ualified in biblical or theological studies themselves. Where would you turn for help? I hope someone might introduce you to the Langham Partnership. hful and culturally relevant books in indigenous heart-languages are scarce or non-existent.

Langham Partnership -

Walking alongside the global church

Imagine you have just been called to be the pastor of a church that was planted recently, but you yourself have only been a Christian a few years and you have had no training whatsoever, least of all in a seminary or institution of any kind. You are one of the 80% of those who are pastoring Christian churches around the world with no training at all. 

Imagine that you are expected to preach every week, but nobody has given you any guidance about how to go about that, and you have no books other than your Bible. Imagine that, perhaps, somebody helps you get to a seminary, but there are very few books there either, and most of them are in English, which is not your language, and the teachers are not well qualified in biblical or theological studies themselves. Where would you turn for help? I hope someone might introduce you to the Langham Partnership. 

Now when churches lack deep roots in God’s Word and sound teaching, ordinary believers and their leaders easily fall victim to false teachers and damaging practices (which is as true in the western churches as anywhere else). As Jesus said in his parable of seeds and soil, rapid growth without depth leads to rapid withering before long. Langham Partnership seeks to address these needs. 

Nevertheless, even in the face of grinding poverty, civil conflict, political repression, persecution, pandemics and more, the church in many parts of the world continues to expand as many new believers are added daily and new churches are planted. We thank God for such evangelistic growth as the demonstration of the power of the gospel. Yet this rapid numerical growth can easily leave churches lacking in depth of discipling and maturity. 

Many church leaders of these vibrant and growing churches lament these deficiencies and long for resources to tackle them. They know that God is powerfully at work among them. They are hungry for His Word and crave the means to satisfy their own hunger and feed their people too. For only then, as the church grows to maturity in faith and life, can the church make an impact through effective mission in the world. 

Our Response

John Stott responded to this context with what he called The Langham Logic. For the sake of God’s mission in the world through his church, he argued, 

- God wants his church to grow up to maturity, not just to grow bigger in numbers. 

- The church grows to maturity through the Word of God. 

- The Word of God comes to the people of God mainly through biblical preaching.

- The logical question to ask, then, is, “What can we do to raise the standards of biblical preaching?

Our Mission

Our mission is to strengthen the ministry of God’s Word in contexts where churches are under-resourced, through:

- Enhancing biblically faithful theological education (Langham Scholars) 

- Fostering the creation and distribution of biblically faithful literature in multiple formats (Langham Literature)

- Nurturing national movements for biblical preaching (Langham Preaching)

In some places, we should remember, the churches of the Majority World are blessed with outstanding qualities of evangelistic effectiveness, theological maturity, and spiritual perseverance (often born out of great suffering) - qualities that put western Christians to shame. There is much teaching and learning, giving and receiving, to be shared on all sides within the global church. The idea of one-directional mission (The West to the Rest), which was never the whole truth in any case, must be unequivocally abandoned. The Apostle Paul spoke of the need for reciprocity - in the mutual exchanging of spiritual and material blessings (Romans 15:27). Langham longs to be a space and a means by which such multi-directional sharing and enriching within the global body of Christ takes place. Our desire, in the spirit of our founder John Stott, is for Langham to be a servant of God’s people wherever they may live, in a spirit of reciprocal giving and receiving and mutual respect.

In short, we want to see the Bible changing churches, so that churches, under God, can change the world around them. 

Find out more about Langham Partnership through our website www.langham.org

Dr Chris Wright will be our Guest Bible Teacher at the 2023 Convention