When I was in my twenties and ministering to students in London and on the staff of All Souls Church, Langham Place, next to the headquarters of the BBC, I became aware of the concerns of young people as they struggled with their identities, their purpose, their future, the state of the world and their relationships. It was the time of the Vietnam War, protests, Beatlemania and the hippie culture of the 1960’s. In trying to reach them for Christ I found that abstract theology did not seem relevant to them. Saying Christ is the answer raised the response, ‘What is the question?’ One Sunday after listening to my boss preaching a sermon I ventured to comment, ‘So what?’ John Stott was an internationally known preacher and author whose expository sermons on the Bible were famous. But they seemed theoretical to the students and young people with whom I was working. They were looking for truth that would help them in their lives and inspire them. Of course they needed the Holy Spirit to open their eyes to the truths of the Gospel but they also needed to hear about how the Gospel could impact their lives. They needed acknowledgment of their challenges and find the relevance of the biblical witness.

After my comment, ‘So what?’ John and I talked about the problem of applying the Gospel to the culture in which we found ourselves. He had grown up in an upper middle class professional milieu, the son of an eminent physician, educated at elite private schools and a privileged university (Trinity College, Cambridge) and ministered at one of the premiere churches in the West End of London. At that time he had little contact with the kind of young people I was dealing with apart from the varied neighborhoods of his parish which included working class and people in the entertainment and commercial businesses. I on the other hand was raised in a hotel and had mixed with all kinds of people and was educated in state schools. Our life experiences were widely different.

Many years later John wrote about the changes he made when he published his celebrated book on preaching, Between Two Worlds. In his Introduction, he thanked me for challenging him to relate the gospel to the modern world. He also wrote:

His great concern in preaching was to relate the Gospel to the issues of the day, while sometimes (I thought) being a bit slapdash in his biblical exegesis. My great concern on the other hand, was to expound Scripture faithfully, while sometimes (he thought) neglecting its contemporary application. On Monday mornings we would compare notes. I would tell him how I thought he could strengthen his exposition, and he would tell me how I could strengthen my application. If only we could combine forces, we said to one another, building on our strength and overcoming our weakness. So Ted was without doubt one of those whose influence lay behind the concern to relate the word to the world, and so behind the founding of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity in 1982.

Now, in my eighties I am aware of a similar problem with the preachers I hear. In their desire to be biblical they concentrate on exegesis of the text at the expense of application to the human condition of their hearers. Their sermons may be orthodox and faithful to biblical theology but they are abstract and theoretical. My constituency now is older and retired people facing the challenges of old age, relationships with their extended families, loneliness, physical disabilities, personal significance, despair, fear of the future, anxieties about their health and the state of the changing world around them. John would later write about these needs which I summarized in my book on his teaching.

It requires entering into the worlds of thought and feeling of our contemporaries. It is incarnational, the eternal entering into the temporal, relating the Word to the world, or Christ to the individual. It means dealing with the major themes of human life, the questions raised in literature and history: What is the purpose of our existence? Has life any significance? Where did I come from, and where am I going to? What does it mean to be a human being, and how do humans differ from animals? Whence this thirst for transcendence, this universal quest for a Reality above and beyond us, this need to fall down and worship the Infinitely Great? What is freedom, and how can we experience personal liberation? Why the painful tension between what I am and what I long to be? Is there a way to be rid of guilt and of a guilty conscience? What about the hunger for love, sexual fulfillment, marriage, family life and community on the one hand, and on the other the pervasive sense of alienation, and the base, destructive passions of jealousy, malice, hate, lust and revenge? Is it possible to truly master oneself and love one’s neighbor? Is there any light on the dark mysteries of evil and suffering? How can we find courage to face first life, then death, then what may lie beyond death? What hope can sustain us in the midst of our despair?

The preacher must be a bridge-builder between the world of the Bible and the world of today. He must respond to the realities of the human condition with the transforming inspiration of the Gospel. Jesus Christ is our concrete contemporary who is relevant to our needs. This is the task of the preacher.