Transforming Friendship: Investing in the Next Generation - Lessons from John Stott and others

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. Friendship is a topic of increasing importance in the public sphere. This book addresses why Christians need to offer the world a compelling and authentic example of how to do friendships well. Included are multiple testimonies from friends of Stott’s from around the world. John Wyatt is an experienced author, speaker and podcaster in the UK with an audience in the USA and beyond from his Premier Media podcast, Matters of Life and Death. The book also takes the time to examine when friendship goes wrong, setting out the hallmarks of healthy and safe friendships that prevent any abuse. This book draws on the author’s personal friendship with John Stott and offers a model for “gospel-crafted” friendships based on biblical and other historic examples.
John Wyatt shares lessons on friendship from biblical characters as well as his own relationship with John Stott, as he makes the case for the value of "Paul-Timothy" friendships in the Church today.