Among the events of the 1960s rooted most firmly in the folk-memory of many evangelicals, both Anglican and Free Church, was an occasion on which John Stott was present not primarily as speaker but as chairman.
This was his confrontation with Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the opening speaker at the Second National Assembly of Evangelicals, on October 18 1966. The Assembly was sponsored and organised by the Evangelical Alliance. Between much of the planning and the event itself there had been a change of General Secretary, Gilbert Kirby moving on to become Principal of the London Bible College, to be succeeded by Morgan Derham.
A few years before, the first such National Assembly had set up a Commission to look at the attitudes of evangelicals to 'the ecumenical movement, denominationalism, and a possible future United Church'. It was at the request of this Commission that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was invited by the EA Council to give the keynote address on the theme of church unity in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. In particular, he was asked to speak in response to the Commission's report, issued the same week, which stated that the time was not ripe for evangelicals to seek to form a united church. He met the EA Council beforehand to share with them what he planned to say, and no objections were raised to the line he intended to take. Reports in the press afterwards, that 'he took the EA Council by surprise', can only reflect misinformation or a failure by the Council to recognise the significance of what would be said; or perhaps a difference in presentation which altered the emphasis of the message from analysis to appeal.
