Christ transforming culture: A safari adventure in Kenya
By Deb Fox | Wycliffe Today Autumn 2024 Edition
In September 2023, Wycliffe Australia sent a team of nine people from Australia to Kenya to facilitate seven training events. The first three events were in far northern Kenya and mostly delivered in the Borana language. One major event was a Contextualisation Workshop, where Borana pastors and lay people studied their culture and worldviews in light of Scripture. Those involved in the workshop learned a new Bible story each day then went to local schools, where the stories were eagerly accepted by the children. At the same time, a different group of Boranas were learning The Matthew Drama script to help bring the words in the Bible to life. Over 900 Borana speakers (most not from a Christian background) attended the performances.
Team leader, Keith Benn, explains that the purpose of the trip was to provide training and support for African pastors and those involved in Bible translation, while also encouraging Aussies to consider how they can support the global church in Scripture engagement and Bible storytelling. As Keith says, ‘An important goal for every church is making God’s Word relevant for their people’.
Philemon was one of the Kenyan pastors who expressed gratitude for attending the workshops:
In our contextualisation class today, I learnt about the different rituals and the different festivals we do. I realised that, as Scripture depicts, Christ transforms culture – all culture. There is no culture that does not need transformation. Scripture says that God can transform them in a better way to ensure that God is the anchor of everything.
One of the Australian team members, Robert Love, was encouraged by the insights the Kenyan leaders shared during the workshops:
We’ve had a particularly fruitful and interesting time looking at traditional Mbeere beliefs and what the Bible says about them. In particular, we’ve been looking at how the Mbeere people believe that they go to sacrifice and make prayers to Gai (God) at special trees in order to get things that they want. Then we turn to the Bible, looking at some verses that help to throw some light on that particular belief. One passage in particular that has been helpful is Acts 17:24–25, ‘The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.
Images: Evan Mercer
Bible storytelling bearing fruit
Wycliffe Today Autumn Edition 2024
In Nairobi, while team leader, Malcolm Barker, trained a second cast to perform The Matthew Drama, the rest of the Australian team were involved in a Story the Bible Teacher Training Seminar at the Africa International University. This was attended by Bible translators and 10 pastors from two different ethnic groups, who went home to teach the seminars in their own languages. Benson is one of the pastors who attended. He shares how the training is now bearing fruit in his village and beyond:
We had training here about Bible translation and how to use Bible storytelling in a very simple way. It has been of paramount importance to me and to the entire church. I was informed about how to preach the Word and to tell a Bible story from a different perspective. So I thank those who have organised the Bible storytelling because it has been of great help to the church.
On Sunday, I started using the storytelling techniques in the church and the elders there were very much amazed and excited to see that their pastor has gone to another level [of understanding]. So I thank you, brothers and sisters from Australia, for bringing this teaching to us through brother Keith. May God bless you now very much. If time allows you, and the opportunity, you can have a time with us so that the gospel of Jesus Christ in our place may grow even deeper in our lives and the church.
For information about upcoming short-term trips, visit https://wycliffe.org.au/eventtype/short-term-trips/.
Let us run, run, run the race
By Elly Sharp | Wycliffe Today June 2020 |
When our kids were little, the ‘greatest hits’ in the Sharp family playing list were a series of cassette tapes called ‘GT and the Halo Express’. The best thing about them was that they included songs with Bible verses straight out of the NIV translation so we all memorised Scripture as the kids listened to them over and over.
One of the songs that stands out in my mind came from Hebrews:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)
I have a lasting image of my daughter Aimée singing that song, bouncing up and down on a tree branch over the roof of our village house. In a sense, it has become the ‘theme song’ for our involvement with the translation of the Gergiko New Testament. But we didn’t run; we plodded.
If you had told me, in 1992 when we relocated to the village of Mukulu in central Chad, that it was going to take us 27 years to finish the translation of the New Testament, I may not have been too surprised. We began at the same time as other language teams who finished in 20 years, and we were still trudging through it.
During the years we lived in the village, a young lady from the peace corps was assigned to Mukulu. She once asked us, ‘What makes you stay?’ I told her that it was the love of Christ, and the love for the people he called us to. It makes all the difference. Our aim was to put the Gergiko New Testament into the hands of the church, and that goal kept us going during very difficult times.
In my mind, the culmination of our work would be the big ‘D’ day: Dedication day! I couldn’t wait! But what if that day didn’t come? What if we went to Chad for it, along with seven visitors from Australia and two from the USA, and the New Testaments didn’t arrive in time? Well, the truth is that they didn’t! We had a small celebration–happy as it was–but not at all what we had imagined.
All we and the Mukulu church can put it down to is that the battle is fierce because some amazing things are happening at a village level. The church has grown so much, even without the New Testament, that they’ve created three satellite congregations. Women in villages on the other side of the mountain have taken literacy classes so they can read the New Testament when it arrives. People one would never imagine are coming to the Lord through dreams. The Chief of the Mukulu people commented to our visitors that having mother-tongue literacy classes for pre-schoolers means that children who attend them are at the top of the class when they get to school.
When we first moved to the village in 1992, there was a group of elderly ladies at church who always sat at the same bench; leaning on their walking sticks it appeared they’d gone to sleep. At that time, all the Scripture readings were in French. One Sunday when I was sitting right behind them, one of the translation team members read the reading from the Gospel of Mark in Gergiko. The ladies sat up and got really animated, chatting among themselves! A lady sitting next to me laughed with me and said, ‘They understood!’ I was so glad I witnessed that because it gave me, well, perseverance to finish the task. Those ladies have passed away, but at the celebration we had in January I got to dance with some of the new generation of elderly ladies, bringing it full circle.
We could easily get discouraged because the second attempt at a dedication was postponed indefinitely by COVID-19. Our main regret is that the New Testaments aren’t in the hands of the people yet. But the Lord has had a plan for the Mukulu people all these years, and he’s not finished yet. He is the author and finisher of our faith.
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