Back to Africa

Translated into English from Hausa, it means, “Western Education is Sinful.”  But the dreaded words, Boko Haram has come to mean something far more sinister to the local Christian populations of northern Nigeria. This radical Islamic faction has acknowledged their objective to attack police, military and Christian institutions in order to mandate complete Sharia law in that part of the country. As a result, they have openly admitted responsibility for most of the repeated bombings during the past year that have taken the lives of thousands of Christians in the region.

Reading all this in the March 10 issue of World Magazine (http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19236) on the first leg of a trip that is taking me to that very area of Nigeria might make you think I should simply turn around and go home again. But instead, I head out today with clear confidence that God is also strongly at work in that part of the country and despite the recent incidents, I can be no safer than in the center of His will.

This is my first overseas trip representing Wycliffe Associates (http://www.wycliffeassociates.org/ ) in my new capacity of promoting organizational development among national Bible translation agencies.  In this case, it will be the NBTT—Nigerian Bible Translation Trust. When I arrive in Jos on Friday, I will spend the next five days interviewing various NBTT leaders to learn what organizational barriers are keeping them from effectively tackling the huge job of Bible translation in their country.  With over 500 languages native to Nigeria, only 22 have completed Bibles and another 100 that have only begun a translation process.  That means there are still some 356 of languages left to be translated so that people might have God’s Good News in an understandable form—the largest number of any country in Africa.

I will do my best to share what I learn along the way—so keep posted on this blog for further updates.

Sample map showing which people groups have the Bible (green) or
the NT (yellow) or nothing at all (red)

As I board my United flight for Frankfurt and then Abuja, Nigeria, I must tell you about some of the “cool tools” I am carrying with me. Hopefully, these things will facilitate greater effectiveness for our national ministry friends. First, are a set of colorful maps provided for me by Global Mapping International (http://www.gmi.org/) that show each of the Nigerian language groups color coded according to their scale of evangelization as determined by the Joshua Project (http://www.joshuaproject.net). 

Taking it one step farther, my friend, Marv Bowers of ILS International (http://www.ilsinternational.net)   has spent the past 48 hours refining another set of fantastic maps of Nigeria just for me that not only show language sectors needing translation, but are also geo-coded so that I can display them on my iPad by means of a special app http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avenza-pdf-maps/id388424049?mt=8) that will also show my actual GPS position superimposed on the map. 

Finally, my briefcase has got several copies of a brand new Organizational Capacity Assessment Matrix that I will be trying out for the first time on this trip. Thanks to a neat partnership with Lisa Price, a student at Benedictine University getting her Masters Degree in organizational behavior and her advisor, Tiffany Yates, we’ve designed a new tool that should significantly aid in organizational capacity evaluation for any national ministry.

So, armed with all these “tools of the trade,” and most of all, with the faithful prayer support of a whole bunch of friends like you, I feel ready for this eight day trip and look forward to how I can add my little bit of encouragement to our Nigerian brothers and sisters who daily face such challenges as those of Boko Haram.