It was 1984. After finishing my classroom work for an MDiv from TEDS, Barby and I flew from Newark to London on People Express ($99pp). We were looking forward to a few weeks with my parents at All Nations Christian College in Ware (UK), where Dad was the principal. He met us at the airport in their yellow VW Golf and somewhere, somehow squeezed in both us and our four suitcases, the sum total of our earthly possessions at the time.

During our visit I enrolled in a weeklong Clergy Conference with John Stott at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. I’d travel in each day by train—and then the week was capped off by going in again on the Saturday for breakfast with the man himself, just the two of us, in his little flat. The fact that I have learned, subsequently, that he offered the same generous hospitality to a gazillion others has not taken the shine off a special moment in my life.

At some point in that week, Stott reflected on how ‘the greatest need in the church today is teaching about what it means to be human.’ A big call. It seemed to resonate with me. At 24 years of age, I could glimpse the wisdom in it. Over the subsequent decades the glimpse has become a gaze as I struggle to think of a time when this statement ceased to be true.

Later, while at Carey Baptist College, I coordinated a new course as the capstone of the new BAppTheol degree, the Thematic Integrative Seminar. We’d select a theme each year—with a gruelling year in ‘contemporary slaveries’ standing out in my memory—and then we’d try to help students build a biblical-theological lens through which to look at a specific topic in society and on to a pastoral and/or missiological response. We wanted this ‘through-at-to’ sequence to become a habit for life. Year after year, theme after theme, student after student, the pull towards humanity as ‘the image of God’ was unrelenting.

It is a truth of such beauty and breadth—and one of the core reasons why I am a Christian.

Earlier this year I added a book to my collection of resources on the topic—Ian Payne’s The Message of Humanity. I’ve delighted in the book—and not just because Ian draws so often on his twin New Zealand and Indian heritages, something he and I have in common …

… but also because there is more than a whiff of John Stott in the clarity and sanity with which he unpacks this topic.

Clarity

The bulk of the book is an engagement with 12 biblical passages. It is Bible teaching at its best. E-I-A is fully in evidence: Explanation-Illustration-Application. He is doing his Stottian ‘double listening’, to both Word and World, so well. The main headings in the treatment of each passage are simple and memorable. As students, DA Carson used to tell us about how John Stott could ‘tap, tap, tap’ on a passage and it would just ‘break open’, making it all seem so easy to do. There is a bit of tap, tap, tapping going on in this book as well.

Just as one example, consider Ian’s treatment of Human Life and Planet Earth (Genesis 9.1-17): (a) God’s goodness: replenish all life on the planet (9.1-3, 7); (b) God’s sovereignty: reverence all life on the planet (9.4-6); and (c) God’s covenant: rely on God’s promises for the planet (9.8-17). In these pages, there is talk of pandemics, the death penalty and climate change—but within the biblical framework provided by this passage. Then there is a collection of “Lessons” at the end of the chapter (as with every chapter), together with a “Study Guide” at the end of the book.

Maybe ’12’ sounds a lot to you. It is a lot. But Ian divides them into two sections: Being human backwards, with six passages from the Old Testament; and Being human forwards, with six New Testament passages. The ‘backwards’ section explores “how humans are created in the image of God” (3). The ‘forwards’ section unpacks “the difference Christ has made for humans” (3). Turning this topic so decisively towards Jesus is something I have left underdone in the past and so I found this helpful.

The story of God’s love for his rebellious creatures has at its centre one who fulfils the potential of humans and the promises of God to remedy the ruin, and draws us to our destiny. The Bible points us to Jesus Christ, the true human, the image of God. God’s opinion on what humans are is found by looking at Jesus Christ (2).

My overwhelming response as I read…? “Oh, to be a pastor again!” I’d be rushing to do a sermon series—using the Lessons and Study Guide for supplementary small group discussion—on what it means to be human, with this book as a foundational resource. But twelve is a lot. So in 2026, it would be a series on Being Human Backwards and then in 2027, it would be one on Being Human Forwards. The biggest challenge? Doing my own work in the text when Ian’s is so good… But I faced that challenge with John Stott’s material in the past and I am sure the Spirit would help me be victorious once again!

Sanity

This is such a stormy area at the moment—but hasn’t it always been stormy?—and Ian walks right into the storm: climate change, artificial intelligence, racism, nationalism, terrorism, feminism, abortion, gene therapy and gender constructivism. These are just some of the topics into which he wanders, especially in Part 3: Issues in Being Human.

John Stott’s Issues Facing Christians Today, with its multiple updates and revisions, is the gold standard when it comes to sanity on these topics. Ian’s book is not in that league, nor is it trying to be. It is nowhere near as comprehensive, for starters. Nevertheless I did find his treatment of Men & Women, Sex and Sensibility (in which he collaborates with a same-sex attracted pastor) and Race and Ethnicity to sit helpfully alongside Stott’s similar treatments.

What I appreciated most was the triumvirate of chapters with which Ian opened this section—Knowing Modestly, Growing Gradually and Being Authentic. This felt more like a series of Attitudes in Being Human. In this insane world with its shrill polarizations, these pages felt like a bit of grace being added to the truth. John Stott—who was, by the way, a founding editor of this series in which Ian’s book is the final volume—would have been particularly pleased with these chapters methinks.

This section also has me exclaiming, “Oh, to be a pastor again”. In those 12 chapters we have biblical exposition at its best—and this always needs to be the steady diet for God’s people. However, against that expository backdrop, engaging in topical preaching is so important. To be able to take topics like these ones and to trace them like threads through the biblical story, offering people a biblical-theological framework by which to engage them, needs to be a tool in the kitbag of every preacher-teacher.

So, “take up and read”, as St Augustine once expressed it.

nice chatting

Paul