Scripture Engagement

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...

Not much has been thought about Scripture Engagement research. There are two types: Research before starting S.E. work Research to find out how well existing published Scriptures (often print New Testaments) are being used I will focus on the former. It's very tempting to dive into making Scripture Engagement products without really thinking through what the needs are, what works and what doesn't, and what people are likely to respond to. Here are some ideas: Find out whether the culture is honour-shame, power-fear, or purity-pollution. This will help you know how to frame the good news in such a way that people will light up in understanding, assuming the Holy Spirit is at work in their lives. To do that one tool is the culture test , though it doesn't cover purity-pollution as a paradigm Read Wayne Dye's article on the Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement, then fill out a questionnaire based on that article. Give each condition a rating, then work...