Scripture Engagement

Many of you will have heard of asset-based community development (ABCD). How can Bible translation programmes be asset based, rather than deficit based? The best way to look at this is a comparison table: Deficit based Asset based Driven by outsiders Driven by the community Outside funding Community funded Done to meet a need Done to help the community grow Quality control done by a consultant Community checked and approved Control from outside-in Lead by stepping back Products not accepted? Products are accepted Little engagement Engagement with products Scientific Organic Not sustainable Sustainable Of course many translation programmes these days are neither one nor t'other, they are somewhere between these two extremes. Nevertheless, this illustrates a point, and shows that the current

The tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH in Roman script) is most likely to have been pronounced 'Yahweh', not 'Jehovah' by the Hebrews.* It's meaning is explained in Exod 3 - it means 'he who is'. It might also mean 'he who causes [things] to be' i.e. the creator. Because of the second commandment the scribes, when reading from Scripture, avoided pronouncing the divine name, and substituted either ha shem 'the name' or adonai 'lord'. In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, the word used to translate YHWH was kyrios 'lord'. This usage carried on into the New Testament, so when believers said 'Jesus is Lord' they were equating Jesus with the YHWH of the Old Testament, as well as threatening the political  status quo where, in the Roman empire, Caesar was given the title 'Lord'. The usage of YHWH is interesting. In the Old Testament it frequently used with the sense 'God

The prosperity gospel is widely practised throughout the world, and hugely popular in Africa. It has also gained a foothold in Europe via certain modern movements that emphasise the 'health' aspect of 'health and wealth' teaching i.e. the idea that God doesn't want anyone to suffer, but for all to be healed. We are probably all familiar with TV evangelists who ask us to give, and God will reward us by giving back. The proof that it works is the large house they themselves live in, and the executive car they drive. The trouble with this teaching is that it does not line up with the overall message of Scripture. The so-called proof texts used by prosperity teachers are often taken from the Old Testament (nothing in and of itself bad about that), turning descriptive teaching (a description of what God did then) into prescriptive ideas (God wants that to happen to everybody). "God made Abraham prosperous. He wants to make us prosperous too!" Now, there are a l

 And now for something completely different - a testimony!  Why did I join the Bible translation movement? I often get asked this question, and it's a good one. Of course, it was a matter of calling. But how did that calling manifest itself? It's a long story... Back in the 1980s we already knew that God had called us into mission work, but we didn't know what type of mission work he'd called us too. In my final year at university I visited Crosslinks in London, but they told me to go and get a secular job, and establish my profession, then I'd be able to use that in mission work. We got married, settled down, and became school teachers. But we were still exploring opportunities for mission - in fact we lived in a highly multicultural city, attending a church in the inner-city area where there were a mix of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. This enabled us to continue friendship making amongst those of other faiths, whilst attending the church and building rela

Unusually, a theological topic. How are we to understand Jesus in the light of the Old Testament covenants? I've been helped on this topic by Alistair McKitterick who has been teaching at Moorlands College and is now off to the London School of Theology. Obviously his understanding of this topic is better than mine, so I'm giving him fair credit for much of what follows. Having said which, he might not agree with everything I write below. Most of us are fairly familiar with the covenants in the Bible, which are with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the the New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah and found in the New Testament. The background to these is suzerain-vassal treaties between kings and their people, or between a more important and less important king in the ancient near east. The most important of these covenants, from a NT perspective, are the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, but I will include the Mosaic covenant too: Abrahamic - the promise of land and descendants (Ge

So, you want to make a decent audio recording of some music, or speech and want to know how? There are lots of blogs and YouTube videos out there on this, but some have way too much equipment listed. Here are the bare essentials: Condenser microphone as per the picture Audio interface Cables - XLR, USB, etc. A pop filter (for speech and vocals) A DAW - digital analogue workstation - which is the software you need A room or booth ('yurt') that has been sound-proofed and acoustically deadened None of this will cost very much, in fact the software (the DAW) can be obtained for free. Some people swear by Audacity , but I prefer Cakewalk by Bandlab. The other option is just to look for an audio interface that has free software bundled with it. I got a very basic version of Ableton bundled with my Komplete Audio 2. Ableton does way more than you need it to, as it can be used for live performances, but is easy to use for recording. Another popular audio interface is the Focusrite Sca

  Videos are a great way of getting Bible stories out to people, including children. If the audience is literate, it is often a good idea to include subtitles with videos. Even if they are functionally illiterate, it might make sense to include them, so as to encourage growth in literacy amongst the group. In YouTube it is possible to add these later in YouTube Studio. You can also allow others to add subtitles for their language, if you wish. For social media platforms like Facebook it is often better to hardcode the subtitles onto the video. If you are using a program like Shotcut this is not possible. You have to download another program that has this option e.g. Filmora (though this needs to be paid for) and Kdenlive (free and open source). If you want a program that is easy to use, go for Filmora over Kdenlive, as the former has a really nice user interface. The reason we want to include subtitles is that people sitting on a bus, or in a waiting room, or somewhere like that, wa

The argument in chapter 2 of Leading Change is that over time organisations tend to get complacent. And not just organisations but the managers within them. Managers are good at keeping to the status quo. Leaders are good at initiating change. We often have too many managers and not enough leaders. Managers get promoted to leadership level, which excaserbates the problem. On top of that, it is important to introduce any change stage by stage (see table on p21). Some leaders introduce change too quickly. They jump straight to the later stages, not realising that the earlier stages establish an atmosphere ready for change. Once changes have been implemented it's important to make the new way of doing things the standard, so the corporate culture has absorbed the new way of working. How does this apply to SE? We need leaders to champion the idea of all programmes and activities being SE programmes and activities, with translation embedded within those programmes. They need to implemen

Sometimes in a corporate organisation there are issues with the structure and mentality that can get in the way of change taking place. Scripture engagement is all about seeing change happen in the lives of people and communities as they engage with God through the Scriptures. Therefore some of the books about theories of change are helpful to us as we investigate issues within our family organisations. Here is a list from John P Kotter's book, Leading Change , p 16: Allowing too much complacency Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition Underestimating the power of vision Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or even 1,000) Permitting obstacles to block the new vision Failing to create short term wins Declaring victory too soon Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture All of these can be an issue in our family of organisations. Here's why: We allow ourselves to believe our own propaganda about the importance of peoples

Many Bible translation projects have exegetical advisors (EA). In some parts of the world they work with a cluster of languages, giving exegetical (meaning of the Hebrew and Greek) advice to translators working in several languages (some regions call them translation advisors). In Eurasia area we often have exegetical advisors working on one language. The usual expectation is that they learn to be able to read this language, and can speak the language of wider communication (LWC) with the team, if the team know it. If not, they have to use the local language with the team. That works with traditional translation projects. Many projects these days are using a method called Oral Bible Translation (OBT), where only aural and oral methods are used. The translation is only transcribed at a later stage of the process in order to keep track of key terms, and in case the consultant requests the translation in some kind of written format. The EA is expected to give input to the team about the b

We all now the importance of community checking (or testing) a translation. This is where members of the team (but not the translators) go out into the community to test a translation, to see if it is understood, often using Katy Barnwell's ' 10 Ways of Testing Your Translation .' If you haven't read it yet, do read it now. Community Checking and Scripture Engagement So, what is the connection between community testing and Scripture engagement (SE)? There are several things that can be said about this: Community checks are a good way of gaining legitimacy or acceptance of your translation amongst the community. They've had input, so now they have had their say, their feel they own the translation It's not about a product it's about a process - building relationships with the community which will lead to SE Some of the methods of community checking overlap hugely with SE, namely Listening to Readers (or to those giving their voices to audio recordings), Tell

 In the area of research, whether linguistic, anthropological, or whatever, it is common to use the terms 'etic' and 'emic'. Here is a definition: 'The etic perspective is the outsider’s perspective, the perspective that we have of a project’s parameters—for example, an outsider’s perception of gender in Afghanistan. The emic perspective is the insider’s perspective, the perspective that comes from within the culture where the project is situated—for example, gender perspectives of women involved in a project in Afghanistan.' https://programs.online.american.edu/msme/masters-in-measurement-and-evaluation/resources/emic-and-etic accessed 13th January 2023 Another difference between etic and emic is that the former often assumes the use of a model, or theoretical basis for a study, whereas the latter, almost by definition, would avoid the use of models and theories. Emic involves the use of insider data without theory-based analysis. Any comments would be descri