Scripture Engagement

The language we use to refer to projects matters. It's well known that referring to a project as 'my project' is not a good idea, for instance. Or 'my language' meaning the language you are learning and working on. Equally problematic is talking about Bible translation as if it is the be-all-and-end-all. For instance, "So and so is just doing storying, but his friend so and so is doing proper Bible translation!" This does not communicate what we want it to communicate. It communicates that Bible translation is the real job, what actually matters, and storying is in some way inferior. Whereas in fact storying, or whatever, might be the most appropriate strategy for the audience in question. And it might lead to a Bible translation programme of some sort. Also, we often refer to New Testaments as Bibles. Strange. Why do we do that? Because that was the traditional goal of many Bible translation programmes. They were working on a 'full New Testament...

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn . Luke 2:7 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/luk.2.7.KJV (emphasis mine) It wasn't an inn! There was no room in the guest room. First century houses in Palestine had a courtyard, rooms for the animals  in the ground floor, and two rooms above or next to those, one for the family and one for  guests. Since Bethlehem was full of relatives, there was no room for Joseph and Mary to stay in the guest room, so they  had to sleep on the ground floor with the animals. The unfortunate thing is that a mistranslation of the Greek in an early English version paved the way for future misunderstanding. The Greek word is (UBS4): καταλύματι, 'lodging place, guest room' in Luke 2:7.

The good thing about working as an exegete and translation adviser with translators is that you don't have to solve all the exegetical problems: Numbers in the Old Testament Whether manna was light blue or a kind of whitish colour Who wrote the books of the Bible Whether or not there were different 'sources' of a given book etc. We simply translate what is there and leave others to sort the problems out 😄. But , and it is a big but, there are problems we do need to solve: What 'righteousness' means in the Old Testament, and in Romans/Galatians (actually it's more about how the respective Hebrew and Greek terms sadaqah and dikaiosune are used ) What does 'the righteousness of God' mean? Is it God's righteousness (as in his honour), or the moral righteousness i.e. innocence he imparts to us? What does 'lord' mean when it refers to Jesus in any given instance? LORD God? Or lord/sir? Why was a given verse/passage/book written? W...

There is a growing trend in the UK church to equate mission with local evangelism. This worries me for several reasons: It seems to me that God's mission is much broader than evangelism, in that it includes liberating the poor i.e. the whole socio-economic side of mission is left out if we reduce it to evangelism. Exodus. On top of that it ignores the environmental side of God's mission - green ethics. Genesis 1-2. It forgets what is probably the main thing - God's mission is to the nations. That was the whole point of Abraham's calling (the beginning of God' redemptive story). Genesis 12. If we reduce mission to local evangelism we are back to the divide that used to exist between spiritual and physical dimensions (materialism), between one nation and another (nationalism), and between us and the rest of God's creation (anthropocentrism).  As Chris Wright has pointed out, it's not that God has a mission for the church in the world, it's tha...

Often we talk about being 'in God's house' on a Sunday morning. What does the Bible mean when it talks about God's house? In the Old Testament it refers to: Bethel, 'the house of God', a place where Jacob met with God in a dream, and God spoke to Jacob and renewed the covenant he had made with Abraham with him Gen 28:10-22. This place is mentioned frequently throughout the rest of the Old Testament The house built in Shiloh to house the ark of the covenant Jdg 18:31. It may just have been a tent, like the tabernacle, we don't really know, but we do know that the ark was kept in the most holy place, where God's presence was powerfully experienced The temple 1Ki 5; 1Ch 6:48 often referred to as 'the house for Yahweh [the LORD]' rather than 'God's house' 1Ki 6:1, and it was filled with a cloud representing Yahweh's presence 1Ki 8:10, though this wasn't actually where Yahweh lived, as the whole of heaven cannot contain h...

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...

It's true - Arts flies the good news under people's radar screen. It's a great way of reaching people's hearts. There are lots of stories that corroborate this. In Asia there was one group that had one hundred hymns translated into their language, but the church was dwindling and few sung the hymns with enthusiasm. Some well-meaning mission workers had had these hymns translated some decades earlier, but the tunes were Western. In came some ethnomusicologists / ethnodoxologists and helped the local people work out which instruments could be used in a worship context, and then helped them write songs which used their own style of music. These songs were so popular that the church moved out of the building and into the village, and many many others started joining in with the worship times! Eventually there were a group of musicians writing songs and leading worship in their community, and the church continued to grow. This is just one of many stories I could share....