Radius

Say What?

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How can missionaries break through walls of misunderstanding?

Everyone Needs to Hear!

We say this often. It’s our passion. This is what missions is all about: The unreached need to be reached with the Gospel. They need to hear the message of Christ.. and we believe they deserve to hear it in their heart language.

What Does “Hear” Really Mean?

If they misunderstand our message, have they “heard” it? If they reject it because we communicated poorly, have they really been evangelized? If they mix parts of God’s truth with their existing beliefs, have they been “reached”?

The answer to each question is No.

Culture is Important…

Language fluency is important. But it’s not enough! A big part of what Bill does is to help missionaries learn language and culture so that they can effectively communicate the gospel. Clearly. So it will be understood. So the Unreached can respond with faith to the truth of the Gospel. So they won’t simply put faith in their own misunderstanding of the Gospel.

Missionaries need to be able to get inside the head of their audience. We must understand what the Unreached believe… what they think—even their unconscious preconceptions—and most importantly, how might they misunderstand the Gospel.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Missionaries don’t study the culture in order to change the message to make it more palatable! We do not change the Gospel to make it fit the worldview of the audience. Rather, we learn the culture and worldview so that we know how the audience might misunderstand; how they might make the message fit their preconceptions. When we can anticipate how they will misunderstand, we can teach in a way which will avoid that… a way where God’s truth can be clearly understood.

We don’t change the Gospel; we want to see the Gospel–clearly communicated–change people’s thinking.

Recently, Bill took two trips to Ethnos360’s training center in Missouri to meet with others on his team as they develop the updated CLA (Culture & Language Acquisition) training materials for missionaries worldwide. The second set of meetings focused on helping missionaries gain insight into the worldview of their audience, and who to deal with potential misunderstanding of the Gospel message.

Health Update

This has been a year of doctor visits (32 and counting): ER, urgent care, doctors, ultrasounds, CT scans, an MRI, injections, physical therapy… whew! Since our last update, Bill has seen great progress in recovering from his pelvic bone/muscle injury. He spends hours each week faithfully following his physical therapist’s instructions, and that has made a big difference! He can walk around now without pain, and can even climb stairs. But he still needs to set some limits.

On top of all that, this week he has a kidney stone removal procedure (on September 14). Please pray for that to go well with no complications. Pray that it will not interfere with his teaching at Radius International the following week.

Upcoming Ministry

Updates coming soon on:

  • teaching at Radius International
  • development of culture/language learning software
  • a language consulting trip to Mexico in November
  • plans to revisit Asia Pacific in January

What Drives Us?

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If every Christian in the world shared Christ with every single person they knew… and all of those people believed, there would still be two billion people in the world who had never heard the gospel.

 

-David Platt (Cross 2015, paraphrased from one the testimony of one of our Radius students)

 

 

(sorry, but the video we shared in our last post suddenly became “private” and unable to be viewed)

Step by Step

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Hanuman

Huge statue of the monkey god Hanuman in the square outside our hotel

Baby Steps

In November and December we took our first trip to South Asia, the region with the most Unreached Peoples Groups in the world. Thousands of unreached groups call this part of the world home. We were blown away by the vastness, the tremendous need for committed Gospel ministers, the poverty, the oppressive idolatrous false religion, the powerful anti-Christian sentiment of the government, and how much we have to learn to be the most effective in helping missionaries in this part of the world.

We were blessed and encouraged by the believers in some of the already-reached People Groups and their gracious hospitality, their love for the Lord Jesus, and their passion to reach the Unreached in their corner of the world! We also enjoyed some pretty amazing food and all the colorful beauty in the South Asian culture.

We helped four couples with their language learning (one South Asian couple and some expats) and Bill was training two consultants to coach language learners in the same way (one South Asian consultant and an expat.)

We were also able to reconnect with Singaporeans friends as we passed through their airport. Most of them were on a team that came to our tribe on Palawan in 1987. We hadn’t seen some of them in 30 years! The other friend we had met at missions camps in 2010.

Spices

Our South Asian host was ready to make every meal taste amazing.

Big Steps

While in South Asia, we were excited to be able to meet up with nine graduates of Radius International. We were part of their prefield training, when Bill taught them about how languages, language learning, and translation principles. Now they are in place, thriving in a very challenging context, and doing very well in language learning as they prepare for their future ministries. These Americans have left much behind and stepped out to do big things in the power of the Spirit to share about the Savior they love so much.

Painful Steps

While in Asia, we had to climb a many flights of stairs. Lots of them. Every day for 4 weeks. This took its cumulative toll and Bill got home in mid-December to find himself in tremendous pain and sometimes unable to even walk. The holidays made it difficult to schedule an appointment to see his doctor, so we went to urgent care first. Now, many weeks, 3 more doctor visits, a few x-rays and an MRI later, we know that his body took a beating and he has inflamed joints in his pelvis, swollen bone marrow, and a partially detached muscle (hence the pain, as you can imagine!) The pain clinic prescribed steroid injections. He just had the first injection on Feb 17th, and the next is set for March 3rd. If those reduce the pain as hoped, he will start physical therapy. Your prayers for a fast recovery are really appreciated!

Next Steps

In Asia, we were within sight of the highest mountains in the world, and in one location, we could see the hills of FOUR closed countries, each with many unreached People Groups. But to these unreached tribes, political borders mean very little, so they cross over from their closed countries to places where believers are waiting to engage them. The most exciting thing is how local South Asian believers want to reach those groups on their side of the border and these South Asians are asking for training in language learning and effective cross-cultural ministry. We want to help them!

So we have a number of potential ministry trips: follow-up visits to South Asia and to the islands of Asia Pacific, a workshop to train Singaporeans, trips to the Philippines and West Africa…

…but first we are getting Bill’s body ready to travel. He can’t be walking between airport terminals or dragging luggage around just yet. Meanwhile, he has his ongoing projects to keep him busy developing language learning materials and he’s preparing for some upcoming workshops and consultant training here closer to home.

Pray for healing, for God’s grace and provision, and for all that’s involved in the preparation of materials to enable many more missionaries to take God’s message to the world and to communicate it clearly in the Heart Languages of the Unreached.

Because everyone deserves to hear in their Heart Language.

 

What Are We Doing Lately? Lots…

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THE  PALAWANOS  NEED  MORE  TEACHING…

   …WE’RE  HELPING  WITH  THAT

WE’RE STILL INVOLVED WITH THE PALAWANOS

  • Ongoing ministry after 33 years of ministering to the Palawanos and translating the New Testament for them
  • Recently put the Southwestern Palawano New Testament (written and audio) into an Android app
  • Annual trips to Palawan for Bible teaching seminars to supplement our partners’ teaching
  • Working with our missionaries who are mentoring the youth: Bible study materials and online discipling
  • Helping missionaries learn Central Palawano and put our New Testament into that related language

 

 THE  WORLD  NEEDS  MORE  MISSIONARIES…

   …WE’RE  TRAINING  THEM

WE’RE TRAINING A RADICAL NEW GENERATION OF MISSIONARIES

  • Teaching language learning and Bible translation at Radius across the border – come along sometime!
  • These are young people who want to go to all the hard places to reach the Unreached
  • Serving as a language learning consultant for them as they get out on the field

 

MISSIONARIES  NEED  LANGUAGE  FLUENCY…

   …WE’RE  HELPING  THEM

WE’RE HELPING MISSIONARY LANGUAGE LEARNERS—AND THOSE WHO HELP THEM

  • Developing the DIY language learning materials all our missionaries around the world will use to be able to communicate the Gospel clearly and to disciple the Unreached
  • Teaching and leading language coach workshops in the USA, Thailand, Latin America, and more to come…
  • Doing online language coaching via Skype

 

NON-WESTERN  MISSIONARIES  NEED  TRAINING,  TOO…

   …WE’RE  PROVIDING  CULTURE-SPECIFIC  TRAINING

WE’RE WORKING TO DEVELOP THE TRAINING FOR NON-WESTERN MISSIONARIES WORLDWIDE

  • SE Asians including Filipinos, Chinese and Indians, etc., want to reach the Unreached
  • Two recent trips to Asia Pacific to help local believers reaching other tribes
  • An upcoming trip to South Asia to help our missionaries to begin training local Christians as missionaries

 

THE  CHURCH  IN  AMERICA  IS  REACHING  THE  UNREACHED…

   …WE’RE  TRAINING  THEM

WE’RE HELPING CHURCHES REACH UNREACHED PEOPLES… RIGHT IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

  • Training language learners so an immigrant Unreached People Group can be reached in their heart language

 

WE  NEED  HELP  TO  KEEP  GOING…

   …OUR  PARTNERSHIP  TEAM  IS  STANDING  WITH  US

WE CAN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOU!

  • One upcoming ministry event is our November trip to Thailand and South Asia to train missionary language learners and consultants
  • International and in-country tickets needed for Donna (Bill’s tickets already covered)
  • Conference expenses already provided—praise the Lord with us!

Over the Border and Around the World

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Training in Tijuana

Last week we once again had the privilege of teaching at Radius International in Tijuana. There are 11 students there this year, all being trained to go to the hard places of the world, and take the name of Christ to Unreached People Groups.

They are also being taught how learn the Heart Language of the people to whom they will minister, and that’s where we come in. This semester Bill taught a 10-hour course called Form and Meaning.

Form & Meaning? What does THAT mean? Glad you asked…

Form & Meaning

Missionaries have the most important message in the world (that’s the “meaning” part.) They want to communicate that message clearly. But that’s not so easy. To have effective cross-cultural ministry, they need to be trained about what to say and do (that’s the “form“) that will clearly get that message across.

The trouble is, people around the world communicate meaning in different ways. Each language and culture has unique forms to share a particular message. Sounds, words, letters, grammar, gestures, even acts of friendship… all are forms that communicate very different meanings.

THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL WAY TO COMMUNICATE A PARTICULAR MEANING

Bill teaching Form & Meaning at Radius

It’s All About That Meaning

Here are some fun examples of form/meaning differences:

  • Letters: The letter j represents one sound in English (as in “jump”), but a different sound in other languages: h as in Juan in Spanish, y as in Bjorn in Swedish, etc. “What a j sounds like” is completely arbitrary.
  • Words: “Cat” in English is gato in Spanish, right? Well, kinda. Gato also means a car jack, a person from Madrid, and many other things. Words don’t have one-to-one correspondence.
  • Metaphors: In our English Bibles, we have “edge” of a sword; but in the Hebrew and Greek it is actually the “mouth” of the sword (yes, it’s a double-mouthed sword in Hebrews and Revelation!) In Palawano, the “mouth” of the sword is its tip; the blade or edge is called the “eye” of the sword.
  • Grammar: English has the single word “us.” Palawano has three different words, meaning: “us, but not you,” “just you and me” and “you, me and all of us.” Three forms. English has one form, and lumps all three meanings together.
  • Little Things: English has about 150 prepositions and some of them, like “of,” for example, have a dozen or so meanings! Some languages have ONE preposition. Meaning gets communicated with very different forms.

And those are just the easy kinds of differences!

Expect the Unexpected

  • Turning verbs into nouns: Some languages don’t make nouns (repentance, baptism) out of verbs (repenting, getting baptized) the way English and Greek love to do.
  • Making friends: What if saying “I just got you a little something” was an insult? What if saying that a baby was beautiful made the mother frightened (because you just alerted the evil spirits to where a cute victim was)? What if you were supposed to change the form and say that the baby was “ugly” and mother (but not the spirits) would understand the meaning to be, “Oh, what a cute baby!”? What if you gave a friend a dozen roses and they understood you to mean, “Drop dead!” because it was an even number?
  • Asking questions: And what if Jesus’ rhetorical question, “To what shall I liken the Kingdom of God?” meant that he really didn’t have a clue and was asking the disciples to explain it to him?!

In each case, you would have to make some big changes to communicate what you meant to say.

THE FORM MUST CHANGE FOR THE MEANING TO REMAIN THE SAME

That is the lesson Bill was teaching the students. They cannot afford to “think English and translate.” They must learn to think about the meaning and communicate that in the best form. In the fall semester, Bill will teach them more about how to discover the underlying meaning.

It’s a joy and a privilege to teach these eager missionaries and to get to know them. Both of us enjoyed chatting with them over lunch and answering their questions about missionary life.

Oh, and by the way, lunch at Radius is always awesome:

IMG_1139

Thank God with us…

  • a good week of teaching
  • no hassles driving in and out of Mexico 5 days in a row
  • safety in spite of a flat tire on the interstate (after leaving Mexico on Friday)
  • the privilege of training others to reach the Unreached

A Joy: Teaching at Radius International

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Bill overlooking tijuana

Bill with the city of Tijuana spread out behind him, and San Diego in the distance

One of our joys during this season of ministry is Bill’s involvement at Radius International as part-time adjunct faculty, training young missionaries.

bill teaching radius

Radius equips cross-cultural workers to plant churches among unreached people groups. Bill teaches two courses. The first one is five days (10 hours) long, called Form & Meaning. It is part of the Culture Acquisition curriculum at Radius, and is presented during the students’ first semester. Here’s how the Radius website describes that course:

In all areas communication, the difference between “form” and “meaning” is hugely significant. When functioning in our own language and culture, we intuitively manage that difference, and we depend upon it constantly! But what we do intuitively in our own culture can really hinder clear communication across cultural and linguistic boundaries. We want you to avoid the common communication errors that take place when we assume that similar “forms” shared by two cultures have similar “meanings”. We’ll equip you to become aware of the form-meaning challenge and teach you how to successfully manage it.

Bill uses lots of examples from the Philippines and the Palawano people. It’s a fun, interesting module.

Tijuana street with church

Tijuana street scene

The Radius campus is in Tijuana, Mexico. Now that we are based in San Diego, we can drive across the border into Mexico. It takes us almost exactly 30 minutes to get from our house to the school.

Donna often accompanies Bill on the days he teaches, as she really enjoys interacting with the students and staff.

The second course he teaches is Semantics and Translation. It is two weeks long (20 hours), and a bit more intense and technical. It expands on the Form and Meaning course, and covers many of the areas involved in Bible translation with an emphasis on translating the original meaning.

bill teaching radius 2

The students are a committed bunch. They live in Tijuana for 10 months developing ministry skills and character to be effective, long-term cross-cultural workers.

“Radius is a serious, 10-month course,
designed for people who are planning to do serious, long-lasting church planting among unreached peoples.”

They inspire us! One young couple is headed to a war-torn Asian nation, another wants to work in South Asia, another couple is headed for Africa.

The Radius Kitchen

The Radius kitchen

The students live full-time in Tijuana, and eat at the school. We get to join them for lunches when we are down there. Wonderful, home-cooked Mexican food.

Great lunches!

Great lunches! This one was chile rellenos by Donna’s special request.

This past December, Radius’ second graduating class made its exit. And now, just this week, another group of students have started their year of studies.

The map below shows where they may end up in the years to come. Bill and I sincerely hope our relationships with these students will be long-term, and that we will be able to see some of them in their future places of ministry over the coming years, to encourage them, to help them in their language learning, and to see in person what God is doing among Unreached Peoples.

Unreached people group map 2014

For a close-up, interactive version of this map, go to this link.

We appreciate your partnership as we train these young people to effectively plant churches among Unreached People Groups by ministering in their Heart Languages.