Billy Graham Remembers Evangelist John Stott

The Rev. John Stott, one of the most influential evangelical thinkers of the 20th Century, died in London Wednesday. He was 90.

“The evangelical world has lost one of its greatest spokesmen,” said Billy Graham in a statement, “and I have lost one of my close personal friends and advisors. I look forward to seeing him again when I go to heaven.”

Stott’s death was announced on the website of All Souls Langham Place, the church he attended as a child, then led as rector after he was ordained. It was there, during the 1954 London Crusade, that Graham first met Stott.

In 1955, Stott introduced Graham to C.S. Lewis and in 1960, Stott participated in a gathering of 33 Christians leaders in Switzerland, led by Graham, that discussed God’s strategy in missions and evangelism.

That meeting foreshadowed another in 1974 when Graham convened the first-ever Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. While he was the visionary for this Congress—possibly the greatest Evangelical gathering of missionary leaders in history up to that point in time—Stott was the chief author of the Lausanne Covenant, the document which came out of that conference.

John Stott Ministries President Benjamin Homan reported that Stott’s death has come following a few weeks of discomfort, and that the death was simply due to complications related to old age.

A memorial service will be held at College Church in Wheaton, Ill. Please visit the John Stott memorial page for more details and to sign the remembrance book.

Used with permission of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.