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New photo library reflects Alliance direction

A new photo library, available to all Alliance organisations, is about more than just sharing images for publications. It reflects the Alliance’s shared values and direction.

The library, found at skip.wycliffe.net, contains more than 15,000 images from around the world. All Alliance organisations and their staff members are encouraged to use the images in corporate and personal communications to illustrate the work of Bible translation. Sign up for a free account here.

“We all recognise the world is becoming more visual,” says Phil Prior, the Alliance’s director for communication. “It's not just about telling people about Bible translation but showing Bible translation, too. This new tool will make that so much easier.”

The previous photo database, also called Skip, needed to be replaced because the software company that created it no longer supported it. Over the past several months, a four-person Alliance team has been transferring and cataloguing images to the new service provided by PhotoShelter, one of the world’s leading providers of digital asset management platforms.

Ling Lam, based in Hong Kong and a member of the Alliance Communications team, leads the Photo Team. She says users will notice immediate improvements from the old system. For one, choosing and downloading photos is far less cumbersome and requires fewer mouse clicks and redirects.

“In the past, it looked like a shopping page where you would get an invoice,” she says. “And then you would get an email in order to download the photos. But with this new system, you can do everything right there. You find a picture you want, click ‘download’ and choose the size you want, from extra-large to extra-small and to fit your purpose like high resolution or low.

“So it is quite a step forward from what we had. If you take just five minutes to navigate around, you will know exactly how it works. It's very easy.”

Users also can create their own workspaces, enabling quick recommending and sharing of photos among teams.

From the photo library: Obed Busi (whose mother tongue is Deg) harvests ground nuts from the field on his mother's farm in New Longoro, Ghana. His mother has this farm as part of a micro enterprise developed from Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation’s (GILLBT) Development Assistance Training Program. Photo: Rodney Ballard

‘Generously give … graciously receive’

The photo library represents more than just a new software solution. It embodies the journey that has been steadily taking place among the entire Alliance. Photos were once provided largely by a central team. Now, the library will rely completely on photo contributions from Alliance organisations and partners.

“This fits very well with the Alliance journey,” Ling says. “We have moved away from having full-time photographers who travelled around the world, and then Alliance organisations were purely the users of these resources,” Ling says. “Now, representatives from all the areas, local photographers, can also contribute.”

“We feel that the Alliance is a community where all of the organisations generously give and graciously receive. We hope that this new system will become a powerful illustration of this mindset.”

From the photo library: A student shares about a recent missions trip during the Sunday morning worship at Tokyo Deaf Church. Photo: Heather Pubols

Sharing the cost

For Skip to be as good as it can be, Alliance organisations will need to work together both in funding it and keeping it stocked with current photos. Wycliffe USA has funded the first two years of software licensing and maintenance through a targeted grant, but starting in late 2024, the Alliance will seek to fund the service as a project. The estimated cost is $7,500 US per year. Any number of Alliance organisations could choose to contribute.

“We will also need people to share their best images to illustrate how this global movement works,” Phil adds. “And as this resource grows and develops, there will be opportunities for more people to get involved with managing the system.”

The arrangement reflects the Alliance’s core value of Partnership and Service: “Partnering interdependently as an expression of the unity of believers. Serving in community through holistic ministry that facilitates translation, access and application of God’s Word.”

From the photo library: a large plant in Costa Rica. Photo: Rodney Ballard

A global team

The people working together to manage Skip come from Alliance organisations.

Along with Ling, the Alliance Photo Team includes Daisy Kilel from BTL Kenya, and Gary McMaster from Wycliffe Australia. The team hopes to add one more member, from the Europe area. Anyone interested can contact Ling.

“Our mission for this small team is to collect new photos from local photographers in various areas,” she says. “Soon we will invite people to contribute their photos. The system allows us to create positions for contributors, where they can upload their photos directly.”

From there, the Photo Team will review the pictures to make sure they meet quality standards. They also can review and edit the caption information. Finally, they will place images into the library and different categories, where they can be used by anyone in the Alliance.

Usage rights

All images in the library are provided under the Creative Commons license of CC:BY 4.0 or CC:BYNCND 4.0 unless otherwise specified. Users should always click on “Show info” and check the information under “usage right”. If no usage rights are mentioned, the Photo Team asks that users follow CC:BY 4.0, including giving credit to the photographer. If users fail to follow these requirements, their access could be revoked.

Thus far, the library contains only photos. But eventually, it might also include PDF versions of organisations’ magazines, plus additional story material that other Alliance organisations could use. Video clips are another possibility, but that would require far more storage capacity and funding.

Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance

Images used with this story can be found in the new Skip photo library.

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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.