Scripture Engagement

 A lot of people are talking about integral mission these days, whereas the idea of holistic mission seems to have fallen by the wayside. What's the difference? Holistic mission is mission to the whole person, taking into account their physical as well as spiritual needs. Evangelism is combined with social action. Unfortunately, this term has been used for some years now, and much mission that was labelled 'holistic' was mainly social action. Integral mission has more focus on communities and their felt needs. What issues of poverty and (lack of) justice are there? How can a given community begin to address these issues? What input do they need from outsiders as they do so? How can they define kingdom goals that will bring them out of their physical and spiritual poverty? Lausanne defines it here . The fact is that the neediest communities are often ones that lack the Bible, and lack a clear orthography (alphabet corresponding to the phonemic system of the language, and tha...

 In Bible translation these days we often talk about paradigms A and B. These are as follows: Paradigm A The translators and exegetical advisors all work on one language. The exegetical advisors learn this language and give both exegetical and translation input, as well as some training and tech support (of e.g. Paratext). The translators don't have to be Christian believers. Often the translators are from another major religion, or are a mixture of believers in Jesus from that background and those who follow the majority religion. The project is owned by a mixture of partners. Paradigm B A group of related languages (all part of the same language family) are organised into a cluster. One exegetical advisor gives exegetical and translation input to all these projects, as well as providing some training, and tech support (of Paratext, etc.). They never learn to speak the languages, but work mainly through the LWC. They do, however, study the linguistic features of the languages. The...