Scripture Engagement

So, I was just chatting with an arts specialist I know, and we were discussing how the arts help with Scripture engagement (SE). I told him that the arts help fly truth under the radar. He went a step further, saying, "Local arts speak directly into people's hearts." Now, that got me thinking. How often do we, in the Bible translation and SE world, talk about how hard it is to get the truth into people's hearts? There are all kinds of barriers: The message might not be contextualised enough, so it doesn't seem relevant or interesting They might not know enough background of the Bible to understand the message It might be in the wrong language (they might not know the prestige language very well) If it's in print, they might not be very literate Even if it's taught, it might not be taught in the right way -  orally , using oral-preference learner techniques of communication i.e. stories, memorisation, show me then let me do it myself (with input), then let

When discussing Wayne Dye's Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement , it's common for people in the Bible translation world to say, 'That's one of those conditions we can't do anything about.' Unfortunately there are a couple of these: Condition 6: Spiritual Hunger Condition 7: Freedom to Commit to the Christian Faith Actually it's not true. Let's have a look at how these can be addressed by teams. Condition 6 can be addressed by looking at the felt needs of the community, and by contextualisation. Condition 7 can be addressed by contextualisation. So... Felt Needs Sometimes a community will have various struggles to do with finance or health or their collective self esteem. These can be addressed biblically, which means coming up with Kingdom goals or biblical values to replace those that are unhelpful. I heard of one community where they were continually hungry, because they could not produce enough rice to feed themselves. Developers came in and help