Telling the Truth about Missionary Training

Once upon a time, in a typical, well-intentioned Baptist church, a man and his wife surrendered to what they described as God's call on their lives for missionary service.  The excitement of their decision permeated the church.  The pastor recognized them during the invitation and said a few words about the church's longstanding commitment to missionaries and the remaining task of world evangelism.  Folks from the congregation came by after the service to shake their hands and offer words of encouragement.  

Shortly thereafter, the pastor counseled the couple concerning their need for Bible college training and the need to raise support.  Since they were already mature adults, they did not feel the need for the entire program being offered at Bible college so they decided to spend a minimal amount of time getting whatever they could.  After all, they had already wasted several of their adult years; and people on the mission field were dying and going to hell.  Time was of the essence, and they needed to get there as fast as they could.  Their pastor conceded to their truncated plans for training as long as they agreed to spend some extra time helping around the church for a period of time.

While away at Bible college...

Bible Translation Beginnings
 

More than 2,000 spoken languages in the world do not have even a shred of Scripture translated into their mother tongue ("mother tongue" or "heart language"  refers to the first language that people learn to speak as children).  A staggering 193 million people represent those waiting for a Bible in their mother tongue.  The blessing of having the printing capabilities of Bearing Precious Seed on site has made God's mandate to reach all peoples an even greater responsibility for First Baptist Church, Milford.  We can only print what has been translated, and much remains to be translated.  We have recently begun to work toward the great unfinished task of Bible translation.   

I recently returned from a grueling summer at SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics).  SIL has almost eighty years of experience in the training of field linguists specifically for Bible translation; because of this, their expertise is second to none.  While there, I met a man who had taken some prerequisite linguistics classes elsewhere in order to participate in a translation-related course at SIL.  His painful discovery was that his preparation had been woefully lacking when it came to being ready to meet the challenges of the work at SIL.  The vision of our pastor and First Baptist Church in sending me has been to secure and provide the best possible preparation for our students at Biblical School of World Evangelism who are pursuing God's call in Bible translation, consistent with our conviction of the correct Bible text and philosophy of translation.

This semester (fall 2008) we launched the inception of this Linguistics' department at BSWE.  I am currently teaching two of the linguistic courses that I completed at SIL this past summer.  My prayer is that God would enable some of our students to affect a change in the number of Bible-less people of the world.  We covet your prayers as we pursue this God-focused endeavor.

If you have a burden to start a military ministry or plant a church near a U.S. military installation, Tom Lancaster can help you.

Dr. Tom Lancaster has been the senior missionary pastor of Rhein River Baptist Church in Mannheim, Germany since 1992.  Rhein River Baptist Church is a church for the U.S. Military stationed in Germany but has an international congregation.  Prior to going to Germany, he pastored in the States for twenty-one years and traveled in evangelism and church planting for three years. He has been used to start seven churches in the States and has assisted in starting two churches in Germany.  Over twenty men have surrendered under his ministry and are now in full-time Christian service.

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