Bible translation partnership in Lae

I spent this week in the town of Lae, one of the main ports of Papua New Guinea. It's connected to Ukarumpa by road--the famous Highlands Highway, which is in many places more pothole than road--and I rode there with a van-load of other people from Ukarumpa. A visit to Lae, of course, always means a fast food meal at Big Rooster (just around the corner from where I stayed, at the SIL Guest House), but my main purpose was to attend three days of meetings in my role as Director for Language Services. The meetings were designed to lead to the formation of a partnership among Bible translation organizations, local and national churches, and other institutions in Papua New Guinea. The motivation for this partnership comes from the changing role of missions in the task of Bible translation. Until recently, translation was supported largely by financial contributions from Western churches and was done with a lot of expatriate missionary involvement. But we're now seeing a steady decline in both the financial and people resources from the Western church in cross-cultural missions. There is also a sense of urgency about the task that remains: about 300 languages in Papua New Guinea still have not a single verse of the Bible. Working at the current rate, it would be over 100 years before translation begins in all of those languages. Something has to change to keep the work going.

The Bible Bilum Partnership is one part of the answer. The bilum is the traditional woven string bag common in many parts of PNG; people use it as purse, backpack, suitcase, baby carrier . . . on and on. The idea of the Bilum Partnership is that the partners are committed to working toward the time when there can be "A Bible in Every Bilum."

The host church for the meetings this week was the Cassowary Road United Church. This congregation has caught the vision of supporting Papua New Guinean missionaries in work that will benefit the church of Papua New Guinea. They are one of the first in what is hoped will be a new movement of PNG churches getting excited about missionary work in their own country. You can see a video about Cassowary Road and their missions vision here. There is a feeling that this is the time for the Papua New Guinean church to come alive in missions and take a bigger role in Bible translation than ever before.

At the conclusion of the week, representatives from a number of organizations and denominations signed a covenant to signal their commitment to supporting Bible translation in Papua New Guinea. Please pray for this developing partnership, and that everyone involved will find the right ways to move forward and continue the work.

photo by David Tute