Scripture Engagement

Media products often end with the resurrection. Why? We just want to get people saved. This is the wrong strategy, imho . We are commanded to make disciples. People need the message of Acts. Some people need to be able to see the road ahead before completely committing themselves to Christ. Acts teaches us that: God is at work! The Holy Spirit who came after Jesus ascended to heaven, works through us Where there are no churches planting new ones is needed  Those churches are missional in nature, i.e. self-reproducing Local believers are the ones to lead those gatherings We may encounter persecution Some areas have people who are more open to the good news than others Many Jewish leaders had misunderstood the Bible and what it taught about the coming chosen one Nevertheless many Jewish background as well as Gentile background people believed, so churches were often made up of both, often causing some tension It's about growing, discipleship, and moving forw...

This is a controversial topic for some! There are those who think that only pianos and organs are appropriate for worship. Others are OK with drums, electric guitars and so on. What does the Bible have to say? Instruments used in the Bible Some instruments were used for false worship: 'Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the nations and peoples of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.' Daniel 3:7 'They have harps and lyres at their banquets,            pipes and timbrels and wine,   but they have no regard for the deeds of the LORD,           no respect for the work of his hands.' Isa 5:12 Some for true worship:       Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet ,              praise him with the harp and lyre ,...

In Katy Barnwell's 'Ten Ways to Test a Translation' we are advised not to ask any questions that ask for the opinions of the hearer, only factual questions should be asked. Certainly we don't want to ask, 'Is this a good translation?' Nor do we want to ask, 'What do you think of the translation?' We might, however, want to ask, 'Why, in your view, did Jonah run away from the Lord?' when testing Jonah 1. This is because it finds out if the hearer has understood the main point of the plot in chapter 1, despite the fact that this is only implied, not openly stated. Jonah is running away from the Lord because Nineveh is a major Babylonian (Iraqi) city full of non-Jews who might want to kill him. Not only that, we later find out that Jonah doesn't even want the Ninevites to repent. His view is that they deserve punishment simply for being non-Jews, and therefore non-believers. He is falling into the religious trap of being judgmental, like the ol...

The relationship between Bible Translation, Scripture Engagement, and Missiology can be seen as a Venn diagram with quite some overlap: The relationship between some of these is fairly obvious (SE and Missiology, especially), and I will come back to the relationship between Translation and Missiology another time. In addition we also talk about 'Language and Development'. Without language we would not need to translate, nor would we be able to express our trust in God, or desire to share him with our neighbours. So, language and its development (and general development of a minority people), is key. Our actual activities, however, are often more to do with translation and Scripture engagement, depending, where we work, and what the needs are. Our goal is not to create languages, but to create Scripture access. Our goals might include developing bilingual education programmes, but the greater goal is Kingdom growth (via bilingual Bible apps and in other ways). The language...

Bibliography Barnwell, K. (2002) Bible Translation: An Introductory Course in Translation Principles. 4th edn. Dallas: SIL International. Dye, W. (2009) ‘The Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement’, 26(2). Available at: http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/26_2_PDFs/89-98_Eight%20Conditions.pdf (Accessed: 2 May 2018). Gutt, E.-A. (2000) Translation and Relevance - Cognition and Context. Manchester: St Jerome. Hill, H. et al. (2011) Bible Translation Basics. Dallas: SIL International. Hill, H. and Hill, M. (2008) Translation the Bible into Action. Carlisle: Piquant Press. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson (1995) Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilt, T. (ed.) (2003) Bible Translation - Frames of Reference. Manchester: St Jerome. Useful Links Websites you may like to look at for further information: Bible Gateway https://www.biblegateway.com/ Bible Society (UK) https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/ SIL https://www.si...

The decision to move to a more open model of work wasn’t just taken for pragmatic reasons. Missions in general have been realising that we need to move away from colonial approaches, where the foreigners are in control, and away from post-colonial approaches, where the foreigners feel guilty that they are even involved in the work. In these days of globalisation, we can all be involved without anyone feeling guilty or misused in any way. Post-colonial approaches have affected many areas of academic study, including translation. We now realise that languages can be used to adversely influence people (colonialism), and that translators are more than linguists, they are cross-cultural intermediaries (post-colonial approaches and globalisation). For instance, if an interpreter hears something that they consider might be insulting to those they are interpreting for, they might modify what they say and tone it down a bit to make it more acceptable. On top of that we know that the cultures w...

The major push that occurred in the 19 th century resulted in mission work and Bible translation beginning in many fairly major languages, but it was not until the 20 th century that smaller groups and minority languages were considered a need. It has only been in the last one hundred years ago that phrases like ‘every tribe, every nation, every language’ were used to call workers and others into mission work and partnership in it. Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, actually began in the 1930s by starting a training programme called ‘The Summer Institute of Linguistics’, to equip those already studying linguistics at university to analyse an unwritten language from first principles. The early recruits went to Mexico, where they researched and analysed the indigenous languages such as Nahuatl and Mixtec. They lived in villages, worked with ‘language informants’, as they were then known, and produced phonology write-ups, grammars, dictionaries, primers ...