International (MNN) — One group of believers isn’t wasting any time getting God’s Word into minority languages.
Collaboration is key to accelerated Bible translation. Dane* with unfoldingWord says, “We’re trying to bring all these people together and energize them about this work [because] if we try to do all this work ourselves, we would exceed our capacity. But the network is very powerful.”
He’s referring to a global network of churches and church planters that is focused on translating Scripture into minority languages. Learn more about unfoldingWord’s approach here.
unfoldingWord collaborates with church networks to create biblical content, technology tools, and translation training.
(Photo, caption courtesy of unfoldingWord)
“We just finished our global Church-Centric Bible Translation forum [with] about 60 leaders representing 24 nationalities involved in church-centric Bible translation,” Dane says.
“We gathered in Kenya to share the vision, inspire new initiatives, celebrate groundbreaking achievements, [and] to encourage relationships directly between the church networks.”
One translator from South Sudan met the team who created the tools he used. “He said, ‘The translation made it possible for us to translate God’s Word into my people’s language for the first time,’” Dane recounts.
“He’s thanking him [profusely], and the Jordanian guy is weeping because he finally met somebody face-to-face who was using this work outside of Jordan.”
Another church leader, this time from Indonesia, left the forum with action in mind.
“He was new to church-centric Bible translation, but he was so energized by it. He said, ‘I’m going home to mobilize my whole church network for church-centric Bible translation,’” Dane says.
Pray for this and other new translation efforts started at the forum. Request a monthly prayer calendar from unfoldingWord here.
“Not only are people being equipped to do Bible translation, they are also equipped to go deeper into God’s word than they’ve ever been able to before,” Dane says.
“We are utterly and totally dependent on God and on prayer to energize and empower this mission. Without it, we are hopeless.”
*Name withheld for security purposes.
Header and story images courtesy of unfoldingWord.
