Transforming Friendship

John Stott would never have called it 'mentoring', but throughout his life he instinctively drew alongside younger men and women from across the world and gently pastored them within the context of a warm, genuine and healthy friendship. This was clearly a wonderful thing for those involved, but it leads us to ask why it isn’t more common across the church. In Transforming Friendship, John Wyatt speaks of the transformative experience of being Stott’s close friend. Alongside examples from the Bible, Christian history and the church today, he creates a model for "Gospel-crafted" friendship, with a particular emphasis on the need for more Paul-Timothy type relationships like the one he enjoyed with Stott. However, John also acknowledges that recent serious scandals and the hermeneutic of suspicion prevalent in our culture have made people more cautious about these kinds of relationships. The church, therefore, needs to lead the way in seeing friendship transformed into something safe, life-giving and Christlike.