Wycliffe Bible Translators came to Victoria

We were delighted to welcome Eddie Arthur, the UK Executive Director of Wycliffe Bible Translators, to be the special guest at the World Mission Weekend 29th - 30th January. Eddie 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.

The vision of Wycliffe Bible Translators is that by 2025, together with partners worldwide, they aim to see a Bible translation programme begun in all the remaining languages that need one. Wycliffe exists to serve the worldwide church, partnering with churches and individuals to make the Bible available to every people group. The aim of Wycliffe is to partner with others to carry out Jesus' command to make disciples of all nations.

I can see why it would seem crazy to set about translating the Bible for people who are suffering from starvation and war. People in those sorts of situations have urgent needs and as Christians we should be moved to help them, but, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek to bring the Gospel to them. Evangelism and social action go hand in hand.

However, simply addressing peoples’ needs in the short term does not normally solve their problems. As the old saying goes; give a man a fish and you feed him for a day: teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. I believe that the Gospel, or in this specific case, Bible translation are part of the process of ‘teaching people to fish’.

You will probably be aware of some of the catastrophes that have taken place in the world over the past year, be they floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and Australia, or landslides in China. Indeed, you may have responded financially to alleviate the suffering. When we consider such events, the work of Bible translation may seem to be irrelevant at worst, or secondary at best. Surely getting relief to the needy is where we should be concentrating our efforts and our funding?

Actually, I believe that the need for Bible translation becomes even more urgent in the context of these disasters, and all the others that have happened and are yet to occur. After all, it is in the Bible that we find how Job lost everything and screamed at God for an explanation, how the Israelites were put to the sword, how God led His people through famine, sickness and genocide. Without the Bible people cannot even begin to have a framework within which to place their own desperate situations and lives.

When we read the Bible we meet within its pages people who are marginalised through poverty, social structuring, illness or illiteracy. The very people for whom Jesus came, in fact. And the people groups with whom Wycliffe works most often; the weakest, poorest and neediest. So we find ourselves working at opening up the Bible to those in most need of it, such as the deaf, the illiterate and the poverty stricken.

Right now, Wycliffe workers are involved in projects to translate the Good News into the mother tongue of many hundreds of people groups, in whatever way they can best understand it, because we believe that God will use His word to speak into their deepest needs.

The Bible gives people a framework to understand their situation and tools with which to address it, as this video shows.

But translation does more than this. A Bible translation project is typically linked to literacy work and in the long term, literacy is one of the best ways of transforming poor communities.

Eddie Arthur