Fancy two weeks in the south of France this summer?

 

Wycliffe Bible Translators UK are recruiting for a two week holiday with a difference!

Two Week Stint will run from Saturday 27th July to Saturday 10th August 2013, near Valence in the south of France.

Participants will join a group from across Europe as Wycliffe Bible Translators UK and ATB France* host a bilingual, cross-cultural and productive holiday, with plenty of opportunity for time spent with God and some adventure thrown in too!

In the mornings, participants will have a chance to worship, draw closer to God and reflect on his mission to the world – and join one of three tracks: creative, linguistic and teaching / literacy

For more details on Two Week Stint and to register go to www.wycliffe.org.uk/twoweekstint

* L’Association Traduire la Bible

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Changed the world recently?

No, I thought not. We rarely do, come to think of it. But God does… all the time and the wonderful, exciting, scary thing is that he wants us to be part of it. Part of his mission to the world he created.

I really appreciated Eddie Arthur’s recent post We Are Not World Changers

Eddie wrote the blog in response to seeing a number of tweets and articles from churches and mission agencies claiming that the people involved in them are changing the world. Eddie was not convinced.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that these people are not wonderful, hard-working, dedicated and well-intentioned. I just don’t believe that they are changing the world. Oh, and I don’t believe that the world isn’t being changed. I just don’t believe that they are the ones changing it.

A few years ago a colleague and I got a bit annoyed with more than one mission agency whose advertising encouraged people to believe that by going on their short term summer teams, they could make a difference.

I think we would both have agreed with Eddie’s thesis…

Let me explain. When Christian ministry (be it through a church or mission agency) is successful  it is God who achieves that success; not the church or agency. Paul planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the seed to grow. God calls us to work alongside him. He uses our efforts – the slick and professional as well as the gauche and embarrassed - to bring glory to himself. We serve God and God changes the world.

As we get together tomorrow as a Wycliffe Bible Translators church engagement team, my prayer is that we will look to God and listen to his promptings as he invites us to be part of enthusing the UK and Irish churches to be part of God’s mission to his world through Bible translation.

What a privilege to be invited by God to work alongside him!

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A wee office in East Belfast…

… not too far from where there have been six nights of demonstration and rioting.

Flag riots East Belfast

Normally it’s pretty quiet around here. We just get on with our work – praying for and promoting the work of Bible translation throughout the world today. We get on with it by day and stay away from the area by night.

This week has been interesting. The office is pretty quiet this afternoon as I sit here writing this all alone, but it’s been fairly busy all week.

An American / N. Irish couple has started work this week having returned from assignment in the Philippines. They join our other staff (all N. Irish… OK, one has her English husband) who have worked in Ivory Coast, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal. Another N. Irish member has been visiting from his flying assignment in Australia. An Argentinian couple popped in the other day for a chat.

Some of these are preparing to move on: to further study before returning to Senegal; to take up a new role in West Africa; another to Cambodia – but that’s just for a wedding and he’ll be back. He deserves a break having just completed the production, printing and distribution of 4,000 copies of our local news and prayer magazine Wycliffe News.

And of course in the background, there has been Andy, our friendly IT man, sorting out our computers remotely from England.

Church elders have been here too this week: two with our Australia assigned pilot and another who was on a trip with me 10 years ago to Cameroon.

As I say, it’s noisy down the road of an evening and that’s what makes the headlines. God’s work tends to go on quietly under the media radar.

Me? I’m delighted that we have two final year university students applying for linguistic / literacy roles when they graduate – and an A level student wanting a GAP year role somewhere to use his IT skills to help Bible translation. And three more A level students are coming for work experience in the next few weeks.

God is working away in a wee office in East Belfast. Isn’t it brilliant?

Take a look at what we do in Wycliffe Bible Translators UK here.

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Sectarian Traybakes

When a Wycliffe colleague from Dublin was joining us some years ago, she referred in a conversation to Protestant traybakes. That was news to me. I thought everyone in Ireland enjoyed traybakes. The English I wasn’t so sure about…

Recently someone directed me to this blog by Petroc Trelawny, a BBC Radio 3 presenter who also writes about music, books and travel.

There was a time, long ago, when business at Broadcasting House in Belfast would briefly halt at eleven in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon – the hours when the canteen laid out the fresh traybakes. Quite correctly, a former controller of BBC Northern Ireland decided the sweet cakes were taking up too much time – and now they appear on special occasions only.

Caramel slices, snowballs, raspberry ripple squares … I don’t really like sweet, sugary things, but, when in Ulster … The classic Northern Ireland traybake is the ‘Fifteen’; 15 marshmallows, 15 digestive biscuits, 15 glace cherries – chopped and crushed, bound together with condensed milk, refrigerated, rolled into a sausage and then cut into fifteen pieces.But wait. Shock horror. I have discovered that traybakes are sectarian.

Fifteens

A friend of mine from Belfast phoned the other day on his way back from a wake. I asked him if there had been any traybakes. He went quiet, then uttered a line of admonishment. ‘It was a Catholic funeral – there were scones, not traybakes’. So now I know. Fifteens and snowballs for the Protestants; cherry, fruit and plain scones for the Catholics. But, as I can testify, on the rare occasions when traybakes now appear at the BBC, people of all faiths and no faith fight their way to the front of the queue. Perhaps traybakes can be seen as a metaphor for the success of the peace process.

In Wycliffe Bible Translators UK, traybakes have been much more than a metaphor!

Traybakes have fuelled many’s a Wycliffe event – and not just social ones. Traybakes have been central to events held in and around Belfast: First Steps (formerly known as Wycliffe and Me), Wycliffe:Live, Pray 10/11/12.

But a few years ago, we began to export traybakes to England when we held summer short term team orientation weekends. I can testify that our English colleagues now know and love their Protestant traybakes! Sectarian? Not all – traybakes have the potential to promote world peace.

This blog is dedicated to my friend and colleague who is affectionately known as Lynda McTraybake and who introduced traybakes to Bible translation.

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Free Bibles at St Rollox

Friends Paul and Emma work with International Teams and are leaders of the refugee and asylum team based at St Rollox in Glasgow. Paul sent me this photo.

It’s great that asylum seekers can be helped with all sorts of advice, food and clothing, English classes, travel passes, destitution relief, somewhere to hang out – and also access to the Bible in their own languages!

Can anyone identify the languages of these Bibles? I’ve spotted French, Kurdish, Turkish… any more?

I wonder how many mother tongue languages are spoken by the people with whom Paul and Emma are working…

I wonder how many of their languages are among the almost 2,000 that don’t have a translation yet…

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Mission starts with God

On Saturday 10 November 2012, Wycliffe Bible Translators UK held a prayer event called Pray 10/11/12 at three venues around the UK. After an opening praise session, people at all three venues watched a video entitled Mission Starts with God in which our UK Director Eddie Arthur focussed our thoughts for the day by leading us through The Lord’s Prayer. You can click on the link in the previous sentence to watch the video – it’s worth it!

Eddie has used The Lord’s Prayer before in his e-book Praying for Missionaries. As it says on the Amazon Kindle page:

It is always difficult to know how to pray for people involved in Christian mission work. This short booklet uses the outline of the Lord’s Prayer as a template for effective, cutting edge, missionary prayer.

I guess the difference with the video is that Eddie tells stories from around the Wycliffe Bible translation world and we see photographs of many of the people involved.

And so I encourage you to watch the video and download Praying for Missionaries on to your Kindle – it costs the princely sum of £0.77 – and use both to pray for us and the ongoing work of Bible translation.

 

 

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Evelyn Sloan 18 May 1949 – 27 October 2012

A godly lady, a caring and gentle friend and a wonderful work colleague!

Evelyn Sloan, a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators for 27 years, died on Saturday 27 October 2012. I was asked to speak at the funeral yesterday at St Mary’s Parish Church, Dundonald on behalf of her Wycliffe colleagues. This is what I said.

Since sending out news that Evelyn had passed away on Saturday afternoon, I have received many messages from Wycliffe colleagues via e-mail and Facebook. Some of these colleagues are here today; others are abroad and have asked me to pass on their sympathies to the family.

In these messages, the same words kept appearing: caring, welcoming, lovely, gentle, humble, godly. Evelyn showed Christ to other people.

Evelyn’s desk in the Belfast office is still referred to as “Evelyn’s desk” – no one else has permanently occupied it since she retired. Quite often recently I have looked up from my desk, looked through the open door and across the space to Evelyn’s empty desk. I miss Evelyn in the office.

Why? Quite simply because Evelyn Sloan was a godly lady, a caring and gentle friend, a wonderful colleague.

As Ruth and I drove to Donegal on Sunday morning, we listened to a CD in the car. It’s called Waymarks: Songs for the Journey produced by the Northumbria Community. As we listened and sang along, we thought – these words are so appropriate to Evelyn.

I would like to share these Scripture based words with you. The song is called Brother, sister, let me serve you.

Brother, sister let me serve you.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey.
We are brothers on the road.
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you;
Speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping.
When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we’ve seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven,
We shall find such harmony
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony.

Brother, sister let me serve you.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.

Richard Gillard  © 1977 Scripture in Song

That’s what Evelyn did throughout her years with Wycliffe Bible Translators: first at the UK Centre in England; then in Nairobi; latterly in the Belfast office. Evelyn served others.

And so I say to Evelyn’s family and to her St Mary’s family… today with you, her Wycliffe family thanks God for a godly lady, a caring and gentle friend, and a wonderful work colleague!

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Mission Agencies in the Recession

As I drove to work this morning, the radio proclaimed that figures to be released today would show that the UK has moved out of a double dip recession – and that the move towards growth has been boosted by the Olympics!

So maybe it’s not the best time to write this blog.

Nonetheless I want to refer to an article written by friend and colleague John Doherty in the Autumn 2012 edition of the Bible Society in N. Ireland’s Word at Work magazine.

John has been reflecting on how the charitable sector is faring in these troubled times…

Most Mission agency representatives that I work with are under severe pressure as they seek to maintain their programmes at home and abroad at current levels. Although their passion for the Gospel remains undimmed, forward planning is becoming ever more difficult. In our Bible Society, for example, it requires faith and steady nerves to commit funds to a 5-year New Testament translation project knowing that it would be unthinkable to send the translators home and tell their people “Wait a little longer for the first words of Scripture in your language.”

In Wycliffe Bible Translators, we can empathise with this. Just one of many examples… in our Wycliffe UK Call to Prayer this week there is a series about Bible translation work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

While rejoicing that the entire Kifuliiru Bible has now been drafted, all the remaining work in DRC is facing an imposing challenge:because of decreased income from givers, the project and neighbouring projects have budget cuts of 65%. Pray that givers around the world would take this opportunity to serve their worldwide family intentionally by supporting these translations.

John continues…

Mission agencies are challenged in the same way as individuals, families, and churches by insecurity of income and uncertainty about the future. What is the individual to do, especially if they have given long-time support to a number of worthy causes? Here are some thoughts for you to ponder, both for yourself and also for your church/church group:

1) Is it time to be more selective and focus on those agencies which best reflect the imperative of extending Christ’s kingdom here and across the world? Choosing a smaller number of charities would help make your prayer life more focused, and your financial giving more strategic.

2) According to the Charity Commission, “There may be more than 10,000 charities already operating in Northern Ireland”. Given even the legendary generosity of our people, that figure is not sustainable. Also, while many Christians give to good causes which do not have a religious ethos, the reverse is not true. I can’t recall BSNI ever receiving a gift from someone who did not have a love for Scripture. Perhaps Christians should first ensure they are supporting Christian organisations before going on to consider other ‘Good causes’ for support.

3) This principle also applies to churches. Rather than trying to support lots of charities (Christian and non-Christian), church committees might prioritise their giving in line with their Mission vision. Church members also need to pray for that work, so the whole church needs to be kept informed and encouraged about how God is using their gifts to change lives.

4) Finally, while it is currently tempting for individuals and churches to reduce support for Christian work, we should all remember that the Church has survived to the 21^st century only because of the historical commitment of others to spread the Gospel. Mission is not an optional extra – it is a fundamental living out of our faith.

It was Paul who identified a clear priority when he wrote to Christians in Rome “But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10.14 – ESV). Paul would have considered his task impossible without his scrolls and the Bible today remains an essential tool for teaching people about Jesus.

I would probably argue with some of John’s points, but that wouldn’t be unusual. I passionately believe that God will work out his mission plans for his world because it is his mission and not ours. But the Bible also says that he invites his people to be very much involved!

With God’s grace, and the prayers and gifts of God’s people, BSNI and Wycliffe Bible Translators will continue to change the lives of some 350 million people all over this world who have yet to have access to  the Bible in a language they understand.

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“What do you have? …Ok, I can use that!” Jesus

For the disciples in Matthew 15 it was:

“What do you have?”

“Seven loaves and a few fishes…”

“Ok, I can use that.”

And Jesus fed 4,000 plus people in a deserted area in Gentile territory – and continued the process of teaching them who he was and what he was about.

For me and my wife, almost 25 years ago, it was:

“What do you have?”

“Seventeen years teaching experience in Belfast…”

“Ok, I can use that.”

And Jesus led us into Wycliffe Bible Translators and took us to a boarding school for missionary children in a very rural environment where we taught some wonderful children of equally wonderful missionary colleagues for eight years.

First year at Vavoua International School

I’ve been thinking about this idea since last Sunday morning…

Jesus says: what do you have that I can use? So you can help me in my mission to the world that I created.

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A potentially unsettling question for church leaders

Just saw this from Alan Wilson as I ate my lunch…

I suspect that it’s the church that keeps mission front and centre that is less likely to lose its way and fade into irrelevance.

A potentially unsettling question for church leaders.

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