The other side of the incarnational dimension of Langham’s work is in our literature programmes. Originally John Stott founded the Evangelical Literary Trust as a way of getting books into the hands of pastors and using his own royalties. For a long time, that basically meant sending western books to other countries – evangelical books by evangelical authors in Britain and America. And they still do that because these are still valuable books.
But the other half of Langham Literature is Langham Literature Creative and it’s growing very rapidly. Its purpose is to stimulate indigenous evangelical authors, writers, editors and publishers in their own languages so that people are getting quality evangelical writing which is much more incarnate, much closer to their own culture, their own language, and written in their own context, addressing the issues that they are facing.
CT: Christian communities are growing despite many difficulties. And in some countries they are perceived as helping Western powers.
CW: Yes, it is the case that Christianity is regarded as a foreign religion in many countries around the world, whether rightly or wrongly. It is a perception that is very convenient for the political leaders in countries that want to be hostile to Christianity, to persist in the myth that all Christians in our country, in India or some parts of the Middle East or Asia, for example, are only Christians because they are converts by westerners with western money, backed by foreign powers, and it is a very convenient myth to push out, but it is actually very far from the truth.
There have been Christians in India longer than there have been Christians in Britain, right back to the first century. There have been believers in the Middle East since the day of Pentecost. And after all, they were first called Christians in Syria. So there is an authentic voice of indigenous Christianity in these countries which needs to be heard as that – as the voice of indigenous Christianity even though they often do get portrayed as foreign religions.
CT: You are involved in the preparation work for Lausanne 2010.
CW: Yes, I’m the chairman of the Lauasanne Theology working group which is one of about six working groups in the Lausanne movement. There are plans for another Lausanne Congress in Cape Town in October 2010. The intention is to think again about what is meant by the Lausanne slogan which comes from the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 – the whole church taking the whole Gospel to the whole world.
The Lausanne movement will be quite important strategically. Many of us in the leadership of Lausanne feel it is an opportunity, particularly in the worldwide evangelical movement, for us to engage in some self-critical reflection and repentance and to say, well worldwide evangelicals are growing very fast but what kind of people are we and how did it come to be that the word evangelical is held in such contempt in many parts of the world because of the way in which evangelicals behave and the attitudes they display, their connections in some parts of the world with prosperity gospel and in other parts of the world with very wealthy, powerful leaders, and in North America connections with a particular form of political power.
