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Letter from America

The great and the good

When John Stott’s memorial service in America took place, I was fascinated to hear the influence of British evangelicalism.

Person after person who spoke talked about how some of the luminaries known to readers of this paper — John Stott, Dick Lucas, and others — have had an outsized influence on developing a thinking person’s approach to biblical Christianity. The work of the Simeon Trust (www.simeon.org) generates similar conferences to that of the Proclamation Trust and frequently quotes Dick Lucas aphorisms.

Sharpened appreciation

I suspect I always knew that being bused from my school to hear preaching of this kind of quality as a teenager was a privilege, but the years (and the distance) have sharpened that sense of appreciation. There are, of course, many great preachers here, and (again) readers of this paper could list their names as well as I can, not forgetting Tim Keller who spoke at the memorial service.

And yet I wonder, sometimes, with all the size and noise and sheer scale of American evangelicalism (e.g. have you seen this new, very helpful, internet magazine, www.credo mag.com?), it may be easy to let familiarity with role models closer to home become less in our eyes (or ears) than they really are.

Not just the famous

And I don’t just mean the famous by the ‘great and the good’. The person who insisted on taking me through Two Ways To Live in one of its early renditions until I knew it by heart. The person who discipled me at university. I feel the value of that gospel DNA greatly when I compare it to the more schmaltzy infotainment versions of discipleship that some I know experienced growing up.

The text that I have in mind is: ‘Respect those who work hard among you…’ (1 Thessalonians 5.12). Whether a Bible study leader, a pastor, an elder, a vicar, a rector, a camp leader, a UCCF staff worker; if you are near someone who is teaching you the Bible faithfully you are being influenced by something great and good. And if you’re doing the teaching, and working hard at it, we respect you.

Josh Moody is the senior pastor of College Church, Wheaton, Illinois, and Associate Fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University.