One of the biggest warning flags in a sermon comes when the preacher says: “Now, in Greek, the word is … which (literally) means …” Sometimes they know what they’re talking about. More often they are about [...]]]>

Over the weekend, Clayboy has posted a short piece which touches on one of my pet hates in preaching:

One of the biggest warning flags in a sermon comes when the preacher says: “Now, in Greek, the word is … which (literally) means …” Sometimes they know what they’re talking about. More often they are about to pull a fast one. (Read on!)

This weekend, Sue and I visited the wonderful Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. The weather was cool and foggy, which gave an amazing atmosphere to the ruins. Which I hope comes across in these photographs.

It must have been a hard life being a monk here through the hard winter months, and even the summers are [...]]]>

This weekend, Sue and I visited the wonderful Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. The weather was cool and foggy, which gave an amazing atmosphere to the ruins. Which I hope comes across in these photographs.

It must have been a hard life being a monk here through the hard winter months, and even the summers are hardly hot and balmy is this part of the world.

It was an interesting thinking back a couple of weeks to the worship service I attended in Ouagadougou. The setting was very different: hot sun in place of Yorkshire fog and bright colours in place of grey stone. But it’s not just the externals that were different. I wonder what the monks of Fountains Abbey, their lives ordered by the daily rule of Benedict, would make of an African Assemblies of God service and vice-versa.

The style of music, the way of praying, the manner or reading and learning from Scripture are all hugely different in the two contexts. I suspect that just about the only thing that would be recognisable between the two contexts is the cross which appears prominently in the church in Burkina and which no doubt appeared at Fountains Abbey during its heyday. The quiet contemplation and ordered life of the monks seems to have very little in common in with the hectic life and worship of people in a modern day capital city in West Africa. And yet both claim to be Christian. So which is the authentic face of the Christian message?

Both of them, of course. Authentic Christianity is worked out in the lives of communities as they take on board the message of the Gospel and live it out within the context they find themselves. Life in England in the middle ages was drastically different to life in modern day Burkina Faso and because of this we would expect the expression of  Christianity to look very different. I will return (again) to the question of how Christianity relates to culture in the near future. But perhaps the most important question that we can ask is what does authentic Christianity look like in our culture today? Britain has undergone huge changes over the last thirty years and I would expect that our living out of the Gospel would reflect that.

Let me give you an example. Gordon Kennedy, who is a [...]]]>

How on earth do we get Bible translation onto the agenda of the church in the UK? There are still 300,000,000  people without a word of Scripture available to them – but it’s ever so hard to make people in the UK aware of this.

Let me give you an example. Gordon Kennedy, who is a very nice chap, blogged on Monday evening’s meeting at Kingdom Come in Belfast. He gives a brief overview of the evening, including a summary of the amazing message from Gordon MacDonald. However, he failed to mention the short Wycliffe presentation that I gave that evening.

Kingdom Come is a big conference for church leaders and I knew that the main speaker would be excellent. It was always going to be difficult to make a mission presentation stand out, so I thought long and hard about what I should do. I avoided doing a traditional missionary talk and tried to capture people’s imagination for God’s mission. My mention of Wycliffe was almost a throwaway line at the end. I hoped that by doing something unexpected, my message would be memorable – judge for yourself how well I succeeded.

My talk was part of the opening section; the bulk of the evening was given over to Gordon MacDonald. His talk was excellent and inspiring. It was just what the leaders there needed – it certainly did me a lot of good. But, sadly from my point of view,  I’m pretty sure that by the end of his talk everyone had more or less forgotten what I had said. Of course, I was pleased that the main message was so good, but boy was I frustrated that the short presentation I had worked on was so overwhelmed.

Just how do we get to promote the need for people around the world to hear God’s word in their own language? Most weekends, I end up speaking about Bible translation in a church somewhere around the country, but there must be a way to speak to larger groups (though church invites are always welcome).

Last week, I had the amazing privilege to sit in on meetings where people were planning to translated the Scriptures [...]]]>

Ours is an instant age. We move quickly and we want to have instant access to our money, to music and to people. But is faster always better? What about when it comes to Bible translation?

Last week, I had the amazing privilege to sit in on meetings where people were planning to translated the Scriptures for the remaining languages in Burkina Faso (read about them here). During the meetings, I found myself musing on the issue of how long it will take to actually do the translations. Generally, it is assumed that it is good to make translations available to people as quickly as possible. I regularly hear two reasons for wanting to speed up translation.

The first is that people need to hear the message of Scripture and until translation is finished, many will not be able to do so. Last week, I heard a number of Burkinabé translators expressing concern for their families who were not yet able to fully appreciate the Bible because it wasn’t available in their language. The fact that people around the world are living and dying without a knowledge of God’s reconciling love should give a sense of urgency to our mission, including Bible translation.

Another reason that people give for speeding up Bible translation comes from an eschatological view that implies that the return of Jesus will somehow be triggered when every people group has access to the Gospel. At some point in the future I will do a blog post on Matthew 24:14, but for now let me simply say that I don’t believe that it is talking about the end of the age or a worldwide Christian mission. (If you want to disagree with me, wait till I write my full post on the subject. I’ll delete any comments on this post that get into the exegesis of this verse as it isn’t the central point of the post.)

In my experience these are the two main reasons given for speeding up Bible translation: one is good, the other (I believe) less so. But is faster always better? The thing is, I can think of two good reasons for slowing down the rate of Bible translation, too.

Just for a moment, reflect on the resistance in some English speaking circles to the use of Modern Bible translations. Now imagine that you are a Christian leader in a minority language community. You have been using the Bible in a trade language for years, you are familiar with it and as far as you are concerned this is the only Bible you have ever seen. Now imagine that someone comes along and tells you that you should use the Bible in another language altogether (even if it is your own).  It is not hard to imagine that some people will oppose the use of this new-fangled Bible, even if it is easier to understand. It is not just the King James only crowd who can be reluctant to move to a new translation – it happens all round the world. If all we want to do is translate and publish Bibles, we can move as fast as we like. But if we want people to be enthusiastic and eager to use the new translation, we may need to spend significant time in building relationships, explaining how translation works and demonstrating the advantages of the new book.

Another reason for taking time to do translation is that the process of translation itself can be of great value. A while ago, Mark Brown rashly suggested that Google tools would soon allow us to translate the Bible into a new language in 20 minutes. At the time, I pointed out that this was not as imminent as he suggested. I also said that even if we could translate that fast, we may not want to;

But, even if we could do a Bible translation in twenty minutes, would we really want to? As Lingamish pointed out, the problem is not getting the word translated, it is getting people to read it and base their lives on it. One of the most important aspects of any translation project is the Godly lives of the translation team demonstrating the reality and relevance of the message long before the words emerge from the printer. As one African church leader put it, ‘we want to see the Holy Spirit in the lives of the translators long before we see the words Holy Spirit on the page’. (Read more)

Speed is a value in Western culture: a very high value. Because of this, it is hard for us to realise that speed per se is not a Gospel value. In Bible translation terms, the Gospel value is to see communities and individuals bringing their lives into alignment with God’s claims on them as they get to grips with the message of Scripture. All things being equal, it is good to get the Bible to people as quickly as possible – but speed must never be allowed to compromise the Gospel impact of the missional work of translation. As I wrote in the post quoted above:

There is a value in speeding up Bible translation, but not at the cost of losing the human and community touch. This is something we westerners with our task orientation find very hard to understand …

Somewhat related to this is my post examining Wycliffe’s long term vision: Vision 2025.