Langham Preaching Conference
My boredom problems are well and truly over.
After the Scripture Union Easter camp last weekend I barely had time to change over what little clothes I had left that passed for clean to head back to the SU campsite at Pango Point for the first ever Langham Preaching Conference. Langham Partnership International (LPI) is an organisation concerned with the growth of churches in the majority world that grew out of John Stott’s home church of All Souls, Langham Place in Britain. It has three branches that provide evangelical literature to Bible colleges and seminaries, scholarships to fund nationals to study at doctorate level to become ‘local theologians,’ and run preaching workshops to train pastors in Biblical preaching.
There’s a long story to how Langham decided to host its first South Pacific preaching conference in Vanuatu, but I’m incredibly thankful to God that they did! Like much of the majority world, Vanuatu is blessed with great acceptance of the gospel and many keen believers, yet suffers from a lack of robust teaching and training – what was described as a ‘great breadth of faith, but with little depth.’ In an effort to begin to change this, LPI runs the workshops mentioned above: a three-strand system of building up pastors in their preaching of the Word of God.
Right from the start there was great excitement as Christopher Wright (director of LPI) preached from Nehemiah 8 on the opening night. Over the following days he and David Cook (principal of SMBC, Sydney) walked us through basic exegesis, bridging the gap from grasping a text to preaching it, as well as some low-level Biblical theology and pastoral skills. The basic structure was a lecture on the theory of, say, exegesis, then a daily Bible passage to apply it to in personal study (all from Acts for our Strand 1), followed by a small group workshop to agree on a common exegesis and draft a sermon outline, and finally that passage preached through by Dave or Chris.
On a very self-centred level I rejoiced in having some wonderful Biblical teaching (Sydney-siders, you have no idea how good you have it…none…), a reminder of some areas of preparation I’d gotten lazy on, and the insights of the two speakers and John Buckle (an experience pastor and member of Langham Australia’s board) into the task of pastoring. There were some challenges… it was hard hearing some of the interpretations of fairly straightforward passages and trying to respectfully disagree and offer different readings entirely in Bislama, not to mention having to fly back forth to uni to run and teach at different CF things and juggling a sudden flood of speaking engagements in the next few weeks. Overall, though, there were great joys!
- Meeting and getting to know heaps of people labouring for the gospel all around the islands (including those working on a Vanuatu Bible commentary project)
- Seeing the keenness with which they applied themselves to wrestling with Scripture after being shown how to go about it and seeing it modelled powerfully
- The formation of regional ‘preachers’ clubs’: small groups of pastors and lay preachers who will meet regularly to sharpen one another’s skills, share resources, and keep one another accountable
This last one was particularly significant for me. Coming from an Anglican background in Sydney I have a particular soft spot for that denomination. The Church of Melanesia (CoM) – the Sth Pacific incarnation – is about as ‘high’ as they come, steeped in sacraments at the expense of the Word of God. Yet, as one of the CoM pastors told me as they were planning multi-level clubs throughout Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands (to not only ensure they continue to preach Biblically, but teach others to do so as well on local, regional, and national levels): “Now we’ve seen God’s way of teaching and we must hold to it even against all tradition.â€
So praise God for the work of LPI, the labours of Chris, Dave, John, Wendy (LPA director) and Graham, and Andy and Philip on the Pacific side and pray for the perpetuation of Biblical, Christ-centred preaching throughout all the islands.
Posted: Mar 29, 06:53 PM Category: Friends
Tags for this article: langham, preaching, vanuatu
KT* · Mar 30, 07:21 PM
Wow, the Sydney evangelicals are getting right on board with stuff aren’t they? Did you know that John Buckle manages Flo Harris Lodge and goes to PBC? Anyway, sounds like it was a really encouraging time for you and that’s wonderful!
J · Mar 31, 01:57 PM
Haha yeah John and I were having a chuckle working out how many people we knew in common…including the ‘gluten-free troublemaker’ Joho!
I say bring on the Sydney evangelicals!! We could do with about fifty more over here =)
Kathryn · Apr 5, 05:42 PM
That’s great you got some solid input, good to hear. Are you feeling better and less sick now?