Dr John Stott, the distinguished British evangelical and one of the founders of Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization, will be celebrating his 60th anniversary of humble ministry with East Asian Christian leaders.
On Friday, the Langham Foundation East Asia branch founded by Stott, is going to hold the "Rev John Stott 60th Anniversary of Ordination Thanksgiving Evening." Leaders from education ministry, theological ministry, mission organizations, churches, and individual scholars in Asia will pay tribute to the contribution of Stott over the years. Rev John Stott will also share a message with the theme "One Calling- Reverse the Trend, Be the Lord’s Disciples."
The Wing Kwong Pentecostal Holiness Church in Lok Fu, Kowloon, will host the event, co-organized by the Langham Foundation East Asia branch, the Hong Kong Federation of Evangelical Students and others.
In fact, Dec. 21, 2005 was the 60th Anniversary of Stott's ordination, according to the Langham Foundation United Kingdom & Ireland branch. He is a committed churchman in the Church of England since he was ordained into the ministry in 1945. He then serves the All Souls Church at Langham Place in Central London till now, where the street is famous for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Stott has also been a Chaplain to the Queen Elizabeth II since 1959.
Following his illustrious career serving God, Stott has just been rewarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the Queen's New Year Honors List, "for services to Christian scholarship and the Christian world." The news was released on midnight on Dec. 31, 2005.
According to Langham Foundation, Stott is grateful that the citation reads "for services to Christian Scholarship and the Christian World," but at the same time he is somewhat embarrassed by the continuing reference to the "British Empire" which has long ago ceased to exist. The award will be presented some time within the next five months.
Not only Stott has been actively involved in leading the evangelical movement in Britain, his prominence within North American evangelicalism was also reflected in his role as Bible expositor on six occasions at the triennial Urbana Student Mission Convention arranged by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He was vice president of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) from 1995 to 2003.
Furthermore, Stott has put quite a lot of emphasis on the ministry in East Asia as the theological training and education is still very lacking in many countries. Langham Foundation provides scholarships for theological Ph.D. studies to evangelical teachers who will have strategic influence in their home countries.
According to the Langham Foundation Asia branch’s newsletter in summer 2005, it is sponsoring four scholars in their doctoral studies in the United Kingdom and one doctorate student in the Hong Kong Baptist University. Of the five doctoral scholars, two of them are from mainland China, one from Hong Kong, one from the Philippines and one from Lebanon.
Langham Literature program also efforts work in over 90 countries to distribute needed biblical commentaries and reference works in the four major languages of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, while Chinese is under consideration.
