John Stott was rector of All Souls Church in London, England, for 25 years and chaplain to the Queen for more than 30. He is internationally renowned for clear, expositional preaching. We asked Greg Scharf, chair of practical theology at Trinity International University, what he learned from Stott in his three years on staff at All Souls.
What makes John Stott the preacher he is?
His commitment to being mastered by the text of Scripture. He wrote early on, “The real secret of expository preaching is not mastering certain techniques but being mastered by certain convictions.”
He also wrote, “The biblical text is…[not] a convenient peg on which to hang a ragbag of miscellaneous thoughts, but a master which dictates and controls what is said.”
And yet, he wouldn’t want to leave the impression that it’s just us and the text. He wrote somewhere else, “One might single out freshness of spiritual experience as the first indispensable quality of the effective preacher. No amount of homiletical technique can compensate for the absence of a close personal walk with God.”
How did you witness this “mastery” in his life?
There was a funny story when he was preaching away from London and he took the train. He recognized he might not have the freedom to prepare himself spiritually once at the preaching venue, so he went into a corner of the rail station and began to pray, facing the corner. When he finished, he turned around to a crowd of people staring at him, wondering what this strange man was doing looking at the wall. I remember many times he would pause in silence before leading prayer. It was a great reminder and example that prayer is coming into the presence of the holy triune God and is not to be done frivolously.
What other methods of Stott’s sermon preparation did you adopt?
John remains a reader of all kinds of literature. He calls it dual listening—listening to the text of Scripture and listening to those in the world who are articulating the problems of our day. He started a reading group of likeminded people to discuss what they learn from contemporary books. Dual listening is letting our contemporaries tell us where their hearts and needs are, so when we’ve been into the biblical world, we cross the bridge to the contemporary world with truth.
John also got feedback on his sermons from the sharpest people in the congregation. He tended to ask medical students to give him feedback, because they were trained in analysis and observation.
In my ministry, I asked a young graduate student pursuing a masters in communication to critique my sermons. I wouldn’t have asked for that if it hadn’t been for the example of John Stott asking for feedback on his messages.
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