The Journey August 2024: Wycliffe Ethiopia’s Bible Translation and Church Planting Initiative (BTCP)

Wycliffe Ethiopia's offices by night.

At Wycliffe Ethiopia, our mission is to see communities transformed through the life-changing Word of God. Achieving this requires two essential components: the Bible translated into the community's heart language (mother tongue) and a vibrant church where believers can gather and grow spiritually. Historically, efforts have focused either on Bible translation or church planting, leading to gaps where communities have God's Word but lack a supportive church environment or vice versa, resulting in churches without proper scriptural guidance and the spread of false teachings. BTCP, on the other hand, is an integrated approach to reaching a community through preaching the gospel, planting churches, and doing Bible translation simultaneously for effective disciple-making and sustainable gospel ministry in places or communities for example living in the borderlines of Sudan-South Sudan and Ethiopia.

The great commission mandates us with both components. Making disciples of all nations requires the availability of God’s word and a community of faith that needs to be a disciple or follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Matt 28:20) Therefore, we strongly believe that Bible Translation and Church planting go hand in hand and are the two sides of the same coin. One cannot stand or be effective without the other. 

To address this, we have launched a new initiative called Bible Translation and Church Planting on cross-boundary languages (BTCP). This initiative targets border area language communities, often overlooked as minority tribes that don't fully belong to either neighboring country. These communities have neither the Bible translated into their language nor a church planted among them. Believing that the Word of God and Jesus' message is for everyone, we are committed to reaching these communities through BTCP. 

Our Strategy

Our strategy is to recruit people from the community and train them both in Bible translation, Evangelism, and church planting. The concept is to have our Bible Translators dedicate four days a week to translation work and the remaining three days to evangelism, mission, and church planting efforts.

We have already seen success with the Ganza community, located on the border between Ethiopia and Sudan. Classified as an unreached people group with no existing churches, we have five translators working with the Ganza language. From Monday to Thursday, they focus on translation, while Friday to Sunday is dedicated to evangelizing and establishing churches. Their ability to move freely between Sudan and Ethiopia has greatly facilitated their ministry, allowing them to provide comfort and reassurance to a community that has endured significant conflict and discrimination.

This initiative is already bearing fruit, with our translators becoming a beacon of hope and spiritual growth for the Ganza community. We are excited about the impact this approach will have on other border area language communities as we continue to share the life-changing Word of God and plant churches that nurture believers in their faith.

Looking ahead, Wycliffe Ethiopia will be organizing an international BTCP conference in 2025. This conference will bring together different Bible Translation organizations, church planting missions, and local churches to network and collaborate. The focus will be on BTCP efforts and their significant impact on minority language groups located in border areas. We believe this conference will be a pivotal moment in expanding our efforts and fostering stronger connections among those dedicated to spreading the Word of God and building thriving church communities.

—Wycliffe Ethiopia