StopandThink.com Movie to Share While Sharing Christ

We believe our decisions on Earth determine our eternal destiny; thus, we choose to “leave our pre-conceived beliefs and biases at the door” as we honestly seek to know Almighty God, human nature, and the means of eternal life.

When you think about it, our eternal destiny is the most important subject in all of life. Why? Well, if there is an eternal life (i.e. 850 billion years is the first inning), and our decisions on earth determine if we go to peace/joy/love (heaven) or wrath/horror/misery (hell), then we need to put all religious pride, feelings, assumptions, and biases aside and honestly pursue the truth. This is a big deal!

The most common hang-up we hear via this website is (in one form or another), “I don’t believe the bible can be trusted.” Ok, that’s cool; however, have you ever spent 10 hours of your life openly and honestly investigating it for yourself? How about 5 hours? 3? 1? So what you’re saying is, “I’m betting my eternal (!!) life on a hunch.”

Honestly, it is not our intention to talk you into anything. Your relationship with God is between you and him; however, we’ve studied this subject for literally thousands of hours (formally and privately) and simply want to help you, whether you’re a believer or not, go to the next level of (theological) education. We believe our creator gave each of us a brain, and with it, the responsibility to learn for ourselves. Truth is not subjective, it’s not relative, it’s not a feeling. Your belief in something doesn’t make it truth. It’s either true or not true. Oxygen is either essential to human life or not; the light we see from stars actually left the star years ago or not; a man named George Washington was once the president of the United States or not; Jesus Christ was the son of God or not; Jesus rose from the dead or not. We’re not advocating blind faith, at all! We’re encouraging you to consider the evidence and make your own decision. We’re attempting to present the evidence honestly and clearly and asking you to stop and think about it.

I grew up as a religious person, going to church every week, trying to be moral, and doing the best I could to please God. In my late 20s, I was challenged regarding the accuracy/truthfulness of the Bible. In an attempt to disprove its historical accuracy, my paradigm totally changed. That was over 20 years ago and I’ve been openly and honestly studying ever since. I’ve realized that it’s okay to question… in fact, I now question just about everything. That is why, as said above, we encourage you to leave your preconceived ideas at the door and just pursue intellectual truth; there are answers to all of your questions. Christianity is not blind faith, far from it!

So, I invite you to spend time going through the website. Before you do though, spend at least a minute or two asking God to help you hear/understand honest truth. If you have any questions, or see that something on the site is in error, please let us know. However, (since we’re committed to truth and clarity), don’t say something is wrong without presenting an intellectual case using official doctrine/documents. With all due respect, feelings or hunches are not worth much here. If we’re shown to be in error with something, trust me, I’ll move very quickly to change it; again, since we are committed to honesty, truth, and clarity.

May God richly bless you as you diligently seek after him. He’s there, you know, and wants to be known.

Sincerely,

Wycliffe’s New Method Can Translate New Testament in Weeks

By Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

Ever since Wycliffe Associates (WA) debuted a new approach that can translate almost half of the New Testament in two weeks, the smaller sister organization of Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) has been inundated with requests.

The process, called Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation (MAST), relies heavily on the local church to provide translators that are fluently bilingual. In a radical shift from earlier work, translators work simultaneously on the text instead of sequentially, and they learn translation principles (including proper names, idioms, and key terms) as they go instead of attending weeks of training beforehand.

By the end of 2014, WA had 115 projects underway. It added another 133 in 2015, and expects to begin another 500 in 2016. The world has about 4,100 living languages without any Bible translations, according to Mission Frontiers, the online magazine of Frontier Ventures.

“This is a breathtaking moment in the history of the church,” WA president Bruce Smith said in October when announcing MAST’s growth. “Christ’s Great Commission is doable. We can share God’s Word with every language group on earth—in our lifetime.”

Is this the death knell for longstanding translation practices, which invest years into language training and translation preparation?

Not quite, said Roy Peterson, CEO of the American Bible Society (ABS). That model was already dead.

“There is no such thing as traditional right now,” he said. “We are watching methodologies evolve right before our eyes that are accelerating translations.” ABS recently completed a New Testament in Zambia in three and a half years, he said. In 1980, the same text would have taken 10 years, according to Mission Frontiers.

Three and a half years is still a lot longer than MAST’s claims. But the accuracy of MAST was recently called into question by a peer-review assessment team, which included members of the Seed Company, Word for the World, WBT Ethiopia, and WBT Africa. They observed a two-week MAST project in Ethiopia in August.

While cautioning that “this review should not necessarily be interpreted as a ‘blanket assessment’ of other MAST implementations,” the group found that “the rate of progress and the quality achieved clearly do not substantiate the widely publicized claims made for the accelerated rate of translation that can be achieved through the MAST methodology.”

The review group had trouble with both of MAST’s time-saving techniques.

Having different translators work simultaneously on different parts of a Bible chapter “can only result in major inconsistencies in style and terminology, especially where they are working from different source versions,” the report said.

It also warned against skimping on pre-translation training: “Such shortcuts may give the impression that the goal is being achieved faster, but they inevitably result in loss of quality.”

A first draft of the Gospel of Mark in five languages was “achieved faster in the two-week Ethiopia MAST workshop than is typical in other initial translation workshops, but the quality was such that much more work will be needed to bring it to an acceptable quality and in a condition ready for wider testing,” the report said.

While all Bible translators want both speed and accuracy, accuracy is more important, six organizational members of Every Tribe Every Nation told CT. The alliance includes some of the world’s largest Bible agencies.

“The only thing worse than keeping someone waiting for the Bible in his or her heart language is a new translation that jeopardizes the clear communication of this same gospel message,” they wrote.

Making errors can cause lasting damage, said Peterson, whose society is part of the Every Tribe Every Nation coalition. “There’s something so delicate and important about the transmission of the Word of God. If we don’t give [local translators] the tools and training, if we let Scripture go out that has not had the care, then I think we’re playing fast and loose with the Word of God.”

Seed Company CEO Samuel Chiang agreed.

“There is deep historical precedence for training,” he said, pointing to the education Old Testament rabbis received. “I would never want to overweigh people with things, but [training] ahead of time is important.”

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for MAST, both Chiang and Peterson said.

“We want to build bridges with everyone who is trying new things,” Peterson said. “[WA is] passionate about translation and we want to affirm that, and ask in what ways we can make sure quality and accuracy are the hallmark of whatever methodology we embrace.”

The report had “elements that are helpful inputs and other parts that are both inaccurate and perhaps not as helpful,” WA’s Smith told CT. The Ethiopia MAST project was hampered by some specific problems, he said.

“We encouraged the church to bring whoever they chose to participate, and we ended up with people who were not actually fluent in two languages,” he said. “Bilingual speakers are really the foundation for all Bible translation.”

The lack of language skill “significantly handicapped the outcome,” he said. So did the size of the teams, which were smaller than WA prefers for MAST.

But letting the local church choose the number and fluency of the translators remains one of WA’s core commitments, he said. “Part of the results in Ethiopia are the result of allowing the church to exercise their full authority over stewarding God’s word in their language.”

The MAST process, correctly used, still turns out a level of accuracy that rivals slower translation methods, Smith said. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

“We’re still on a learning curve,” he said. “We’re improving this.”

While MAST increases the options available to local churches, it doesn’t make other Bible translation methods obsolete, Smith said. “There remains an overwhelming number of languages without even one verse of Scripture. At this point, every strategy is needed to get God’s Word to every nation.”