CALLING CHRISTIAN LEADERS
By John Stott
IVP. 131 pages (+ study guide). £7.99
ISBN 0 85111 257 9
What lies at the very heart of ultimate reality, even of the very being of God himself? According to Dr. Stott, the answer is 'power through weakness'.
This is not, as the title might suggest, a book seeking to drum up candidates for paid ministry; rather it comes as a rebuke (at least it did to me) of all desire for power, all display of competence, all self-reliance. It is not exclusively aimed at Christian leaders either, since it is an exposition of 1 Corinthians 1-4, based on sermons given in various international contexts, including Keswick 2000, and is subtitled 'Biblical models of church, gospel and ministry'. It is short, easy to read, challenging, and heart-warming: it would be great to use, for example, as part of your daily Bible study and would certainly lead you to prayer. There is a study guide at the back with questions to help you think further, particularly about application.
Stott says that we must not aim 'to wander through the text like a gardener through a herbaceous border, picking the flowers we like, and discarding those we do not like'. Instead, he opens up to us the apostle's logic through these four marvellous chapters, methodically explaining, often in three- or four-point summaries, the connections and lines of thought we are to follow.
I was particularly grateful for his work on 1 Corinthians 2.6-16, a passage I have heard expounded in many different ways. Gordon Fee in his commentary on 1 Corinthians says that 'this paragraph has endured a most unfortunate history of application in the church'. But Dr. Stott shows how it is the Bible which brings us the teaching of the Spirit and the mind of Christ, and he thus titles his chapter 'Holy Spirit and Holy Scriptures'. In 2.13 he sees Paul making an unambiguous claim to 'verbal inspiration'.
The review in The Church Times (at least there was one!) wanted to 'forgive John Stott his couple of swipes at Roman Catholicism'; I would rather thank him for explaining again the errors of purgatory and priestcraft. While John Stott, now in his 80s, is sometimes criticised for being overly irenical, he has never been afraid of arguing for truth, and we still have things to learn from his many years' experience of biblical study and ministry.
Above all, this exposition is a call to humility. The church and its leaders need many things, but surely we shall always need that. We may not much like it, but we are still the scum of the earth, and God's power is still seen in our weakness.
James Dudley-Smith, minister of Holy Cross Church, Hove
