Langham Partnership International

Preaching

Welcome to the Langham Preaching pages!

preaching_overview

The primary aim of Langham Preaching is to work in fellowship with national leaders to establish local and national preaching movements (a fellowship of Bible preachers). Together we provide practical on-site support for pastors and lay preachers, organising training seminars, providing resources, and building a local movement committed to Bible exposition. During 2011 over 55 country programmes will be underway in many parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean, Europe and Eurasia. There are also another 15 countries being queued for future development.

Local ownership is vitally important and so, before a programme begins, a line-up meeting is needed with church leaders from across the denominations and across the country, to discuss how a long-term programme is best established. Then the training begins with a series of Langham Preaching seminars designed to sustain training over several years. Each seminar is usually for 4 days, and provides practical help and encouragement to those who have a Bible preaching/teaching role, whether pastors, lay preachers, evangelists, church planters or workers in para-church settings. The purpose is to work with national believers to develop an indigenous movement for relevant Bible exposition. Our training ethos is described below.

From Langham Preaching Solomons 2009

Level 1 introduces the foundations of Biblical preaching. Level 2 typically covers the theme of preaching from the New Testament, and level 3 tackles preaching from the Old Testament. The seminars involve lectures, group work, Bible expositions, prayer, and planning for grass-roots training and support. There is also a ‘training of trainers’ programme developed for those who will serve as local facilitators in their towns or regions. They then run local level 1 training events, and participants then usually join the national training programme. In this way the preaching movement develops both locally and nationally.

Continuity is encouraged through local preachers’ groups which meet regularly. Sometimes called preachers’ clubs, or escuelitas in Latin America, every participant in the programme is encouraged to join such a local group, providing regular opportunities to learn together and to support others in the preaching fellowship.

Local ownership is key: the programmes are developed by leaders with a commitment to encourage Biblical preaching movements in their town or country.

Regional coordinators are being appointed to facilitate the development of preaching programmes in major world regions. In turn, there is a growing sense of regional fellowship amongst the emerging preaching movements, strengthening the work in each country and sharing resources in the region.

News of the many programmes underway can be found on the Preaching pages of this web site. There is a small staff around the world, and Jonathan Lamb serves as the coordinator.

What is our training ethos?

Langham Preaching was founded by John Stott and is one of three programmes which comprise Langham Partnership International (LPI) – alongside Langham Literature and Langham Scholars. While LPI is developing its own identity in the world, the convictions associated with John Stott will always shape its future.

Langham Preaching is about preachers. Other ministries belong within the mission of God in the world, but we are committed to preachers and preaching. “We believe that God wants his church to grow up. We believe that the church grows through God’s Word, and that this Word comes to people, primarily, through preaching.”

Langham Preaching is about preachers in the majority world. Other parts of the world are significant, but we are committed to those countries where the need is greatest, where the resources are fewest, and the growth in the church is fastest. But it is often “growth without depth”. Under God’s gracious hand, we are committed to seeing depth develop.

From Langham Preaching in Tanzania

Langham Preaching is about biblical preachers in the majority world. Other types of preaching exist, but we are committed to that brand of preaching which opens a biblical passage and frees that passage to provide the shape and purpose for the sermon because the preacher remains in that passage for the duration of the sermon.

Langham Preaching is about training biblical preachers in the majority world. Other approaches to equipping preachers play their role. There is the teaching of homiletics in the theological college. It starts instinctively with theory and tends to be more academic, more dependent on books and notes and lecturers, and more examinable. But we are committed to an approach which complements homiletics – and often supplements it as well. We aim to be more practical, working with fewer and simpler skills practiced and modelled repeatedly, so that we build a training that is more transferable without the need for an abundance of resources.

Langham Preaching is about training in a way which builds and sustains a movement of biblical preachers in the majority world. Other methods make their contribution. There are the larger conferences where preachers are motivated to fulfil their calling. But we are committed to smaller seminars designed to spark a movement as people gather regularly between the seminars in local fellowships for encouragement and accountability. And to nurture this regionalised movement the emphasis gradually slides across to the training of local facilitators. So the event which is the seminar becomes that brief moment in time when the infection is introduced, after which we pray that a ‘benevolent virus’ might spread. So while participants often gather looking for an event that contains something useful for themselves, we are even more interested in how they will scatter into a movement with something useful for others.

Langham Preaching is about training in a way which builds and sustains an indigenous movement of biblical preachers in the majority world. Other initiatives in these under-resourced areas readily depend on continuing support and direction from overseas. But we are committed to an outcome that is sustainable within the country and with limited resources. While in the early days of our partnerships foreign personnel and funding is prominent, as a given movement develops it becomes increasingly regionalised as local facilitators working at the grassroots become the focus. Then when a movement reaches maturity, it will be identified by regular gatherings of these facilitators that will be directed locally.

From Langham Preaching Latin America

Langham Preaching is about training in a way which builds and sustains an indigenous movement of biblical preachers which changes the culture of preaching in the majority world. Under God’s gracious hand we are working towards changing the culture of preaching. And as that transformation in preaching takes place we believe it can lead on to the transformation of the church … and then as the church transforms there is the expectation that there will be a transformation of the often troubled countries in which these churches are embedded. This is because biblical preaching helps the church grow up into maturity and a mature church, living as salt and light and full of grace and truth, is the God-ordained agency for the transformation of societies.

Please take a look at the Impact stories, which will introduce the variety of preaching movements around the world.

Thanks!

Preaching