Scripture Engagement

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