Stott’s Influence (4): Common Ground

On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.

The fifth and final influence is Stott’s commitment to emphasize what we have in common as evangelicals rather than pound on our differences. As an evangelical statesman, he was of a decidedly vanishing breed. He never sought to divide Christians, to win over people to the particulars of all his viewpoints. Rather he worked to unite Christians in the basic convictions of the faith. He never aimed to win so much as to be winsome. His book
Evangelical Truth (first published in 1999) is one example of this.
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A Theological App for That

Say you’re at lunch and someone starts chatting casually about the aseity of the Son. Well, you don’t want to be caught short. No, you want to be part of the conversation. You want to act like you know what’s going on by doing more than making knowing grunts of approval. But you really haven’t a clue what aseity (uh-SEE-i-tee) is. What do you do?
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Stott’s Influence (3): World Christianity

On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.

This leads to Stott’s third influence. In addition to encouraging respectful engagement with the culture at large and encouraging the life of the mind, John Stott promoted an understanding and appreciation of world Christianity. In fact, Stott was a World Christian long before it was fashionable to be a World Christian. I already mentioned the many university missions around the world. He had made over 15 trips overseas to dozens of countries before the Berlin ’66 Congress on World Evangelization where he gave three plenary Scripture expositions.
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Stott’s Influence (2): The Life of the Mind

On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.

Second, in addition to promoting constructive engagement with culture, he also (in contrast to much American evangelicalism) promoted an evangelicalism that was decidedly not anti-intellectual. He thoroughly endorsed the life of the mind, most explicitly in Your Mind Matters.
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Stott’s Influence (1): A British Anglican in American Evangelicalism

On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments.

To separate John Stott’s influence through publishing from his influence through other avenues is almost impossible. The emphases in his preaching, teaching and worldwide pastoral ministry were entirely consonant not only with his publishing efforts but also with his own institution building through the Langham Trust and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity as well as his deep involvement in other institutions from the Lausanne Movement to the Tearfund to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students–not to mention the Church of England.
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If It’s on the Web, It’s Free–FALSE

Intelligent, informed, morally upright people have told me that anything on the web is public domain. They feel free to repost it, reprint it, resell it or re-use it in any way they wish without permission. Music, images, text–it’s all fair game.

Not so. The copyright laws apply to whatever is on the web in the same way they apply to whatever is in a newspaper, magazine, book, TV broadcast, radio or any other media. If it’s not fair use or if free use is not explicitly stated (as with something like wikicommons and wikimedia) then permission is required from the copyright owner. Here’s a couple more myths.
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