Awesome ministry Insight from John Stott...

Several weeks ago I heard a mp3 of John Stott's Final address. Stott has been a stalwart of evangelical faith for half a century, and to be honest I was not expecting much from the message. My own cynical struggles aside, I was quite surprised when the message held some incredible and timely wisdom for the church.

I will lay out what I thought was the most significant stream of thought in it... but feel free to read it for yourself and tell me what I missed.

I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth and it is – God wants His people to become like Christ. Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God.

[There is a] sense in which the Incarnation was not unique: the amazing grace of God in the Incarnation of Christ is to be followed by all of us. The Incarnation, in that sense, was not unique but universal. We are all called to follow the example of His great humility in coming down from heaven to earth.

[In] his commissioning in John 17 [Jesus] says ‘As the Father sent me into the world, so I send you.’ These words are immensely significant. This is not just the Johannine version of the Great Commission but it also an instruction that their mission in the world was to resemble Christ’s mission. In what respect? The key words in these texts are ’sent into the world’. As Christ had entered our world, so we are to enter other people’s worlds.

This entering into other people’s worlds is exactly what we mean by incarnational evangelism. All authentic mission is incarnational mission. We are to be like Christ in his mission.

Why is it, you must have asked, as I have, that in many situations our evangelistic efforts are often fraught with failure? Several reasons may be given and I do not want to over-simplify but one main reason is that we don’t look like the Christ we are proclaiming.

John Poulton, who has written about this in a perceptive little book entitled A today sort of evangelism, wrote this:

‘The most effective preaching comes from those who embody the things they are saying. They are their message. Christians need to look like what they are talking about. It is people who communicate primarily, not words or ideas. Authenticity gets across. deep down in side people, what communicates now is basically personal authenticity.’

What thoughts does this generate for you?