Introducing Dr. Mary Evans: A Life Devoted to Biblical Teaching
Our guest this month, Dr. Mary Evans, embodies a lifelong commitment to God’s mission. Having dedicated her life to faithful Bible teaching, Mary has served in countries including Ethiopia, Ecuador, Ghana, and Nigeria, and for three decades at London Bible College (now the London School of Theology), where she was once Vice Principal.
Mary’s influence extends beyond teaching; she has contributed to the Bible Society, Global Connections, Evangelical Alliance, and authored respected commentaries in the Bible Speaks Today and Tyndale series. Her passion for God’s Word resonates deeply in her work and in every conversation.
Reflecting on her journey of faith, Mary humbly describes herself as “very ordinary,” yet her story is inspiring. Growing up in a Christian family in northwest England, Mary recalls, “I can’t say exactly when I came to faith because I just knew Jesus from childhood. Like Jeremiah, my sense of calling has been with me as long as I can remember.”
From Personal Calling to Global Impact
Mary’s story highlights the importance of faithful mentorship and encouragement. She remembers a kind elder lady who sparked her interest in deep Bible study by giving her theological books at a young age. Mary also recounts the challenge of discerning her calling between missionary work and teaching theology, concluding with God’s clear direction that set her on a path to theological education—a choice she made while trusting God’s guidance.
“I knew as a child that God was calling me,” Mary shares. “It wasn’t a big deal; it was just how it was.” Her life has been a testament to obedience and faithfulness, showing that even ordinary people can have an extraordinary impact through God’s calling.
Serving Langham Partnership: A Vision of Partnership and Growth
Mary’s connection with Langham Partnership began before it took its current form. She served on the literature committee alongside John Stott and has been deeply involved in scholarship and governance since joining the Langham board in 2010.
Discussing her role on LPIC—the Langham Partnership International Council—Mary explains the significance of governance in keeping Langham’s vision and integrity intact: “LPIC’s role is to ensure the budget balances, that the vision remains strong, and that integrity is maintained. I’m convinced Langham continues to uphold these essential values.”
Her experience on the scholarship committee has been both challenging and rewarding. “Each year, around 80 applications come in for only 15 scholarships. It’s not just about academic excellence, but about serving the church faithfully. Seeing these scholars grow and thrive is a great joy.”
Mary praises Langham’s model of partnership, especially the respect shown to churches worldwide. She notes how Langham stands apart from other organisations by encouraging mutual learning and shared mission rather than parent-child relationships.
Looking Ahead: Hopes for the Future of Langham Partnership
With a heart full of gratitude and vision, Mary plans to step down from the Langham board this November. Yet her hope for Langham’s future is clear: growth rooted in the same faithful vision.
The church needs good preaching, and I believe Langham’s role in training and equipping teachers of God’s Word remains vital, even here in the UK.
“I want Langham to continue supporting the global church, especially where resources are scarce,” she says. “The church needs good preaching, and I believe Langham’s role in training and equipping teachers of God’s Word remains vital, even here in the UK.”
Mary’s wisdom shines through as she reflects: “Every Christian institution needs a self-destruct button—a time when it knows to finish. For me, it’s time to finish with Langham, but Langham itself is very much needed and alive. It’s time for someone else to take up the baton.”
Thank You, Mary, for Your Faithful Service
Langham Partnership UK & Ireland offers heartfelt thanks to Dr. Mary Evans for her decades of faithful service, teaching, and leadership. Her legacy encourages us all to deepen our love for Scripture, support one another in God’s mission, and remain steadfast in faith.
We pray God’s continuing blessing on Mary as she embarks on this new season, and on Langham Partnership as it carries forward the crucial work of nurturing passionate, confident Bible teachers around the world.
Together, let us continue to stand for faithful Bible teaching—because strong churches start with God’s Word rightly taught.
Video Transcript
Summary
- Langham Partnership exists to support indigenous Bible teachers to preach and to teach God’s word accurately and with confidence. Dr. Mary Evans has taught in colleges all over the world. Mary has also authored several books. It’s wonderful to have Mary as our guest on Langham Live.
- Mary’s desire to teach God’s word is very close to her heart with Langham Partnership. When she knew it was time to finish at LBC, she went to Ethiopia to teach the Old Testament.
- she came onto the LPUKI board in 2010 and also served on LPIC. She has also worked on the scholar team to assess viable candidates each year.
- Mary Evans will stand down from the board of Langham in November but wants John Stott’s vision to continue.
Transcript
Mark Armstrong (Supporter Development Officer for Ireland) interviews Dr Mary Evans
Over this last summer, our Langham team in UK and Ireland have been very busy on different stands. And on one of the stands in which I was on, I had a dear brother from Ukraine who came with tears in his eyes and he said that he wanted to thank Langham Partnership for the support in which they are giving to the church in Ukraine, especially at this time and especially today after we hear the devastating news that has come overnight.
Well, those conversations certainly make the hair stand in the back of my neck because it draws me back to the central reason why Langham Partnership exists. And of course, Langham Partnership exists to support indigenous Bible teachers to preach and to teach God’s word accurately and with confidence.
Well, our guest this evening, Dr. Mary Evans, has spent her life playing her part in ensuring that God’s word is taught accurately and with confidence. Mary has taught in colleges all over the world, really, but in countries such as Ethiopia, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, amongst others. She taught in London Bible College, I think it’s now called the London School of Theology, for 30 years and at one stage was the vice principal.
Along with that, she has sat on councils of the Bible Society, Global Connections, Evangelical Alliance, Latin Link and SIM, just to name a few. Mary has also authored several books, including part of the Bible Speaks Today series, commentary on 1, 2 Samuel and the Tyndale commentary on Judges and Ruth. And it’s wonderful to have Mary this evening as our guest on Langham Live. If she wasn’t being interviewed, she still would be on Langham Live because she is such a faithful attender of it.
So, Mary, thank you so much for being part of this evening. We really appreciate you coming and being part of this. We’ll talk a little bit about your connection with Langham Partnership in a few moments. But first of all, start off by telling us who is Mary Evans? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to faith in Jesus Christ.
Yes, it’s always odd, isn’t it, on something like that, because who I am is very ordinary. I’m an academic, but not a superb academic. I’m a very, what they would call a journeywoman academic. I’m a generalist. Old Testament, it was my speciality. But it feels, I mean, I hear all that stuff and I think that’s ridiculous. It’s just me and that’s how it is.
But I came to faith, you were saying as well, I can’t remember, to be honest. My family were Christian. So you grew up knowing Jesus. So I can’t say, oh, on that day. I can say several times when I was a child, you’re thinking, oh, I better accept Jesus again, just in case I didn’t. And those of you who were brought up in Christian homes would think that it was very interesting.
Later on when I was teaching, I used to ask regularly, not so much when they were converted, but everybody at the college had some kind of calling. So I asked, was their calling out of the blue, one off occasion, or was it a regular development that grew over years? Or was it like Jeremiah, it’s been there since as long as I can remember.
Now, mine was the Jeremiah kind. I knew as a child that God was calling me in a way that was different from calling me to be a Christian. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just how it was. I had a family with a history of Christian service over the years. Not my direct family, but somebody in every generation, way back about six generations, was a minister and so on. So that wasn’t abnormal, but it was different.
When I asked the students that, it was fascinating. Over the years it was about a third, a third, a third which I found interesting. Some years it would be more one than the other, but mine was. I can’t remember beginning the beginning of the fact. I just know that Jesus loved me from when I was before. I can remember. Wonderful.
Mary, where abouts were you brought up? What part of the country?
In the northwest. I live in Warrington now and I was brought up 20 miles up the road from here.
So you spent your life around that same area, apart from the times whenever you were living in other parts of the world teaching?
Well, no, because I was in London for 35 years and in Nottingham for four years studying. So I had to come back here in 2010 because it was clear my stepmother was going to need support and it was going to be me that had to provide that. So, from 2010 to now, I’ve been up here. From the first 18 years of my life I was here, but only two years in the middle when I taught maths up here. Mostly it’s been more in the Watford area.
Right, wonderful. How did you develop your love for reading and for studying as well as teaching the Bible? And are there any individuals that sort of influenced you as you walked that road?
Well, that’s an interesting question. When I was growing up, you know, you took it for granted, if men were called, they went into the ministry and if women were called, they became missionaries. That was just part of life. So I assumed that I was going to be a missionary. And that was fine. That was all there in a development all the way through.
But as a young person, there was a lady in our church, Mrs. Lewis. I can’t… I think Joy was her first name. But you wouldn’t have dreamt of calling somebody that, older lady who kind of noticed me and she started giving me books to read. She gave me, when I was about 13, the Tyndale commentary on Hebrews to read and that kind of sense of… And then Ralph Martin, who some of you may have heard of, he used to teach at Fuller in the States. He was teaching at Manchester at the time and came to our church. And kind of thinking that solid Bible teaching mattered in terms of listening to sermons.
So there’s a whole range of things like that. But all the way through, I thought I was going to go abroad. Glenn and Winifred are on the call and they knew I was going to go expecting, hoping as it were, to go to Brazil. But during my time as a student, I got a kind of thing and couldn’t do. When I finished my first two years, which was when I was… I’d been expecting then to go overseas, I couldn’t.
And it was just clear that what I’d really liked to do was do more study. And although I wasn’t well enough to do much out there, I could still keep studying. So I then did some research during that time, and then I applied to the mission. But during those two years, it had become very clear that my call to go overseas, it hadn’t disappeared, but it had become subservient to my call to teach theology, really, that became stronger and stronger.
I’d been planning for years that the missionaries all knew me, they knew what I was intending to do and so on. There was no reason why I’d be turned down. And then I applied, therefore, still not feeling 100% certain about that, but what to do. So I applied and I got back the response that first time. It was, well, we’re accepting you, but you can’t teach theology in the places where you wanted to go. And I thought, well, I can’t do that.
Then, you know, you can go and school teach or do this or do that, but what am I going to do? I’ve got to get a job, I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to have some money from somewhere. What am I going to do if I’m not going to do that?
The next, virtually the next day I had a phone call from LST, from Gilbert Kirby, the principal, to say, we’ve been talking and we’re wondering if you would like to come and be a sort of junior lecturer next year. And I thought, was that me? You know, maybe years in the future, but not… No.
So anyway, I phoned Donald Guthrie, who’d been my mentor and said, look, Gilbert said this, he said, I know, well, I’m not going to do it unless I’m 100% certain that you were behind this. Because he’d supervised my research, he’d mentored me and so on.
And he comes down, he says, I suggested it and that whole sense of, well, here’s something. So it was just for a year and then by the end of the year they had asked me then whether I’d stay on. But I’d also had a comeback from the mission, saying basically what we said wasn’t quite right.
I think the missionaries in the country, in Brazil, had gone back to the leader who thought that’s what they’d said. But what they actually had said was, it will be very difficult as a woman doing that. They hadn’t said, you can’t do it. So then I was faced with this choice.
There were two things and it seemed to me at that point God was saying to me, look, if you go to Brazil, I’ll be with you. If you stay at LST, I’ll be with you. At this point, dear, you’ve got to choose. And both would be okay.
At that point it just seemed to me that staying at LST was the right, LBC was the right decision. But it was a very clear message from God to say, but you can’t go through life saying, I would have gone there and they wouldn’t let me. There you are.
Wonderful. I was just thinking whilst you were saying that, Mary, us gray-haired folks, and I certainly put myself in that camp, is how we can still influence young people. Young, you know, you were influenced by older people in your life who invested in you, and that we all still have that part to play. Investing in younger people. Wonderful story.
Well, obviously, there’s a clear connection, Mary, between you and your desire to teach God’s word, which we obviously see already. It’s very close to your heart with Langham Partnership. So when did you first connect with Langham?
Well, before it was Langham Partnership, I sat on the literature committee that John Stott was still on at that point and Steve Mattingly was chairing that committee. I also had a link with the UK Scholarship Committee.
But then just before I knew it was time to finish at LBC, I’d been there a long time. Every five years I stopped and thought, do I, is this right to stay on or not? You can’t do it every year, but every five years. And each time it was, the Lord said no.
I got this picture of, are you, when you’re staying in the same place a long time, are you in a rut which you need to get out of, or are you in a furrow that you need to keep going with? And until I got to a certain stage, it was always, no, it’s a furrow.
Then it became actually not that it was a rut at all, but it was, it’s time. So I resigned and before I knew what I was going to do, it became, well, I had a call from somebody I’d never heard of in Ethiopia saying, we’re here on the grapevine that you might be available and we’re just desperate for somebody to come and teach Old Testament. Will you come?
And I’d said yes. And then I had a phone call from David Camdale, who was also on this call, saying, we’d like you to join the Langham board. And I said, I can’t, I’m going to Ethiopia. And he said, I don’t know if he remembers or not. Well, you should come to the meeting anyway.
Which I did and met the people and saw what the Langham Partnership was being at that point. And then I went to Ethiopia and I think my first board meeting was in October 2010. I got back from Ethiopia in August 2010 and David immediately called and said, you can join the board now. That’s pretty much what happened.
Yeah, yeah. So you weren’t allowed to put your feet on the ground too much at all.
See, that’s a sign of… My mum often says to me, the sign of people who are willing to serve God is that they’re always busy. So it is.
So it is. And that’s a good, healthy sign.
Well, as you say, you came onto the board in 2010 and you’ve also served on LPIC, which is Langham Partnership International Council. So would you like to tell us, just for those of us who mightn’t be completely clear, what LPIC is, what that involvement is within Langham?
Yeah, well, Langham has all these national boards who are raising money for the work, the work is the three programs. And LPIC is basically because Langham International doesn’t have any legal form, but it’s nevertheless a real entity.
LPIC is the way it has representatives from each of the national boards and from different individuals around the world. Basically its role is governance of Langham International.
It’s therefore any governance role, as you know, is you have to make sure, check the budget, make sure it balances. You have to make sure that the vision is being maintained and you have to make sure that integrity is also being maintained.
Those are the three things that you need to check over the years. And we have all seen Christian organisations where one or other of those things hasn’t been done adequately — that things haven’t managed the budget properly, haven’t checked integrity properly, or have let the vision get lost.
And it’s been a real joy to see the way Langham has developed and grown and changed, but maintain that vision and done so. I’m completely convinced so far, at least with integrity and holding on to the original vision.
Yeah, obviously, the 15 years in which you’ve served on the board, you’ve always seen God’s gracious hand as Langham has developed really over those 15 years. Is there anything that’s sticking out in your mind where you’re saying, well, that was just seeing God moving in a special way as you’ve served on the board?
Yeah, like any… I mean, I love Langham. For me, right from the beginning, there’s been a wow factor, a sense of, look, this… And all parts of it fit in with where I was at the scholarship thing.
I’ve sat on the scholarship committee, and sitting on the scholarship committee is really hard. Not because it’s not a joy, but we have every year about 80 viable applications for scholarships and we only have enough money for about 15.
You can’t give people a bit of a scholarship because if they’re coming from a poor country, they either have to have the lot or nothing. Their churches don’t have anything to support them. So if you’re going to support them, you have to pay basically for the whole lot.
They have to have something given from their church, something given from the college they’re going to work in. But there you are, you’ve got these staff, the Langham staff, the scholarship director and so on, narrow it down.
They do a short list of about 30, and the scholarship committee then has to put those in order. All the time you know that each one of those has a big prayer group behind them saying, praying that they’ll get this scholarship. And you know that not all of them will.
It’s just thankful that there’s a group of you doing it. It’s not just you making that decision, but it’s always… You look at the ones, and every year they seem to be better. They seem to be… And I’m not talking about more scholarly. I’m talking about scholarly people who love the Lord and really committed to serving and doing it.
So that’s been a joy to me personally. And the sense of seeing that develop, that we’ve moved from about 10 a year to about 15 a year and just praying that that will go up, to be able to go up to 30.
And then seeing the way in which groups around the world are developing with a picture of Langham that’s positive. So many people that you speak to from different places where they have been, the mission that founded, where that went and worked, where they’re at almost still.
There are some people that still go out. I saw this in Ethiopia with a few, not so many now, but people who start from the perspective of, well, we’re the parent and you’re the child in terms of talking about the church.
People around the world, scholars around the world in particular, are getting more and more cross about that. Yet that’s never been the way that Langham’s been seen. It’s always been seen as a partner and a sharer and a learning together and seeing each other at work.
That’s been a real joy to see that develop and grow and to learn the literature side. You see it, you’ll all be seeing books now being produced in a way that just didn’t happen 20 years ago, didn’t happen 10 years ago.
Even that through Langham literature, these publishers, Peter Quant is working still and the team there developing publishing and seeing that happen and seeing the growth of the church.
So in some ways, Langham is less needed than it used to be, except that the funding factors and the supporting factors and the developing factors are still there and still doing, in my view, a great job.
Thank you.
Yeah, that’s all our prayers.
Mary, your intention is to stand down from the board this November. And certainly I would like to take my opportunity to thank you.
I’m only with Langham now about four years, but whenever you’ve attended the team desks and sitting down beside you and just those encouraging words to us is very, very much appreciated.
You’ve maybe already hinted at this, but what would be your aspirations to see Langham in the future, even though Mary Evans will not be sitting on the board?
Because it’s… I, in a sense it needs to grow, not in my way. And you’ve got to let that go, you’ve got to say, and yet what my vision would be as it grows, to hold on to that sense of this is what we’re there for, that the concern is for the whole world, but in particular for those parts of the world that haven’t got the resources themselves.
And that might be monetary resources, it might be personnel resources, it might be political resources, whatever.
But we used to call it the majority world. It’s very difficult now to make those distinctions and so on.
But there is a concern for those who need that support, but nevertheless the willingness to change and be there and maybe work out what that means in today’s world as opposed to in yesterday’s world.
But to hold fast to that vision of the church needs good preaching.
And to be honest, even in Britain, that sometimes, particularly as many of the theological colleges are closing down and finding it difficult to keep going, that sense of maintaining biblical truth within the churches so that the vision of both, of all three of our programs, the preaching, the scholarship and that, that vision will continue and grow.
And Langham, I’d love to see Langham still being part of that.
I have the theory that every Christian institution, whether it’s a college, apart from the universal Church, every Christian institution needs to have somewhere a self-destruct button.
It needs to at some point say it’s time for me to finish or it’s time for this institution to finish.
I’ve seen when I was a kid, Christian Endeavour was really significant for me.
The first talk I ever gave was to a group of training for kids, really young people, sort of 11 up.
The first talk I ever gave, they had a book which gave a little talk in it, and you had to expand on that talk.
Well, the first one I did, the book, if you read out the book, it took one and a half minutes and my talk lasted for two and a half minutes.
But it also had Christian Endeavour things like a Sailors Committee.
We had to sew little packs that sailors might like with needles and things in them, totally out of date.
But even at that stage it had reached its time.
Some people were really upset when it kind of closed down.
But there’s a time and a place for everything.
And that in a sense is why I’m finishing with Langham. Not because I think Langham is finishing but I think Mary in Langham is finishing. And it’s time.
Well, Mary, thank you so much for your service and what you have done.