History of the Wycliffe World Day of Prayer

Wycliffe’s World Day of Prayer is a global celebration of:

Thanks­giv­ing— as we re­mem­ber who God is and how He has done the seem­ingly im­pos­si­ble…again and again.

Joy— as we rec­og­nize how God con­tin­ues to open doors and hearts to ac­com­plish His mission.

De­pen­dence— as we ac­knowl­edge that all that we have and are is be­cause of God.

God is sov­er­eign and almighty, yet He has in­vited us to par­tic­i­pate with Him in his mis­sion. Prayer is an es­sen­tial facet of that par­tic­i­pa­tion and keeps us rooted in our re­la­tion­ship with Him.

There is a long tra­di­tion of Wycliffe staff, col­leagues and lo­cal churches pray­ing to­gether on be­half of Bible trans­la­tion. Every day, around the world, peo­ple are pray­ing for the Bible trans­la­tion move­ments, for the im­pact of God’s Word on in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties, and for lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties who don’t yet have His Word. But one day a year, No­vem­ber 11, we make a spe­cial ef­fort to come to­gether in prayer, united in hearts and minds in all our di­verse con­texts and locations.

Why November 11?

On No­vem­ber 11, 1933, Wycliffe founders, Cameron Townsend and L.L. Legters, crossed the bor­der from the U.S. into Mex­ico be­cause God an­swered prayer. It was a ma­jor step for­ward for Bible trans­la­tion and also the be­gin­ning of what even­tu­ally be­came Wycliffe (now more than 100 Wycliffe Global Al­liance or­ga­ni­za­tions) and close part­ner or­ga­ni­za­tion, SIL.

The Journey—

  • Townsend’s vision for Bible translation had continued to grow as he lived with and learned from the Kaqchikel people of Guatemala. They completed a translation of the New Testament in 1931.
  • While working on a Kaqchikel literacy plan, Townsend met Dr. Moisés Sáenz, an educator from Mexico. Townsend shared his philosophy of education with Dr. Sáenz. He shared his vision of language communities transformed by God through His Word in their language. He shared his desire to see people learning to read in their own language, teaching each other and valuing their language and heritage, confident to “stand on their own feet”. Sáenz was impressed by Townsend’s vision and wrote a letter inviting him to start work in Mexico.
  • In 1933, while recuperating from tuberculosis, Townsend received a visit from his enthusiastic colleague,  L.L. Legters. Legters had recently travelled to Mexico and noted, “There are at least fifty Indian tribes without the Bible, and some are large.”
  • The participants of the August 1933 Keswick Bible Conference in New Jersey prayed for the Indians in Mexico because new foreign missionaries were not allowed in and those working there were severely restricted. After praying, the group thought Legters and Townsend should go to Mexico to get permission for Bible translation work among the Indians.
  • So Townsend and Legters went to Mexico. At the border, the guards refused them entrance. Townsend and Legters prayed. Then Townsend remembered the letter from Sáenz and gave it to the guards. Recognizing the author of the letter, a renowned and respected educator in Mexico, they called Mexico City for orders.
  • Legters and Townsend prayed, sang and prayed again while waiting for an answer. Finally it came. Yes, they could enter Mexico.

No­vem­ber 11—Wycliffe's World Day of Prayer—a good day to re­mem­ber how God has ac­knowl­edged the prayers of His peo­ple and a good day to cel­e­brate Him to­gether as we con­tinue in prayer.

05/2025 Global

Special Report - May 2025

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05/2025 Global

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry

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Global

Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI

Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities.  In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on.  On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot.  This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them.   Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.  

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