Why is Language Fluency So Essential in Missions?

Why is language fluency so essential in missions?

Having fluency in the language is not just important for communication, but it's important for affection. It's important for love, to communicate to the people. If I can speak their language, I can greet them. I can preach to them. I can express love to them. But there's layers that language does. It's like removing the outside layers of an onion.

When you're able to get deeper into the language, it brings a new facet of understanding where they come from. It helps you to understand their background. It helps you to understand their failure to understand the Bible. It helps you to communicate difficult passages.

For example, let's take the word mercy or grace. The English dictionary is about this thick. The Tsonga dictionary is about this thick. So it's not easy to communicate a word like mercy. Tinchalo is the word in Tsonga. But tinchalo can mean several things. Even a word like believe is rifomelo. But rifomelo also means believe, agree, accept. It can mean a host of things.

Try explaining justification in the Tsonga language. Eventually there's a word for justification, but most people don't know that. So to explain justification, whereby you declare someone righteous, you're going to have to tell a story.

And actually, missionaries, in my opinion, have to understand theology in some ways better than pastors in their homeland—because they have to know how to explain it. Sometimes you can just get away by saying justification and you don't really know what it means. But I've learned that when I explain justification, I take off my jacket and I use another person's overcoat. And I explain the great exchange—whereby we were clothed in sin, and God expects us to be righteous. But in the great exchange, Jesus Christ on the cross took our clothing of sin, and in exchange, He gives His righteousness. So that while we are still sinners, we have a righteousness that's been declared to us. But it's not our own righteousness. It's an alien righteousness that came from Christ. So that when we stand before Christ one day, even though we are, in a sense, still sinners, we're clothed with an alien righteousness.

And we have a technical term for that. It's called justification, or we might say imputation. But to explain that in a foreign language takes time. It takes detail. It takes study that cannot be learned in a few moments.

I think of John Paton. He said he taught other people the language by giving them 14 vocabulary words each day, and each day they had to learn 14 new words in Tannese. And that will take you to a level—now you can order from the market, you can buy things, you can greet. But if you want to get to another level of explaining justification, if you want to explain imputation, that's going to take you to a whole new depth of the language. But we're willing to go to that depth because we want to explain the depths of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.