It was the twinkle in his eye that surprised me.

Almost twenty years ago I was standing near the procession of pastors as they entered The Falls  Church, the historic 300 year-0ld Anglican congregation in Virginia. My young son Jonathan was standing too, but on the railing, with his little-boy knees exposed. The English hymn was being sung, the organ adding to its majesty as the pastors entered, one by one—and John Stott, the long friend of the congregation was last in line, on his way to preach for the day. He saw me, smiled, and then tweaked my son’s knee, eyes twinkling.

Several years later, in the same sanctuary, Jonathan ran up to me, insisting that I come to talk to “him.” I saw Stott, and together we made our way. He sat down, drew Jonathan onto his lap, and tenderly talked to him, gently explaining that he was “Uncle John.” Forever after, he was.

A few days ago this great man died, and I sighed. I found myself remembering many moments over many years, feeling with tenderness the poignancy of the now-but-not-yet of everyone’s life, but especially of this man who taught me so much.

The best newspapers in the world have done well in telling the story of his life. Of all that I read, the Guardian did the best job of offering an honest account of the richness of his life, full of complexity and nuance that ninety years would mean for anyone. Describing him as "a renaissance man with a reformation theology,” it ended with these words, “Urbane and gracious as both visionary and strategist, Stott left the Langham Partnership as perhaps his major legacy.”

What is the Langham Partnership, and what does it say about Stott that matters to us? To some he was “the Protestant pope,” and that does get at the global character of his congregation. But for most of his life he was the rector of All Soul’s Church, Langham Place, in center city London, literally next door to the BBC headquarters. Over time he was extruded into a teaching ministry all over the world, speaking in universities and writing extensively. Wherever he went, crowds gathered, pressing in to hear from someone they trusted to take the Bible seriously, and to take the world seriously.

He argued for the importance of understanding that we live in ‘”two worlds,” and therefore of “double-listening,” listening to God in his Word, and with equal seriousness, listening to the world made by God. That was at the heart of his vision of preaching, and of teaching pastoral leaders, and so early on he decided that the income from his public life would go the Langham Partnership, a vision born of his pastoral relationships with people from every continent. Any one who has worshiped at All Souls knows that it is still one of the most cosmopolitan congregations in the world, with the faces of the world gathered together Sunday after Sunday; perhaps still a lingering memory of the day when the sun never set on the British Empire.

As Stott traveled the world, meeting leaders on every continent and in every culture, he drew them into the hope and dream of the Langham Partnership. At its heart it exists to equip developing leaders for the Church in “the majority world”—the term that Stott came to insist upon, the more he traveled—offering study and books so that the Church might have the gifted, trained leaders that it needs.  

The vision has come alive—no longer what might be, but what is. This spring I had two very good conversations with Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop of the Anglican Province of Kenya, and the leader of GAFCON, a global convocation of Anglicans; overwhelmingly this fellowship represents most of the Anglicans in the world. We talked of many things, of his life and mine, his work and mine. He is a Masai, and I am a Californian; both of us have traveled far from our origins. And of course we got to the nexus of faith to vocation to culture, and with remarkable honesty he observed, “That is the problem for the Church in Kenya. We have a disconnect, a disconnect between faith and vocation and culture.”

But we also talked about Stott, and the fascinating story of the Archbishop’s own vocation. The top student in theological studies as an undergraduate, he was chosen to receive a Langham Partnership grant, enabling him to do a PhD in theology in Toronto. He returned to Kenya, and over time as pastor, then bishop, he was asked to be the “bishop of the bishops” for seven million Anglicans in Kenya. Upon hearing of Stott’s death, I wrote him, and he responded, “Without John Evangelical faith would have suffered tremendously and some of us would not be who we are.” The Archbishop’s story is only one of many, incarnate in the lives of people who in their own ways have learned to “double-listen,” with Stott committed to the challenge and complexity of living in the world under the Word.

World and Word? Unashamedly, Stott took both with equal seriousness. Most of the time we are pushed to choose one or the other—and how is it possible not to? At least from where I sit, from who I hear in the debates and discussions that come my way, most of the time it seems we must choose. As if thoughtful, responsible, visionary people cannot do both at the same time.

What does all this mean for the world that is Q? If I had one impression from the Q Gathering this spring in Portland, it was this: without a blush, Q was calling us to live within biblical orthodoxy, and to engage the culture—at the same time. No trade-off. Not one more than the other, but both/and. Coherent lives, rather than compartmentalized lives. Q offered two-and-a-half days in Portland as an embodied argument, making the point that the common good is best served when Christian people do both at the same time.

John Stott believed this too, profoundly so, living his life over the course of his life listening to the Word and listening to the world, believing that both really mattered. The listening is not an end in itself though. To remember the title of his final book and an earlier book, the point is to become “radical disciples,” people who live in “two worlds,” under the authority of the ancient text and deeply engaged in the contemporary cultures of our world.

To press his point, he argued that Christians have no right to blame the world for being the world. If it is skewed, if it is unjust, if it is wrong, he maintained that that was because the Church had failed in its calling to be salt and light. As he put it so plainly, “Why would you blame meat for rotting? Why would you blame a room for being dark?” That is what meat does that hasn’t been salted; that is what rooms are when lights haven’t been turned on. Instead, his long call was for the Church to enter in, to penetrate and permeate, salting society, lighting the world. In his own way, pastorally and prophetically teaching that faith shapes vocation, and that vocation shapes culture.

Rest in peace, Uncle John, and know that there are generations following you, from every corner of the earth—from Nairobi to Portland, and a million places in between.

Editor's Note: The image above was found on the John Stott Memorial website.

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