Talk:CLC International

CLC International

CLC International is an interdenominational world mission organization, committed to the distribution of the Bible, Christian books and a variety of Christian media. This is done through Christian bookstores, bookmobiles, translation work, publishing, printing, wholesale distribution, websites, eBooks and more. CLC is currently working in 43 countries and has over 670 workers worldwide, 98% of whom are national workers serving in their own countries.

It is represented by more than 120 bookshops and around 20 distribution centres. In addition, CLC publishes Christian books in over 20 countries in 22 languages such as Burmese, English, French, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Romanian and Russian.

The CLC work in each country is autonomous and is established as per national laws and requirements. The name CLC International is used to represent the worldwide ministry of CLC. The various teams around the world are united by common vision, goals and International Constitution. CLCIO (talk) 20:20, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

History of CLC

CLC was founded in 1941 in Colchester, England, by Kenneth and Bessie Adams. Together they had worked with the Friends Evangelistic Band in England, holding tent meetings and visiting homes. On many of these visits, they found that they had been preceded by others who left literature, especially Jehovah's Witnesses. This burdened them to make Christian literature with the message of salvation by faith, through grace, more widely available. They started visiting homes selling good Christian books, and in 1939 rented two small upstairs rooms in a non-shopping area of Colchester, one of which was made into a book room as a literature base. A year later they moved the book room to the busier St. Johns’ Street which became known as “The Bible Depot”.

Through the mission magazine ‘World Conquest’, a publication of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (WEC), Ken and Bessie learned about the plan of the mission to establish twelve regional centres in the country, one of which was to be in East Anglia. They approached WEC and offered their services and premises in Colchester for that purpose. Their only preoccupation was that this might mean that the bookshop would have to be closed or sold. Norman Grubb, the then General Secretary of WEC, encouraged Ken and Bessie to continue with the literature ministry, with the vision ‘to establish a chain of Christian bookshops throughout the country and the English-speaking world … and even in other countries where English was widely used … to become a service agency for the literature needs of missionary societies and the national church around the world.’ The Adams, together with Mr. and Mrs. Whybrow, who by then had joined the work, felt led to align themselves with this vision of WEC, and a Christian literature organization, under the title of ‘The Evangelical Publishing House’ was born. This took place despite the government understandably severely limiting publishing and the opening of bookshops in wartime England.

As others joined the ministry, a conference with some of the WEC leaders was held to bring into focus the reason for the existence of the literature mission, the clarification of its objectives, its basic principles, and its relationship to WEC. It was affirmed that though the Evangelical Publishing House had come into being as part of WEC, it had now developed into a separate entity. Whereas WEC is a mission to the unevangelised, ‘CLC was to be a literature ministry to all countries and all peoples, Christian and non-Christian, in home and foreign fields.’ This sealed the beginning of the formation of the Christian literature organization as an autonomous ministry. By the end of the war, there were six literature centres across England and a work serving German prisoners of war.

In the post-war era, The Evangelical Publishing House changed its name to Christian Literature Crusade (CLC) and grew into a global outreach, starting with locations in Canada and Australia. Growth continued, and by 1947, CLC bookshops had been established in the United States and in Dominica. After that, the opening of new bookshops and Christian publishing houses took place almost every year.

In recent years, the ministry assumed its new name, CLC International. However, for various local reasons, there are some countries which belong to the CLC Fellowship which do not use the CLC name. For example, CLC is known as ELS in both India and Pakistan. The ministry now operates in Africa, North and South America, Asia and Europe. CLCIO (talk) 20:21, 9 June 2023 (UTC)