March 2008 UPDATE
TOTAL VISION New Bible Translation Recruitment Event! Last year, the Wycliffe Recruitment Ministries department which Chuck supervises hosted a pilot project for a new recruitment event called TOTAL VISION. This spring the program was officially launched. TOTAL VISION is designed to provide participants with a fresh look at how Bible translation work is done today using new creative strategies to speed up reaching Bibleless people. This course attracts young college students and encourages them to join Wycliffe. Bible translation work today is taking on new dimensions. Many Bible translation projects started today are done in ‘language clusters’. A ‘language cluster’ is sometimes a group of related languages. However, sometime a ‘language cluster’ is a group of unrelated languages, but located in the same geographical area. These ‘language cluster’ projects work on numerous and simultaneous Bible translation projects for each language in the cluster. Thus when completing a translation ‘cluster’ project, 6-8 languages receive a New Testament at one time and each in their own language! When working in ‘language clusters’ often Wycliffe translators take on very specific roles. However, in traditional settings where we place one translation team in one language community, translators need to have a broad knowledge about a lot of translation areas. However, the number of these types of projects is less than 20% of the remaining 2251 languages. Many of the remaining languages can be done using the ‘cluster’ approach. In new ‘cluster’ communities, our members will take on specific tasks such as one team member becoming the Bible translation consultant, with another member serving as an anthropologist and still another as an exegetical specialist or a literacy specialist. Team members will add their expertise to each language in the cluster. When they finish working in their area of expertise in the ‘cluster’ many will move on to a new ‘language cluster’ and add their expertise to a new group.
www.wycliffe.org/totalvision Even though we have creative strategies for working, the fact remains that we will continue to have traditional approaches. Therefore, Chuck’s recruitment team has decided to also keep the program “Total It Up” (TIU) that we told you about a few years ago. The TIU event promotes the traditional approach and the TOTAL VISION event promotes the new cluster approach. Please pray that we will have over 300 young people attend these recruitment events this summer.
TOTAL VISION Participants Learning To Work In ‘Language Clusters’!