Biography of John Stott, Vol. 2

Towards the end of the 1950s, Richard Bowdler left the staff of All Souls, Langham Place, and the ministry of 'Chaplain to the Stores' passed to Michael Harper.

He was a Londoner (the family home had been in Welbeck Street) and he had long been an occasional visitor to All Souls. He was converted to Christ in his first year at Cambridge, and during the vacations had alternated between All Souls and Westminster Chapel.

He had met John Stott both in London and through the CICCU, and rubbed shoulders with him at meetings of the Eclectic Society while serving his first curacy at St. Barnabas, Clapham Common. It was during Michael Harper's time there that John Lefroy led a mission team from All Souls to St. Barnabas; and no doubt this played a part in the invitation to succeed Richard Bowdler in 1958. Michael Harper found John Stott 'a very powerful man but easy to work with - an awesome preacher ...'. He was one of six curates under the Rector's eye: 'I felt my relationship with him as a curate to a vicar was ideal ... I felt he didn't interfere, but he did take an interest in my work in the Stores. I remember I would share with him either at staff meetings or privately. I know he was interested: he listened to what I was saying and gave advice and supported me.'

Experience of renewal

It was in September 1962 that Michael Harper had an experience of 'renewal', not at a Pentecostal meeting, but through reading the Scriptures: 'It was earth-shaking ... baptised in the Spirit, everything leapt off the page.' The phrase 'baptised in the Spirit' represents a key element in what became known as the Charismatic Movement (or in its earlier days, 'Neo-Pentecostalism'). This had crossed the Atlantic some years before, but was only then on the point of becoming a feature of British church life. John Stott had come across it to some degree in the late 1950s through visits to California. He retains a recollection of an American pastor visiting him at the Rectory:

'He came to see me at 12 Weymouth Street and sat opposite me in an armchair, and in the course of the conversation about this outburst of tongue-speaking said to me 'Have you ever heard anybody speak in tongues?' Those were his exact words, to which I replied 'No, I haven't', because I hadn't at that time. So he then said 'Would you like to?', and to my utter amazement, before I had the opportunity to say 'Yes' or 'No', when I was probably hesitating, he broke into this unintelligible utterance, with his eyes open looking at me.

'That experience quite shocked me and made me feel that if this is something you can turn on and off like a tap, it really isn't a gift of the Spirit, in the way that they claim. I think it was after this that Michael Harper had his experience, which came to him through meditating on Paul's prayer at the end of Ephesians 3, and the phrase 'to be filled with all the fullness of God'.'

'Tell the whole story'

This was a period in which the staff of All Souls, in common with many others, were re-examining the call to holiness and to life in the Spirit. John Lefroy's prolonged illness of a few years before had been the cause of much prayer for his healing, and this, together with George Ingram's persistent concern that the church should know the fullness of the Holy Spirit's power, 'had provoked the staff into a deeper and more systematic study of the doctrine of God's Spirit'. The official history of All Souls church continues:

They did not reach a unanimous conclusion, indeed there were considerable theological differences, but because they felt a growing sense of the need for both individual and corporate self-examination and repentance leading to spiritual revival, All Souls Day 1963 was made the culmination of a week especially devoted to renewal.

It was in this context that, on a staff away-day, John Stott invited Michael Harper to 'tell the whole story' of what he felt had happened to him. At the end John Lefroy told him, 'Michael, I believe you've been baptised in the Spirit' - an expression which Michael Harper had not met before. Foreseeing the dangers of possible division in the church, John Stott told Michael Harper that while he was perfectly free to speak of his experience in terms of personal testimony, it would be best if he did not preach on the subject. Michael Harper agreed:

'At some very early stage, I said to John, 'Look, I will never preach on this; I'm not in the business of splitting All Souls', and I never did. I preached and people used to come up to me afterwards and say 'You're different', this sort of thing ... John Stott was very interested, he was very intrigued, very gripped by it, but the turn-off was when I spoke in tongues.'

The 'speaking in tongues' began, privately, to divide the staff fellowship - some claiming it as a particular gift of God, some dubious about its theological or biblical basis. It was not surprising that, in Michael Harper's words, 'by this time quite a lot of people were writing to John Stott saying 'You've really got to get rid of this Harper man' ... but John Stott never hinted or intimated to me that I should go'. It was not until two years later when Michael Harper was on the point of leaving the staff, that John Stott felt ready to declare his mind publicly on these neo-Pentecostal teachings and experiences.

Neo-Pentecostalism

The rise of Neo-Pentecostalism in America had been brought forcibly to the notice of evangelical Anglicans in Britain by a five-page editorial in the journal The Churchman by Philip E. Hughes, a respected scholar. His imagination had been fired by what he had seen and heard, on a visit to the United States in 1962, of Pentecostalism there. From 1962 onwards a stream of occasional articles and pamphlets - many of American origin - kept this issue on the evangelical agenda. A new organisation, The Fountain Trust, was established with Michael Harper among the moving spirits. A few years earlier he had been 'singled out ... for particular prayer' among the staff team at All Souls by a little group of lay members (including George and May Ingram whose great longing was for revival) who wanted him to experience 'a baptism of the Spirit'. George Ingram made no secret of this, and Michael Harper would find 'that familiar elderly voice' on the phone pleading 'Brother - please don't travel second class to heaven, will you?' By the beginning of 1964 both John Lefroy and Martin Peppiatt (who was leaving to serve with CMS in Africa) were joining Michael Harper in believing that they too had been baptised with the Holy Spirit.

Baptism in the Spirit

Roopsingh Carr, then working in London and a member of All Souls, asked John Stott one day whether there was such an experience as 'the baptism of the Holy Spirit' and remembers the reply: 'I do not know, Roopy'. With a number of those close to him already involved in the movement and testifying to blessings received, John Stott set himself during a visit to the Hookses to think through the question in the light of Scripture. Then it was time to share his conclusions. One historian of the moment records: 'Hopes were high among the newly-blessed at Langham Place that John Stott, the Rector, a weighty voice in evangelical circles within the Church of England, would follow suit. Stott came to hear some visiting speakers witness to their personal experience, but these hopes were finally disappointed at the Islington evangelical clergy conference early in 1964. Before a record attendance attracted by the topic of the Holy Spirit and by news of this new movement, Stott repudiated the concept of a post-conversion Spirit-baptism.'

Biblical doctrines

David Watson, at that time a curate in Cambridge, had been assured by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones that what he had begun to experience in this new Pentecostalism was indeed the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Watson described how:

'This was a period of much heart searching, diligent study and many meetings. Because of the growing number of people in the country claiming to be filled or baptised with the Spirit, John Stott was asked to produce a clear paper setting out the biblical doctrines. This he did with his usual clarity, authority and graciousness, but taking a view diametrically opposed to that of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.'

John Stott's address was neither prepared, nor delivered, as quite the manifesto which these accounts suggest. His aim was not to create controversy or reinforce division, but to teach the truth. Nevertheless, it was a timely intervention since many thoughtful evangelicals - not least those concerned with the student world - had considerable misgivings as to how far this movement, at least in all its manifestation, was solely the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Derek Tidball, in an understated sentence, notes that: 'Evangelicals have been much affected by the charismatic movement in its various forms but have not always embraced it easily. The involvement of the Roman Catholics, the apparent devaluing of doctrine in favour of experience and the preference for the present word of God, as in prophecy or words of knowledge, as opposed to the written word of God, as in Scripture, have made many evangelicals cautious.'

Pentecost and Calvary

Further, he shows how, at least for a time in the early days, it seemed that 'Pentecost was replacing Calvary' and adds, 'The songs of the movement were particularly noted as having changed the emphasis but it was true of the writing and preaching too.'

It is still sometimes supposed that John Stott's address at the 1964 Islington Conference (particularly when expanded for publication) was a throwing-down of the gauntlet, a confrontational challenge. A correspondent writing from California the following year suggested as much. John Stott replied rebutting any suggestion that his view was preconceived.

'When the movement began some years ago in this country I personally searched the Scriptures deliberately in order to discover the truth about the subject. I opened my mind afresh to all that was being said, written and claimed, and spent two years reading, thinking, praying and discussing. It was as a result of this prolonged period of study that I came to my conclusions.'

Second experience?

The impression was easily given that certain 'charismatics', by their insistent advocacy of 'baptism in the Spirit' and the gift of tongues, were thereby impugning the standard of discipleship of others. John Martin, sometime editor of the Church of England Newspaper writes of 'a bitter war of words' though he admits that this was generally conducted with courtesy.

For the most part, charismatics were as polite and gracious as Stott in their language, yet they could not hide the fact that they believed Christians needed this second experience of God's blessing - be it called 'baptism' or 'fullness'. The conservatives could draw only one conclusion from their arguments: that there were first-class Christians who had received this charismatic blessing and second-class Christians who had not. It was hardly a recipe for harmony at parish level.

John Stott's Islington address, both as delivered and in its published form, was firmly directed to the need of the time: 'the recrudescence of 'Pentecostalism' in non-Pentecostal churches, which rejoices some and bewilders or even alarms others'. Nevertheless, he made his reasons for speaking (and later writing) clear: 'our motive in thus seeking to discern God's purpose is practical and personal, not academic or controversial. We are brethren. We love one another. We are concerned to know God's will in order to embrace it ourselves and commend it to others, not in order to score cheap points off one another in theological debate.'

Universal blessing

The booklet (it was only 40 pages long) laid down as axiomatic that Scripture taught the fullness of the Holy Spirit as a distinctive blessing of the new age, the Christian era: that it was a universal blessing for all Christians, and intended as a continuous blessing. Careful exegesis dealt firmly with what were frequently cited as contrary instances (notably in Acts 8 and 19). His main thesis was that the baptism of the Spirit necessarily accompanies conversion, a once-for-all experience.

As an initiatory event the baptism is not repeatable and cannot be lost, but the filling can be repeated and in any case needs to be maintained. If it is not maintained, it is lost. If it is lost, it can be recovered. The Holy Spirit is 'grieved' by sin (Ephesians 4.30) and ceases to fill the sinner. Repentance is then the only road to recovery. Even in cases where there is no suggestion that the fullness has been forfeited through sin, we still read of people being filled again, as a fresh crisis or challenge demands a fresh empowering by the Spirit.

Finally, he considered the implication of the Apostolic command 'Be filled with the Spirit' (Ephesians 5.18) and added: 'We must assert that neither the baptism nor the fullness of the Spirit need be accompanied by spectacular signs. The initial baptism of the Spirit may be quiet and unsensational while the continuing fullness of the Spirit manifests itself in moral qualities rather than in miraculous phenomena.'

Never out of print

In its original or later form the book or booklet has never been out of print. In 1964 the original booklet was replaced by a rewritten and expanded version, Baptism and Fullness. John Stott's purpose in this revision was to clarify and amplify what he had written, and relate it to the growth of the charismatic phenomenon during the intervening decade. But 20 years later, in reply to a question, he added this explanation: 'I practically rewrote the book, principally because I felt I had been less than generous in my evaluation of the movement. So, I wanted to put on record that I had no doubt that God had blessed the charismatic movement to both individuals and local churches. It would be quite impossible and improper to deny that.'

No change of mind

But there was also a third and more personal reason. 'During recent years', he wrote in the Preface to the new edition, 'I have regularly received letters from people who say they have heard that, since writing The Baptism and Fullness of the Holy Spirit, I have changed my views. This is not so. The revised edition gives me the chance to correct this false rumour.'

The letters in question continued from many parts of the world for a period of three or four years. John Stott summarised their general content as making five points: 'We hear that you have changed your mind, that you now have been baptised with the Spirit, that you speak in tongues, that you have asked IVP to withdraw the book, and they have refused to do so.' It is not surprising that he was glad of an opportunity to deny all such suggestions and set the record straight. From time to time since then the rumour has resurfaced; but it remains entirely without foundation.

This article is taken from volume 2 of the biography of John Stott by Timothy Dudley-Smith, to be published by IVP on September 21. Next month we will carry an extract on John Stott and Dr. Lloyd-Jones.

In this first of two extracts from his biography, Timothy Dudley-Smith tells the story of John Stott and the rise of the charismatic movement