Celebrating and Sending Forth Scripture in the Gmz Language

NT Dedication Blogs:

(If you didn't get a chance to watch our 10-minute highlights video, check it out here - https://vimeo.com/808929420.)

Part 1: What do you see?

The dedication of the New Testament in the Gmz language is by nature a complicated event. It’s complicated linguistically, as you have Gmz speakers, Amharic speakers, English speakers, and many multilinguals. It's culturally complicated in that when you compare the Gmz culture, the Shuwa culture (that of highland Ethiopians), and my Farenje culture (non-Ethiopian), there is a HUGE difference of perspective when asking to whom belong the honored seats at this banquet, how is respect to be shown and to what degree. There is even a complication, or better, a tension in what direction the celebration is facing – looking back into the past, or looking ahead into the future. On the one hand, it is a celebration of work that has been done, and an acknowledgement of its successful completion. But on the other hand, the dedication of this book is more like a commissioning, for it to go forth into the community and begin the work for which it was created. This leads to yet one more complication, one so basic that we forget to ask it, what is this thing that we hold in our hand? Is it the fruit we are harvesting? Or the seed we are planting? As the Gmz NT rests in my hands, I can feel the weight of 7 years worth of tedious work in the translation office. As I flip through the pages, each verse has its story, each illustration and footnote was discussed in detail, to me it’s a book of memories from a long journey we had opportunity to take with some young men who have, along the road, become like family to us. But at the same time, that’s not all I see in this book. I also see its potential to accomplish the reason why we invested our sweat and tears. I see the Word of God, the Good News, which is sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). I see the Truth revealed by God through his Holy Spirit, attesting to the greatest of all divine revelations, Jesus Christ. I see the Good Shepherd reaching out to his sheep scattered among the Gmz people, calling them into his care. And his sheep will hear his voice (John 10:27). I see Gmz pastors and evangelists now equipped to quote a God who speaks their language, and in doing so to implicitly say “This is not the God of the outsiders alone, this is your God, your Creator, who loved you so much to send his only begotten Son to be your Savior from sin.” In the book in my hands, I see the great potential for the Kingdom of God to be strengthened within Gmz society as they benefit from translated Scriptures in the same way that my people, my language community has enjoyed for the last 497 years (that is, since Tyndale, or 628 years if we go back to Wycliffe’s translation into Middle  English). So, a NT dedication ceremony is an exciting, yet complicated event, celebrating today God’s faithfulness in the journey thus far, yet anticipating even greater fruit down the road.

Part 2: Sweetest Moments

The commute into Moody Bible Institute was unlike any other in that, I talked the whole way in. Normally, I am quiet in the back seat of the vehicle, sipping my coffee and thinking about the day that lies ahead. But this particular commute was my first day back after the New Testament dedication ceremony trip, and it was my first encounter with friends who took genuine interest in how things had gone. To be honest, the typical question, “how was the trip?” was really hard to answer this time around. It was wonderful in some ways, but also very emotionally challenging in others. It revived our love for many people, yet reopened the wounds of saying goodbye. Having alerted my commuting buddies that I was still processing how to think and talk about it all, they seemed very intentional to patiently listen and prompt me with helpful questions when I got stuck. One particular question they asked was perfect, “what were some of the sweet moments?” I sat silent for a moment before responding with what felt like a non-climatic answer, “To greet and be greeted by our Gmz brothers and sisters in Christ.” You’re telling me you went across the world to celebrate the product of a decade’s worth of ministry and to launch a new chapter of outreach and discipleship among a whole people group, and the sweetest moment was saying hello? Like I said, it’s kinda non-climatic but as I have thought about it more, I am seeing a deeper reason why that was the moment in the trip when I felt the most joy.

I’ve told the story many times before, how when I first came to Moody, I was WIDE open to serving God in any type of missions, with only one exception – Bible translation. The 18-year-old version of myself saw that as an absolute nightmare of boredom, sitting in an office, in a big city, surrounded by books, and writing a term paper the rest of my life. No thank you, despite being an introvert, I wanted to work with people and see lives (my own included) transformed by the Gospel. My freshman year, Wycliffe speaker, Marilyn Laszlo, came to Moody and shared her story of translation among the Sepik Iwam people of PNG. It was her story that opened my eyes to what Bible translation actually looks like. It’s  walking alongside people, diving into Scripture together, wrestling with hard words and concepts and eventually producing not just a book, but disciples of Christ who have ingested every word found therein. It isn’t an office job, it’s a deeply relational, people job, yet with implications to impact a greater community in both space and time (aka. subsequent generations). Count me in on thatǃ

And so, what were the sweetest moments of the NT dedication event? To greet and be greeted…how could anything be sweeter than reconnecting with the people who walked this journey with us? Ministry is about people, and although I didn’t think about it in the carpool that morning, I see that response as somewhat of a bookend to the vision I caught (or rather was caught by) when I heard Marilyn Laszlo speak 24 years earlier, almost to the dayǃ

Part 3: I’ve Got This

As noted in an earlier blog, the New Testament dedication ceremony is a complicated event and along with it comes complicated emotions. This means that some of the best stories we have to share are only made sweet when you journey with us through the challenge that preceded them. There were several threads that wove their way through our experience, but one of the hardest, and subsequently the sweetest, is the thread of Bible distribution.

The NT dedication is a celebration of past work accomplished, but it is also very much the opening paragraph to a new chapter. For the Gmz, that chapter is one of having access to God’s word in their own language. However, just printing words on a page does not accomplish anything of eternal significance, and so we must ask, is the community ready and able to use these Scriptures? And a whole field of ministry, called Scripture Engagement, is hard at work to assess language communities, identify barriers to use, and work with the community to overcome them. One of my favorite classes I took in grad school was called Scripture Use Methods, where we learned of the eight conditions that must be met in order to get the Word of God off the page and into people’s lives. One of those conditions, Accessibility, was on my heart as I sat in a meeting the day before the dedication. After listening for about an hour of discussion concerning the dedication program that would take place the next morning, I popped in with two questions. The first had to do with the lack of Gmz language being spoken in the ceremony. My second question was regarding distribution, “I understand that the New Testaments will be sold tomorrow after the ceremony, but if a Gmz person wants a Bible on Monday morning, after we all have gone, where will they be able to go to get one?” The project leader from the Bible Society thanked me for my question and began a rather lengthy answer about policies in distribution. “We don’t give away Bibles for free because then they have no value…so we are offering them at a reduced price tomorrow, but the next day they will be more expensive…each Bible probably costs about 20 times the amount we will sell them for tomorrow.” I kept following his discourse anxious to hear an answer to my question. Finally it came, “Let me tell you, we don’t sell these Bibles to local store owners, because then they change the price and make money off of them, and then the next day, they are being sold in the market for a different price…so, Travis, if a Gmz person wants a Bible, its no problem, they can talk with their church leaders and they can contact us and we will have Bibles in Bahir Dar (a city about 4 hours away) and even more in Addis Ababa (about 12 hours away), and we can send some from there, but remember, the price will be different because then we have to think about transport costs…” When the long response came to a conclusion, conversation was quickly swept onto something else and my heart sank. You mean to tell me that the closest distributor of Bibles will be 4 hours away? According to the condition of accessibility, Scripture Engagement is directly proportionate to how easy is to get a Bible. Imagine with me, “So you want to read Scripture in your own language? How bad do you want it? Jump through 16 hoops, then and only then, we’ll give it to you, probably.” How would a curious seeker respond? “Oh, ok, I’ll come back tomorrow…maybe.”

The next morning, my sadness about the lack of a distribution plan deepened when I learned that the NT dedication event was by invitation only. In other words, each denomination could invite only 60 people to the event, and in Ethiopian society that meant the highest officials got the invite, whether or not they are ethnically Gmz, or even speak the Gmz language. That’s another story for another day, but its devastating effect on distribution was not lost on me. New Testaments were sold after the event, but only within the walled compound where the event was held. That means that the gate was closed for the average Gmz believer, not only to celebrate the Word of God coming in their language, but even to purchase one. Later that afternoon, when walking through the Gmz village, we encountered Temesgen, a Gmz church leader and evangelist with the Baptist denomination. He told me of how he didn’t get an invite to the celebration, but he was able to get a copy because he had given money to his dad and brother who were invited. My heart ached, why do we have to make it so difficult?

After the celebration was over, I watched as the unopened boxes of unsold Bibles were loaded back onto the bus on which they came. And later, after a celebration meal, I watched as that bus pulled out of the city. That night, with our kids sleeping all around us, Andrea and I sat up in bed processing all the emotion of the day. There was never any doubt that our 10-year ministry in Ethiopia had given us the privilege of playing a role in something incredibly important; never any regret for the years spent, convinced that they were part of an exciting story that God has been and continues to unfold among the Gmz people. We thanked God for that gift he has given us. But we also grieved the challenges, both the ones we faced, and the ones the Gmz community continues to face. Tears flowed as Andrea and I lamented, among other things, the distribution of New Testaments. “This is a textbook case of how NOT to do distribution,” I said at one point, before hearing in my head the words that Janey, the Catholic translator, had said at dinner that night. After describing some of the challenges they now face, he said to me words that have bounced around in my head ever since, “Travis the years that you were here, those were the good years, but it’s been really hard ever since.” He meant it as a compliment as well as a lament of their current reality, but I couldn’t help hearing what I know he wasn’t saying, “Travis, you abandoned us to face these challenges alone.” That thought cut me like a knife.

Take, for example, the problem of distribution. If I were still among the Gmz people, I could have covered this lack of distribution plan. I could have been the one to drive up to Bahir Dar or Addis Ababa to bring back boxes of books. I could have bought a whole truckload myself and worked with local churches to set up distribution points. Like countless times in the decade we lived there, I could have used my financial resources and sometimes my social prestige and power to make things happen either in advocacy for the Gmz people, or in adding grease to the logistical processes that so easily get stuck. But we are not there anymore and all those challenges fall directly onto those with minimal resources and very low social prestige. “…those were the good years, but its been really hard ever since.” I remember just before laying down to try to sleep, my last words to Andrea were, “There is so much to celebrate in this New Testament, I just wish the road was not so bumpy.”

The next morning came quickly as we had been scheduled to catch a 6:30am bus out of town. Janey met us along the road and sat with us as we waited for the bus. The streets were quiet as the town was just starting to wake up. After a few minutes, along came the familiar face of Adamu, formerly a member of our review committee and currently a Gmz leader in the Lutheran church. After the initial greetings, he turned to Janey and said, “Hey, I need some Bibles, where can I get some?” Janey responded without hesitation, “No problem, come on over.” My head snapped to look at him, “What do you mean 'come on over?'” “What, didn’t you hear? As the bus was pulling out of the town yesterday afternoon, it stopped by the Catholic sisters’ compound and dropped off all of the unopened boxes of New Testaments for us to sell from there?” Adamu cut in again, “Good, I need about 20 of them, I’ll come by later this morning.”

Thank you, Lord for that random conversation when Adamu happened to run into Janey just minutes before we boarded the bus and began our long journey back to the States! It’s as if after a long night of some rejoicing mixed with a whole lot of grieving, God pulled back the curtain and gave us the perfect peek into what he was doing. As the bus rolled past the city limits, I praised God that he had not abandoned the Gmz people and that just as the Holy Spirit’s work in that region had pre-dated our arrival, so also it will long outlive our departure. The gracious God of all comfort met me in all the griefs I had in leaving Giglel Beles for what may be the last time ever, and he leaned in and whispered with his still small voice, “Travis, I’ve got this.”

And if that wasn’t enough, he repeated louder the next day when Janey called me just before we left for the airport, saying, “Travis, I have good news and one big surprise. First, we’ve sold almost a whole carton of Bibles to random people coming by this morning, so word is spreading! But even more surprising is that the Catholic priest came just now and bought three boxes to give to all of the Gmz catechists under his leadership. He even said, ‘I would buy more, but I don’t want to be greedy and prohibit other churches from access, besides, I can buy them directly from Addis Ababa.’” My eyes welled up in tears at this news, knowing that this particular priest, now in charge of the whole Catholic ministry in this area, had not supported our translation until now, and I'm amazed and humbling to think that the dozens of Catholic chapels spread out in villages 50 kilometers in every direction from the town will be using our Bibles. In it, I heard God's still small voice again, “Travis, it’s time for you to leave again, and yes, there's more work to do, but I ain’t going nowhere, remember, I’ve got this.”