Sarah Barnes is in the process of joining Wycliffe in Canada and will go into a role recruiting a mobilising more people to get involved in the translation movement. You can read more about her on her blog – she’s still got a way to go raising her support before she can start properly so you can see how that’s going too.

One page worth taking an extended look at, is the collection of videos she’s put together illustrating all the different aspects covered by the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Photograph from Ruth Hubbard's blog http://ruthhubbard.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/gloria-a-dios/

Ruth Hubbard is Vice-President of Communications for Wycliffe Bible Translators in the US. Recently she was in Guatemala, where Cameron Townsend – the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators – first recognised the need for Bible translation.

In a recent blog post Ruth reflected on how things have changed.

• When Cameron Townsend started work he thought that there were about 1,000 languages in the world. It turns out that there are around 7,000.
• In Guatemala it’s possible to see the results of the early days of Bible translation. Not only are there Christians as a result of the Bibles that were produced in the minority languages, but, these Christians are involved in leadership within the church.

Uncle Cam (that’s what some call him) had a vision that was both expansive and limited. He saw a day when people from every language community would have access to God’s Word and therefore could decide for themselves whether to enter into a relationship with Him or reject that invitation. That vision is in the process of being fulfilled. Today there are just over 2,000 language communities with no access to Scripture who need it, and around 2,000 with a translation in progress.

You can read the whole piece on Ruth’s blog Hubbard’s Cupboard

It just got me wondering, what do we take for granted today that within 80 years will have changed completely?

Set up as a network to encourage and grow younger Christian leaders, the podcasts were part of a communication strategy trying to link experienced leaders with those just starting out on the road to Christian leadership.

The quality of the podcasts were always good and the interviews provided some really useful information, so why are they stopping after almost two years.

David Couchman who presented the podcasts wrote the following on his blog…

In the future, the main way the Slipstream resources will be delivered will be through the e-letter. Users identified email as their preferred way to receive information. This will be more frequent, shorter, and will not have a regular schedule, but will be sent out when there is something specific to say – a new resource, an upcoming event etc.

Read the full post here

A few thoughts

1. We can often get caught up in schedules and loose the plot of what we are trying to do. If you plan to release something once a month you have to produce something once a month, regardless of whether you have good quality content or not. I don’t think this was a problem for Slipstream, they had lots of good stories – including interviews that I recorded with Andrew Hamilton and Eric Bryant that never made the cut.
2. You have to use appropriate media for what you are trying to share. It’s far quicker for me to read an e-mail than it is for me to listen to a podcast. Much of what was shared through Slipstream could have been conveyed faster in writing than by listening to the audio.
3. Finally, does the technology limit the audience? I reckon more people can be reached by e-mail than by podcast. I listen to podcasts because I have an iPod and use iTunes on my home computer. If it wasn’t for my attachment to the Mac I probably wouldn’t bother. In other words, a podcast may be convenient for me but not necessarily for everyone. I reckon the e-mail route will give access to a wider audience.

What do you think?

The overview according to Marko

this process was fairly simple, really, and is based on the idea that the holy spirit is in each of us (both the person with the question, and the other participants). but it’s not as much about “advice giving” (which often crosses into our own junk and mere opinions), as it is about asking open-ended questions to bring the convener into a space where he or she can more clearly hear what the spirit is saying.

Of course, as soon as the process is over it would be really easy to slip into advice giving mode, but that’s not the point.

While I was at uni I had a friend who would get into a real flap about her assignments. Deadlines would loom and the pressure would increase and she’d ask, ‘what do I do?’

We’d then talk for a bit about her options and she’d come to some kind of conclusion and press on with the task. Her assignments would all get done and the pressure would ease.

I never once said, ‘Well, I think you should do this.’ We’d just talk until she had a clear idea of what needed doing and when. This Clearing Committee sounds like the same kind of thing. Giving an individual the space and time to think through some of the stuff that life throws at us and making us more equipped to make decisions.

Maybe for some there is an element of the Holy Spirit in there, especially around certain issues, but I also think it’s a pretty good process for people who don’t necessarily believe in God.

Now before you get excited and start e-mailing for predictions for this year’s Derby winner (Kentucky Derby, Melbourne Cup, Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, or any other horse race) I should be quite honest and let you know that I can’t.

What I do know is that the following statements are completely true:

• Being successful last year doesn’t mean that repeating the same thing guarantees success.
• Being unsuccessful doesn’t mean that it was a bad idea that can’t work in the future.

Mark wrote an interesting blog post this week about getting comfortable. He pointed out that it’s easy to look for the safe ground and never try anything new. Only repeating stuff means that you’re likely to miss out on the new and the exciting. For some it’ll be that they miss out on great food, others it’ll be seeing new things, for some it’ll mean that they’ll miss Jesus.

One great line his post though was…

But – we’ve never done it that way before, these 7 words would have to be the most inspiring words you are likely to ever hear???

Exciting isn’t it. Doing something new.

So share, what have you tried to do that’s turned to success or failure?

But increasingly I’m finding that people are troubled by the ‘ought’ of the Christian life. They have an idea of the Christian life in which the second half of Paul’s epistles should be left out. It’s all about what God has done for us in Christ and it’s not what we do in response. That’s overstating it a little. But that’s the sense of it.  The idea that there are obligations placed upon us as we follow Christ is something that people think undermines grace. Grace has become the ‘catch all’ term for God’s acceptance of us whatever we’re like. I want to defend that. God’s grace does mean that we receive what we don’t deserve; namely eternal acceptance through Christ’s imputed righteousness (Romans 8:1). But God’s grace is not only limited to saving us, by his grace he changes us. In Titus 1:1 Paul teaches that the knowledge of the truth will lead to godliness. God’s not done with us at conversion. He wants to sanctify us to become like his son.

Read the rest of Running the Race

It got me thinking again. A couple of weeks ago I was preaching on the Good Samaritan and was particularly struck by the words of Jesus at the end of the parable, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

It seems pretty clear to me that as Christians we can just sit back and wait, we have a command to go and do. In the parable it meant getting involved with someone from the other part of town, sacrificing time and money, and showing genuine concern and care.

Yes, I have a lot of growing in this area to go too.

You can read them here,

• Wycliffe: Bible translation statistics
• Wycliffe: The popular questions on Bible translations
• Wycliffe: Benefits of Bible translation
• Wycliffe: I’m rubbish with languages, is there anything I can do to get involved?

Post one, with the cartoon above taken from cartoonchurch.com, was from St Aidan to Abbey Manor, a blog written by David Keen. He freely admits that the cartoon had little to do with the post, some inspiring words from Frost and Hirch’s ‘Shaping of Things to Come’, but he’s right, it is a good cartoon.

“In contrast with today, when so much of our Christianity is about being with the right people in the right places at the right time, Jesus was always in the wrong places, with the wrong people, at the wrong times. ” – The Shaping of Things to Come

Kill your speed was from political blogger, Iain Dale. He, like me, had been caught speeding (37 mph in a 30) and had been invited to take part in a driver refresher course. These things cost the same as the price of the speeding ticket, but you walk away in the end without points on your licence and a new respect for the speed limit. As Dale says,

The main point of the course was to drive home the difference between driving at 30 mph and 40 mph, and from that point of view it was highly successful. OK, it stands to reason that the faster you drive, and you hit someone, the more likely they are to die. But when you are told that at 30 mph the person has a 90% of chance of surviving, while at 40 mph they only have a 10% chance of surviving, it does make you think. Everyone on the course had been caught doing between 30 mph and 40 mph.

But the most interesting bit of his account was the stats. Did you know…

Perhaps the most shocking statistic was when we were told that if you break down on the motorway and decide to sit in your car on the hard shoulder your life expectancy is reduced to 12 minutes – 12 minutes!!! [read the whole thing here]

If you breakdown on the motorway this weekend, please, please, get out of the car, even if it’s raining.

Kevin D. Hendricks from Church Marketing Sucks posts the following.