About Us
What is CLC Ministries?
CLC International (formerly Christian Literature Crusade) is an evangelical, interdenominational world mission. In the United States we are registered as a 501(C)(3) not-for-profit organization. This organization was founded in England in 1941 and has its international headquarters there today.
The Purpose of CLC is to make evangelical Christian literature available to all nations so that people may come to faith and maturity in the Lord Jesus Christ.
CLC is an evangelical world missions organization which emphasizes literature production and distribution to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is done through Christian bookstores, bookmobiles, translation work, publishing/printing, websites, ebooks and more. CLC works to serve the entire evangelical community and therefore has workers and materials that are from various denominational perspectives.
For new international works, CLC sends cross-cultural missionaries to start a work. The goal is to establish a sustainable ministry that can be operated by a national staff in a reasonably short period of time. This means that our missionaries may work themselves out of jobs around the world as these fields mature and become self-sustaining.
Our national workers work very sacrificially and we are happy when donations come in to our Overseas Literature Fund to help fund their valuable work! Today, over 90% of our CLC fields are run by national workers and several of these countries are now sending workers cross-culturally to start works in new places.
Our History
The Vision Begins
In the early days of World War II, a young couple, Ken and Bessie Adams, heard Jesus’ call to” feed my sheep.” 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 the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ken declared, “I cannot stand by and watch the spread of so much dangerous propaganda and not do something about spreading the truths of the Gospel.” So he and Bessie visited homes armed with good Christian literature and Bibles.
“I cannot stand by and watch the spread of so much dangerous propaganda and not do something about spreading the truths of the Gospel.”
Fired by his passion for literature distribution, Ken rented some upstairs rooms in Colchester, England, and named his new work “The Evangelical Publishing House.” This took place even though the government was severely limiting publishing and the opening of bookshops in wartime England.
The Adams next felt led to align themselves with the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (now WEC International), with plans to help that organization establish regional book centers in England. Norman Grubb of WEC was thrilled with the potential of a string of bookshops and remarked, “We could begin scattering ‘spiritual Woolworths’ around the country and then worldwide.” Requests, opportunities, and funding began to come to Ken and Bessie, resulting in the formation of CLC as an autonomous ministry incorporated Nov. 1, 1941.
CLC Ministries offered a literature ministry to all branches of the church. “We will not let doctrinal differences hinder us from serving all denominations with their literature needs,” affirmed Ken. “But our position is to be uncompromisingly evangelical so that purchasers feel quite sure that all they see and buy will build up readers or point the unconverted to the Savior. Each book center should be first and foremost a spiritual powerhouse–workers out to win souls and help fellow Christians, this being more important than the sale of books. Branches of Christ’s church in the town should be made to feel that the shop belongs to all and is their service.”
The Vision Continues…
By the end of the war, there were six literature centers across England and that growth continued over the coming years with God’s grace and blessing. Today CLC serves in 47 countries where 700 men and women of diverse nationalities are joining hands to distribute God’s Word and Christian literature to a world hungry for hope and peace.For new international works, CLC sends cross-cultural missionaries to start a work. The goal is to establish a sustainable ministry that can be operated by a national staff in a reasonably short period of time. This means that our missionaries may work themselves out of jobs around the world as these fields mature and become self-sustaining.
Our Core Values
Faith
We exercise faith in the will, power and providence of God to meet every need for both the ministry and the members. Therefore, the expansion and outreach of this ministry is not determined by our visible resources but rather by the commands and promises of God.
Sacrifice
We recognize personal sacrifice and total dedication to be essential to the fulfilling of our God-given commission. We should be willing to face hardship, inconvenience, sickness, danger and even death if necessary, for the fulfillment of Christ’s command to make known the Gospel to all people. We should make every effort possible for the fulfilling of CLC’s purposes.
Fellowship
We are a fellowship of God’s people drawn from various backgrounds. We therefore allow no national or racial prejudices or exclusive denominational or doctrinal emphases in the life and ministry of CLC. We believe that within the fellowship of CLC the will of God can be known in all matters pertaining to His work. Therefore we expect that, as we seek Him, agreement can be attained within the fellowship in making decisions. We accept the teaching of Christ that the test of our discipleship is our love for one another. The fellowship principle within CLC means that each member should be sensitive to the needs and welfare of others and bear one another’s burdens in the spirit of love.
Holiness
We affirm our dependence upon the work of the Holy Spirit to fulfill our purpose, and shall ever seek His power and guidance by prayer, faith, obedience, humility and holiness. We take this to mean living with the supreme aim of pleasing God in thought, word and deed according to the standard of the Bible.
What We Believe
The following is the Statement of Faith with which all members must agree and to which all items carried by CLC must conform.
1. We believe in the Holy Scriptures as originally given by God, divinely inspired, infallible, entirely trustworthy, and the supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.
2. We believe in one God, Creator and Sustainer of all things, eternally existent in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. We believe in the deity and humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, His virgin birth and sinless life, His miracles, His substitutionary and atoning death on the Cross, His bodily resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of the Father, His mediatorial work, and His personal return in power and glory.
4. We believe in the universal sinfulness and guilt of all mankind since the Fall, rendering humanity subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
5. We believe in redemption through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and regeneration by the Holy Spirit as essential for the salvation of lost and sinful mankind.
6. We believe in the justification of the sinner solely by the grace of God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
7. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit, by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
8. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost: those who are saved will rise to life and those who are lost will rise to be condemned.
9. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers, who form the universal church, the Body of which Christ is the head.