Just when I thought that it could not be possible to have another first-hand account of the impact of John Stott’s life (d. 2011), along comes this book by his close friend, John Wyatt.

I am always ready to learn more about John Stott, but also about friendship. It fascinates me. It keeps coming up in my readings and reflections—like with Bishop Azariah’s speech at the famous 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference. There is something profound in the mutuality which friendship represents. It is not so much about meeting a person half-way, but going all the way for that person … and welcoming their efforts to do the same with you. It is what we need, not just at a personal level, but also at the global one—where it offers just that much more than partnership…
So yes, the combo of Friendship in the title and John Stott in the subtitle had me hooked before I even opened the cover—and when I did open and read, I found different perspectives to appreciate.
What the Bible says
“The biblical narrative has a special place for the intense, intimate bond of love and loyalty that may develop between two people” (34)—and it starts with God as a friend in the opening chapters of that narrative. I had not noticed it. There is only one thing that is described as not good in Genesis 1-3. Adam was alone.
The ache for human intimacy, the ache for friendship, for companionship, is not the result of sin and brokenness. We have been created in such a way that we cannot even enjoy paradise without human friends (47).
And so we find the Almighty Creator God coming into his garden to spend time with his friends in the cool of the day. Amazing. Then there are those two Old Testament stories: Ruth ‘clinging’ to Naomi (Ruth 1.14) and Jonathan and David being ‘knit’ together (1 Sam 18.1)—and how these “intimate, committed and loyal friendships between followers of YHWH are intended to model, reflect, be indwelt with and energised by the covenant love of God himself” (46). They aim at a stedfast love that never ceases.
In the New Testament, we encounter the friendship of Jesus with the Twelve. I hadn’t noticed before how Jesus urges them to breakaway from the rabbi-student relationship (see Mt 23.8-12). “Jesus explicitly distanced himself from well-established patterns of rabbi-disciple relationship and discouraged his disciples from appropriating the title or the hierarchial customs of first-century rabbis” (117).
Then, of course, there is that beautiful passage—
My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you (John 15.12-15).
There is also Jesus with Mary, Martha and Lazarus—’an ordinary family made extraordinary’ by Jesus extending friendship to them, as he did with the Two on the Road to Emmaus. Other examples in the New Testament include Paul and his penchant to have long lists of names of his friends in ministry (for example, Romans 16)—and then Wyatt deals with the friendship of Paul and Timothy at length (103-125) as an example of an intergenerational friendship marked by a “long term, committed, covenantal loyalty” (Wyatt, 109).
The raw material for a biblical-topical sermon series on friendship lies in these pages…

What society says
Part of what Wyatt is trying to do in the book is to ‘reimagine’ friendship in light of what is happening in contemporary culture.
… (Friendship) has become trivialised, distorted and corrupted by many forces: the sexualisation of the culture, the ubiquity of social media and the commercialisation of internet ‘friendship’, the appalling abuse scandals involving prominent Christian leaders, the hermeneutic of suspicion and the fear of being accused of inappropriate behaviour (151).
—but it is the sexualising and abusing of friendship that is his particular focus. It is “sex and power (that) come to be seen as the dominant covert forces which motivate all deep and intimate relationships” (5). His reflection on classical and biblical views of friendship lead to some probing questions.
I want to ask the question why this classical ideal of friendship was lost over the centuries, and why it should be that for us, living in the twenty-first century, friendship seems both less powerful and less significant than sexual and romantic coupling? Why is it so natural to view the closest and most intimate relationships through the twin distorting prisms of sex and power? (13).
Less powerful. Less significant. And so he wades into these two areas…
Sexualised? You only need to ask yourself if it is possible for a contemporary reader to engage with the story of David and Jonathan without assuming that something sexual must have been happening. That says something. Or, when watching movies it is so rare to find a celebration of intimate, close friendship, without it being sexualised. “Contemporary culture repeatedly blurs the distinction between close friendship and sexually expressed intimacy” (67). Even if you have what you consider to be a more permissive attitude towards sexuality, is this still not incredibly sad? Is the intimate no longer possible without the sexual? Barby and I were away from New Zealand for a decade and we’d both say, on our return, this is the area where there has been the biggest shift in society.
Abusive? It is hard to miss—in theological traditions that should jolly well know better—the “sad litany of charming, gifted, and persuasive Christian leaders who have turned out to be involved in abusive relationships with younger people who were under their influence” (71). Story after story in recent times, contributing, in part, to sobering books like this one. Somehow the Archbishop of Canterbury himself missed the significance of it all—and he had to resign from his job. The abuse in intergenerational friendships is Wyatt’s focus, where the imbalance of power opens up this possibility of abuse. Speaking of ‘shifts’ while we were away, we had to learn a new word on our return: safeguarding.
How John Stott lived
Stott’s capacity for friendship was extraordinary. One chapter is entitled, “Would you like to have a cup of coffee with me?”—in which Wyatt narrates how their friendship started. I tasted a similar experience while attending a Clergy Conference in London in 1984 when John Stott invited me to come to his little flat for breakfast on the Saturday. “Who, me?!” The gloss on that experience has only slightly dimmed in the succeeding years by the discovery that he offered the same friendship to dozens, even hundreds, of other people!
What the experience showed me is the importance of placing his capacity for friendship in the wider context of qualities in his character like humility and integrity. It is the whole package. In fact, while in Pakistan in November to celebrate 20 years of Langham Preaching, I was asked to take a workshop. I settled on playing with the Apostle Paul’s “Follow Me, as I follow Christ”, but substituting John Stott (Langham’s founder) for “me”—and then focusing on humility, integrity and friendship. These are such critical DNA-like issues for us in Langham Preaching, so much so that just before Christmas we sent Wyatt’s book to all our preaching movement coordinators and facilitator-trainers.
Here is an extract I quoted in Pakistan—the undisputed highlight of the book for me.
Over the years I have had the privilege of meeting a number of prominent Christian preachers. I have listened to them in the pulpit with awe and admiration at their eloquence, persuasive abilities, charm and apparent spirituality. But then, on several occasions, meeting the same person in private, I have had a sense of disappointment. They were impressive in public but less so in private. They seemed diminished once they were out of the spotlight. There was a sense that they had adopted a persona in the pulpit that was not entirely authentic.
But (when) alone with John Stott, I had the opposite sensation. Yes, he was impressive, charming and authoritative in the pulpit, but in truth he was far more impressive in private—sharing his heart, his deepest concerns, his personal prayers, with nobody watching. As you got to know him, it became apparent that he wasn’t putting on an act … He made you hungry for an undefinable quality of his life and character. As I got to know him, it became obvious that he lived and prayed in the way he preached (76-77).
More impressive in private than in public… Wow.

I love Stott stories, with this one a favourite—but with a few more from this book to add to my collection. Firstly, Sri Lankan Vinoth Ramachandra’s experience of being in one of Stott’s famous reading groups. After watching a movie directed by the Swedish existentialist, Ingmar Bergman,
Stott was so deeply moved by the film that he insisted on taking us all to a nearby church where he knelt before the Lord’s Table and poured out his soul in contrition over all his flawed relationships. It is such integrity and vulnerability that leave an indelible impression on young people’s minds (as quoted, 80).
Then the story from Rico Tice, part of the pastoral staff with John Stott at All Souls, from the final hours of Stott’s life.
I came back in and sat with him, and at one point I remember reading through John 14. He barely acknowledged me, but that was not the case when one of the Filipino cleaners came in to say goodbye. He was a young man and had obviously heard that John was dying. With a monumental effort, John took his hand and rose up out of his bed to kiss it, and then slumped backwards. As I was leaving, Uncle John’s inner circle began to arrive, but I noted that none of them were given anywhere near the greeting that he gave that young man. (98-99)
I told another story from the book in both Pakistan and Myanmar as we travelled—about Saul, a young Mexican lad who came to Christ through reading Stott’s Basic Christianity and then hitch-hiked across the country just to meet Stott, on a visit to Mexico, so that he could ask his questions. Stott’s care and attentiveness with him on that occasion started a lifelong friendship (with Saul’s daughter, Eidi, now on the Langham USA Board!). But you know what? Such is the reality of the ‘twin distorting prisms of sex and power’ I am not sure I could tell that story in public in NZ today, without peoples’ minds meandering off to places where the story itself does not travel … and for good reason, to be fair.
The heart of Wyatt’s contribution is his description of Stott’s commitment to what he calls ‘gospel-shaped friendship’ (60-71), or “a friendship carved out of the heart of the gospel” (6). Here is a sprinkling of the features of such friendship that impacted me: truthful; covenantal; mutual (“In our friendships with John Stott, many young people found a surprising sense of mutuality”, 63); vulnerable; barrier-crossing; prayerful etc. And for Stott, Gospel-shaped friendships need boundaries as well: non-sexual; non-abusive, non-coercive, non-manipulative; and non-exclusive. Afterall, as my mummy used to say to me, true freedom is found within the fence, not beyond it.
[By the way, if you prefer listening/watching, here is John Wyatt taking 30 minutes to share his reflections on how Stott impacted his life, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth. It is superb.]
Hagiography—’a biography that treats its subject with undue reverence’—tends to hover around John Stott’s life. I know people tend to roll their eyes a bit when I go on and on about him. We do need to take care. Towards the end of this interview, offered at a similar time, Wyatt offers some critique of Stott’s ministry. I add one more. When I first heard the phrase ‘Blokes Worth Watching’ (BWW) it was being associated with John Stott by people who knew him. Maybe unfairly. I don’t know. I guess you could argue that his own ‘life and legacy’ did puncture BWW to some degree. Nevertheless, it is a most unfortunate phrase! Not only does it suggest a poor attitude to women, it harbours an elitist perspective. While there are plenty of specks, even logs, in the NZ lens on life, it is noticeable how the British lens still tends to look through class, just as the one in the USA looks through celebrity. Some people are worth watching—and some are not. It is not good. Interestingly, the early British mission in India considered the key to success to be the conversion of upper caste Brahmins—and they were wrong, as the aforementioned Azariah was to demonstrate. Everyone is worth watching, taking the time to draw alongside—in friendship, after reading this book (!)—and enjoying the mutuality in growing together in our influence for good and for God.
What John Wyatt recommends
The way Wyatt distinguishes friendship from both mentoring and pastoral care is helpful. With the former, he paints a little scenario, imagining the mentor-mentality at work:
I am an expert in my business, a successful, highly trained, skilled practitioner. In comparison you are less skilled than I at the moment, but you clearly have promise. So, I am going to pass on my skills, my expertise, my understanding of the world, so that one day, you too may become a skilled practitioner. Of course there is a place for various forms of hierarchical mentoring, or coaching, within the Christian church, focused on the passing on of particular skills, experience and insight. But I think we should draw a distinction between these modern business concepts and the biblical model of Paul-Timothy friendships, based on mutual support, love, transparency, vulnerability and encouragement (122).
I find this so reassuring—because my mentoring is forever being sabotaged by a preference for the mutuality of friendship. And then a few paragraphs later, there are similar comments about pastoral care:
Inevitably, over the course of a long friendship, there will be seasons when one person may be more burdened and needy and the other is in a supporting role. But in a healthy relationship the support will never be only one-way. We are walking together and supporting one another along the Way, encouraging one another to become more fruitful in our service, more Christlike in our character, as we journey towards the final goal of joyful celebration and reunion in the house of the Lord (123).
Hmmmm. I wonder what the priority and prevalence of Gospel-shaped friendships might look like in a local Christian community—with them then complemented and complimented, along the Way, by the mentoring and pastoral care ministries?
The final chapter is a final flourish on the need to ‘reimagine’ friendship. “How can we foster a culture in which healthy, deep and intimate gospel-crafted friendships can flourish?” (152). There are lots of practical ideas, so why not get hold of the book and ask the Lord, in the power of his Spirit, to bring these ideas to life in your own life—as I try to do the same in mine?
nice chatting
Paul
About Me

the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
Just when I thought that it could not be possible to have another first-hand account of the impact of John Stott’s life (d. 2011), along comes this book by his close friend, John Wyatt. I am always ready to learn more about John Stott, but also about friendship. It fascinates me. It keeps coming up…
Reading stories to grandchildren over Christmas reminded me again of how powerful they can be. They are so compact and simple in presentation, and yet so clever in construction. There are just so many features at work in an effective story. It is some years since I taught narrative preaching, but when I did I’d…
Apart from the eight years in which we were based overseas, Barby has been working at the Refugee Resettlement Center in Auckland since 2002. This year she is a ‘release teacher’, spending one day each week in three different classrooms, with three different age groups. Impressive—and demanding. One day is spent with 11-13 year olds—from…
Thanks for this book recommendation, Paul. Having recently lost a close friend over many years to cancer, the topic strikes a chord with me. I can see more than a few similarities in my friendship with Eric to the gospel shaped friendship described here. A good encouragement to keep on forming those kinds of friendships with others! I like the idea of a preaching series on friendship. I’ll tuck that one away. 😊
Thanks, Ken.
Interestingly, as I read through the book my mind kept returning to a friend who died from cancer as well. Ten years ago this coming April. Martin. Yes, you guessed right. We named our son after him. I still keep a photo of him on my desk. The friendship felt covenantal and I still miss him. But the greater grief, as I enjoy armloads of grandchildren, is that Martin was never given that same joy. It seems so unfair.
Looking forward to seeing you next month…