Nairobi, KENYA (June 7, 2010)

The Africa Bible Commentary, a one-volume commentary on the whole Bible written by seventy African scholars, has been published in both English and French, and is now at last also available in PORTUGUESE. Portuguese is the official in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe, and is also widely used in the Cape Verde Islands. Refugees from the once war-torn countries are now scattered in all their neighbouring states. Moreover, Portuguese is spoken worldwide by some 180 million people, from Goa in India to Brazil to Portugal itself.

 
JSM-Langham Literature Editor Isobel Stevenson reports on training for aspiring writers and editors so desperately needed in the African evangelical publishing industry. 

 by Isobel Stevenson, editor Langham Literature

Today Africa is mourning the passing of another of her great sons, Dr Tokunboh Adeyemo. Dr Adeyemo has been a leader in the evangelical church in Africa for more than 30 years, during which he has overseen the growth of many supposedly impossible projects. He led the Association of Evangelicals in Africa for 25 years, and resigned to found the Centre for Biblical Transformation, which provides training for those in leadership positions in Africa. He also made an enormous contribution to the development of the Nairobi

The Promise:
Fifty million Africans with few or no evangelical resources in their native language – a fact, until now! The Africa Bible Commentary (ABC), translated into Kiswahili, will be an instrument for evangelism and discipleship training in East Africa. The impact of this book on one Bible college professor shows great promise:

“I felt a strong urge to call all my former students back and make a big apology, and then re-teach the books afresh using these new insights, so relevant and contextual. Why did it take so long to have such an invaluable resource in our language?”

Kiswahili is the first or second language for more than 50 million Africans in the region of East Africa. Providing the Africa Bible Commentary in this widely spoken indigenous language will give even more pastors an opportunity to share and understand the gospel with local communities.

by Colin Macpherson (Langham Literature – Creative) 

 
How can the gospel sink deep roots into a country where a generation of Christian writers, thinkers and leaders and their books were wiped out in five short years? Church leaders need to be equipped with culturally-relevant resources that will help them disciple believers. Through our Langham Literature program, John Stott Ministries is partnering with Fount of Wisdom Publishing (FoW) in Phnom Penh to provide pertinent books for the rapidly growing Cambodian church. This year, FoW published two new titles in Khmer with counsel and financial assistance from our ministry: God’s Big Picture (V. Roberts) and Dig Deeper (N. Beynon and A. Sach). Both books are well oriented to the local situation, with much needed content for grassroots pastors and first-generation believers.

October 31, 2009

September 2009 marked a big milestone for the Literature program. A new warehouse opened in the United Kingdom that has made distribution of evangelical literature worldwide more efficient, more flexible, and more easily available for partner publishers.