EMQ » July–September 2022 » Volume 58 Issue 3
Church-Centric Translation
When local churches own and run Bible translation projects, communities of believers experience spiritual growth in the way that the early church did. It facilitates greater transformation and makes the gospel available faster to everyone in community.
By Natalia Piroshenko* and Sofia Ivanov* with Lincoln Brunner
Bible translation has come to a crossroads. The vast majority of Bible translation work in the modern era has been done by highly educated Western missionaries, hundreds of whom gave their entire careers to translating Scriptures for people who didn’t have God’s Word in their own language. We view them and their efforts as shining examples of utter devotion to, and sacrifice for, the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
The work of those missionaries over the past 80 years has produced more than 2,200 New Testaments and whole-Bible translations. However, as missiologists and strategists inside and outside the Bible translation movement look at what’s been accomplished and the remaining task, one thing has become very clear. The methods that have gotten us to this point will not anytime soon get us to what we believe is the final goal: the church in every people group and the Bible in every language.
The numbers themselves paint a daunting picture. According to the Wycliffe Global Alliance, of the more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world, only 717 have a full Bible, while another 1,582 have a New Testament in their language.[1] However, many of those completed translations are decades old and badly in need of revision.
According to anecdotal testimony from people who speak those languages gathered by unfoldingWord and others, the sad reality is that many of those translations have barely been read, if they were at all. This is mainly because local churches did not own and run the translation process, but rather were told by outsiders what to do and when.
The sad reality is that many of those translations have barely been read, if they were at all.
The fact is, languages change too often and too subtly for outsiders to track the needs of those languages effectively. More importantly, however, from a missiological and theological point of view, practitioners of traditional Bible translations who make production of a translated book (the Bible) their final goal, in fact, miss the ultimate point – making disciples of every nation (Matthew 28:19).
In our view, that will only happen when every people group has the Word of God in their own language in a form that is fully trusted and trustworthy. That’s why we believe the time has come for the church to fully embrace Church-Centric Bible Translation (CCBT).
The Beauty of CCBT
We took English-language resources from unfoldingWord and translated them into Russian so we can then train minority-language Bible translators how to translate Scripture into their own languages. These resources include Scripture texts like unfoldingWord’s Literal Text and Simplified Text, as well as unfoldingWord’s translation resources such as Translation Words, Translation Notes, and Translation Academy.
We translate the Scripture and accompanying resources book by book so that the Scripture can be translated, checked for accuracy, and then used by those churches much more quickly than if they had to wait for all 66 books to be completed before they ever saw them. This process also helps translation teams gather better feedback from the people who speak the language being translated.
We may come from different backgrounds – Natalia from academia and Sofia from a career in church and children’s ministry – but we are both highly invested members of a team that is working as one to provide these Bible translation tools for hundreds of language groups connected to Russian through patterns of bilingualism. That is the beauty of CCBT and why we believe in it so much.
The Bible is the Means to Reach a Bigger Goal
For many of us on the team, when we first heard that ordinary people like us could do Bible translation, we were shocked. Our big question was, “What about quality?” I (Sophia) don’t have any theological degrees or education. I thought only people like the disciples or the heroes of the faith should participate in translation. But then I realized that even faith heroes were ordinary people. And it doesn’t depend on who you are, but Who asked you and called you to do this.
I can see myself as a colleague of Paul or Luke. I realized that they were also ordinary people in the beginning, but they allowed God to use them. Church-centric translation helps people feel significant – that they can really do great things – especially those from minority languages.
When I (Natalia) started on the team in 2019, at I wondered how successful church-centric Bible translation could be. If people don’t know linguistics or biblical languages, how can they understand problems or know when they’ve made mistakes. It seemed like a crazy idea. But then I realized the genius of it. When Bible translation goes back into the hands of the people using that translation, they can experience spiritual growth in a way that is closer to the early church.
When Bible translation goes back into the hands of the people using that translation, they can experience spiritual growth in a way that is closer to the early church.
In fact, I believe this goes back to how the Word of God was used in the beginning. The first followers of Jesus didn’t have the complete text of the New Testament; it had not yet been written. If they were lucky, they had a letter or two of one of the apostles, or one of the gospels.
Faith in Christ expanded all over the Roman empire first by people hearing the story of salvation. Then after they believed it, they received the Scripture – piece by piece, and not everything at once. These little pieces of what later became the New Testament, they carefully read, discussed, and interpreted into local languages. So, the New Testament was living in and lived by communities of believers even before it was a complete collection of 27 books.
Moving the focus from the book to the community is what CCBT is about. The goal is not to produce a book; the goal is to produce the fruits of the Spirit. This may sound like a paradox, yet we believe church-centric Bible translation is more biblical than traditional Bible-centered approaches. The Bible is not a goal. The Bible is the means to reach the goal – salvation and spiritual growth of the community of believers.
The Bible is not a goal. The Bible is the means to reach the goal.
Connecting Locally and Globally
My husband and I (Sofia) are from Central Asia. We moved many years ago to our current home in Eastern Europe. After we moved, we tried to connect with a few local pastors and ask them to support Bible translation. I remember one pastor who, like millions of other people around the world who speak a majority language, didn’t see the need for Bible translation at all.
“Why do these minorities need a translation in their mother-tongue language?” he said. “They know Russian. Let them just read it in Russian.”
We thought, “Wow, that means that minorities cannot hear the Bible, the Word of God, in their heart language.” It was awful. It was not fair. I truly believe that Jesus one day will speak in every minority language.
In Revelation 7:9 (ESV), we read, “After this I looked, and behold a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands …”
That gave me boldness that I don’t need to prepare myself to be worthy enough to be a Bible translator, and to be a part of this big mission. Church-centric translation connects me with other believers who have different talents. We each bring our unique skills into translation as we work together on it as a team.
CCTB has also increased my sense of connection with the global church. I used to be in one church in my home country. Now on the translation team, I serve with team members from many different countries (like Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine), and we feel like a family.
You Don’t Have to Wait
Many Christians from minority groups in our part of the world worship in Russian and read the Bible in Russian. Translating Bible stories or some biblical books from Russian into their own language is a huge spiritual exercise! They do not even need to complete the translation or make it perfect to benefit.
They begin by thinking through a Bible passage in their mind and then try to verbalize it in their mother tongue. They might do it orally and may not do an entire book – perhaps just some concepts. For example, they may consider what sin or salvation mean in their mother tongue language.
The best part is that no one has to wait until the Bible or even a biblical book is completed, checked, printed, and then delivered to understand truths from Scripture. Communities can be impacted by Scripture now. And all 66 books can’t be done at once. Translation must be completed piece by piece over a long period of time. This facilitates greater transformation in the church; spiritual maturity comes as Scriptures are translated. They can translate one or two chapters and engage with the material right away. This really helps small, minority-language churches.
Communities can be impacted by Scripture now.
The Gospel for Everyone
In partnership with local churches, unfoldingWord helps train, develop, and equip church-centric translation teams. Through their translationAcademy, people get educated while they translate. Other tools, like translationWords provide access to more theological material. These enable church-centric Bible translation teams to do more on their own. This makes the gospel available for everyone, in community.
The CCBT approach reminds me (Natalia) of the day of Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came on the apostles, they started speaking in tongues. And each of the representatives of the many different language groups that gathered in Jerusalem heard them and understood what they were saying: a message about Jesus. The writer said this was the first translation, or interpretation, of the gospel. And it was done even before the gospel was written.
The gospel was always for the people. In fact, it was translated even before it was written. It goes to the nations in the language that the nations can comprehend – like Jesus himself. God came to humans in the way that humans could see him and understand his words – the Living Word.
In the same way, Bible translation is coming to people in a way that they can understand, as well. The people we train to do CCBT begin with Bible stories and then work up to different books from the Bible. This is how the first Christians operated. They started with the message. It was a message about salvation history. The first apostles told about history of Israel in their own words and how it led to Jesus and what Jesus did. This looks like unfoldingWord’s Open Bible Stories (openbiblestories.org) – retelling Bible history in short stories.
Also in the early days of the church, communities each received different letters (epistles) from Paul. In Colossians 4:16 (ESV), Paul says, “And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.” It was not delivered to the churches as one set. It was piece by piece over time. It was a process – just like what is going on now. It provided a natural and organic way for the church to grow and develop.
Church-centric Bible translation expresses the love of God by serving the community.
Church-centric Bible translation expresses the love of God by serving the community. This is our focus with this approach to Bible translation. It’s a big shift not just in methodology, but also in theology. If you really think about it, it’s mind blowing.
Natalia Piroshenko, Ph.D., is a university lecturer in New Testament studies. Sofia Ivanov holds a university degree in translation. In collaboration with unfoldingWord (unfoldingword.org), they work on a team based in Eastern Europe that is translating Russian-language Scripture and translation resources – Natalia as a Greek-to-Russian translator and Sofia as project manager. As part of the Church-Centric Bible Translation (CCBT) process, they are creating these resources so that minority languages across the Russian-speaking world can translate the Bible accurately for themselves as part of their churches’ theological formation process.
Lincoln Brunner (lincoln.brunner@gmail.com) is a writer and editor who has covered Christian ministries worldwide for nearly two decades. He is also the co-author of Go Tell It: How and Why to Report God’s Stories in Words, Photos and Videos (Moody Publishers, 2014). He lives in the Dallas area with his family.
* Pseudonym used for security purposes.
NOTES
[1] “2021 Scripture Access Statistics,” Wycliffe Global Alliance, accessed February 25, 2022, https://www.wycliffe.net/resources/statistics.
EMQ, Volume 58, Issue 3. Copyright © 2022 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
