About Gospel Literature Service (GLS) in Udyog Bhavan, 250-D,Worli, Mumbai

Background
During the British rule in India, in 1939 when the second World War was beginning Wilfred Durham started printing tracts to reach out to the British soldiers passing through the then Bombay. After the War, Wilfred along with Mrs. Christina Durham and Thomas Craig registered Gospel Literature Service as a religious public trust in 1946 for printing and distributing Christian literature for supporting the missionary efforts in the country. But as Wilfred was called home to be with Lord in the August 1951, the responsibility of continuing the work fell on his wife Christina Durham. With the help of other trustees, she continued the ministry till passing on to glory in June 1983. In those years, the editorial and operational aspects of GLS were handled by fulltime trustees. The funds for the ministry also came primarily from abroad.

The early trustees of GLS had not envisaged literature distribution as an independent ministry; but it was to be a support for the overall effort of the evangelization of India. It was not an arm of a particular denomination either. So, GLS became a home base for many evangelical organizations like Union of Evangelical Students of India, Operation Mobilization, Scripture Gift Mission and Pocket Testament League. Not only that, many eminent Indians from different denominations, like Bro. Bakht Singh, E. V. Philip and Capt. C.V. Simon among others, have serve on the Board of Trustees.

Turnaround & Progress
But after Christina Durham, a co-founder of GLS, left the scene, the leadership of GLS was in the hands of Indian believers. That period also marked a decline in the internal accruals and donor support resulting in a general slow down in the production and distribution of books. Progressively, GLS faced severe management and financial problems and about 1992-93, it came to a crisis situatioin. So the then Board of Trustees invited a brother with experience in business and organizational management to take up leadership as the Honorary Executive Trustee of the Board with a mandate to take appropriate decisions to revive GLS.

After analyzing the existing strength, weakness and challenges, a strategic plan was put in place in 1994 for turn around and GLS redefined its relevance and purpose. This was followed up with a change in the strategic direction of its objectives and goals. All facets of GLS activities were aligned to the opportunities in a changing environment to maximize operational effectiveness, efficiencies and yields. The printing facility was downsized to minimize loss and finally to be phased out. As per the plan printing has since been phased out and outsourced.

The product portfolios were expanded. Besides, by various means values of assets and facilities were unlocked. From this income, for the first time in 1995 a Corpus Fund was created. This was diligently built up over the years by various means and generous gifts from overseas missions and individual Christians. It is from the income of this Corpus Fund, GLS has been sustaining its activities since then.

Expansion Ahead
Religious tolerance marked the first forty years of Indian independence despite sporadic attempts to gag gospel work. But since then there has been a more concerted effort in various parts of the country to persecute Christians. But when on the one hand opposition to Christian work increased, people in general and particularly the rural population became increasingly receptive to the gospel. This has increased the cry for more regional language books.

Having realized this imminent need for Christian literature in major Indian languages, depending on the Lord, GLS has taken a conscious decision to make available evangelistic as well as Christian growth books in the regional languages. Already a significant start has been made with, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Odiya, Bengali, Urdu and Assamese. This need to be further consolidated and expanded in the next few years.

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