The Radical Disciple

Peter Baker | July 2012 - Highfields Book of the Month
By John Stott - (2010) Nottingham: IVP 

There are books I read because I have to, others because I want to, while some I read because like a mountain they are just there and must be climbed. War and Peace was a bit like that for me! John Stott’s final book, Radical Disciple, falls into all three categories except that this experience is a gentle walk and not a hike.

For me, Stott has been the most effective and strategic evangelical thinker, leader and writer of the 20th Century. Therefore when his final book was widely promoted in the publishing stage as 'Uncle John’s' last will and testament, I knew I had to read it. But I didn’t get around to what is at 140 pages, one of his shorter works, until the Highfields’ Staff made it our 'Book of the term' this summer. It has been a joy to spend an hour every other Thursday unpacking the collected reflections of this pastor–teacher, chapter by chapter. 

Here are three reasons why you should read it too:

1. It represents the wisdom and experience of  a long life, lived in the service of Christ. There are very few books like this which provide such a distilled wealth of Christian learning. Stott has chosen what he sees as the major foci through which we need to see the life of faith. Of course not all will agree with every single word he writes or with the  priority areas he has chosen  for a balanced  perspective on Christian thinking and living. But chapters on ecology, environment and lifestyle flow together with explorations of what it means to be mature and Christ-like. Personally, I would have enjoyed reading his considered views on Scripture and the Spirit - but you can’t have everything!

2. Reason number two is because the book is non technical and therefore accessible. Some 'popular' books dumb down for a mass market. But Stott has the knack , which only really able people have, of making the profound simple without becoming simplistic. He states the blindingly obvious and yet when I leave one of his beautifully constructed sentences, I find myself  saying, 'Why didn’t I put it that way?' 

3. Third reason, the book has a devotional quality. I found his autobiographical chapter on dependent living especially powerful. In it Stott explores the physical weakness of the last few years of his life and how he has managed to deal with it. In this, as in so much else, one is never far away from a sense of Stott’s deep personal connection with and relationship to Christ. He writes out of love for His Lord and Saviour. Here is a spirituality, that overused and often misunderstood term today, that I can relate to. It’s never less than Biblical but it’s always far more than cerebral. 

Single, educated at Cambridge, Chaplain to the Queen and a thoroughly Anglican establishment figure.  You’d think Stott would have  limited traction. But from the pulpit of All Souls, Langham Place, and perhaps even more significant , his work with Langham Trust, Stott had a global reach. 

I only had a few personal conversations with him and that during the last decade of his life. He advised me on one occasion over a Sunday lunch  that I should take a 20 minute power nap every day! That he confessed was the secret of his energy levels as an 80 year old! After which he took his own advice and disappeared up to bed! In the end it was John’s humanity that spoke to me as much as his writing and preaching. 

Something of that engaging humanity smiles through this book. Buy it, read it, absorb it.