Words for Life Summer 2010

WordsforLife

The Bible: the Story everybody needs

wycliffe.org.uk

Welcome

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I’m really excited to be introducing the new look Words for Life to you.

Those of you who have been supporting Wycliffe Bible Translators for a while may have noticed the changes that have taken place over the last few months. We now have a new logo, a new website and now this new, restyled, Words for Life.

These are just a few of the steps we have taken to improve the way that we communicate the need for Bible translation to the Church in the UK. But, whether you are new to Wycliffe or a long-standing supporter, what hasn’t changed is our determination to make sure everyone has the opportunity to hear God’s word in the language that they understand the best. We’ve even gone so far as to put this ambition into writing, with the statement that’s on the cover of this magazine, ‘The Bible: the Story everybody needs’.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Words for Life. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to get in touch, it would be great to hear from you.

Phil Prior Editor E: phil_prior@wycliffe.org

Contents

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:9)

P3 Welcome P4 Why translate the Bible?

P7 Biblefresh P8 Transformed hearts, transformed lives P12 Who needs a Bible?

P13 From Eden to Eternity P15 Pray, give, go, tell P16 InFocus: Hook Evangelical Church in Chad

Wycliffe Bible Translators, Wycliffe Centre, Horsleys Green, High Wycombe, Bucks HP14 3XL T: 01494 682 268 E: askus@wycliffe.org Scottish Office: 129 High Street, Linlithgow EH49 7EJ T: 01506 840 500 E: Scotland_ukwycliffe.org Northern Ireland Office: 342 Beersbridge Road, Belfast BT5 5DY T: 028 9046 9905 E: nireland_uk@wycliffe.org

Why translate the Bible?

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In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...

(Hebrews 1:1,2a) Eddie Arthur

Two amazing words; “God spoke”. Once we grasp the simple fact that God has communicated with us, nothing can ever be the same. We haven’t been left on our own to muddle through life, trying to work out what it is all about until we shuffle off this mortal coil and into oblivion. God has spoken to us and given us the answer to life the universe and everything.

Not only has God spoken, but he has spoken in various ways: dreams, a burning bush, a donkey, writing on the wall and prophetic speech all come into the picture. God did whatever was needed to get His message across, because He wants us to understand what He is saying. And then He spoke through His Son. God, Himself, took on human form, lived on the earth and showed us in the clearest way possible what God is like and how He acts.

But God went a step further than this. He made sure that hundreds of years later and in a different part of the world we would have a reliable account of all that He did and said. Without a written record, the amazing things in the Bible would have been lost in the mists of history. But God wants us to hear and understand when He speaks, so He gave us the Bible.

The Bible is a remarkable book. It tells a story that explains why we were created, what has gone wrong with the world and what God is doing to

restore things. It is a story which covers absolutely everything; a Story that everybody needs. But God’s story is a story unlike any other; it makes a claim on our lives and calls us to align ourselves with what God is doing in the world through His Son. It calls us to make the story our own, to live the story. As we align our lives to God’s story, we discover that the things which were true for Moses, David and Paul become true for us: their God becomes our God and He speaks to us.

One of the really amazing things we discover is that God wants us to communicate on His behalf.

He could have written the Bible in letters of fire on pages of gold, but instead He chose to work with men and women to get His words written.

In the same way, He could speak in a loud voice out of heaven to your neighbours, but He chooses to send you to talk to them; amazing! God wants to talk to people and He wants to be understood, and He chooses to do so through you and me.

One of the ways in which God chooses to use us is by making the Bible available to people. There are still over 300 million people around the world, speaking two thousand different languages that don’t have access to the Bible. God wants the Bible to be made available to these people and so do we.

One question that we are often asked is why we don’t just teach everyone English. It’s a good

question. In fact, there are lots of linguistic and technical factors that would make it very difficult to get all of the minority peoples of the world speaking English, but that isn’t the point. The real reason we don’t want to teach everyone English, or Chinese, or Korean, is quite simple. God wouldn’t do it!

The story of the Bible is the story of God breaking down barriers to communicate with us as clearly and understandably as possible.

God reaches out and speaks to people where they are and He calls us to do the same. Bible translation is simply a continuation of God’s work in reaching out to speak to men and women in ways that they can understand. The wonderful thing is that He doesn’t do it all Himself, but He gives us the privilege of joining Him in His work.

He calls us to live the story and then gives us the amazing honour of working alongside Him to give the story.

Eddie Arthur is the Executive Director of Wycliffe Bible Translators. Previously he has worked as part of the translation team for the Kouya New Testament in Ivory Coast and as the National Director for a Wycliffe partner organisation in Ivory Coast and Mali.

You can read more of Eddie’s thoughts on Bible translation and life, on his website kouya.net, or follow him on Twitter @kouya

Biblefresh

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2011 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. To mark the occasion Wycliffe Bible Translators are joining a number of other organisations, under the banner of Biblefresh, to encourage Christians in the UK to take a fresh look at the Bible.

During the year there will be multiple opportunities to rediscover the story of the Bible.

New reading material will be available to help with personal and group Bible study. There will also be a variety of special events and training that’s open to everyone, bringing the Bible to life and helping us to better understand God’s word for ourselves.

Of course it’s wonderful to live in a country where the Bible is so easily available and events like this can take place, but we know that’s not the case for everyone. That’s what makes Biblefresh so exciting for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Not only is there great encouragement for people in the UK to learn from the Bible and let it have a real impact on their lives, but there’s also the opportunity to give the Bible to a community that as yet doesn’t have God’s word in their own language.

The Bible translation element of Biblefresh will give everyone the opportunity to support a translation project in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

There will be more information about the project

and Biblefresh in future editions of Words for Life.

In the meantime you can visit the official website (biblefresh.com) for an update of what is going on in the UK.

Transformed hearts, transformed lives

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Information Poverty Kills!

Anée wept bitterly as she held her baby close to her chest. She was filled with a confusion of anger, grief and guilt. She was supposed to have taken the medicine herself and the baby would have benefitted through her milk. But she didn’t understand the doctor’s instructions, and she can’t read, so she gave the medicine directly to her baby.

Her newborn daughter died from a tragic and avoidable overdose. Information poverty kills.

Anée was the wife of our night guard, Beltoise when we lived in Chad. Their angry grief made me angry too. The doctor should have known that 80% of Chadian women are illiterate. He should have known that she probably needed to be told what to do. Anée had been to primary school, but since everything was in French she had understood so little that by the time she left she was still unable to read. Children who learn to read and write in their mother tongue before bridging to the official language flourish and fly, while those who have to do it all in French often flounder and fail. It still troubles me that while in the UK only six children out of 1,000 live births die before the age of five, in Chad it’s 200 children.

So many of those deaths are avoidable. There is a direct link between mothers being able to read and infant mortality. Mothers who can read have children who live longer.

Hope for the future But there is hope! The Chadian government is starting to explore teaching in the mother tongue in primary school. They are also promoting the use of Chadian languages for adult literacy. But that can’t happen without the right resources.

For decades Wycliffe staff have been analysing languages and producing guides to understanding

grammar, dictionaries and literacy materials. These are essential to good Bible translation, but they are invaluable for multilingual schools too.

Our work in many developing countries is not only enabling people to find spiritual healing and nourishment, but physical healing and nourishment too. One of the booklets our teams translated into several languages of Chad was a very simple guide on how to treat a baby with diarrhoea. It’s so simple: sterile water, salt and sugar can save the life of a sick child. In the 15 years since it was translated that little booklet has probably saved hundreds of lives. To quote Nobel Prize winner Sir William Lewis “The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge”.

The pendulum effect I really enjoyed watching Alice in Wonderland at the cinema with my wife and children this month.

“Contrariwise” said Tweedledee as he bickered with Tweedledum. Two people contradicting each other just for the sake of it makes for entertaining comedy, but it’s a disastrous way to develop theology. Somebody overstates their case, so somebody else feels the need to counter that position by overstating an opposing view. Before long we have polarised an argument into two unbiblical, but firmly-held positions.

Parts of the church have done this with evangelism and social action, promoting one to the exclusion of the other. This was starkly illustrated last month by an American TV show host who encouraged Christians to leave churches that worked for “social justice” because he believed it to be just a code for “communism”! Any church that treats a person as either just-a-soul-that-needs-saving, or just-a-bodythat-needs-feeding has definitely lost the plot. Jesus both taught and fed the five thousand.

Who needs a Bible?

Our world is a big place. There are around 6,900 languages in use today around the globe. Of these languages almost 2,500 have part, or all of the Bible available to them. But, that still leaves a huge number of people waiting to hear God’s word in their own language.

To make God’s word accessible to all people in a language that they understand, translation work still needs to begin in over 2,200 different languages. Those languages represent more than 300 million people.

Wycliffe’s Integral Mission Wycliffe Bible Translators in the UK is a member of an international family of organisations called Wycliffe Bible Translators International (WBTI).

WBTI is a member of the Micah Network, a group of over 300 Christian agencies committed to Integral Mission. Integral mission is “the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel.

It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other.

Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. If we ignore the world we betray the word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the word of God we have nothing to bring to the world. Justice and justification by faith, worship and political action, the spiritual and the material, personal change and structural change belong together.” (micahnetwork.org).

Wycliffe’s language development work produces transformed lives through the translated Word and through translated development information.

People grow better crops and live better lives.

They care for their environment and they care for their neighbours. They learn about justification by faith and oral rehydration solution. Wycliffe’s work brings both spiritual and material blessing.

Development agencies such as World Vision and Save the Children are increasingly paying attention to these issues. My current role involves working with such agencies to help them better understand the roles culture and language can play in development. So is Wycliffe becoming a development agency? No, our core purpose is still clearly in focus, but we are not blind to the broader consequences of our work. Language development is holistic ministry, meeting the needs of people who still have both body and soul.

Dave Pearson was Director of the Chad Branch of SIL from 1991 to 1998. He currently serves as a Language Development Advocate, helping UN agencies and NGOs to better integrate language issues into their development work.

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From Eden to Eternity The Story of the Bible During May and June 2010, Wycliffe Bible Translators will once again partner with Saltmine Theatre Company to bring the story of the Bible to churches across England.

It was a great experience for the Church too, as From Eden to Eternity provided church families with the chance to be excited by the Bible all over again.

Full of humour and emotion, From Eden to Eternity takes key scenes from the story of the Bible and brings them to life on the stage. The action reminds us that the words of the Bible are far from dry and dusty, but show how great God’s love is for us.

The 2009 tour raised funds to support Bible translation for the Koro cluster, a group of languages in one area of Nigeria. The 2010 tour sees Wycliffe once again give individuals the opportunity to continue the support for these languages.

The 2009 tour made a huge impact on audiences.

Seeing familiar passages brought to life reminded people of how powerful the words of the Bible are, while for others it highlighted aspects of the Bible story that can often be overlooked when reading words on a page.

To find out what this tour has achieved you can visit the From Eden to Eternity website (eden2eternity.org) where there’s also the opportunity to continue to give to the project.

2010 Dates

June

May

8th June - Shrewsbury - Trinity Churches, Holy Trinity Meole Brace 9th June - Thame - St Mary’s Church 10th June - Fleet - Church on the Heath 11th June - Brentwood - Peniel Church 12th June - Leeds - City Evangelical Church 15th June - Coventry - Elim Pentecostal Church 16th June - Woking - Christ Church 17th June - Ruislip - Ruislip Baptist Church 18th June - Brighton/Hove - Holland Road Baptist Church 19th June - Crawley - Crawley Baptist Church 21st June - Chelmsford - Central Baptist Church 22nd June - Chertsey - St Peters Church 23rd June - Portsmouth - Oasis Church, The Venue 24th June - Salisbury - St Pauls Church 25th June - Swindon - Freshbrook Evangelical Church

11th May - Exeter - Belmont Chapel 12th May - Bristol - Kensington Baptist 13th May - Swansea - City Temple 14th May - Cardiff - Highfields Church 15th May - Hereford - Hereford Baptist Church 18th May - Northampton - Kingdom Life Church 19th May - Cambridge - St Barnabas Church 20th May - Ipswich - St John the Baptist 21st May - Norwich - Norwich Central Baptist Church 22nd May - Banbury - St Paul’s Church 25th May - Durham - St Nicholas Church 27th May - Sunderland - Sunderland Minster

Pray, give, go, tell

If you do not have access to the internet, don’t worry. You can contact us by calling 01494 682 268 or e-mailing askus@wycliffe.org

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God is doing amazing things through Bible translation.

If you’ve ever wondered how you could play a part in sharing God’s word with people across the world, here are some ideas.

Pray

Give

Go

Tell

Prayer makes a real difference. We’ve seen barriers broken down, health restored and people changed as a result of prayer - you could play a part. Why not commit to pray for Bible translation and sign up to receive a daily prayer e-mail from Wycliffe Bible Translators? wycliffe.org.uk/signupctp?

Money is not the only thing that keeps Bible translation going, but it is an important aspect of the work. Many projects are taking place in countries where it would be impossible to fund the work locally. Wycliffe is funded by the support of individuals and churches. To find out more: wycliffe.org.uk/give/give/

Could you get involved with Bible translation?

Not all roles require you to be able to speak another language, or even to go overseas. Our Mobilisation team would be happy to speak to anyone who could offer their time from a few months to a few years. wycliffe.org.uk/go

Many Christians are unaware of the number of people without access to God’s word.

You can support Bible translation simply by sharing the news of what needs to be done, and the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators, with your friends and family.

InFocus: Hook Evangelical Church in Chad

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evangelism among the group, no church and, as yet, no scripture translation. But InFocus told us that there was a young Chadian man, whose father was a Dadjo, who wanted to reach out to that group. So in a way, in God’s timing, some of the big decisions were made for us.

InFocus always stressed that it is entirely down to the supporting church to decide how much or how little to provide in the way of financial support. In this case, Jean, the young man, was ready to begin work and our church agreed to provide financial backing for him as a full time evangelist to the Dadjo.

Could you tell us a bit about the project you are involved in?

Wycliffe Bible Translators’ InFocus programme enables UK churches to connect with people groups in Africa and Asia.

The story of Hook Evangelical Church’s (hookchurch.org) involvement with a project in Chad is just one of many examples of how a church in the UK has built an ongoing relationship with an African community. Words for Life spoke to Patrick Tucker, an elder at Hook EC, about how the church first became involved with an InFocus project and what results they have seen.

What made the church decide to get involved with an InFocus project?

a group without the scriptures and among whom little or no evangelism was being done.

The church has always had a strong mission interest. Back in 2000 someone suggested that we should look at the Adopt a People concept and consider adopting a people group.

Could you tell us about the sort of decisions you made as a church to find the right project?

Through our discussions it became clear that many people in the church had an appetite to support something quite pioneering. In other words, they were willing to consider linking to

To cut quite a long story short, Wycliffe’s InFocus team were very helpful in guiding us to link up with the Dadjo people group in Chad, Africa.

This group seemed to match the “criteria” we had discussed earlier in that there was no existing

Since the start in 2002, much of Hook’s prayer and financial support has been for Jean doing village evangelism among the Dadjo. He had to leave the work in 2008 but we are pleased that another worker has come forward to take his place.

During our visits we also learned of another Chadian evangelist working among the Dadjo in a different village to Jean. At the time he was being sponsored by another mission but we are pleased that we have also been able to support him in prayer and to give some financial support.

All photographs used by kind permission of Kevin Rhoades

Support from other sources have also enabled a couple from Wycliffe US, Art and Denice Aviles, to make huge inroads into the analysis of the Dadjo language, producing an alphabet, dictionary, learn to read books, health leaflets, and guides for teachers as well as portions of scripture text. In addition, literacy classes have been set up, involving up to 500 Dadjo speakers.

You mentioned that you also visited Chad. Could you tell us how that developed?

From the beginning we had always hoped that it would be possible to make visits to Chad.

The first visit in 2003 had to be quite carefully planned because the Dadjo had no idea who we were and may have cared even less if they knew why we were there!

As time went by we made further visits to do practical work to help existing Chadian churches in the Guera region, not far from where the Dadjo are. Little by little this has allowed us to make contact with the Dadjo people themselves and to win their confidence.

You’ve also been able to make a practical contribution in other areas too?

Our members have also been able to benefit from what we call the “Chad experience” by providing teams in recent years to run holiday Bible clubs in the capital, N’Djamena.

Most recently, a young couple from Hook have returned from spending a year doing administration and support work. Altogether, nearly 30 people from Hook have been able to visit Chad. Although this is costly to do, the

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impact has been inspirational and has ‘lifted’ church life at Hook.

How has being connected to a Bible translation project challenged, changed your church?

From the beginning we wanted this to be a whole church project, but getting this vision across to the church is always a challenge! It can be difficult for Hookites to picture the scene and what is going on in Chad. In addition, since we started the project we have had a number of new members and new regular attendees, and the danger is we just assume they know what we are talking about when we mention the Dadjo project. So we have to work hard at our communications: with prayer and regular updates in services; newsletters etc.

One other great benefit has been when workers from Chad travelling via London have visited the church to update us with news and share what is going on.

What about other encouragements?

There’s a real thrill to be part of a local church that is prayerfully and practically active in seeking to extend God’s kingdom in a place where it is not yet recognised, being involved in pioneer stuff amongst an unreached people group. We firmly believe the interest in a people group without the Bible or a church has kept the need of the unevangelised high on our agenda.

It’s also great to see so much progress being made in so little time. The Dadjo now have their language written down and literature produced.

This is a blessing in and of itself just humanly speaking – let alone one day having the scriptures in their own language.

And the future?

We knew our commitment to the project would be a long-term thing.This is a project that will run for many, many years yet – and we need always to be reminding people of this.We expect future visits will be vital for information and encouragement.

Finally, we need to trust God’s word that one day we will meet Dadjo people before the throne of the Lamb!

Our thanks to Patrick for taking the time out to talk to us.

If you would like to find out more about how your church could get involved in supporting a project why not get in contact with InFocus?

T: 01494 682251 E: infocus_uk@wycliffe.org W: wycliffe.org.uk/infocus

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:9)

WordsforLife

“ a haven of refreshment and encouragement�

This was the verdict of one church group after holding their retreat at the Wycliffe Centre.

By holding an event at the Wycliffe Centre you will be supporting Bible translation around the world.

Located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty between London and Oxford, up to 160 guests can be accommodated on this 22 acre site.

T: 01494 682 266 E: accommodation_uk@wycliffe.org W: wycliffecentre.org

wycliffe.org.uk Wycliffe UK Ltd., a company registered in England and Wales, no 819788; a charity registered in England and Wales, no 251233; and in Scotland, no SC039140 Registered office: The Wycliffe Centre, Horsleys Green, High Wycombe, HP14 3XL.VAT no 195702346