Scripture Engagement

I was just in a presentation,* and the presenter shared a slide about the Scripture engagement (SE) impact chain, which I thought I'd pass onto you fine folks! Here it is: The point is, to have community transformation, you need to have individual transformation. To have individual transformation you need eyes and ears either reading or listening to Scripture. To have eyes and ears reading and listening you need people being reached with those materials in print or audio format (or video, which combines both). To have those materials you need to develop them in the first place. That's the SE impact chain, in a nutshell! Now, the clever amongst you will have spotted that you can't just produce materials, therefore. Neither can you just produce materials and distribute them, as that's only two steps along the SE impact chain. To have community transformation you need to make sure the whole chain is working as it should. As the picture of legs on the side shows, that means...

In this clip from the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark we see the Ark of the Covenant getting archived. Click on the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRP0MBNoieY  (watch from 1.05) Often in Scripture engagement work, the Bible or New Testament is produced, printed and then 'archived' in the cupboard or back room of one denomination's church. Or an audio recording of a gospel (e.g. Luke) is made and the 'archive' is kept on someone's hard-drive in Texas, North Carolina, or wherever. We're good at producing materials, but not very good at promoting them. Nor are we good at helping people engage with them. Producing materials is just the first stage. On top of this we need to distribute, promote, and then relate to those who are engaging with the materials in order to answer their questions. This then helps us refine not only those materials but any future ones we produce. These materials need to be in a variety of media, oral, dig...

In SIL you would have thought our ultimate goal is to produce New Testaments and Bibles (not necessarily in that order), but that is not so. If the outcome you write up in your plan is 'members of the language communities are actively involved in producing appropriate high quality Scriptures and Scripture products and increasingly own the process of making them available', as it is in one SIL group, then although that may look good to funders and supporting churches, it isn't necessarily what's needed. The end (ultimate goal) of translation is transformed communities/lives , therefore we need to merge Scripture engagement and translation into one outcome, which would be something like: 'Through engagement with available and accessible Scripture products and Scripture-based products, communities are internalising the good news and demonstrating it in their daily lives.' The actual work of Bible translation leads to that outcome. Therefore translation tea...