Our dear brother Femi Adeleye, Director for Langham Preaching Africa, shared major encouragements, issues and requests for prayer on our Langham Live call last month.
Simon Foulds (SF), LPUKI Supporter Development Manager: Can you tell us where you are at the moment?
Femi Adeleye (FA), Langham Preaching Africa Director: 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).
SF: Have you got family there with you in Ghana?
FA: Yes. My wife lives with me and our daughter. We have three sons who are in other parts of the world.
SF: Wonderful, so what does (being Director for Langham Preaching Africa) mean for you on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis for Langham?
FA: I lead a team of nine other persons to provide leadership for Langham Preaching Ministry in Africa. 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 such 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.
SF: How long you been with Langham in this role?
FA: I’ve been with Langham for nine years. This is my 10th year. But in terms of Langham as a partnership, it actually goes back to about 23 years ago. I had known Uncle John—we call him Uncle John—in the context of IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) ministry. 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 High Leigh Conference Centre, I think somewhere on the outskirts of London, for the inaugural meeting of what would become the Langham Preaching programme 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.
Now working in 32 countries
SF: 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 did that sort of show any sort of fruit or anything that was in Africa? Was that a bit further on the road?
FA: 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 in (a Western African country).
From those small beginnings, we now work in 32 African countries. And in the past two years, in particular, we initiated the preaching movement in six new countries. We call them the three Gs of West Africa: Guinea, 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.
SF: That is amazing. In your mind then, are we still miles away from being where preaching needs to be in Africa? Is there still a long journey ahead?
FA: 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‘. 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.
Engaging with theological institutions
And then more recently, we’re engaging with theological institutions. At least five theological institutions have invited us to help redesign their homiletics (preaching) courses 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 and 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 by what I see.
SF: That sounds amazing and it’s not necessarily in our hands. It’s in God’s hands. And it grows at His speed. That is beyond our thinking at times, which is just fantastic.
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.
Appeal for Langham Preaching in Africa
It became the basis of our appeal for this year – we’ve just started to come to the close of that*. Emeka used that phrase: “the harvest is great, but the workers are few.” But 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?
FA: 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.
300 pastors and laypersons at a preaching summit
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 Keswick Convention. I was speaking in Keswick 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, they 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, 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.
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.
Major challenges facing Christians in Africa
SF: It’s just so encouraging to hear all of this. However, I guess there must be problems along the road. Can you share a few of the issues that you’re having to tackle as well around the continent?
FA: We have a number of security issues… with churches being attacked, pastors displaced… which is a major concern and is disrupting the training… [Femi talked about militant groups in certain Western African countries, which we are not sharing for safety reasons].
The other thing 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.
Personal prayer requests
SF: Femi, first of all, is there sort of anything personally we can be praying for you, for yourself and your family?
FA: 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.
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.
*So far, £21,386 has been raised for our Langham Preaching Africa appeal – this has been match-funded thanks to the support of a generous supporter.