.
She made the request for a word of blessing, and once John had agreed, the carpet was brought forth and John prayed and offered his brief sermon.
The text was John 3:16. The words were simple and clear. The tone was compassionate and dignified. The assurance was personal and tender. The man who typically preached in a spotlight to hundreds and thousands, across a wide range of tribes and tongues and nations, with intellectual rigor and verbal command, now preached amid shadows to one woman and a handful of neighbors.
As his study assistant, accompanying John on this trip to India and Bangladesh, I was privileged with this view of John the highly visible preacher, and John the nearly invisible pastor.
What struck me then and now was John's consistency in each role and his faithfulness to Christ in both. John was simply trying to love his neighbor, the priest in Burma, by serving his mother, the widow in India. All John did on that occasion was to fulfill a simple request. But to
Problems of Christian Leadership do so required personal persistence. It meant stepping away from the crowd—the same person, serving the same Lord.
My first exposure to John had occurred when I was twenty-three at IVCF's Urbana Student
Missions Convention. The most captivating part of that week for me was the question-andanswer session that John led. Hundreds of people, out of the thousands at Urbana, showed up for this informal Q&A time. I was greatly struck by the humility and clarity of John's responses, by his knowledge of the Bible and by his self-effacing humor.
At one point, a theological student asked a very long and technical question using many multisyllabic theological terms. John asked the young man first to define each of the words he had used, and second to restate his question more simply. It was, frankly, awkward and insistent—maybe even a little embarrassing—for the seminarian. He did as John had asked, however, and then John proceeded to respond to the question simply and clearly. Although I had not yet met John in person, this exchange suggested what I later found to be true of him: a drive for clarity, a confidence in rationality, an
Two "Timothys"
expectation of competency. John embodied these, even as he encouraged them in others.
While his demanding capacity and competence were impressive, what moved and intrigued me much more was his character. Who is this man? Is he who he seems to be? How did he become that person? Standing several years later in that darkened courtyard in India, I thought back to that Q&A session at Urbana.
The integrity of John's life and ministry was not only apparent onstage but offstage as well. The humble and earnest devotion he expressed in public was also evident in private. John has sought to live one life serving one Lord.
Although I was a young Christian and recent seminary graduate at the time I came to work as John's study assistant, it had already become clear to me that while God provides gifts for ministry, the greater effect comes through character, the fruit of God's Spirit. Charisma, winsomeness, popularity, charm and cleverness can matter—in fact, they can matter too much.
What endures and bears peculiar witness to God comes from beyond mere capacity before a crowd. The greater testimony comes in an other wise unexplained character. This is what drew
Problems of Christian Leadership people to Jesus. This is what is meant to be true of Jesus' disciples.
The sermon on the carpet was the most memorable of John's sermons to me because it was the sermon that was John's life. His spiritual gifts might have taken him to India, to offer a set of lectures, to speak about important things with important leaders. But it was his character that got him into that darkened courtyard. The sermon he offered mattered not because of his degrees or his achievements or his honors, but because he had tasted that the Lord was good and had good news to share with an elderly sister in Christ who was blessed by that encouragement. The circumstances that distinguished
John's life from this woman's life were vast. But what they held in common mattered more, and they both knew that.
Over the three decades that I've known John, I have undoubtedly put him through some of the scrutiny that mentors often have to endure. I have wrestled internally with places of agreement and disagreement, with choices made or not, with our differences in attitude or experience, culture or generation. I don't have the same confidence in human reason that John does. I don't
Two "Timothys"
share the same rigorous commitment to selfdiscipline. The spiritual glass through which I look is not as clear as the one through which John sees. All that now seems like mere difference without division. For what still draws me to John more than anything else is the aroma of John's life—a life centered and matured in the love of Jesus Christ that bears fruit to the glory of God. John was all the more impressive, not less, the deeper our relationship became.
What I feared most from my early exposure to the Christian faith was that it seemed to make life smaller rather than larger—less love, less joy, less creativity, less wonder, less engagement. I was exposed to some pastors who seemed to be the incarnational proof that this was so. But when I came to faith in Christ as a young college student, I discovered that Jesus saves us from smallness.
I remembered this in Madras. As John preached that day, I stood so far from where I had been born and raised. I was now working for a pastor whose vision of the gospel had a cosmic and global reach, and who showed me in character and action that to be a disciple of Jesus meant growing in wisdom and love, in humility
Problems of Christian Leadership and hope. The world John knew and served was not parochial. The personal gospel was not a private one, and the particularity of the gospel was for the sake of its universality.
John introduced me to the Majority World, not as an object but as a family. His heart had grown far beyond his upper-class home and his elite education. He carried daily a vivid sense of the vital faith and strength of brothers and sisters around the world. He prayed daily as one standing alongside a very large family, with its size and urgency making it all the more compelling. I have experienced with peoples from many places and cultures our common center in Jesus Christ, and the ways our hearts and minds grew toward our Lord because of our brother John.
What John taught me in that sermon in Madras was what his life has taught me over the last thirty years. God so loved the world that the gift of God's Son reorders and enlarges our hearts and our lives. The one gospel of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ both intensifies and enlarges our understanding of God, and of the worth of our diverse brothers and sisters in Christ, and of all our earthly neighbors. The
Two "Timothys"
God who loves us all takes us where God wants, in order that we might show and proclaim this love for the transformation of the world and for the sake of God's glory. It was clear to me that day as John stood on the carpet in the courtyard:
John was simply being himself, the new self that was and is being renewed in the likeness of Jesus.
Mark Labberton was one of John Stott's early study assistants. He went on to be senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, California.
He has served on the board of John Stott Ministries in the United States and is now the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
"Above All, Cling to the Cross" by Corey Widmer I have countless memories of my three years serving as Uncle John's study assistant, but two anecdotes are the most prominent in my mind.
The first occurred after just a few months in the very mundane pattern of our daily life together.
Every morning, at 11 a.m. sharp, I would bring him a cup of coffee. I would find him hunched over some letter or manuscript at his desk, con-
Problems of Christian Leadership sumed with the work before him, putting his unparalleled powers of concentration to whatever task was at hand. Not wanting to disturb him, I would quietly set the cup and saucer adjacent to his right hand, and oftentimes he would mumble a barely audible word of thanks: "I'm not worthy."
Initially I thought this comment was amusing, but after a few months I began to find it slightly bothersome. How could someone pronounce himself unworthy of an acidic cup of instant coffee? One morning I was feeling a little cheeky, and when Uncle John mumbled his usual expression, "I'm not worthy," I quipped back, "Oh, sure you are."
Uncle John stopped, and I saw the powerful magnetic look of his concentration ease from the papers before him. He slowly raised his gaze, and, with a look of immense seriousness, yet boyish playfulness, he responded, "You haven't got your theology of grace right." I laughed, grinned awkwardly, and then said, "It's only a cup of coffee, Uncle John." As I turned round and headed back into the kitchen, I heard him mutter, "It's just the thin end of the wedge."
It took me days to figure out what he meant by that final rejoinder in our exchange. Though
Two "Timothys"
I never discussed it with him, I am convinced that he meant this: if our commitment to Jesus
Christ and our understanding of his grace do not impact the small places in our daily lives— the "thin end of the wedge"—then we are not living integrated lives. Our commitment to Christ may be most richly expressed in the most apparently inconsequential moments.
Uncle John was always fond of talking about "whole-life discipleship"—that is, his concern that the comprehensive lordship of Jesus Christ would extend its reign over every dimension of the Christian's life, bridging the "sacredsecular" divide that often separates our "spiri tual" lives from our "secular" commitments and interactions.
I saw this same commitment deeply manifested in his daily life, in the way he carefully negotiated a simple lifestyle, in his concern for the physical and material environment, in his interactions with taxi drivers, waiters, hotel concierges and other sundry people who crossed his path, and above all in his gentle and winsome engagement with Frances and me on a daily basis. He truly was an "integrated" Christian, and the grace of the gospel infused even the
Problems of Christian Leadership thinnest ends of the wedge that was his life.
The second anecdote relates to a very different setting: in hot, balmy Madras, India. We were there for a preaching conference in 2002, and one afternoon while birdwatching, Uncle
John took a nasty fall over a cement curb and lacerated his right leg. What looked to be a fairly harmless cut (one that would have healed naturally for someone less elderly) soon became a painful, swollen and infected wound, and began to worsen daily. Over two days we visited at least three different doctors in several different hospitals, but no treatment seemed to be halting the wound's deterioration. Finally, I was able to get in touch with Uncle John's cardiologist back in London, and with grave concern in his voice the doctor warned me of the immense seriousness of the situation in view of the state of Uncle
John's heart. He insisted that if things did not improve immediately, we should come back to London as soon as possible.
Later that day Uncle John and I were together in his room as I recounted to him the concern of his doctor. It was as solemn a moment as I ever shared with him. I believe that both of us perceived that, with the real possibility of se-
Two "Timothys"
rious infection and blood poisoning, these could possibly be his last days on the earth. Despite this fact and the pain that he was experiencing, he remained lighthearted and engaging, as always. Almost as if he recognized that this might well be some of the last time we would share together, he began talking with me about my future, about my desire to be a pastor, about what he considered the most vital dimensions of the pastoral ministry. Of all that he shared with me in those precious moments, one piece of advice has stayed with me more than any other:
"Above all," he said, "cling to the cross."
The cross of Christ, the title of what he considered his most important book and the one in which he invested more of himself than any other, was the paramount theme, the one he returned to again and again. He took quite literally
Paul's call in Galatians 6:14, one of his "life verses" as he often called it, to be "obsessed" with the cross. Even when he was not speaking about it directly, the centrality of the cross remained like a deep subterranean undercurrent beneath the body of Uncle John's life and work, affecting and directing so much of his thinking on ethical, theological and pastoral issues. "The
Problems of Christian Leadership Pervasive Influence of the Cross" is the title of the epilogue of The Cross of Christ. It could just as well serve as an epilogue for his life.
Thankfully, Uncle John's leg did heal, and several more years of ministry lay ahead for him beyond that moment in India. Those were not his final words to me, as it turned out. But for me, they endure beyond all others.
Corey Widmer was John Stott's study assistant from 1999 to 2002. Since 2005, he has been associate pastor of outreach at Third Presbyterian
Church, Richmond, Virginia, USA, and since 2008, copastor of East End Fellowship, a multiethnic fellowship.