Making Bibles available

Have you ever gone to church and left your Bible at home?

You can’t look up the Scripture passages the teacher cites, so you can’t read along as they are read out loud. Perhaps more importantly, you can’t look at what comes just before and after the passage, to make sure it’s being used in context.

Now imagine if no one in the church had a Bible. The teacher has the passages he needs in his notes, so he can read them to you and teach from them. But that’s it.

And now let’s imagine you don’t have a Bible at home either. I have two Bibles in my office, and I think I have five or more at home. What would I do without any of them? How would I grow, and become the follower of Christ that God wants me to be?

This week’s dedication of the New Testament in the language of the Ese Ejja people of Bolivia started me thinking about this. But if you think I’m thinking about Bible translation (because I think you’re thinking I’m thinking about Bible translation … I think), you’re wrong.

I’m thinking about some of the other important steps that are needed before a Bible translation can be put in someone’s hands.

Proofreading is one.

Right now Julie and one of her co-workers, Hedy Enns, are proofreading the revised New Testament for the Yagaria people of Papua New Guinea, and Genesis, Exodus and other parts of the Old Testament for a tribe in South America.

Can you even picture where you would start proofreading a language you cannot read? Let me tell you, it’s a painstaking, difficult process, but it’s vital to producing as “clean” a Bible as possible.

Only a handful of people in the world do this, and few teams have the experience Hedy and Julie bring to the task.

What about layout?

Open your Bible and look at how it’s laid out. Does yours have two columns of text and side notations and footnotes? Did you ever think about what is involved in taking a simple Microsoft Word document containing a New Testament, and getting it ready to be printed like a Bible?

Doug Lotz does most of those for New Tribes Mission, and again, he’s among a handful of people in the world who know how to do that.

How about getting it printed?

Feel the paper in your Bible. Few print shops can print on such thin paper and bind a Bible well enough to stand up the conditions it’ll face in the tropics. Fewer still do a high-quality job economically. Who finds them, gets the best prices, arranges deliveries and shipments, and does quality control?

Here in Communications, that’s the job of Jon Frazier.

That’s four people who play key roles in supporting the work of Bible translators around the world. Four people who make it possible for tribal people around the world to hold the Word of God in their hands.

Next time you pick up your Bible, will you pray for Julie, Hedy, Doug and Jon? And next time you’re looking for a strategic ministry to get more involved in, look one of us up.