John Piper says he longs for "the light of discernment and the heat of ambition" which kept world-renowned Bible scholar John Stott focused on playing a key role in God's work globally until he died about nine months ago.

Towards the end of his ministry spanning over three decades as the pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., Piper is reading Alister Chapman's new biography of John Stott, Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement, with "special interest," he writes on his blog on the Desiring God website.

Piper wrote the article to mark "Stott's first birthday in heaven" April 27. He says he was especially interested in learning how Stott finished at All Saints Anglican Church in London, where he became rector in 1950 until 1969, and how he shaped the rest of his life as he moved on. more >>

WHEATON, Ill. – Under the slated skylight and within the clean, airy white walls of College Church on the Wheaton College campus, more than 600 people gathered Friday to remember and be inspired by the life of John Stott – the English Anglican clergyman who helped define and drive the global evangelical movement in the 20th century.

One by one, speakers eloquently, but with much sincerity and humor, recalled the humble, intellectual giant of the evangelical community who astounded and touched Christians around the world with his clear and authoritative exegesis of the Bible, and with the way he lived his life.

“He (John Stott) truly was, in some ways, the first person who spoke the word of God to me through his literature and I also heard him in person,” proclaimed Tim Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and whom Newsweek magazine described as a “C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century.” more >>

WHEATON, Ill. – Hundreds of Christians inspired and impacted by the life of English evangelical theologian, preacher, and global thinker John Stott gathered at Wheaton College on Friday for his U.S. memorial service.

Intimate stories of a man driven until his last breath to live according to the will of God and make Him known were shared by friends, protégés and evangelical leaders. Stott died on July 27 at age 90.

The following is the biography found in the memorial service program pamphlet. more >>

LONDON – There were moments of poignant reflection but also much laughter and thanksgiving at the funeral of John Stott today.

All Souls Langham Place, Stott’s beloved church in London, was filled to capacity with friends, relatives and many others who did not know him personally, yet had in some way been touched by his preaching and more than 50 books.

The queue of Christians waiting to enter the church prior to the start of the service stretched to a block away. more >>

[The funeral for John R. W. Stott, one of the most famous evangelical preachers of the last century, will be held today in London at All Souls Church, Langham Place, where he served with distinction for so many decades of ministry. In honor of John Stott, I here republish an interview I conducted with the great preacher in 1987. The interview was first published in Preaching magazine, for which I was then Associate Editor.]

John R. W. Stott has emerged in the last half of the twentieth century as one of the leading evangelical preachers in the world. His ministry has spanned decades and continents, combining his missionary zeal with the timeless message of the Gospel.

For many years the Rector of All Souls Church, Langham Place, in London, Stott is also the founder and director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. His preaching ministry stands as a model of the effective communication of biblical truth to secular men and women. more >>

Soon after he became a columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks wrote that people were “misinformed” about Evangelicals. Part of the reason, Brooks reasoned, lay in whom the media chose to speak for us: choices that made as much sense as having “Britney Spears and Larry Flynt discuss D. H. Lawrence.”

So he introduced his readers to an evangelical whom many had never heard of but was, in Brooks’ words, “actually important,” John Stott.

Stott died last week at the age of ninety, once again with a very favorable eulogy in the New York Times. We will miss him in more ways than one. more >>