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PREACHING SKILLS
Lessons from John Stott
What Greg Scharf learned working with a preacher known for breathtakingly clear exposition.
Greg R. Scharf

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PreachingToday.com: Greg, give us the background of how you ended up working with John Stott.

Greg Scharf: When I was a senior at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the early 1970s, John was invited to teach preaching. I wasn't originally in the course, because I registered later than some others, and I went to the registrar and said, " Who do I have to bribe to get into this class? " He said, " If you get the instructor's signature that would be okay. " So I took it to Uncle John, as many of us in our generation refer to him — I didn't then but I do now — and asked him to sign that. He said sure. So I got into his class and in that class got to know him.

One of his grad assistants had spent time with Campus Crusade in Britain and arranged for me a 15-minute appointment with John. He said, " We're establishing an internship at All Souls, and I'd be happy if you applied for that. " Having done that I went over immediately after finishing the M.Div. in 1973 and was there for a year as an intern. Then they asked me to join the staff and work with university students, and I was there for a further two-and-a-half years, so three-and-a-half years altogether in the mid '70s.

How did this name Uncle John come about?>

All of us who know John Stott hold him in such reverence that overfamiliarity was a bit awkward, and he, being a proper British man, also wasn't comfortable with that. So we needed something between Dr. Stott and " hey, you, " and Uncle John became his preferred form of address.

Working with John Stott as you did for several years, were there any particular stories that typify who he is?>

There were a number of fun stories about Uncle John because of his discipline as a person. He was able to do whatever he needed to get done what he needed to get done. A number of us had lunch together in the basement of the rectory. After lunch one day I asked him, " Do you have a moment? " And his answer was, " Just. " He meant it, and I took it and nothing more, because I knew he was a disciplined person.

Tell us some of the things you saw in him that make him the excellent preacher he is.>

There are many of these. At 82 years young, he's still very sharp and disciplined as a thinker and preacher. One of the major things 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. " So his fundamental commitment is that it's not a matter of methodology but of theology. That has transformed the way he approaches the task of preparing to preach.

He wrote about the nature of exposition. I'm quoting now from Authentic Christianity from the writings of John Stott. It was put together by Timothy Dudley Smith and published in 1995 by IVP:

Christian preaching is not the proud ventilation of human opinions. It's the humble exposition of God's Word. Biblical expositors bring out of Scripture what is there. They refuse to thrust into the text what is not there. They pry open what appears closed, make plain what seems obscure, unravel what is knotted, and unfold what is tightly packed. In expository preaching the biblical text is neither a conventional introduction to a sermon on a largely different topic nor a convenient peg on which to hang a ragbag of miscellaneous thoughts, but a master which dictates and controls what is said.

It's that understanding of what preaching is that shaped everything Uncle John does when he preaches.>

And yet, he wouldn't want to leave the impression that it's just a matter of us and the text. It's really us and the Lord. In fact, he wrote somewhere else:

It seems to me that one might well 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. Unless he puts a new song in our mouth, even the most polished sermons will lack the sparkle of authenticity.

One funny story about him in this regard was when he was preaching at some event away from London and took the train to this other British city. He had a few moments at the rail station after he got there. He wanted to prepare himself spiritually and recognized he might not have the time or freedom to do that once he was at the venue of his preaching opportunity, so he went over into a corner and silently began to meditate and pray, facing the corner. And when he finished his spiritual preparation, he turned around and there was a crowd of people staring at him, wondering what this strange man was doing looking at the wall.

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	Average Rating:  by 1 member. (Members, please login to rate this item.) Augustus Thompson   (Guest) Posted: June 29, 2007 Having read Basic Christianity, from that little book came a wealth of knowledge, therefore this article is indeed a good reflection on the person of and the character of John Stott.