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...

If you want to get useful answers you have to ask the right questions. Do you agree? Yes, of course you do. In the Bible translation world we often ask a very narrow question when planning for the next stage of work: 'What would you like to see translated next?' Now, if you simply want to translate, and that's it, that question is fine, but what if you want to see some kind of result from your translation work? What if, for instance, you want to see transformation occur? Then a more powerful question to ask the community and positive stakeholders in the project would be: 'What kingdom goals would you like to see reached?' These kingdom goals should meet felt needs of the community - they should solve problems that are apparent to most or all in the community. See below on how those can be met. If that's too abstract, then try, 'What kinds of things, in your extended family, do you tend to worry about?' This will help establish some felt needs, from which...

It's popular these days to say that all of us are addicted to something, in some small way. I hear some people talking about those with 'addictive personalities' too. I'm afraid I don't know much about these things from a sociological or psychological perspective (ask my daughter), but I can say this, there are many people in the world addicted to alcohol or drugs (I suppose the former is actually something to do with the latter), and they need help. My burden is to help those in Central Asia who are addicted to heroin. How can we address this issue? What I have noticed, is this: Heroin and opium are much cheaper and more easily available in Central Asia than in some other parts of the world Because of the collectivist culture where there is a desire to gain social capital and stay connected with one's extended family, if someone becomes a narkoman (drug addict) their family will frequently hide them away, and then provide them with the drug to avoid shame...