Bishop Tom [Brown] was then elected to succeed Archbishop Davis, and he was installed as the 10th Bishop of Wellington in February 1998.
He hit the ground running.
In his charge to his first diocesan synod Bishop Tom declared that change was on its way ”“ and he’d start that by disbanding the diocesan standing committee.
When he outlined that move, he says, applause broke out in the cathedral ”“ led by the clergy.
“The standing committee had swollen to 27 members,” Bishop Tom recalls, “and it acted like parliament. There was a left wing, a right wing, liberals, conservatives ”“ catholics, evangelicals and charismatics, all fighting for their own patch.”
Monthly Archives: August 2011
The Bishop of Wellington to retire
Remembering John Stott–Stuart Babbage, Chris Wright and others
John Stott was pre-eminently an evangelist to students around the world and in commentaries he wrote as a gifted expositor of the word of God. It is instructive to compare Billy Graham’s autobiography with Timothy Dudley Smith’s massive biography of John Stott. Billy Graham’s autobiography is graphic and revealing; by contrast John Stott’s biography is reticent and discreet. We learn much about John Stott’s bird watching, nothing about his role as Chaplain to the Queen and the names of individuals, high and low, whom he met and ministered to.
I count it a rare honour that he invited me to preach at All Souls, Langham Place. I also shared with him the platform at one of the great Urbana Conventions under the auspices of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship in America. John Stott stayed with me when conducting a Mission to Melbourne University. He was a memorable guest, delighting my children by teaching them the longest word in the English language, floccinaucinihilipilification!
A John Stott obituary in the LA Times
“He was a very broad-minded evangelical,” said Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, which hosted Stott several times. “He was the kind of person who wanted to bring different factions together and emphasize what we hold in common.”
Stott believed that evangelism was not the only mission of Christians, a stance that some evangelicals criticized. He urged Christians not only to spread the gospel but to act on the Bible’s teachings by addressing social injustice in the world. He wrote and preached on climate change, global debt and other pressing issues facing contemporary society. Through the Langham Partnership he trained preachers, built libraries and helped 300 pastors from poor countries earn doctorates in biblical studies. They returned to their countries and became evangelical leaders, such as the Nepalese graduate who started a seminary in Katmandu.
“Evangelism and social action went together in the ministry of Jesus,” Stott told the Orange County Register in 1998. “So they ought to go together in ours.”