Welcome to a Bible translation journey that equips your church network to build translation capacity in a way that serves the Great Commission. You will study, translate, apply, and use 50 stories from the Bible. These stories will teach you the overall narrative of the Bible, will equip you to share the gospel with others, and will introduce you to foundational translation principles and skills. Our prayer is that you will find this training useful for the work of Bible translation and helpful for the work of ministry.
The Mission-Translation Brief provides a series of dialogues to help your community begin its translation journey. These discussions cover four important topics related to church-centric Bible translation. The first discussion explores the purpose and mission of your network. Church-centric Bible translation focuses its translation work on the spread of the gospel. The second discussion centers your work in the church. It is important that your community involves key churches and leaders in this process. The third dialogue relates to Christian formation. The aim of this approach to translation is for the church to grow to maturity. The fourth discussion identifies key translation decisions that will define your translation work. Finally, you will summarize these conversations into a brief overview. This summary will help your community approach its translation work with a focus on mission, church, and Christian formation.
Open Bible Stories faithfully recount fifty biblical narratives. As a whole, these fifty stories survey the overall story of Scripture (i.e., the metanarrative) from Genesis to Revelation. Each story is retold in simple language for ease of translation training and effective use in ministry. In order to assist people in understanding the overall storyline of Scripture, these fifty stories can be grouped into 11 major units. The flow of these movements outlines the ways God has worked throughout human history—past, present, and future.
Each story is organized around a fivefold study process (called the Five Movements). This fivefold structure allows your community to develop translation skill (drafting and checking), grow in Christian maturity, and participate in God’s mission in the church and surrounding world. On either end of these five movements is a community formation activity and a community review reflection. The structure of this fivefold process is outlined below:
Here is a general outline of the journey that lies ahead:
Part One: Mission-Translation Brief
Part Two: Open Bible Stories
We are excited that you have decided to take this initial step in translation training. In what lies ahead, there will be many first encounters: new experiences, new principles, new work, new ministry opportunities, and new relationships. Our hope and prayer remains that God will be your guide and strength in your first steps of Bible translation.