Equipping Deaf Christians to share the good news

Wycliffe Today Winter Edition 2025

An exciting project is about to be launched to provide Deaf Christians with tools to grow in their faith and reach other Deaf people with the gospel. Wycliffe Australia, Bible Society of Australia and Alpha Australia have been close partners in creating a translation of the Alpha course into Auslan – Australian Sign Language.

Rebecca Thurrowgood is a Wycliffe Australia member who has been coordinating the Auslan translation. The collaboration with Alpha and Bible Society was especially meaningful to her as it enabled various skills, experience, connections and resources to come together to fulfil a growing need within the Deaf Church. 

Rebecca’s parents are both committed followers of Christ, yet they have found that, as Deaf people, their ability to fully engage in the life of the Church has always been a struggle. Although work is underway for a translation of the Bible into Auslan, the translation of Scripture is only in its early stages and there is currently a lack of Scripture engagement and outreach tools to reach the Deaf in Australia. Rebecca shares:

At the end of 2023, Bible Society was chatting to me about what things we could do for the Deaf community in regards to translation. I mentioned that my dad had said he’d really love a translation of the Alpha series. Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia, Bible Society Australia and Alpha Australia met to discuss how this could work and, after just 45 minutes, we were all keen to get started.

The first goal of the Auslan Alpha project was to provide resources to help Deaf Christians to grow in their faith and understanding of Scripture. A second but just as important goal was to equip Deaf people to reach out to others. Rebecca explains:

The Deaf Church hasn’t really reached the next generation. Just like a lot of [hearing] churches in Australia, we have an ageing Church. We want to ensure that we’re not starting from scratch in ten years’ time. At the moment, the Deaf community in Australia is an unreached people group, essentially. We want to change that. 

A professional studio has been set up at the Wycliffe Australia National Office in Kangaroo Ground and that space was used to film the Auslan Alpha videos in September 2024. Rebecca says that all of the interpreters they brought in were Christians who had a deep affinity with Alpha and a desire to reach Deaf audiences with the gospel. One of the interpreters was on set filming when she mentioned that she had offered to run the Alpha course in her church. The Auslan Alpha resources had not yet been finished but she really wanted to test them out and see how much interest there was. Rebecca recalls:

The translator told me: ‘I only have 10 weeks this year that I can run an Alpha course. When I told some Deaf friends about it, they were happy to come along. She later messaged me, saying, ‘There are five Deaf people who don’t yet know Jesus coming to the Alpha course! I’ve got eight people turning up and a church has offered to host it for us.’

The Auslan Alpha team presented at the Australian Deaf Christian Network conference in January and Rebecca says they were given permission to start promoting the upcoming Alpha series:

Around 60 Deaf people were in the audience. When they saw the preview of the Auslan Alpha videos, they were so excited. One of the ladies got up, and she cried, ‘I have been praying for years that there would be Alpha for the Deaf. God just answered my prayers.’

Rebecca is still beaming since the project has started wrapping up. She says:

I think the biggest challenge with this project was that none of us had ever done anything like it before. But God made it happen. It is always beautiful to see organisations coming together and partnering in a vision.