“You would be hard pressed to find an evangelical thinker over the past fifty years more respected than John Stott. His preaching is exemplary. His commentaries are clear. His commitment to missions and the global church are beyond reproach. And his theology is always balanced. That’s why the following, from Stott’s recent book The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor, is all the more striking:

“I trust that none of my readers is that grotesque anomaly, an unchurched Christian. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God.”

— by Pastor Kevin DeYoung in “WHY WE LOVE THE CHURCH, In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion” p. 159