Biography of John Stott, Volume 2

Among the events of the 1960s rooted most firmly in the folk-memory of many evangelicals, both Anglican and Free Church, was an occasion on which John Stott was present not primarily as speaker but as chairman.

This was his confrontation with Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the opening speaker at the Second National Assembly of Evangelicals, on October 18 1966. The Assembly was sponsored and organised by the Evangelical Alliance. Between much of the planning and the event itself there had been a change of General Secretary, Gilbert Kirby moving on to become Principal of the London Bible College, to be succeeded by Morgan Derham.

A few years before, the first such National Assembly had set up a Commission to look at the attitudes of evangelicals to 'the ecumenical movement, denominationalism, and a possible future United Church'. It was at the request of this Commission that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was invited by the EA Council to give the keynote address on the theme of church unity in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. In particular, he was asked to speak in response to the Commission's report, issued the same week, which stated that the time was not ripe for evangelicals to seek to form a united church. He met the EA Council beforehand to share with them what he planned to say, and no objections were raised to the line he intended to take. Reports in the press afterwards, that 'he took the EA Council by surprise', can only reflect misinformation or a failure by the Council to recognise the significance of what would be said; or perhaps a difference in presentation which altered the emphasis of the message from analysis to appeal.

Warm atmosphere

The Central Hall, an imposing auditorium, was well filled, with a double row of well-known evangelical leaders representing differing churches and traditions on the platform. Derek Prime, in the middle of his year as President of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) wrote 30 years later of his clear recollections of being in the vestry before the platform party moved into the hall:

'The atmosphere was warm and friendly. After prayer together, John Stott, the chairman, suggested that we make our way to the platform, and Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones asked John Stott where he wanted him to sit. "Sit at my side", John Stott requested, to which the Doctor quickly responded, with a twinkle in his eye, "Which side? You have two sides, John!"'

John Stott was given ten minutes for his Chairman's Remarks, and Iain Murray points out that he knew 'the general nature' of what Lloyd-Jones was to say, following a conversation in Oxford earlier that summer at the International Congress of Christian Physicians. It was by agreement, therefore, that John Stott referred to his own conscientious continuing membership of the Church of England on the ground that its formularies were biblical and evangelical, and that evangelicals were therefore the Anglican loyalists, and non-evangelicals the deviationists.

Stott's four points

And he made four simple points on church unity: 'First, spiritual unity should be expressed visibly. Second, the visibility of this Christian unity must include the mutual recognition of the ministries and sacraments - there must be full communion. Third, this visible unity of the Church must be founded on the biblical faith. Fourth, this visible unity of the Church must also allow room for divergence of belief and practice in matters of secondary importance.'

This was followed by Morgan Derham's appreciation of the main speaker of the evening (remembered by one eyewitness as having 'eulogised the Doctor with faint praise') which brought forth the response from Dr. Lloyd-Jones when he finally rose to speak, 'It would be churlish of me not to thank Mr. Morgan Derham for the remarks he has made, but I wish he had not done so; he has robbed me of my valuable time!' John Stott as chairman introduced Dr. Lloyd-Jones as 'in every particular my elder and better; I hold him in great esteem and affection in Christ.'

Making an appeal

Lloyd-Jones's address followed; and rapidly began to take the form of an appeal. In its published form, in a book of his collected addresses, it is so entitled: 'Evangelical Unity: an Appeal'. At least twice in the address he speaks of wanting 'to make an appeal to you this evening'; and there can be no doubt that he was explicitly exhorting his hearers, 'especially ministers and clergy, in this congregation at this moment', towards action.

Reading his address at this distance it is not entirely clear, for all the passionate rhetoric, what exact step he was urging such men to take; but it is plain that to say - as The Christian and Christianity Today reported - that he was urging them 'to leave the major denominations and to form a united church' was quite mistaken. Rather he seems to have pleaded that 'what we need above everything else at the present time, is a number of such churches, all in fellowship together ...'. The effect, however, was sufficiently dramatic, and the urgent note of appeal sufficiently unexpected, for John Stott to feel obliged to offer from the chair an impromptu word of caution against immediate secession. Feelings were running high; one historian speaks of 'the horror of members of the audience who valued their existing denominational allegiances': an eyewitness recalls that 'the atmosphere was electric. None of us had been at an occasion like it ...'.

Men with flushed faces

The audience included many Anglican clergy for whom John Stott felt a special responsibility: 'From the platform I could see younger men with flushed faces, sitting on the edge of their seat, hanging on every word, and probably ready to go home and write their letter of resignation that very night. I hoped at least to restrain some hotheads from doing this.'

Further, the use of the opening address to make an appeal of action seemed to John Stott as chairman an improper anticipation of the business of the Assembly as set out in the agenda of the next two days. It was to foreclose the discussion. When he rose, therefore, to thank the speaker and announce the closing hymn, he felt obliged to add 'with much nervousness and diffidence' that he thought Lloyd-Jones mistaken in his argument from the faithful remnant, as well as in his appeal.

As reported in the press, his words were: 'I hope no one will make a precipitate decision after this moving address. We are here to debate this subject and I believe that history is against Dr. Jones in that others have tried to do this very thing. I believe that Scripture is against him in that the remnant was within the Church and not outside it.'

Strong reactions

As might be expected, this public disagreement produced strong reactions. J.I. Packer recounts how that night 'my phone rang in Oxford and a woman's voice greeted me with the words "Jim - is John Stott mad?" Next day one who had been at the meeting told me that my friend Martyn Lloyd-Jones had gone off his rocker...'. The Church of England Newspaper described Lloyd-Jones's proposition as 'barmy'! Most people who spoke to John Stott at the close of the meeting (John Laird, a wise elder statesman of evangelicalism, General Secretary of the Scripture Union, not himself an Anglican, among them) expressed their thankfulness for this timely intervention. Some (for example, Douglas Johnson of the IVF, who wrote a characteristic six-page memorandum) complained that John Stott had improperly used his position as chairman, adding that 'It was said that (though the room may have been hot and he is naturally rubicund) the chairman was "flushed", "rattled", "annoyed", "angry" (various terms are used).'

Calling on the Doctor

A week or two later John Stott took the initiative and called on Dr. Lloyd-Jones and offered an apology. He went on to describe their meeting and subsequent relationship in an appreciation written for The Times on Lloyd-Jones's death (though in the event not published by them): 'I called on Dr. Lloyd-Jones to apologise - not for what I had said (which I still believe) but for misusing the chair and almost turning the meeting (as he put it) into a "debate". He told me that he had scarcely restrained himself from answering me and developing the debate.

'But we continued to have a warm personal relationship. I always had a strong affection and admiration for him. In an era of theological flux he stood firm for historic, biblical Christianity. And although he was a polemical speaker, he always distinguished between principles and personalities, and was at heart a man of love and peace.'

Uncertainty remains, and will probably never be finally resolved, as to how far the Evangelical Alliance was culpable, as Douglas Johnson supposed, for a failure adequately to brief the chairman and speaker as to the nature of the occasion. Indeed, his memorandum goes further, saying that some of those who had been in touch with him felt that the meeting had been 'rigged'. Morgan Derham, as the new Secretary of EA, was closely enough in touch with Dr. Lloyd-Jones 'to know that something was brewing'; and believed that he 'intended to make the EA Assembly meeting the decisive event in his "crusade" for separationism.' Morgan Derham recalls: 'I rang John and warned him that Lloyd-Jones might well exceed his brief, which was to explain his case, but not to make an "appeal", and that by doing so I felt he would be violating his rights as a guest at an EA event. If he did so, I felt that John, as chairman, would be well within his rights to challenge MLJ's appeal.'

A tragedy

Morgan Derham came to see the whole affair as 'a tragedy for evangelicalism, based on ... a monumental error by MLJ.' This is also the recent assessment of James Packer's biographer, Alister McGrath. In his view, following the events of October 1966, 'a broad division opened up within English evangelicalism over the specific issue of whether evangelicals within mainline denominations should stay inside or leave. A bitter dispute arose, where there had hitherto been friendly disagreement. Rightly or wrongly, Lloyd-Jones was criticised for wrecking evangelical unity. It is no exaggeration to say that the "shadow of 1966" has lingered over English evangelicalism ever since.'

This view certainly remains current in some circles. A major historian of evangelicalism writes that 'the effects were catastrophic' with 'a fierce outburst of acrimonious controversy', and the National Assembly had to be cancelled the following year as a direct consequence. For Dr. Lloyd-Jones and some of his followers, therefore, it probably could be called a defining moment. James Packer in his appreciative and enthusiastic review of Iain Murray's second volume of Dr. Lloyd-Jones's biography describes the book 'as a chronicle mostly of compassionate conflict, mostly with other evangelicals', taking its subject, 'Britain's most leader-like pastoral thinker and greatest preacher, from the middle to the margin of English evangelical life.'

Out of all proportion

Insofar as this is a true assessment, the public disagreement of October 1966 must have played a significant part. Following it, the Puritan Conference (which had enjoyed a very significant measure of Anglican leadership) was recast as 'the Westminster Conference', and from the very next year the Westminster Fellowship ceased to offer a welcome to Anglicans. As Dr. Packer put it, with saddened realism in an affectionate assessment, '15 years of separatist drum-beating does appear in retrospect as something of a scorched-earth era in English evangelical life.' Yet it remained John Stott's considered view, 30 years later, that the incident had been blown up out of all proportion. He doubted whether, among evangelicals 'this was a (let alone "the") defining moment in Anglican/Free Church relations'.

Certainly the National Evangelical Anglican Congress of 1967 was to prove a bigger cause of division, real or apparent; while the ripples from the Stott/Lloyd-Jones incident of October 1966 quietly faded into the background in most Anglican circles. This is, however, in marked contrast to the feeling of hurt which long prevailed (and lingers still in memory or folk-memory) among those EA supporters whose natural sympathies lay with Westminster Chapel rather than with the Church of England. It is surely significant that the British Evangelical Council (whose constituency, in general, is among evangelical churches which remain outside 'pluralist ecumenical bodies', such as denominations linked to the WCC) should devote the greater part of an issue of their twice-yearly journal to a detailed examination of this incident, 30 years after the event. It suggests that the scars of the occasion (and the wider significance it represents in terms of ecclesiology) were deeper and longer-lasting in the Independent than in the Anglican evangelical psyche. But even for Anglicans, something of the lesson of that evening remained, and the echoes of the need to resist calls for secession could be heard long afterwards.

Private visit

Some years later John Stott ended 1978 with a private visit to see Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: he had tried to do so the previous Christmas but 'the Doctor' had been about to leave London. They met at Dr. Lloyd-Jones's home on 19 December: 'He could not have been more affable and welcoming. We sat in his roomy ground-floor study where he does his writing, and Mrs L-J brought us coffee and chocolate biscuits'. Both men had written on Ephesians, and John Stott told his host how he had profited from the four volumes of Ephesians studies so far published; and that he had several times quoted him appreciatively in God's New Society. Dr. Lloyd-Jones responded: 'Do you know', he said, 'I never intended to write up those Ephesians sermons.' Then he explained the 'double commission' he had received in hospital, immediately before having his injection prior to his major operation some years previously. Though he was not the kind of person to hear voices or receive direct messages, yet this had been so direct as to be almost audible, a message as real and clear as his original call to preach. God had said to him two things: (1) 'you are not to go back to Westminster Chapel', and (2) 'you are to put your sermons into writing and to go round encouraging the churches, specially the weaker ones.'

Making repairs

John Stott's main reasons for the visit were personal: to build bridges and repair a friendship which, though never intimate, was firmly rooted in respect and affection. Their talk went on to speak of 'the Doctor's outspoken criticism of evangelical Anglicans; and to set right the record, where he had believed (mistakenly) that at NEAC '77 drama had replaced biblical exposition. John Stott reaffirmed his own position:

'Dr. Lloyd-Jones, you give the impression that you think we evangelical Anglicans are unprincipled in our commitment to the Church of England. You use expressions like "mixed denomination" and "comprehensive church" as if we gloried in this. Speaking for myself, I'm first and foremost an evangelical.'
'I find that hard to believe.'
'But I am...'
Later, Dr. Lloyd-Jones asked: 'Would you ever leave the Church of England?'
'Yes indeed, I could envisage such a situation, if the church itself compromised officially one of the central doctrines of the faith. I'm not committed to the Church of England irrevocably.'

'We belong together'

On a happier note, John Stott observed how three times in their conversation of not much over an hour, Dr. Lloyd-Jones spoke of his desire that the two of them could work together:

'I wish we could be together, you and I. We belong together. Together we could make a terrific impact on the church and the country.'
'But, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, we are together - theologically, though not structurally.'
'But we ought to be together. If God spares me, and we could be together, I'd say like Simeon "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace".'

They never met again: but on Dr. Lloyd-Jones's death in 1981 John Stott wrote an appreciation for The Times. They did not publish it, but it appeared in a later symposium. He wrote there of his own warm personal relationship, in which 'the Doctor' always distinguished between principles and personalities, and how he was 'at heart a man of love and peace...a spiritual father to many of us'.

This extract from Vol. 2 of the biography of John Stott by Timothy Dudley-Smith (published by IVP in September) is used with permission.

© Evangelicals Now - October 2001
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