There have been many great missionaries in the world.  We learned about some of them during a missions class this past fall called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (which I highly recommend).  As part of this class, we learned about four men and three world-changing eras in the last 200 years.

One of the two men who set in motion the third era was Cameron Townsend, co-founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators.  “Townsend saw that there were still unreached frontiers, and for almost a half century he waved the flag for the overlooked tribal people of the world.”  If you were to ask Cameron Townsend who is the greatest missionary, I am confident of his answer.

‎”The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.”
— Cameron Townsend

As part of our training for Wycliffe Bible Translators, we have to learn about Partnership Development (PD in the Wycliffe vernacular).  Here is a description of what PD is from The IT World of Wycliffe website.

Partnership Development (PD) is a ministry. It is a ministry of education and involvement to those people whom God has called to be missionary senders. This ministry begins when God calls a new single person or family into missionary service, and it continues until they withdraw from the work (change of ministry, illness, death, retirement, etc.). Throughout this ministry, God uses personal involvement with the missionary to bring Christians not already active in the Great Commission into His global purpose. Those involved gain the increasing satisfaction of seeing their contributions making an eternal impact.

This really changes the perspective of talking with people about Wycliffe.  It is amazing to think that we are already starting our ministry.  PD isn’t something just for this initial ramp-up time.  It is an on-going process of communicating what God is doing through our involvement with Wycliffe.  How can PD be furthering God’s kingdom?

In our PD efforts we remind the Church that the Bibleless people are still waiting. We model the fact that God uses ordinary people with ordinary skills. Our initial God-given assignment is to be a missionary TO the CHURCHES and BELIEVERS on behalf of the Bibleless. In God’s time, we will have our teams complete and will then become missionaries TO the BIBLELESS on behalf of the churches and believers!

Thank you LORD for Partnership Development.  LORD, continue to shape in me the proper perspective of PD.

I recently started receiving the Wycliffe Daily Prayer newsletter.  They have a special 40 Days of Prayer which is September 19 – November 11.  Today’s prayer reminded me about a question we had recently about how many translations are available in audio format.

One of the great things about Vision 2025 is the increased cooperation with other ministries.  Here is a quote from Today’s prayer:

The work of Bible translation leads to more than just access to God’s Word in people’s heart languages. It’s the foundational building block for many ministries that follow. God’s Word in local languages is the cornerstone for church-planting efforts, and strengthens existing churches. Once the Book of Luke is translated into a language, the JESUS film can be dubbed into it. Faith Comes by Hearing can record newly translated Scriptures for the audio versions they provide to people groups everywhere. And of course, the language development involved in a Bible translation project leads to an improved quality of life for minority communities—the translation of health materials, teaching literacy, and much more.

Faith Comes by Hearing recently announced The Word of God in 590 Languages … And Counting.  They are committed to reaching the nations with the Word of God in audio, offering the Bible in a format that will connect with the world’s 50% illiterate population.

Today we found out that we are officially members of Wycliffe Bible Translators!  Some of you may know that we have been in the application process to become IT missionaries with Wycliffe.  Some of you might wonder what that means.  Many may wonder how this all started.

Missions for our family has been a gradual, persistent urging by God to see people brought to faith in Jesus Christ.  Our home church has been College Park Church for about 15 years.  Our church has always had a strong emphasis on missions, more so than any other church that we have been involved in.  There is a special emphasis once a year during our missions conference.  Each year I would feel the tug towards missions.

However, the picture I had towards missions was someone paddling a canoe in the jungle and evangelizing the native people of the country.  I could never picture our family in that setting.  There would always be excuses.  There was never a strong connection with a people group like I have heard from many other missionaries.  In my view, participation in missions was never optional.  You either go or you send!

So we followed God’s calling to missions by sending missionaries.  Each year as my salary increased, we would either increase our contributions to a missionary or add new missionaries that we would support.  It was one of the most gratifying seasons of the year!  I was so grateful that I could use the skills that God had given me to gain income and support the work of the Gospel!  Maybe some day some of our children would receive the call to missions and we could support them too, but I didn’t imagine us being called.

Then one afternoon, I was meeting with Joshua Harber who is a field representative for Wycliffe Bible Translators.  Both Michelle and I have always loved the work that Wycliffe does and looked to provide advertising for Wycliffe on Michelle’s website.  While we were talking at Taco Bell, I can vividly remember Joshua leaning over and saying, “You know, Wycliffe really needs IT people!”  It took me by surprise.  Could God really use my skills as a software engineer?  I took a look at the opportunities to serve and most of what I saw in IT was helpdesk, backend business systems, etc.  This was not the type of computer work that I was interested in.  I decided to stick to sending.

This past fall things really changed.  I attended a Last Languages Campaign dinner organized by Joshua.  He conveniently sat me next to a recruiter with Wycliffe.  During this dinner, they presented Wycliffe’s Vision 2025:

To see a Bible translation program in progress in every language still needing one by the year 2025. The ultimate goal—God’s Word accessible to all people, so that everyone has an opportunity to have an intimate and life changing relationship with Jesus Christ.

I also learned how software plays a vital role in seeing this vision reached.  I learned that Wycliffe actually needs software engineers.  The call was compelling.  We could have a direct impact in seeing unreached people groups receive the word of God in their own heart language and be set free from the bondage of sin and follow Jesus!