Dane with unfoldingWord says in 2024 they forged new partnerships with three disciple-making movements and church-planting movements in the global south.

Because of these partners’ reach and because of how unfoldingWord tools will equip them, this will have far-reaching impact on the spread of the gospel of Jesus! 

Partners with massive reach

One of these new partners is in Southeast Asia. “We’re talking more than 1,300 churches representing more than 10 million people. [The leader] is going back [there], he told me personally, to fire up his whole network about engaging in church-centric Bible translation,” says Dane. (More on church-centric Bible translation here.)

Another new partner is a church-planting movement in South Asia. “[This is a movement] where in the last five years, they’ve planted 1,000 house churches with about 50,000 new believers. They’re doing church-centric Bible translation there for those new believers to reach out to their communities,” says Dane.

One brother from South Asia told Dane that language is truly the key to reaching the region for Christ. He told Dane, “You come in to them (a new people group) and you try to start talking about the gospel, [and] they say, ‘Oh, that’s foreign religion.’ But when you can come in with Bible stories in their language, it just immediately opens the door.”

How unfoldingWord tools will strengthen the Church

Dane says that disciple-making and church-planting movements drive Bible translation — they create the demand for it, if you will. That’s because when new believers realize God speaks their heart language, they want to translate Scripture into that heart language. unfoldingWord seeks to provide them all the tools they need for this critical work.

By adding Bible translation to disciple-making and church-planting movements, it will strengthen the global church in amazing ways.

“You’re not just producing a Bible. You are integrating Bible translation into the theological growth of the church, and that just makes the roots of the church deeper,” Dane says.

(Photo courtesy of unfoldingWord)

There’s every reason to expect God will do incredible things — because He already has. Here’s the track record of one longtime unfoldingWord partner ministry in South Asia: 

“They were able to translate the New Testament for 104 people groups, and they did it in two years, using unfoldingWord’s translation core software and some of our other tools and resources.” 

Sounds impossible, right? It’s not. It’s only one out of many stories unfoldingWord could tell. Consider how you could join this exciting movement of God through your prayers and partnership!

“If transferring the capacity for Bible translation from the West to the global south and the rest of the world fires you up… If open licensing, if new technology, if innovative ways to approach Bible translation fires you up, then one way to get involved is to give today,” Dane says. 

Give toward unfoldingWord’s year-end campaign by visiting their website here. 

“We call [the campaign] ‘Endure’ because when churches have God’s Word in their heart language, they endure,” Dane says. “When they don’t have it in their heart language — when they have to operate in just a second language — the church often doesn’t survive past one generation.” 

Header photo courtesy of unfoldingWord. 

Thanks to the collaboration of multiple translation organizations, and to computer software developed by unfoldingWord, Church-Centric Bible Translation work is becoming increasingly possible all over the globe.

*Dane of unfoldingWord says, “What unfoldingWord has done is developed open license content to be able to just hand over and train on how to use it. Hand it over and train the local churches how to use this open license content so that they can do the Bible translation themselves.”

Translation tools

To protect the integrity of the translation work, unfoldingWord trains local groups how to use the software. They have a growing library of resources built on a long history of Bible translation.

“It’s called the Bible Aquifer,” Dane explains, “Think of this underground stream of all this open license, Bible translation content. And then local translators can use an app that’s called the Bible Well. It was developed by Biblio Nexus, and they can go down there and draw this information up and use it wherever they need it.”

Photo courtesy of unfoldingWord.

Many organizations, including unfoldingWord, have uploaded the translation knowledge they have to offer.

While this enables the layperson to translate, Dane says they need traditional scholars to help develop the resources being offered. This is particularly true for unfoldingWord’s Book Packages.

“A Book Package contains pretty much everything somebody needs—a church group needs—to translate the Bible for themselves,” Dane explains.

Each Book Package covers one book of the Bible. It includes:

• A literal translation built on the technical Greek or Hebrew
• A simplified translation that gets the meaning across similar to a paraphrase style
• A verse-by-verse translation guide
• A lexicon to discover key words and definitions in the Bible
• Short articles discussing difficult Bible translation issues

All of these tools in the Book Packages help people to translate the work. Then, they can backcheck it to the original Greek or Hebrew.

Impact on the ground

“I’m so excited about this because I was a pastor for 32 years. And seeing this happen for people just thrills me. Because our brothers and sisters around the world need this information— these tools. And it’s exciting to be able to provide them with these tools.”

The impact of these translation materials is incredible. Dane points to a training that recently took place in West Africa where a group of people were introduced to this for the first time.

Photo courtesy of unfoldingWord.

He quotes a report from the field: ‘For us this was a revolution for the missionary work we do. […] The Bible Well has made our job much easier. Many people who don’t have a high level of deduction can now easily embark on translation work because you have simplified the entire task, making the Bible easy to understand. And we can attest to the accuracy of the content and the resources you have provided.’

To learn more about how you can partner with unfoldingWord, and to check out their resources, click here.

Header photo courtesy of unfoldingWord.

(Graphic courtesy unfoldingWord via Facebook)

Five decades is long enough for things to change drastically! The field used to look like missionaries traveling cross-culturally to work with local people groups and languages. Today, technology and communication have accelerated the process to more than we can keep up with.

Dane* with unfoldingWord says local churches around the world may have caught the vision for God’s Word, but they still need equipping. He points to a massive need for Bible translation consultants — but unfoldingWord’s proposed solution isn’t what you might think. 

“These (translation consultants) are the people that come in after the first draft has been made. They help the local people check their draft,” Dane explains.

“There are not enough of those people in the world to handle all of the translation demand that is out there. We cannot train them fast enough.” 

To help with this need, unfoldingWord and other ministries have compiled open-license resources they hand to church-based teams of translators.

One unfoldingWord team member described this strategy like this: “If we can make specialized Bible translation resources available to the global church, then we won’t need a [Western] missionary force that takes decades to train and decades to deploy. We can equip the church to do it for themselves, and the church can do it forever!” 

Learn more here about unfoldingWord resources for translators.

“People who wanted to make a translation, without a theological education, were able to achieve their goal due to the fact that the tools were prepared by unfoldingWord specialists and their employees who speak Russian.”
–Pastor Ivan K.
(Photo, caption courtesy of unfoldingWord)

But don’t leave this article with misunderstanding — PhD linguists and translation consultants are still needed. It’s just that they were needed yesterday! The point is that there are many ways to serve in Bible translation today. 

“(If you’re interested in Bible translation) I would really research the Church-Centric Bible Translation approach. God is doing some amazing things in the world, and they’re new things. So we need content developers, we need software developers, we need people who want to dedicate themselves to training [others],” Dane says. 

“I would encourage you to study all of those things and be open minded about where God would lead you in terms of your ministry.”

Learn more here about the Church-Centric Bible Translation (CCBT) approach that unfoldingWord and other ministries advocate. Would you prayerfully consider what your role in this critical field might be? 

*Name withheld for security

Header photo courtesy of unfoldingWord.