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When a Need Meets a Passion

- The English Immersion Experience and Beyond

“How could Wycliffe Australia as a Western mission organisation be of help to Kartidaya?”

Barry Borneman, then the CEO of Wycliffe Australia, asked this question to his roommate, Marnix Riupassa, then the Executive Director of Kartidaya, during a 2012 Wycliffe conference in Bangkok. Neither expected the answer to develop into a yearly English learning programme that even COVID-19 could not stop.

Sprung from a Heartfelt Passion

As the leader of Kartidaya, an Alliance organisation in Indonesia, Marnix’s reply to Barry was that his team needed a better command of English to do their jobs well — for writing emails and reports, setting up travel arrangements for non-Indonesian speaking consultants and accessing commentaries in English.

To Kartidaya, the programme was an answer. To Wycliffe Australia, it was a heartfelt passion. Marg Borneman, Barry’s wife who heads the programme, said one of Wycliffe Australia’s passions is to empower national Bible translation organisations. To Marg, who has a background in teaching English, the programme is about much more than that.

The “English Immersion Experience” (EIE) lets participants improve their English by being immersed in it – living in an English context and learning from native English speakers.

Marg Borneman (Left in front) and the 2016 EIE class from Vanuatu and Indonesia at Kangaroo Ground. )
(Back row left to right: Pastor Joshua of Translation Literacy Programme [TLP], Marcel of YMP3, and Kalite of TLP. Front row left to right: Marg, Pastor Ola of GPM, Isma of Kartidaya, and Raewyn of SIL Australia.)
Photo: Rod Jones

"It was a great opportunity to be immersed in English, building the participants' confidence through sharing life and stories of family, work and faith with each other, Wycliffe staff and home-stay hosts, and taking part in church based English classes, " Marg said.

The programme started in 2012. Each year the experience has been enriched in different ways, such as participating in a TESOL training course, Wycliffe’s Open Day, Wycliffe courses on cross-cultural ministry and programme planning workshops.

A Common Desire Among Participants

Over the years, 22 national Christian workers have benefited from the programme, hosted by Wycliffe Australia at its National Centre in Kangaroo Ground on the outskirts of Melbourne. Apart from Indonesia, participants came from the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and East Timor.

2017 EIE participants from Vanuatu and Indonesia in the classroom at Kangaroo Ground.
(Left to right: Elsy of YPMK Kaleb Yosua, Father Norman of TLP, Pastor Mon of GPM, and Ocha of GPM.)
Photo: Marg Borneman

Though these participants have different roles in different countries — Bible translators, pastors, Scripture engagement workers, administration staff — they share a desire to see the Scriptures translated into the heart languages of their nations. The programme was also an opportunity to experience each other’s cultures and hence better understand each other.

The Mutual Benefits

As a staff member of Kartidaya, Netty Manalu attended EIE in 2019. While she was there in Kangaroo Ground, she stayed in the same unit with her mentors, Marg and Barry.

“They did not know my language, so it pushed me to speak English,” Netty said. Though it was not easy, she learned quickly, “not only English but also their [Australian] culture and weather”.

Karyadi Antonius, another EIE participant from Kartidaya, also found the experiences beneficial. Karyadi joined the programme in 2015. He now serves as the Executive Director of Kartidaya.

“It was a good opportunity to improve my ability in English. Now I’m more confident in speaking English and more familiar with the culture in speaking English,” he said. “With EIE, I could learn English both inside and outside the ‘classroom’.”

Working as a receptionist for Wycliffe Australia, Mary Keef joined the programme as a mentor.

“Getting to know the participants was very rewarding and most encouraging,” she said. “Seeing their willingness to try and their desire to learn was wonderful.… They are so devoted to the Lord and committed to Bible translation… giving of themselves abundantly.”

When COVID-19 Became the World Backdrop

Since 2012, Marg had been keen to support the participants with their English after they returned home. This had been difficult due to other responsibilities, but the chance finally came in 2020.

Christine Franklin, an EOE mentor taking part in an EOE session on Zoom during the pandemic. Her Aussie flag was there to show something from her country.
Photo: Kirk Franklin

After COVID-19 appeared on the world scene and Zoom became a part of daily work and life, Marg and her team decided to run the first virtual version of EIE this summer — English Online Experience (EOE). The six-week programme had 11 participants, including a translator from East Timor and 10 who work with Kartidaya. Five of the mentors work with Wycliffe Australia, one with SIL Australia and the seventh is a supporter of Wycliffe Australia. The group met once a week starting in August. Each 90-minute session included three groupings – the whole class, small break-out groups, and sometimes participants met individually with their mentors. For homework, participants talked with their mentors by email and WhatsApp.
Several participants said EOE was not just language learning, but also an “online English fellowship” because a key element of the programme was nurturing spiritual growth together. There were sessions for reflections and discussions on the Word of God and prayer.

To some, EOE was particularly a blessing because it was virtual.

“Because of my area of finance work, it’s impossible for me to leave my work for a long time to attend an English course,” said Anita Chandra of Kartidaya. Yet, through Zoom and WhatsApp, she could practise with her mentor without leaving the country and her job.

Helene Savage, an HR assistant for Wycliffe Australia, had been taking an online TESOL course. The EOE provided her with a great opportunity to observe how a class is led and also to practise teaching sessions herself. She also loved meeting the Indonesian colleagues.

“The best part was the sweet fellowship,” Helene said. “It felt like we were one big family and by the end of the six sessions, even the shyer ones to speak English looked a lot more confident and comfortable.”

Due to international travel restrictions because of the pandemic, the in-person EIE may not happen soon. Yet, the need of these national workers for better English and the passion of Wycliffe Australia to help have become a strong motivation to keep the programme going.

“We plan to offer several options for ongoing English support for this group, as well as run EOE2 early next year with another group of participants,” Marg said. “We look forward to building our relationships on a personal and organisational level and seeing what fruit, beside English improvement, God has for us in the future.”

By Ling Lam

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Special Report - May 2025

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

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

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.