on trees and books

December 14, 2021/Paul Windsor/

I struggle to think of anything in the mission of God in the world today that enthuses me more than the work of Langham Literature.

That day when my Africa Bible Commentary (ABC) arrived remains a vivid memory. I was in a seminar in the dining room at Carey Baptist College (Auckland) and Rachel, with whom I worked, came over with my copy, as soon as it arrived. She knew not to leave it on my desk! Within the cover of the one single volume were collected commentaries on every book of the Bible, together with 80 articles engaging the African context … and everything was written by scholars from Africa.

That was almost 15 years ago … and the seed of that vision has grown into a tree, with some unusual ‘birds coming and perching in its branches’ (Mt 13.32)!

The ABC is visible on the lower left of the trunk, with two branches carrying the six languages of Africa into which it has been translated. Next to it is the Slavic Bible Commentary (in Russian). Above them are the Latin American commentary (in Spanish) and the South Asia Bible Commentary (initially, in English, but now emerging in local languages, like Hindi, pictured here). Across the top of the tree are the ones from and for the Arab world (in Arabic), the ‘big country’ and the Central & Eastern European Bible Commentary. Amazing.

Each volume follows the same guidelines: within the one cover, commentaries on every book of the Bible and articles which engage the local context … and everything written by indigenous scholars.

My favourite story around this growing tree comes from Pieter (Langham Literature) visiting a library in a theological college in Zimbabwe. He wanders through the aisles and the shelves. He locates two volumes of the ABC, but finds their binding in tatters. “Oh no, there must have been some fault in the printing”. He locates the librarian, offering to replace the volumes. “Oh no, Pieter. The binding is not the issue. They are in tatters from overuse. The students love them because they are theirs”.

You can find all these commentaries at this link here — with two volumes (the ABC, currently being revised, and the SABC) available in English. Sometimes I think the prophetic ministry can be over-spiritualized. A lot of it is about having our blindspots exposed. There is no better way to have this happen than by engaging commentaries written from a different, even distant, cultural context.

But, wait — there’s more…

Langham also has a Scholars ministry, which helps emerging leaders in the ‘majority world’ through their PhDs. In the early years, they went off to ‘the West’, with a scarcely believable return-rate pushing up towards 90%. Now, with so many having returned home over the recent decades, another compelling statistic has emerged: those completing PhDs, while remaining in the ‘majority world’ is now pushing up towards 50%.

I digress — but only a bit!

Like any scholar, these people would love to have their dissertations published. But not only is a publisher jolly hard to find, when they are found and the work is published, it tends to sell for USD100, or even GBP100. Yikes! What libraries/people in the ‘majority world’ are going to hand over that kind of cash too many times? So, along comes Langham Literature with the Langham Monograph series (72 volumes and counting — see the link here). More ‘amazing’…

As a teacher of homiletics (an academic word for preaching, which I don’t really like!), I’ve been working through three which are related to preaching — written by Enoh Seba, from Croatia; Joey Tan, from Malaysia; and Johnson Raih, from North East India.

Here I offer some brief words of personal appreciation.

Sparked by 1 Cor 1.18—2.5, I liken the journey to the sermon to be akin to visiting ‘five corners’: (1) Written Word; (2) World; (3) Listener; (4) Preacher; and (5) Living Word. Next time, Seba’s work will remain open before me as I unpack ‘the Listener’.

He engages ‘three potent doctrines’ (the image of God, incarnation, the priesthood of all believers) to provide ‘validation for empowering silenced majorities and giving voice to their eloquent silence’ (262). Listeners, the silenced majority, should be allowed ‘to speak and say more, while preachers should be prompted to listen and hear more’ (230). ‘The imminent challenge for (Croatian) Baptists might be to align their homiletics with their ecclesiology’ (264). Instead of ‘developing persuasive arguments to win over and convince the listeners, preachers should design their sermons around the concept of identification‘ (242, emphasis mine).

Three Chinese festivals. One gospel. Six preachers. What does ‘contextualised preaching’, one that is both biblically faithful and culturally relevant, look like? It will involve both the ‘affirmation and confrontation’ (295) of culture — always. The careful, restrained way in which Tan exegetes the culture (the ‘World corner’ above) and then, with an assured grasp of the gospel, the way he arrives at the conclusion that ‘all three festivals contain elements in harmony with the Christian faith … (as well as) elements contrary to the Christian faith’ (331) — it is masterful.

‘Even though Chinese preachers share the same cultural background with the audience, the preaching needs to be contextualised in order to be effective’ (329). Let’s do it well and, as a recent returnee to the West, the danger of only ‘affirmation’ — a kind of over-contextualisation preoccupied with relevance — which ends up in a subtle, sapping syncretism is ever before us.

Nominalism sits alongside syncretism. Both nurture ‘a form of godliness while denying its power’ (2 Tim 3.4), a ‘spiritual lethargy’, in local churches. It is far easier to see it ‘over there’, rather than ‘in here’, as they kinda hide in plain sight. My visits to NE India, once with Johnson, took me back to arriving in the USA for theological study, as a 21 year old, at a time when 40-60% of the country was in church on Sunday. A staggering figure. But then asking, “How can such a large amount of salt and light have such little impact on society?” Nominalism. Syncretism. Raih references research which shows that evangelistic work by Indian Christians is not vibrant because two-thirds of the Christians in India need themselves to be evangelized.

Raih gathers data from church members and pastors in Imphal, Manipur. He reflects on how preaching can be ‘an incubator of nominality’, but also be a practice which subverts it — but for the latter to happen, it needs to be preaching at its best.

nice chatting

Paul

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on trees and books

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