The Bible for the Church

I heard a rousing sermon this morning, about how we sell (and cheaply) our Christian identity in times of trouble, and how it is the role and responsibility of the Christian to leave comfort for more difficult places.  He talked about the comfort and safety of the womb, and the death that comes if we don't leave it for the harsher world outside.
Somewhere in there, he mentioned the 2/3 world church, and how the places that have historically had the church, are abandoning Christ for more pleasant pursuits.  And somehow, I made a connection that I never had before.
In preparing to come out here, I did a lot of thinking about missions, and the role of Bible translation in the church.  I read a brochure once on the connection between Bible translation and church planting.  While some may oppose the two works, I believe that it is foundational to the church not only in that a new church needs the Bible in a form that its laypeople can easily understand, but also the process of Bible translation trains up community members in the understanding of the Bible, which provides the church with trained (and hopefully mature) leaders.  In some places where Bible translation is done, there is little or no church at the beginning of the process, and at least some mature leadership by the end -- and this is church planting.
But that is not the way it often works around here. Africa has been evangelized, for the most part, for some time.  But the missionaries that came used trade languages (to reach a broader audience, because it could be learned before moving to an area of work, or for a number of other reasons), in most or all areas of the church life, but certainly including preaching and scripture reading. I think of the story of Adoniram Judson, diligently working away on his Burmese language scripture drafts because they were essential to his church planting work, and God's preservation of it through his time in prison and the war with Britain.  And I realize that I can't think of one such story in Africa. Some people ask us if we're learning/using "African," while the reality is that there are some 2,000 African languages, not including dialects of those languages, some of which can be significant.  Many people know of Swahili, which is spoken in this part of Congo, but it is also spoken in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and at least a bit differently in each place.  Swahili is a mother tongue, but the Swahili people live on the other side of Kenya, two countries and Lake Victoria away from us.  People here who speak Swahili do so to get along with people from other tribes, who therefore speak other languages.  By "get along with,"  mean principally buying and selling, but also relationships with colleagues in most work outside of education and government, and often within them as well.  For education and government, French is often used -- particularly in the presence of a foreigner.  So people here mock their own use of Swahili, and they have a simplified grammar and vocabulary, as would be true, I think, for anyone working in a language that was not their first language (e.g., I get by just fine in French here, but no French person would ever mistake me for one of their own...).  But this is the language of the life of the church.
One of the saddest implications of this fact for me is that people only know reading and writing in other languages, and in general the impression is that reading and writing is hard.  Reading and writing in another language is hard, but it is possible to have an experience of reading and writing in your mother tongue, that moves ideas much more smoothly between your head and paper -- as most native English speakers know.  But for me, the greatest shame of this situation is that most people here have no idea.  They try regular Bible reading (or not), find it hard, and give up. So people get up to sing and dance by the hundreds on Sunday, but the weekly Bible study has maybe 30 people.  Why should they work so hard at it?  Pastors are supposed to work hard at it, but I can't really blame laypeople for not regularly reading the scriptures.  And even for pastors, it is clear at times that they have not understood the text: we had a sermon recently on Ezekiel 14, where the pastor read , e.g., from vv 13-14:

Son of man, when a land sins against me... even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord GOD.

But his sermon clearly betrayed that his understanding of the above was the following:

Son of man, when a land sins against me... if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord GOD.

Perhaps a subtle difference, but missing "even" and "but" turns the scripture on its head.  We got a wonderful sermon on how we had to be as righteous as Noah, Daniel, and Job if we were going to avoid God's wrath.  So the church got once more taught on works righteousness, and missed a chance to see the Grace of God in the face of Christ in the Old Testament (where, for one person to save another's life, he would need to be even more righteous than Noah, Daniel, and Job!)
But my point is, the church here is experiencing a famine for God's word -- not the milk of newborns, but the meat that allows full maturity.  And it may be that anyone who has worked here has heard the metaphor describing the church as topsoil -- miles wide, and a couple inches deep.  I believe this is a direct consequence of not having the Bible in the languages that people understand the best -- the languages it would be easiest for the to read and write in, if there were anything to read, or a system to write with.
So, this morning, when the elder mentioned the 2/3 church, it occurred to me, that the question for missions and Bible translation was not, "is Bible translation the best means of and/or necessary for evangelism of the world?" but, "Given that the center of the Christian church is moving to places where it has not historically been, do we want the people in those places to be able to read the Bible fluently, or not?" Or, we could say that Bible translation is not (only) a question for bringing people into the church, but it is a question for the health and maturity of the church as a whole. Or, as the Westminster Confession of Faith (Ch 1.8b) says:

because these original tongues [i.e., Hebrew and Greek] are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner; and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.

Wherever the church goes, we have a responsibility to provide the Scriptures.  Laypeople have a right and responsibility to read (and search!) them, and they can't, if all they have is Hebrew or Greek (which they don't know), and they won't if all they have is a trade language, because of the difficulty.  We want a church where God's word dwells plentifully, not where it exists only for the few who are educated or obstinate enough read it in another language.  This is what will give the church proper worship; this is what will give the church patience, comfort, and hope.
So, in 100 years, when the Christian church in America looks like the Christian church in Europe does today, and when the centers of Christian thought and activity are in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, my hope and prayer is that those centers will be firmly grounded in a clear understanding of the scriptures, and trained by habits of Biblical worship and daily encouragement from those scriptures.
Well, that's what I think, anyway, and why I do what I do.