The Preacher’s Notebook

The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott

John Stott

Edited by Mark Meynell

Lexham Press

Bellingham, WA

2018

Copyright 2018 The Literary Executors of John R. W. Stott

JOHN STOTT: A PREACHER OF METHODICAL GENIUS

In John Stott’s time as rector of All Souls Langham Place, the church has met twice on Sunday mornings (with the same sermon repeated) and once in the evening. In his final years (as Rector Emeritus), John tended to preach only at the 11:30 service. This meant that a member of the ministry team would speak at the 9:30 service, which was often an “all-age” service (albeit based on the same passage as the 11:30 service). Speaking in that context is a very different matter from speaking to a regular adult congregation, and the results usually differed considerably. One Sunday, both John and I were assigned to speak on a passage from the Sermon on the Mount. I got rather carried away with my illustrations, one of which involved my (then) young son Joshua hiding under a table until the opportune moment in the sermon.

The fact that I cannot now remember what purpose this was supposed to serve proves the point of John’s subsequent remark. As we met in the vestry during the changeover time, I cheekily suggested, “I bet you’re not going to be using the illustrations I used at the all-age talk, Uncle John.” He looked at me and responded without a pause, but with a clear twinkle in his eye, “I don’t believe in illustrations.” He was clearly being provocative, and it was just a throw-away remark. But looking back now, I can begin to see what he was getting at. It wasn’t to say that he had no use for illustrations—he did occasionally use quotations and stories (as this anthology clearly testifies). But these illustrations were always secondary to the primacy of expounding the biblical text. If they did not serve that purpose, they had no place in a sermon.

A Preacher of Blazing Clarity

Phillips Brooks (of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” fame) once suggested that preaching was “truth through personality.” While this may be insufficient as a definition, it does make the point that you can tell a great deal about preachers’ personalities through the way they communicate the truth. This was certainly true of John Stott. As Greg Scharf has said, one of Uncle John’s most remarkable characteristics was his integrity—the consistency between his preaching, writing, and living: “His clear and thoughtful preaching flowed from a disciplined and devoted life and was captured in equally lucid writings.”1

Many have noted the wide influence of his teaching, but so often it was precisely the crystalline clarity of what he taught that was the fountainhead of this influence. Every word, every sentence, and every paragraph would be carefully weighed or refined, so that he rarely (if ever) uttered an idle thought or contradictory point when in the pulpit. The American pastor John Piper reflected on this in a memorial tribute to him. ...