Scripture Engagement

 A lot of people are talking about integral mission these days, whereas the idea of holistic mission seems to have fallen by the wayside. What's the difference? Holistic mission is mission to the whole person, taking into account their physical as well as spiritual needs. Evangelism is combined with social action. Unfortunately, this term has been used for some years now, and much mission that was labelled 'holistic' was mainly social action. Integral mission has more focus on communities and their felt needs. What issues of poverty and (lack of) justice are there? How can a given community begin to address these issues? What input do they need from outsiders as they do so? How can they define kingdom goals that will bring them out of their physical and spiritual poverty? Lausanne defines it here . The fact is that the neediest communities are often ones that lack the Bible, and lack a clear orthography (alphabet corresponding to the phonemic system of the language, and tha...

 In Bible translation these days we often talk about paradigms A and B. These are as follows: Paradigm A The translators and exegetical advisors all work on one language. The exegetical advisors learn this language and give both exegetical and translation input, as well as some training and tech support (of e.g. Paratext). The translators don't have to be Christian believers. Often the translators are from another major religion, or are a mixture of believers in Jesus from that background and those who follow the majority religion. The project is owned by a mixture of partners. Paradigm B A group of related languages (all part of the same language family) are organised into a cluster. One exegetical advisor gives exegetical and translation input to all these projects, as well as providing some training, and tech support (of Paratext, etc.). They never learn to speak the languages, but work mainly through the LWC. They do, however, study the linguistic features of the languages. The...

The phrase 'for him who has ears, let him listen' occurs frequently in the New Testament (Mat 11.15; 13;9 ... Rev 2.7... ). You will hear scholars say it is a Hebraism, but where is it from in the Old Testament? In Hebrew the phrase is actually in the negative: אָזְנַיִם לָהֶם וְלֹא יַאֲזִינוּ  'They have ears but do not listen.' Psalm 135.17 cf. Ezekiel 12.2*  אָזְנַיִם לָהֶם לִשְׁמֹעַ וְלֹא שָׁמֵעוּ 'They have ears to hear but do not hear', which is even closer to the NT version. It's important to know that in Hebrew 'to hear' also means 'to listen, pay attention, obey' in Hebrew. So this phrase could be translated, 'They have ears to hear but they do not listen/obey.' In Exodus 15.26 we find the word 'to hear/listen' repeated for emphasis: אִם־שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע לְקוֹל יְהוָה 'If to listen you listen to the voice of the LORD.' This means 'if you listen carefully' or 'if you listen and obey' to the vo...

It seems that the more we specialise, the more we siloise (no pun intended). Siloisation is, according to Wikipedia, "The splitting of personnel, data, etc. into isolated units with poor communication." One danger of siloisation is that we are only interested in our own field of work or research. "I'm a linguist", or "I'm a literacy specialist" becomes an excuse for ignoring other areas of work, all of which are important. Another danger is poor communication between the various fields of work. We don't have time to attend all the Communities of Practice, or read all the emails in all of the email groups, so we just pick our own field of interest, without interacting with related fields. Yet another problem is those who want to subsume all other fields under their own. "It's all education!" Or, "It's all language development!" Finally, we may over-simplify other areas of work. "Scripture engagement is about get...

I'm beginning to get asked a lot of questions about recording audio. I'm thinking about voice recordings of Scripture. Here are some things to think about: Equipment - you only need a USB microphone or decent headset with microphone, or a condenser microphone with pop filter and sound card (that plugs into your USB port) You also need to make an acoustic baffle to absorb sound. This will cut out unwanted echo called 'reverb'. Reverb can always be added later but there is no button to remove reverb, and people like FCBH, who we work with, are fussy about these things, as they know a voice with reverb is hard to listen to and understand (music, on the other hand, needs some reverb, especially the vocals).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bTK6tZzzaE is a good video on how to make a simple acoustic baffle. You can make a small tent in your room, but this gets hot and stuffy in places like Central Asia... Make ...

When a new programme starts it's often tempting to set it up as a Bible translation programme. Sometimes that's appropriate. In many cases, for a variety of reasons, it's not. This is because: It's a minority language People tend to be bi- or multi-lingual (at least if they live in towns, or have been educated) They're oral preference They're illiterate or semi-literate, or literate only in the language of wider communication They aren't yet Christian believers etc. If any or all of the above are true, then it's good to start with language development and Scripture engagement rather than full-blown Bible translation, where you translate whole books of the Bible, and aim for a full Bible or New Testament + Psalms or Panoramic Bible. Sometimes the only reason for doing the latter is the kudos of the team, which is not a good reason. We're aiming for transformed communities, not team kudos! The above flowchart shows the various stages. Note that the pro...

I recently asked the Scripture Engagement team which of the above (see graphic) we do well and which not so well. Their answer? We do production well, publishing and distribution fairly well, promotion not so well, and engagement hardly at all. The fact is that if we are going to produce digital Scriptures, we need not only to publish and distribute them, but to promote them and see the intended audience engage well with them. Often, even those of us producing a lot of digital Scriptures, find ourselves on a kind of treadmill where we produce a product, then go straight onto the next, without thinking about these other steps. Make sure the products are being promoted on Social media (vk.ru, ok.ru, Instagram, Facebook... ) and that someone is following up on those who take a regular interest in them. If we get likes, re-shares and comments that's great! If people are commenting again and again that's even better! Testing is another good way of getting feedback, so make sure s...