How Long Does It Take?

Stephen: If you've been to one of our Missionary conferences, read our blog, or watched our YouTube channel, no doubt you've heard us talk about the importance of translation and of elephant churches. These are churches that take time to build and take time to grow. These churches aren't the dazzling product of a fancy multiplication strategy, but simply the means of grace. In our era of instant gratification, that prospect of slow progress on the mission field goes against everything that we're taught. But as Brooks and other missionaries can tell you, the time it takes to see disciples truly mature and grow in Christ is worth it. And it's time missionaries need to be prepared to give before they go. Brooks, our question today comes from Jason. He asks, "On average, how long does it take for an elephant church to be planted? On average, how long does it take for the Bible to be translated into the language that it was not previously available in?"

Brooks: So, this is another good question. How long does it take? And it is something that I wish I could put an exact number on for everybody, but here's the honest truth:  to plant an elephant church, you just don't know how long it will take. And to see a translation completed, it really depends on a variety of factors. Some of those factors are the translator's ability, the language group, and the helpers that you get in that process, what their education level is. And the church, honestly, it goes in different factors. It goes in ways that you just can't predict. I remember hearing Paul Washer talk one time and he said it's a miracle of God when one church is planted in less than 10 years. It's an absolute miracle. What he's getting at is it's a miracle that a church is planted period. A good church, a healthy church, an elephant church. I love the way that you phrase that. Baby, what were some of the thoughts that you had just going back this year to Yembiyembi and seeing some of the young ladies and just your thoughts on elephant churches to begin with?

Nina: I love the visual description of elephant churches and the meaning behind that. But I think just looking at how long it took us and then how long it's taken other people, the length of time—I get leery of people thinking like they have to put a time marker on it because when you do that, when that time comes, if things aren't quite how you want them, it's easy to think, "Well, now I'm done." And by God's grace, He allowed us to stay, and we did not have a time marker on that. We'd been cautioned against that and thought, really, you know, fought that in our own minds. But however long it took us, the joy to go back and see the elephant church that we were able to be a part of planting there, just how it has lasted generations past us. The joy of seeing the people that we have discipled, but then seeing people that we have not, like we had no part in the next generation, that they're even stronger than the ones that we were spending the most time with. The kids of those parents who have grown up, actually some of them now have just known nothing but being in a believing family, which is such a sweet gift. But to see how things have changed for them and the strength that they have in their faith, how the Lord has given them clear eyes to see and a strong faith to believe in Him and trust in Him. It's so sweet to see this next generation of this elephant church be stronger than anything we could have imagined. But I think a lot of that had to do with, obviously it all had to do with the Lord. But just being cautious of not putting time limits on that. I think people want to know "what will this take me," and I think the answer is until it's done.

Brooks: Just practically, Jason, and this is a really good question, if you're looking at the church plant, I would be very cautious to set time frames on that. Generally, we like to tell the Radius students this is going to take somewhere between 10 and 25 years. That's a really broad window, I know, but there is just a lot that is the unknown factors that you just can't get into until you get on site. So, some helps in the church planting timeline and then getting into some very specific helps on the Bible translation timeline.

Number one, for the church planting timeline, get good training. Some people are nervous that if I go off and get another year of training, it's going to just add to the church planting process. Friends, it will shave off more years and more frustration than you can possibly imagine to be well trained in cross-cultural church planting before you leave your home country. That's my number one thing for cross-cultural church planters.

There are other good books to read. I can get into those, but let me just with the minutes that we have left touch on the Bible translation one. You have a wide spectrum in Bible translation. So, we did the Tyndale episode for Missionary. If you haven't watched that episode, go to Amazon Prime or iTunes or some sort of streaming platform that I don't know about. But watch that episode, and there's a chunk in there that literally shocked me when I was reading the script. And it says that Tyndale retired to a certain area and within weeks, not months, weeks, he finished the New Testament. And I mean, I nearly fell out of my airplane chair when I read that because it took me nine years to do the Yembiyembi New Testament, and I had a co-worker who was doing four of the books along with me and a wife who was right beside me helping with the content checking. Tyndale. One of the lessons that people don't realize in Bible translation is that those who know the language that they're translating into are so much faster. And the fact that Tyndale had grown up speaking English (Martin Luther, same thing, he grew up speaking German) once they mastered the languages of the Scriptures, that's Koine Greek and that's Hebrew, Aramaic as well. But once they knew those, they could translate so much better. And that's a great lesson for translators that are going overseas. Know the language of the people well. The fact that Tyndale could do it in weeks is just astounding. You've got Adoniram Judson. It took him 20 years to do the New Testament, four more years to do the Old Testament. Now, there's a lesson in there as well. The longer that you translate, and I found this to be completely true, and, baby, you verify, the longer that you translate, the faster you get. At the beginning, it will take you weeks to knock out one chapter. By the end of it, when we were chugging through the book of First and Second Peter, those were the last two books that we translated, we could do a chapter a day. And it was you just get faster. It's a set of muscles.

And so, the training that I would think through before you go overseas is just getting good Bible translation training. Not necessarily the training that will train you how to do that, but an overview of Bible translation. I would read some biographies on Tyndale, on Luther, on others who have translated into foreign tongues. And I would just again look towards getting the original languages when you come back and you are about ready to step into translation. That's usually this hidden thing that people don't talk about is that before you step into translation, if you're four, five, six, seven years out, don't get the translation training because it'll all be gone by the time you start actually translating. But right before you step into it, when you come home on a home assignment or you're away for a while, there are programs and Radius has partnerships with a handful of programs, that will train you on the mechanics of Bible translation. That's when you want to get it. But the original languages help tremendously. They're not a must. That's a whole other podcast. But they are tremendously helpful. But knowing the language of the people that you are going to translate the Scriptures into their tongue, that's the key. That is such a huge key that we can take away from Tyndale and Luther.

So yeah, Jason, I hope this isn't too vague to be unhelpful, but it would be—Nina and I would be remiss to put time limits on this. By God's grace, when it is done, it is done. I remember when I finished the Scriptures in Yembiyembi and someone came in and said, "You have now joined the line of Martin Luther, William Tyndale, John Wycliffe, and you are part of that procession." What an incredible thought. So Jason, I hope that's you someday.

Stephen: To watch the William Tyndale film that Brooks talked about in this episode, you can stream it on Amazon Prime or Apple TV, or you can visit missionary.com/store to order a special box set of all six of our Missionary: Obeying the Great Commission films. If you have a question you would like to hear answered on Ask Missionary, drop a comment on this episode. Get in touch with us on social media or send us an email through missionary.com, and your question may be featured on the show. And don't forget to subscribe to the show to get notified when the next episode airs next week. We'll be diving into a question many church planters wrestle with: "How do we handle infant baptism versus believers baptism in the context of planting elephant churches?" See you next week.