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indigenous minority languages

Planting “Gospel Seeds” Through Business Cards

Over the last year or two, during my infrequent visits to southern California, I began to notice a change in the ethnic mix of the men that gather early each morning in the parking lot of the Home Depot near our mission agency’s home office hoping to get work for the day. Typically the men had all been Mexicans, but I noticed newcomers that I suspected were Haitians. 

Five years ago I tracked down the available Scripture resources in Haitian Creole and loaded them onto some “BibleBox” WiFi hotspot units for some Mexican believers reaching out among thousands of Haitians that ended up “stuck” in Tijuana, Mexico on their trek north. Now, for those with smartphones, directing Creole speakers to the Haitian Creole page* within the www.ScriptureEarth.org website seems to me to be the best option. They can have free access to 6 full-length Scripture movies**, the text of multiple translations of the New Testament, audio recordings of the NT in 3 different Creole translations, and a variety of audio recordings produced by the Global Recordings Network.

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Scripture In Mission – Three Major Priorities In Eradicating Bible Poverty

 
Illustration  from TV – Eradicating Bible Poverty@call2all

Scripture In Mission: Three Major Priorities In Eradicating Bible Poverty

The Scripture in Mission Multiplex Resource Team

Written by John Watters, PhD, Chair of the Forum of Bible Agencies International.
This Cape Town 2010 Advance Paper was written by the Scripture in Mission Multiplex Resource Team as an overview of the topic that was discussed at the related session on ‘Scripture in Mission’ at the Cape Town 2010 Congress. 

Abstract

Peter and Angela are busy with their middle-class lives. Next door, Lucy is a Buddhist from East Asia and her housemate is into New Age religious matters. Mma Echu has no Scriptures in her language, and the chief of her village has built a shrine for his god. Amin is interested in Jesus but is illiterate, while Hussein is deaf.
What do all these people have in common? They suffer from a malady that afflicts billions of people scattered throughout every nation in the world—Bible poverty. But none of them realize it.
What are the signs of Bible poverty? It is present where people are hindered by barriers from having access to the Scriptures in a language they understand well and engaging with them in ways that transform their lives. It cuts across economic levels, social status, religious identity, ethnic groups, and languages. Bible poverty affects regions of religious persecution. It affects the non-literate, the deaf, and the blind. Still others, like the Befang of Cameroon, simply do not have any Scripture in their language. And a host of professionals in cities from Shanghai to Munich to Bogota have no confidence in any truth but their own experience. Barriers to engaging meaningfully with the Scriptures show up everywhere: in urban contexts, in rural contexts, in regions where other major religions dominate, and in the post-modern West. But once we identify these barriers, can we also work to build bridges that enable people to overcome these barriers?

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Open Bible

  • by Biblica

In the Open.Bible initiative, Biblica is publishing Bible texts with a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike) Licence. This means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You can adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. You must attribute the original work to Biblica, and if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
“By releasing complete Biblical texts for free under Creative Commons licensing, the traditional Bible licensing, publishing, and distribution pipeline can be completely replaced with a much faster, more efficient vehicle.”

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Audio/Visual Scripture & Outreach Media Sources

The following is a question that I regularly get asked by “on-the-ground” workers- “How can I find out what scripture/ministry media is available online in my people’s language so I can download and use in our outreach?” The below are the main websites I know to point people to that allow them to search for and download media in their language:

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