International (MNN) — The global Body of Christ is growing, but Christians worldwide face a huge barrier: no Scripture is available in the language they understand best.
“The traditional means of translation that we’ve employed for decades has reached its limit in accomplishing the goal of having Bibles in all the world languages,” John* with unfoldingWord says.
“Most of the ones remaining are smaller language groups, and they’re in difficult-to-reach circumstances.”
unfoldingWord comes alongside church planting networks to begin Church-Centric Bible Translation. More about that here.
“The strategy here is to equip the local church to produce translations that no one else would be able to do anytime soon,” John says.
There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world. Around 3,589 have little to no Scripture.
(Photo, caption courtesy of unfoldingWord)
The result is indigenous Bible translation, not unfoldingWord projects. Communities welcome the Scripture their members worked on; it wasn’t handed to them by an outside group.
“The (global) Church itself has gotten far ahead of Bible translation,” John says.
“As we go into these places and fully equip, invest, and teach them everything they need to know, their own energy and passion for having it in their mother tongue takes over.”
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John says, “Difficult geographical circumstances in some of these locations are combined with heavy spiritual opposition, so prayer is of utmost importance as we try to progress in these areas.”
*Pseudonym
Header and story images courtesy of unfoldingWord.
