The Stott Legacy

Jeremy Vine

To those in the UK, Jeremy Vine needs no introduction. He’s a veteran journalist who started out in local radio and newspaper reporting. He was for several years the BBC Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg, and has since become very familiar, as presenter of flagship programmes like BBC’s Newsnight and Panorama. He currently juggles hosting two daily broadcasts, one on BBC Radio 2 and the other on Channel 5 TV. This is quite apart from the fun he has hosting quiz show Eggheads. But most significantly for our purposes, he knew John Stott well when starting out on his career, and counts him as one of his heroes. He even visited John in the last weeks of his life. So I was really grateful that Jeremy carved out the time to speak about the impact John Stott had on his life.

 

- Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2

- Jeremy Vine on Channel 5 

- His memoir is 'It’s All News To Me' (Simon & Shuster, 2013)

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Dr John Dickson

John Dickson is a man of many talents. He was the frontman for a band in the 80s and 90s; he’s an ancient historian and theologian, having done a PhD in ancient history and had teaching posts in his native city, Sydney Australia, at Macquarie University and University of Sydney’s Department of Jewish Studies; more recently he had a visiting role in the University of Oxford classics department.

He is also an ordained anglican minister and has led a church in Sydney. But as if that wasn’t enough, he was the founder of the Centre for Public Christianity and is a writer and media presenter, currently known for his excellent Undeceptions podcast. He is passionately concerned to communicate the Christian gospel to sceptics and to that end, has written a number of successful and helpful books.

Yet the primary reason for getting him onto our podcast is that when asked to describe his churchmanship (especially when visiting the USA), he describes himself as ‘a John Stott evangelical’. So naturally, this amongst other things was the focus of our conversation.

For more information

• Some of John Dickson’s books:

* A Doubter’s Guide to Jesus * A Doubter’s Guide to The Ten Commandments * A Doubter’s Guide to the Bible 

• John Dickson’s Undeceptions Podcast  
• The Centre for Public Christianity

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.
John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Dr Ruth Padilla deBorst

Ruth Padilla de Borst knew John Stott from her childhood since he was a frequent visitor to the family home in Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America. In fact, the main photograph for the episode’s image shows John celebrating his 80th birthday with the Padilla family in 2001. Ruth's father, the late and much missed René Padilla, became an important colleague and close friend of John’s, in part through their participation in IFES student ministry across Latin America and especially through the Lausanne Movement. John was instrumental in getting René a place in the main speaker programme at the 1974 Lausanne Congress and the latter didn’t pull his punches in what was one of the most significant addresses of the entire event.

 

Ruth is a noted theologian and missiologist in her own right. A former Langham Scholar, she lives with her husband James in a community in Costa Rica (Casa Adobe), while leading and contributing to a wide range of institutions and initiatives.

 

• To read René Padilla’s original 1974 Lausanne address, click here.
• An introduction to Casa Adobe in Costa Rica
• CETI (Comunidad de Estudios Teológicos Interdisciplinarios) the institution Ruth leads (in Spanish).
• INFEMIT - the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation

 

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.
John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Ria Pasaribu

After many years working with university students in Perkantas, the Indonesian member movement of IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students), Ria Pasaribu went on to join the staff of OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship). Yet, ever since childhood, she had had a deep commitment to her country’s poorest people, a concern which led her to doing social work studies as an undergraduate.

 

After years of gaining experience in other organisations, she was eventually able to start up her own: Indonesian Care. This exists to be a catalyst for Indonesian churches to wake up to the needs on their doorstep and to channel their members into viable and constructive projects. Over the last decade and a half, this has led to extraordinary opportunities, including partnerships with the office of the Governor of Jakarta, an astonishing feat in what is the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

 

And some of the biggest influences on her vision and ministry? John Stott’s books Christian Mission in the Modern World (1975) and Issues Facing Christians Today (orig. 1984).

 

- Indonesian Care - the website is in Bahasa Indonesia but use Google Translate to get an idea!

- Perkantas - the Indonesian IFES movement

 

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Greg Johnson

Greg Johnson is Lead Pastor at Memorial Presbyterian (PCA) in St Louis, Missouri, a church he has served in various capacities for nearly 20 years. He is also a church historian, who completed a PhD in Historical Theology through St Louis University. But the reason he finds himself at the centre of various church political storms is that he is described, variously, as a gay or same-sex-attracted celibate Christian, a situation which sees him the target of attacks from conservatives and liberals alike within and without the church. 

 

His book Still Time To Care (published in 2021), traces the various approaches to homosexuality taken by evangelicals over the last 50 or 60 years and is both fascinating and chilling (in equal measure). Its most encouraging aspect, however, is the thread he draws between the complimentary, careful stances of four key leaders: Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, and John Stott. So Mark met up with him in St Louis back in June 2021 to discuss the impact of Uncle John in particular.

 

• For more about Memorial Presbyterian, St Louis.
• For Greg’s new Book Still Time To Care

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Gail and Jorge Atiencia

Gail and Jorge Atiencia speak to Mark Meynell from Ecuador, Jorge's home country, in this episode of The Stott Legacy. Gail is originally from Canada, and the couple met while Jorge was training at Regent's College Vancouver. For many years now, they've lived in Colombia and were involved in Langham Preaching right from the start, helping to establish the movement across Latin America. In this episode both Jorge and Gail speak warmly of John Stott's personal example to them, with anecdotes and stories, including a time in Cuba when John woke at 5.30am to wash dishes for 70 people! We also learn about the sighting of a very rare bird and his willingness to preach the Gospel faithfully even in Cuba.

For more on John Stott's life and ministry visit johnstott.org

(NB: poor sound quality from internet connection)

 

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Kosta Milkov

Dr Kosta Milkov is a man of many parts. But strikingly, several of the strings to his bow could be said to have resulted from meeting John Stott in the early 90s. Having studied theology at a seminary in Osijek in Croatia, he would go on with his wife Nada to start up the IFES work in his native Macedonia (in former Yugoslavia). Having met Uncle John at an IFES conference in Poland, he would go on to study one summer at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC) with Stott and others; in time this would lead him to do a Masters at Gordon-Conwell in the USA and, as a Langham Scholar, a doctorate at Oxford in Patristics. Then in recent years, he has been instrumental in starting Langham Preaching in Macedonia. He is a real livewire, a published poet and brilliant teacher, and above all, an inspiring disciple of Christ.

 

The Stott books referred to in this episode:

* Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (1988)

* The Cross of Christ (1986)

* Christ the Controversialist / ‘But I Say To You’ (2013 edition)

Other Links:

* The LICC website 

* More on the Balkan Institute for Faith and Culture

 

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Christopher Catherwood

It is not a debate many outside the UK are aware of, nor is it that well known today within Britain. But the consequences of the impassioned address given by ’the Doctor’, Martyn Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, at the October 1966 National Assembly of Evangelicals, are argued over to this day. He had been given the topic of ‘unity' and explained his incomprehension at believers working in denominations that weren’t simply mixed but full of people who actually denied the gospel. So he appealed for people to come out to work in some kind of loose network or partnership. Immediately afterwards, the chairman, John Stott stood up and challenged the premise and appeal. It was a watershed moment for the British Church. Andrew Atherstone does a good job here at putting it into its wider context.

 

Not many people know that in the gallery at that event was an 11-year old boy, sitting with his mother to watch his grandfather speaking. And he is the guest on this episode of The Stott Legacy! Christopher Catherwood is a modern historian (who has specialised amongst other things on Winston Churchill). But it is his memories as Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ grandson and as a friend of John Stott that is the reason for talking with him here.

 

Find out more:

https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Dr Russell Moore

Russell Moore has a unique influence in American public life: he is President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest protestant denomination in the USA) and so is frequently called upon to comment on matters of public policy and political events. What has set him apart from many on the Christian right in recent years, however, has been his principled and consistent opposition to the policies and impact of President Trump.

 

He has taught and exercised leadership in a seminary setting (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky), written a large number of books, and is widely regarded as a careful and discerning cultural critic. Even though he never met John Stott, he regards him as a major influence. 

 

But it was when he posted a photograph of John on his instagram feed in the aftermath of the shocking events in Washington DC on 6th January, that prompted a conversation for this podcast.

Find out more:

https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/

 

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.

Gottfried Osei-Mensah

Gottfreid Osei-Mensah started out his professional life in the oil industry in his native Ghana before serving in student ministry in west Africa. It was from his position in Nairobi Baptist Church in Kenya that he was urged by John Stott and others to help with the inaugural Lausanne Congress in 1974 whereupon he became the first General Secretary. In his conversation with Mark, he looks back on key influences on his life and especially his work with John Stott with warmth and deep affection.

Visit https://uk.langham.org/get-involved/the-stott-legacy-podcast/ for more info about this episode.

John Stott holds a unique place in 20th-century Church history, both in Britain and across the globe. From 2020 to 2022, Mark Meynell recorded conversations with a range of people who have been impacted by John Stott’s legacy. His thoughts, life and example represent many challenges to our own generation. Join us by listening to these remastered episodes, as we explore inspiration, challenges and insights from the life of Uncle John.