Warmest New Year’s greetings!
By the time this reaches you, I will, God willing, be in Katoomba, Australia. Over a year ago, I was invited to have a part in the annual Summer School conference of the Church Mission Society. The CMS is a fellowship of Christian people and churches committed to global missions. Their mission is to see a world that knows Jesus as they work with churches to set apart godly people as long-term cross-cultural Gospel workers.
I have been asked to exposit 1 Peter in seven sermons. My preparation has been greatly enhanced by benefitting from a commentary by the late Alan Stibbs (1901–1971). After his graduation from Cambridge, he went to China with the China Inland Mission. He was part of the missionary movement that included Isobel Kuhn, Gladys Aylward, and Eric Liddell, the Scottish Olympian sprinter portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire. When ill health necessitated his return to the UK, Stibbs joined the staff of Oak Hill Theological College in North London. Promoted to vice principal, he served at Oak Hill for the rest of his life.
Stibbs was a close friend of Martyn Lloyd-Jones and, like him, was temperamentally shy. J. I. Packer, commenting on him, observed, “Throughout the Bible what makes a teacher of God’s people is not some magic of personality or temperament, but the Word which God gives him, first to obey himself and then to speak to others.”
In training young men for Gospel ministry, Stibbs was seeking, he said, to redress “the widespread deficiency of the preaching ministry in the pulpit and congregation of Great Britain. For many who appear in pulpits to minister the Word no longer speak to those who are persuaded that God is the author of Holy Scripture.”
The impact of Stibbs’s life and work continues to this day. I was nineteen when he died, and here I am, more than half a century later, inspired by his memory, helped by his scholarship, and stirred by his vision to reach the world with the claims of Christ.
His convictions about Gospel ministry I share with many, and your partnership and support for Truth For Life is playing a huge part in seeing younger men in church ministry being strengthened and encouraged.
A new year offers the opportunity to establish godly habits in terms of our private daily reading and prayer and our public commitment to our local churches. This month’s resources will be helpful on both counts. So, although we do not know the future, we know the One who holds it, and our times are in His hands. Looking forward with you to all that God has in store for us all!
With my love in the Lord Jesus,
Alistair
Truth For Life Blog