Femi, thank you for your time this evening. Tell us where you are at the moment.
I am in Ghana, where I’ve lived now for the past 17 years. After about 10 years in Zimbabwe serving with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).
Very good. And there with you, have you got family there with you, Femi, here in Ghana?
Yes. My wife lives with me and our daughter. We have three sons who are in other parts of the world.
Very good, do they not? I seem to find that we’ve got our youngest daughter. She keeps coming back for some reason. The other two are settled, but away from home. But Imogen keeps, keeps, keeps coming back.
So.
Wonderful. So you can go on it there with your wife and, um… Just…
Yeah, just… I’ve sort of shared your title, but what does, um, what does that mean for you on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis for Langham?
I lead a team of nine other persons to provide leadership for Langham Preaching Ministry in Africa. So my title is Africa Director. Emeka, whom some of you might know, is the associate director. And then we have regional coordinators. We’ve divided the continent into various regions: West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa. So we have a regional coordinator overseeing those regions. And then we have other specialist roles as Merci, who lives in Kenya but is responsible for training our facilitators. We have a brother, Victor, who is in charge of building capacity and ensuring that our movements are growing as they should. So I’m team leader. I don’t do this work alone. I lead this team and we try to do as much together as possible.
This is when I need an atlas in front of me, family, because you say that and then I will complain. So I live in Nottingham, bang in the middle of the UK and I’ll complain about the four hours to get to Carlisle to our office. Whereas of course, you’re talking about things 100 times bigger and trying to coordinate those people and travel. But we’ll perhaps come on to that some of the issues that you perhaps have there with issue.
So, Femi, so you’ve been with Langham. So how long you been with Langham in this role?
I’ve been with Langham for nine years. This is my 10th year.
Okay. But in terms of Langham as a partnership, it actually goes back to about 23 years ago.
Fantastic. And what was that connection 23 years ago?
Well, I had known Uncle John—we call him Uncle John—just thought in the context of IFES ministry. Because he travelled widely doing campus missions, speaking not only in Europe, but in Latin America and especially here in Africa. I think I first met him in the west African context, but the first time I really had a good conversation with him was after I finished my graduate studies in Chicago in Wheaton Graduate School. He had come to visit Langham Partnership around Chicago and invited me for breakfast. And in fact, he encouraged me to think of going into doctoral studies, which I was open to. But I was invited back home to lead the student movement. But he promised a scholarship for me, which years later I would later take up for doctoral studies starting in Edinburgh, completed in Ghana.
But in 2003, we gathered in Hylands Conference Centre, I think somewhere on the outskirts of London, for the inaugural meeting of what would become Langham Preaching Ministry today. So that’s where Uncle John poured out his heart on the need for sound biblical preaching as essential for growing churches and Christian witness. So that’s how I first became exposed to Langham.
Excellent. So you’ve seen Langham preaching in Africa then from its birth almost, and I imagine to where it is now in that sort of present role. So, when was that? So you said that’s 2003?
Yes, yes.
So when did that sort of show any sort of fruit or anything that was in Africa? Was that a bit further on the road?
Prior to 2003, Uncle John had actually visited Kenya, visited Uganda. And even though it was not called Langham then, it was training pastors and laypersons. But from 2003 it just became like a mustard seed growing. We inaugurated Ghana in 2005. We integrated Zimbabwe the same year. I was still living in Zimbabwe, but I was invited to Ghana by Jonathan Lamb to initiate the preaching ministry here in Ghana. And two years later, I was invited by both Jonathan Lamb and Chris Wright to start the preaching ministry—Langham Training preaching ministry in western Africa.
From those small beginnings, we now work in 32 African countries. And in the past two years, in particular, the past two years, we initiated the preaching movement in six new countries. We call them the three Gs of West Africa: Guinea, Conakry, the Gambia, and Gabon. And then two years ago, we initiated Namibia. And last year we initiated the work in Cameroon as well as Madagascar. But altogether we work in 32 countries.
This is starting to boggle my mind and trying to get my head around that. That is amazing. And in your… I’m going to come back to a question, but in your mind then, is that starting to cover everything or are we still miles away from being where preaching needs to be in Africa? Is there still a long journey ahead?
I always say it’s a long journey, but we have a proverb in Africa that says the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time—one bite at a time. There is remarkable growth of the church. Our churches are growing so rapidly. You have some congregations that number 2,000. I was in a church that had 5,000 members. How they discipled them, I’m not too sure. And Africans love to preach, not only in churches but in the marketplace, in public transport. There is no inhibition about preaching.
Now, the challenge we’ve had is what is the content of what is being preached? So we continue to make headway. And we’ve had significant progress, not only with pastors but lay readers. And then more recently, we’re engaging with theological institutions. At least five theological institutions have invited us to help redesign their homiletics along the content of Langham training. We are engaging with two here in Ghana. The Church of Pentecost in Ghana has a seminary and is the largest, fastest-growing Pentecostal church not only in Ghana but in various parts of Africa. So we are working with them. Another evangelical school, the Evangelical Churches of West Africa invited us to partner with them. And we have more and more invitations like that. So we feel if the theological institutions, Bible schools that are training pastors, equipping them, appreciate what Langham is doing, then it will multiply our efforts across the continent. So I’m encouraged. I’m encouraged by what I see.
Yeah, that sounds amazing. And just again, it’s sort of, again, it’s not necessarily in our hands. Well, it’s not in our hands, is it? It’s in God’s hands. And it grows at His speed. That is beyond our thinking at times, which is just fantastic.
Just share, Femi, before everybody came on and we were just chatting beforehand and you were just sharing about one of the Zoom calls that you had this morning with some young pastors. Just share that story because I thought it was just so encouraging.
One of the Zoom calls you had this morning?
Yeah. So two young people who belong more to the Pentecostal Charismatic Churches while with me in a conference we had on biblical preaching in Accra in September last month. And they were so encouraged by what I shared on the ministry of Langham Preaching, I also did a couple of expositions. So they said they really needed to see me because there is a significant need in Pentecostal charismatic churches. They observed that most of those we engage with belong to the evangelical Protestant traditions and not enough.
But I told them in some other contexts, we have significant numbers of charismatic Pentecostal pastors participating in our training programs. This morning on our leadership platform, somebody posted the image of 86 pastors currently undergoing a preaching training program in Kinshasa. Most of them come from Pentecostal or Charismatic denominations. So we are very diverse in the churches we engage with.
Let me share an interesting story.
Please do.
This is interesting because we had a leadership training conference. It was kind of a retreat and consultation in Lesotho, well, they call it the Kingdom of Lesotho, sometime last year. And the Roman Catholic archbishop came to visit us at this retreat place we were meeting at to thank us for the ministry of Langham. He had about Langham preaching some years before that and he participated in some of them. And he insists that his priests must attend Langham preaching training sessions as part of their preparation for ministry. Now it looks strange that a Catholic archbishop showed so much interest.
Yeah.
In the ministry of Langham preaching. But that’s the scope of the diverse churches we’re engaging with on the continent.
Amazing. Amazing.
We were really… When I say we, Emeka was over in the UK earlier in the springtime and he was sharing with some congregations in London and also in Northern Ireland. And again, he inspired everybody he was speaking to. And I’m not sure if Ed’s on the call. I’m surprised. He’s perhaps coming tomorrow. Ed Villa, Anglican minister down in London, had been over to Ghana and been at one of your seminars to get to hear it. And we were just so excited with what Emeka was sharing.
It became our appeal for this year that we’ve just started to come to the close of that. You know, Emeka used that phrase, you know, “the harvest is great, but the workers are… the workers are few.” But just share how, you know, I think it’s probably part of your prayer, prayer points, and we’ll come back to that. But perhaps you could just share some of the growth that you’ve already talked about, but how you’re wanting to increase the number of people that you can get preaching to. You mentioned the seminaries already. Are there other avenues that you’re looking at how we can increase the number of people that go through Langham training?
You know, generally we run what you call seminars teaching the foundations of biblical preaching, teaching preaching from the Old Testament, from the New Testament, and then challenging people to be in circles of accountability that you call preaching clubs.
In the African context, we’ve adopted the word “ushirika” which means fellowship. So it’s a fellowship of preachers. But the reason we’ve made that the foundational level even before people get into the seminars is to encourage accountability and support for one another so that pastors who in their preparation come across difficult texts can bring them into their “ushirika” group, their fellowship, to discuss what the challenges are. And in that way they support one another. Many pastors operate in very isolated and lonely places. So we feel we need to encourage this communal being together.
But related to growth, sometimes we set targets as we want to deepen 500 or 600 preachers in a year. Just to share with you some of my travels in recent months, you mentioned Emeka. I was with Emeka in August at what is called a preaching summit. The preaching summits last year with the hope that they would develop into something like the KICC convention. I was speaking in KICC last year. But the hope is that those who are passionate about preaching God’s word will come together regularly to encourage one another to study more and be a witness to churches where preaching is not as strong.
In that summit, there were 300 pastors and laypersons, including denominational heads, including heads of theological institutions, were there for five full days. And then Emeka and I flew to Kigali in Rwanda for a similar conference.
You know, the one in Rwanda had a hundred pastors for two full days, followed by a training for younger people. And there were 380 young persons. So if you add up the numbers. And then when I came back home to Ghana late August, the first week in September, we had what is called the Challenge Book Conference backed by Preaching Challenge which is a chain of Christian bookstores that distribute literature to pastors on biblical preaching and the like. But this year they partnered with us and asked us to lead the content of the training in that hybrid conference. We had about 189 participating in attendance and about 41 attending virtually. And this is happening repeatedly.
I mentioned the one going on now this week in Kinshasa. Here in Ghana, some of my team members are in northern Ghana, in Tamale, leading about 26 pastors in the foundations of biblical studies. So biblical preaching: when they finish the foundations, they will continue in their accountability groups of “ushirika,” the preaching fellowships, before they go back to now learn how to preach from the Old Testament and following that, how to preach from the New Testament. So we see more and more people eager to learn. And I think in this way we’re witnessing significant growth.
Excellent Femi. This is all, you know, there’s smiles. It’s just so encouraging to hear all of this. However, I guess there’s a but there must be problems along the road. And again we will share your prayer points in a bit but perhaps just want to share a few of the issues that you’re having to tackle as well around the continent.
The other I will mention is really the challenge of the so-called prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel. It didn’t really originate from the African context, I’m sorry to say it came to us more from North America. But I think the level of poverty in some of our contexts have made many people embrace that as a shortcut. Using the gospel as it were, as the means to the good things in life. But the emphasis is more materialistic possession rather than the vision or the mission of the Kingdom of God. So that’s a major challenge that we are responding to.
If I may add a thought, travel in some of our contexts can be very, very difficult. Sometimes I choose to go to Burkina Faso by road. I drive. It takes about 16 hours to do that because flight connections are either not there or they are too expensive. So it’s easier to go by road. So say a few challenges that we face.
But we’re encouraged, so much encouraged by various other things that are going on, such as the open doors we have with churches. We have what you call the Langham Preaching Sunday in churches. We started it about five years ago, the last Sunday of June every year is known as the Langham Preaching Sunday in churches. So those who have gone through our training visit various churches to share the vision, the mission of Langham, and very often they are given the pulpit to preach, to provide model expositions. And we see that as a growing thing year after year. So we’re encouraged by that and not feel overwhelmed by the challenges that come.
Well, I think that’s probably what I’m feeling overwhelmed and it’s not my responsibility, like you say, you must be…
Yeah. The opportunities are just there and that must be a challenge of which opportunity to grab first and to run with, I imagine, and just to discerning what is the highest priority I could see.
We’ll get your prayer points up. Femi, is there anything else in particular on those prayer points you want to mention? You’ve got busy.
Yes.
No, no, we need to…
You’ve got a busy November coming up.
Yes, yes.
Tell us about the… the… what sort of… you got the sort of preaching movement leaders coming together in mid-November.
So in the second week of November, from about the 9th to the 15th, we have what we call All Africa Langham Preaching Leaders Consultation to take place here in Ghana. So I will be hosting about 80 leaders who are leaders of various preaching movements from the 32 countries. Rather than just inviting one person, we’re inviting two to encourage mutual accountability. So we’re inviting those who lead their movements as preaching movement coordinators and then they come along with their “ushirika” leaders, those who are coordinating their accountability groups or those leading their national committees. We encourage all movements to have a national committee that more or less serves as the board to which they respond.
So the last time we had this was about three years ago in Ethiopia. But with the growth and new people coming on board, want to be sure we’re on the same page regarding the ethos and the direction of Langham preaching. So we’ll be sharing where the ministry is and where we ought to be going. We’ll be joined by the program leader for Langham Preaching, Paul Windsor, who lives in New Zealand, is going to travel all the way here. Ruth is going to join us from Carlisle and we have a few other global leaders who will join us in this. So our hope and desire, the thing we are reflecting on is preaching God’s word faithfully to impact Africa. So if you can please bear that in mind as you pray for us.
Definitely. Femi and I think Ben Ritter, a colleague from the US, he’s coming with his video camera so we’ll all be able to catch up with that in the coming months after he’s been recording. So we look forward to that.
Well, let’s get the prayer points up, if that’s okay. But while that’s just happening, just a couple of things. Femi, first of all, is there sort of anything personally we can be praying for you, for yourself and your family?
As I said, our children are in different parts of the world. We make a point of being home all together for Christmas. So we look forward to that. Pray that we’ll have a good time of fellowship and interaction when they all come home for Christmas.
And then today happens to be my wife’s birthday. And apart from supporting me in the ministry of Langham Preaching, she runs a Christian retreat centre. Now, the church on our continent is very shy about trauma or matters related to depression, but the need is so significant that she feels called. She’s a counsellor by training to provide nurture and care.
So where we are, it’s been developed into a retreat place where people come in for two or three days, some for a whole week for quiet reflection and spiritual direction. So as a birthday gift to her, if you can please pray that God will bless that ministry that she is committed to. I’ll appreciate it.
Thank you, Femi.
No, it would be our joy to do that.