In the early 90’s I invited Dr. John Stott to meet in Florida with a select group of pastors from large churches around the country.  I was the President of Leadership Network a ministry to senior ministers and staff of those large and growing churches.  While many of these highly entrepreneurial pastors had little regard for academia or even the seminaries from which they had graduated, they all thought of John Stott as something of a rock star in their world.  Even though they were often far more interested in being with successful business leaders they jumped at the chance to be with “Uncle John.”

The normal format for these informal discussions was having the invited resource simply field questions and respond “off the cuff” to the interests of the participants.  The moderator made sure it didn’t turn into a lecture series or one pastor dominating the discussion.  As this was intentionally a room full of dominators it was not always easy!  It was, in fact, never easy.

I picked John up at the airport in Palm Beach as he was arriving from London that evening.  It was late and he had no supper.  I offered to bring him something but he declined as he had work to do.  When I told him about the format he said nothing but looked off for about a minute – a long minute.  “That will never do.  These men have come long distances and having a free-form discussion is a disservice to them.  We’ll just have to have something for them to discuss.”  I tried everything to assure him this was what they expected and he was not to worry about preparing anything.

The next morning I found him at breakfast finishing up his remarks for that day and the next two days.  He had stayed up most of the night preparing on topics he thought relevant to their ministries.  When we convened the group it was clear they were going to be treated to the fruits of his “all-nighter”.  No one complained.  No one interrupted.  No one left the room for a full four hours.  They knew they were the fortunate recipients of a rare opportunity as John discoursed on topic after topic as they scribbled notes.  It was only at the break for lunch that they had a chance to ask questions and they did!

John kept up that pace for three days and when we concluded he was going strong while everyone else was dragging.  I’ve never seen anything like it since.

As my friend and John’s friend Steve Beck told a group of us last month, people did not fully understand the entrepreneurial drive of John Stott and they often miscalculated his energy, focus, humor, and determination.  They mistook his irenic spirit for a lack of strong opinion and fiery intensity.  I think that is what dominated the group that time in Florida.  It wasn’t what they expected while they discovered he was in every way one of them.