Home Stephen Coertze

Looking ahead at 2024

Stephen Coertze
Executive Director
Wycliffe Global Alliance

February 2024

Dear Friends

Warm greetings from Johannesburg! As 2024 unfolds, we marvel at the work of God in our rapidly changing world. And, we look forward to a number of gatherings and conversations intended to draw us together as an Alliance. Let me take this opportunity to mention a few things on our collective agenda for this year.

Covenant 3

In March, the Alliance Board of Directors will review a new version of our Covenant/Statement of Commitment. They will send it to Alliance organisations for their input, and then will finalise it in time for the Global Gathering in October-November. Then in early 2025 we will start the signing / re-signing process with Alliance organisations.

Alliance organisations sign this Covenant/Statement of Commitment with each other in recognition of their participation in the Alliance community and in the mission of God. Periodically, the document is updated and a new signing process takes place. This will be the third version; recommended minor changes from the current covenant are mostly stylistic, with a word or phrasing change here and there.

The church in Bible translation

We have had a number of conversations in recent years about the Alliance’s understanding of and relationship with the worldwide church. The Alliance has several core, foundational documents regarding the church—including a statement recognizing that it is God’s primary instrument for mission. Our Bible Translation Programs Philosophy statement mentions the church prominently. We believe, though, that we also need a full, separate statement about the church. This will recognize the role of the church in Bible translation and the call for the Alliance to come alongside it and participate together. The Alliance Leadership Team has presented a draft statement to the Board, which will be released after the Board’s March meeting. We will share the statement with the whole Alliance and follow up with plans.

We envision this leading to a global conversation in 2024 involving Alliance organisations that are church denominations, and also other churches that are not necessarily Alliance organisations. Historically, the Bible translation movement has diminished church participation to praying, sending people and sending money. But are there more ways in which the church desires to participate? Where and how is it already happening?

Our first priority will be to meet with church leaders from around the world and design the discussion, so that we don’t simply come with our agenda. That meeting will lead to the wider conversation and later analysis of what we discussed and learned together.

Global Gathering

This year will culminate with our Global Gathering, planned for 31 October through 4 November in Johannesburg. This will be the first in-person Global Gathering since 2016, as the 2020 gathering was canceled by the pandemic.

This year’s gathering provides another indication of a new era in Bible translation; it will be the first one held solely as an Alliance event rather than a joint event with SIL. Our theme is Growing Together, and four expressions of that theme will be woven into the program: Community, Explore and Discern Together, Worship and Celebrate.

We look forward to coming away with a clear sense of where we are together as an Alliance, and of the journey ahead as we move into 2025 and beyond.

Power in mission

Starting late this year, the Alliance will prepare for global discussions about power in mission, and specifically in Bible translation.

We want to look at systems of power and control—decision-making in one context that is forced onto other contexts. Today’s mission structures and even mission theology are still based largely on Christendom as a dominant historical and cultural force. By Christendom, I mean the Western countries, empires and power structures where Christianity has been the dominant religion. Mission was built on the idea of from the West to the rest.

The reality has rapidly shifted: Mission today is from everywhere, to everywhere. But many of our structures and systems are still built and driven from the Christendom paradigm. We need to ask questions about that. What is different? Do those traditional structures still serve a purpose? Or do we need to understand and implement structures that are more relevant to the way we understand mission today?

Power in mission can be seen in several major ways. These include:

Resources. I am thinking here of not just organisations’ capacity to give resources such as money, but also their capacity to request money. Some organisations just have a more eloquent way of requesting funding, and they have an edge over organisations or individuals that don’t have that same capacity or training.

Structures. Some organisations have been so well-structured that they have dominated other contexts—which then have become dependent on them. This might not always be the best approach in participating with God in his mission. We might get the most expedient results, but it does not mean that our process honours God.

Information. Researchers realise that the one who controls the statistics wins the game. This raises questions about our own statistics on the status of Bible translation, both globally and locally. Organisations utilise such statistics to decide where they are going to influence and participate. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we know the picture is incomplete. Communities in desperate need of help might not receive it because the statistics don’t highlight them.

For centuries, the symbols of Christianity and Christendom—whether we recognised them or not—have been a crown, a throne and a sceptre. Symbols of earthly power. But the true symbols of Christianity look very different: a crown of thorns. The cross. The empty tomb, implying death and resurrection. A seed that first has to die in the ground to be able to bear growth. A broken vessel – the cup and bread of communion.

How do those symbols inform us as an Alliance? I think this conversation will help us to revisit some of our past reflections, such as the ones regarding community or funding, that are part of our ethos. It will be a chance to assess together how we are doing as an Alliance. Late this year, after the Global Gathering, we will give more structure and thought to this conversation for 2025 and beyond.

Meantime, let me recommend The Mission Matrix by Kirk Franklin and Paul Bendor-Samuel with Deborah Crough. This new book by three Alliance veterans helps us understand our journey as we move from the Christendom model of mission into a new, evolving mission context.

Publications

Speaking of Alliance-related publications, let me mention two more. One is the newly published book, The Journey Concept by Susan Van Wynen, our Consultant for Strategy. With input from more than 50 church and mission leaders in 36 nations, the book encourages the church and mission movements to move beyond strategy models founded in military, industrial-age and competitive thinking. The Journey Concept seeks to help anyone participating in God’s mission navigate continuous change and multiple contexts and cultures with grace and discernment, while remaining firmly grounded and growing in God and his Word.

And then I have asked Kirk Franklin, my predecessor as the Alliance Executive Director, to work on an additional publication for us. This will focus on our understanding of collaboration—lessons we have learned within the Alliance and how we are seeing the concept develop further.

Vision 2025

A joint SIL and Alliance team is planning an event for May 2025 to celebrate Vision 2025. We will have more about that soon, and several Alliance publications throughout this year will discuss the impact and implications of Vision 2025. Let me point you first to The Journey Podcast, which features a two-part interview with John Watters. It was John in 1999 who first suggested Vision 2025, that Bible translation could be started in the next generation for every language community that needs it. It’s a fascinating conversation. Especially for our organisations for whom Vision 2025 is less familiar, this provides a good introduction.

In the Alliance areas

A number of activities and discussions are taking place in the Alliance’s four areas.

In the Americas area, national Bible translation roundtables continue to multiply – we added four new ones just last year. Now, for 2024 we look forward to these roundtables bridging national borders for cross-regional discussions within the Americas.

The Europe area is looking at how to assist the church in several emerging realities: the diaspora and its relationship to Bible translation, translation in Roma languages, and translation in Deaf sign languages.

Africa area organisations have caught on very well to the discussions on influences on the different Alliance organisations as they relate to Bible translation, external and internal influences on the organisations. They will continue to unpack those as they consider their own participation in Bible translation.

The Asia-Pacific area plans an area conference this May. It will be the first opportunity for Nicky Chong, our new area director, to meet with all of the Asia-Pacific Alliance organisations in the same room. This conference will help set the direction for further collaboration within the region and globally. I will participate as well.

• • •

So, that is a brief overview of the year ahead for the Alliance. Of course, anything and everything could change overnight. We learned that four years ago as a global pandemic shifted our course radically. Come what may, we grow in the assurance that God remains firmly in control and that he chooses to involve us all in building his kingdom—often in surprising new ways. May we all grow more like Jesus in this journey together.

News

View all articles

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.