John Stott changes his mind

John Stott was perhaps the most influential Christian intellectual of the twentieth Century. And so it came as a great surprise when, after three decades as a preacher and church leader, he actually changed his mind about the mission of the Church.

Berlin 1966, World Congress on Evangelism

In 1966, the first World Congress on Evangelism, organised by evangelist Billy Graham, convened in Berlin. The large international Congress was opened by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.  John Stott, because of his vast reputation as a Bible teacher, was asked to give a biblical account of the Great Commission.  Stott at Berlin66In his address from Luke’s gospel Stott affirmed:

“The commission of the Church, therefore, is not to reform society, but to preach the Gospel… the primary task of the members of Christ’s Church is to be Gospel heralds, not social reformers.”

Stott explained the message of the gospel:

“It is the offer of forgiveness to sinful men and women on the ground of the Name of the crucified and risen Christ. There is no other message but the offer of forgiveness, and no other ground but the name of Christ. This is the good news we are commissioned to herald. It is the Gospel according to the Scriptures. This Gospel will never change.” Stott’s message was clear: “According to this commission, which is still addressed to us today, our primary duty is to be neither reformers of society nor healers of the sick, but rather preachers of the Gospel.”[1]

Stott concluded:

“the cumulative emphasis seems clear… the mission of the church, according to the specification of the risen Lord is exclusively a preaching, converting and teaching mission.” [2]

At Berlin in 1966, Stott had simply presented the orthodox understanding of the Great Commission, widely believed by evangelical Christians over the centuries.

 The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization

Eight years later, at the Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization in July 1974, Stott revealed to 2,700 church leaders that he had changed his mind about the Great Commission.  In his opening address, The Biblical Basis of Evangelism, Stott Lausanne 1974aStott said, “The mission of the church arises from the mission of God and is to be modelled on it.”  He quoted the words of Jesus, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20.21), and asserted that the church should follow the incarnational model of the Great Commission.  He declared that

“Christ sends us into the world to serve. For he came to serve. Not just to seek and to save, not just to preach, but more generally to serve… Now he tells us that as the Father sent him into the world, so he sends us. Our mission, like his, is to be one of service” (Stott’s emphasis).  He argued that it was in a servant role “that we find the right synthesis of evangelism and social action.”  In an attempt to reconcile the concept of ‘mission as service’ with the Great Commission, Stott said: “I venture to say that we give it [that is, the Great Commission] too prominent a place in our Christian thinking.”

So at Lausanne Stott downplayed preaching and the traditional understanding of Great Commission, and elevated social action and the Incarnational model of the Great Commission.  In the Lausanne Covenant of 1974, he wrote:

“we express penitence both for our neglect of our Christian social responsibility and for our naive polarization in having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive… we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty.”[3]

In his exposition of the Covenant, Stott wrote:

“It is our duty to be involved in socio-political action; that is, both in social action (caring for society’s casualties) and in political action (concerned for the structures of society itself).”[4]

When John Stott promoted the idea that evangelism and social action are a partnership, “like two blades of a pair of scissors or two wings of a bird” he was advocating a paradigm shift in evangelical thinking about the Great Commission,[5] Lausanne covenant2and he found it “exceedingly strange that any followers of Jesus Christ should ever have needed to ask whether social involvement was their concern.”[6]

John Stott confessed that his view of the Great Commission was different from what he had taught at Berlin. In his book Christian Mission in the Modern World published in 1975, he wrote:

“Today, however, I would express myself differently… I now see more clearly that not only the consequences of the commission but the actual commission itself must be understood to include social as well as evangelistic responsibility, unless we are to be guilty of distorting the words of Jesus.”[7]

Stott’s change of mind was entirely consistent with what has become known as the holistic model of the Great Commission.  There is no doubt that the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization was a watershed event, for the evangelical mind was now open to the idea that the mission of the church is indeed holistic, involving socio-political action.

 The Johannine Commission

John Stott based his change of mind on his interpretation of the Johannine version of the Great Commission. He writes,

“The crucial form in which the Great Commission has been handed down to us (though it is the most neglected because it is the most costly) is the Johannine.” Stott asserted, “deliberately and precisely he made his mission the model of ours, saying “as the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Stott’s emphasis).[8]

Stott based his understanding of the Great Commission on this verse of Scripture, entirely ignoring the ministry and writings of the apostle Paul, the first Christian missionary, a vessel chosen by Christ to bear his name “before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9.15).  And so this verse (John 20.21) has been used to form the bedrock of the holistic movement.

But does John’s gospel teach the kind of “incarnational model” advocated by Stott? The answer is an emphatic no! Stott is interpreting the text to support his own political agenda. So how should we understand the John 20.21?

As God the Father authoritatively sent the Son, and as the Son submissively obeyed his Father, so Jesus now authoritatively sends His disciples into the world to preach the gospel to all nations, as we learn in Matthew 28.  The issue in John 20.21 is authority and obedience, not the content of the mission.  Stott’s interpretation of John 20:21 fails to take account of the context, which is the forgiveness of sin (John 20:23).  Social action is not mentioned.[9]

Theologian Andreas Kostenberger comments:

The Fourth Gospel does not therefore Kostenberger3appear to teach the kind of “incarnational model” advocated by Stott and others. Not the way in which Jesus came into the world (i.e. the incarnation), but the nature of Jesus relationship with his sender (i.e. one of obedience and utter dependence), is presented in the Fourth Gospel as the model for the disciples’ mission.[10]

Kostenberger comments on Stott’s view of the Great Commission:

“Stott broadly defines mission as “service to humanity”, including, but not limited to, evangelism.”[11]

Stott’s social agenda

Stott refers to the Great Commandment to love our neighbour to support his social agenda. He says that

if “we truly love our neighbour we shall not stop with evangelism… if we love our neighbour as God made him, we must inevitably be concerned for his total welfare, the good of his soul, his body and his community. Moreover, it is this vision of man as a social being, as well as a psychosomatic being, which obliges us to add a political dimension to our social concern.”  According to Stott we should be involved in “the quest for better social structures in which peace, dignity, freedom and justice are secured for all men… To sum up, we are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve.”[12]

Stott is emphasising the servant ministry of Jesus. He wrote:

“So he gave himself in selfless service for others, and his service took a wide variety of forms according to men’s needs. Certainly he preached, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God… But he served in deed as well as in word, and it would be impossible in the ministry of Jesus to separate his works from his words… He supplies us with the perfect model of service… it seems that it is in our servant role that we can find the rich synthesis of evangelism and social action.”[13]

But Stott’s emphasis on the servant role of Jesus is misleading, for at the heart of the Gospel is the Cross.  For although Jesus ministered to the needs of men and women, his primary mission was to die on the Cross for the sin of his people.  “But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8).  Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1.29).

Social change is the fruit of the gospel

It is a serious mistake to claim, as Stott has done, that social reform is part of the evangelical mandate.  Scripture teaches that social changes are an inevitable by-product of conversion—good works are the fruit of a Christian life.  Christians are saved unto good works and are zealous to do good. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2.10).  And Christ “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2.14).

It is inevitable, therefore, that the good works of Christians lead to an improvement in the social conditions of society.  Tragically, Stott’s change of mind has encouraged evangelicals to turn to the heretical ideas of the old social gospel, and seriously undermined the Gospel of Truth, and this has had a massive impact on the mission field.
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 A voice from the mission field

Two men who have been missionaries in Africa for twenty years, draw attention to the impact holistic mission is having on the mission field.  Their article, entitled, Regaining Our Focus: A Response to the Social Action Trend in Evangelical Missions, draws attention to problems they have encountered.[14] They write:

“Today churches and missionaries are being told that to imitate the ministry of Jesus they must add social justice to their understanding of the church’s mission. As pastors and missions committees embrace the idea that social action and gospel proclamation are ‘two wings of the same bird’, the kind of work that they send their missionaries to do changes, and this has a negative effect on world missions.”

They insist that evangelical missions in Africa are changing for the worse. They write:

“Today many of the new missionaries being sent are focused on social relief, with the church tacked on as a theological addendum. By all appearances there has been a mega-shift in evangelical missions away from church planting and leadership training and toward social justice or social action… As a result, the evangelical church in the West is commissioning and sending a generation of missionaries to Africa whose primary enthusiasm is for orphan care, distributing medicine, combating poverty, and other social action projects.”

The True Mission of the Church

To gain a true understanding of the Church’s mission we need to examine the ministry of the apostle Paul, whom our Lord appointed to be his minister and witness.  On the Damascus road, the risen Christ said to Paul: “I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you.  I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me” (Acts 26.17-18).

Here we learn from the risen Christ the true mission of the Church. The apostle Paul, God’s minister and witness, is sent by Christ to the Jews and Gentiles to open their spiritual eyes, turn them from spiritual darkness to the light of the gospel, to entreat them to repent of their sins, and turn to God, that they may receive forgiveness.

Paul, in obedience to the heavenly vision, preached the Gospel of Christ to people in Damascus, Jerusalem, Judea and then to the Gentile nations. His message was “repent of your sins and turn to God, and do works fit for repentance” (Acts 26.20). Those who repent and turn to God demonstrate the genuineness of their conversion by good works. It is clear that good works are the fruit of repentance, and not part of the Church’s mission to the unbelieving world. Moreover, despite the oppressive Roman occupation, Paul did not agitate for socio-political transformation in Damascus, Jerusalem or Judea.  Such was Paul’s zeal for the Gospel of Christ he said; “woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9.19).  When he taught the Corinthian Church, Paul determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2.1-2). 

John Stott, in direct opposition to of the apostle Paul, determined to make socio-political action and evangelism, like two wings of a bird, both part of the mission of the Church, and in doing so distorted the words of Jesus, by adding to the gospel.  Stott’s change of mind is the action of a double-minded man, who has betrayed the evangelical cause.  Our Lord warned his disciples to beware of false prophets, who disguise themselves in sheep’s clothing, “but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You will know them by their fruits…” (Matthew 7.15-16).  Paul, in his letter to the Galatians Church, warns of those who preach another gospel. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1.8).

The apostle John wrote his gospel not to proclaim the incarnational model of the Great Commission, as advocated by Stott, but rather that his readers might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). This was purpose of John’s gospel.

Endnotes

[1] The Great Commission, Part III, by John Stott, Text: Luke 24:44-49, World Congress on Evangelism, 1966, cited from Billy Graham archives. http://www2.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/docs/Berlin66/stott3.htm

[2] John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, IVP Books, 1975, p25

[3] Lausanne Occasional Paper 3, The Lausanne Covenant: An Exposition and Commentary by John Stott, The Lausanne Covenant, paragraph 5, Christian Social Responsibility

[4] Ibid.  The doctrine of Salvation

[5] Lausanne Occasional Paper 21, LOP 21: Evangelism and Social Responsibility: An Evangelical Commitment

[6] John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today, Marshall Pickering, 1990, p1

[7] John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, IVP Books, 1975, p25

[8] John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, IVP Books, 1975, p26

[9] Joel James and Brian Biedebach, ‘Regaining Our Focus: A Response to the Social Action Trend in Evangelical Missions’, The Master’s Seminary Journal  [Spring 2014], p. 48,  http://www.gracefellowship.co.za/sites/default/files/free_resources/PDFs/Regaining%20our%20focus%20in%20missions.pdf

[10] Andreas Kostenberger, The Mission of Jesus and the Disciples According to the Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), p217.

[11] A. J. Kostenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples According to the Fourth Gospel: With Implications for the Fourth Gospel’s Purpose and the Mission of the Contemporary Church, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), p. 13

[12] Ibid. p32

[13] Ibid. pp26-27

[14] Biedebach, Brian, and Joel James. ‘Regaining Our Focus: A Response to the Social Action Trend in Evangelical Missions’, The Master’s Seminary Journal 25, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 29-50.