Introduction

The Equipping Journey is an integrated approach to Bible translation that weaves together theological formation, translation training, and ministry development. The following descriptions will help orient you to the session layout, key elements, and core outputs for each session of the Equipping Journey.

Session Layout

Each session of the Equipping Journey is structured around five movements. Each of these movements provides a way to deepen understanding of the biblical text in a way that serves spiritual growth and translation quality.

1. Biblical Interpretation: Observing the Details of the Story: After reading the biblical passage, translation teams will answer basic questions (and learn about a grammar-translation issue) to familiarize themselves with the details of the text. After discussing these activities, translation teams will summarize the passage by retelling it in their own words.
2. Theological Dialogue: Discussing the Meaning of the Story: In this movement, translation teams will explore the meaning of the text together as a community. After this discussion, translation teams will produce a draft of the passage in a community translation process.
3. Personal Reflection: Following the Teaching of the Story: This section encourages translation teams to evaluate how God wants you to apply this passage to your own life. After this personal reflection, the translation team will use quality checking questions to assess the translation draft.
4. Ministry Practice: Serving the Church with the Story: The fourth movement encourages church networks to use the passage in the life of their churches in order to build up other believers in their faith. After ministering this passage to others, translation teams use checking questions to also perform a community check of the translation draft.
5. Missional Outreach: Sharing the Truth of the Story: In this final movement, members of your church network (and translation team) share this biblical passage with unbelievers in the wider language community. In these encounters, translation teams use comprehension questions to check the basic clarity of the draft.

Key Elements

Below is a brief explanation of each core component of the Equipping Journey process.

Session Overview

At the beginning of each session of the Equipping Journey is a session overview. The aim of this section is to provide various information that might be helpful as you study, translate, and check each biblical passage. In this opening section, you will find a preview of the biblical passage, a one sentence summary of its key idea, a list of core training objectives, a short narrative summary, a general book introduction, a passage outline, selected themes present in the passage, and a meaning-based translation of the passage.

Reader Translation

The English translation for each biblical passage in the Equipping Journey is a reader version. This translation aims to accurately represent the original languages of the biblical text (Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament) and to communicate the text in a simple and understandable way. This kind of translation also serves as an example for drafting a meaning-based translation in your own language.

Translation Notes

The translation of each biblical passage in the Equipping Journey has translation notes. These notes are built with a unique design to help churches understand both translation and theological issues in the text. In general, the notes follow a similar structure: verse number, selected phrase, alternate translations (L is a literal, form-based rendering; S is a simplified, meaning-based rendering), brief explanation, translation issues, theological statement, and translation suggestion.

Community Formation

Each session of the Equipping Journey begins with a community formation exercise. The aim of this opening activity is to prepare our hearts to study and translate God's Word, to develop a sense of unity among team members, and to equip emerging leaders with basic skills in shepherding groups of people. For church networks meeting together in person, these activities can easily serve as an introduction to each session. For networks and translation teams working remotely, some modified version of this introduction could also be used. This activity could take anywhere between 20–45 minutes.

Question Sets

The Equipping Journey is designed with various question sets to help guide church networks in a study and translation of the biblical text. These question sets help translation teams understand, apply, translate, check, and use the text. Like a tapestry of three threads, the Equipping Journey aims to weave together a process that integrates theological formation, translation training, ministry development. In order to accomplish this, the framework of each session is built on the following seven sets of questions:

1. Observation Questions: These questions ask about the very basic facts of the text. These questions will be identical questions asked for the Comprehension Checking Questions. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 15–30 minutes.
2. Translation Questions: These questions encourage conversation about specific details that are linguistic, grammatical, or translational in nature. These questions will be slightly modified to produce Community Checking Questions. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 45–60 minutes.
3. Discourse Questions: These questions help people explore the important themes in the biblical passage. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 45–60 minutes.
4. Theology Questions: These questions assist translation teams to discuss timeless truths taught in each scripture portion. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 60–90 minutes.
5. Reflection Questions: These questions invite participants to apply biblical principles to their own lives. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 30–45 minutes.
6. Community Checking Questions: These questions list specific check the essential meaning of the translation draft and equip members of your church network in core fundamentals of the Christian faith. These questions are slight modifications of the Translation Questions. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 45–60 minutes.
7. Comprehension Checking Questions: These questions aid translation teams as they check the basic clarity of the translation draft and discuss its core message with those in the wider language community. These questions are identical to the Observation Questions. Depending on the size of the passage, this question set can take around 15–30 minutes.

Translation Training

Each session of the Equipping Journey has a translation training activity. This translation exercise aims to help your translation team better understand a linguistic or translation issue that is present in the current biblical passage you are studying and drafting. This training module can be rearranged anywhere in the session flow, but it seems to fit well after the Translation Questions. In these translation training activities, you will be guided through an explanation of a translation issue, a list of biblical examples, discovery of this linguistic issue in your own language, translation strategies and suggestions, a summary/review of the issue, and application of your learning in the biblical passage you are currently studying.

Community Drafting

The Equipping Journey encourages community drafting. After an initial study of the text, you will follow basic instructions to produce a draft of the specific passage you have been studying.

Ministry Plans

In the movements Ministry Practice and Missional Outreach you will develop some way to minister each passage to others. In the Ministry Practice movement, you will consider how to minister this passage to other believers in your church community. In the Missional Outreach movement, you will envision how to witness this passage to unbelievers in the wider language community. In the context of each of these ministry situations, you will also check the quality of your translation draft.

Checking Activities

In the Equipping Journey, you are encouraged to check your draft for translation quality. In the Personal Reflection movement, your translation community will perform a team check for translation quality. In the third movement called Ministry Practice, you will check the quality of your draft among members of the church community. The final movement called Missional Outreach allows for you to check the translation draft in the wider language community. After all of these checks are complete, it is fitting to send your draft (and the insights you gained from these checks) back to your church network leaders for their own assessment of the translation quality. Throughout each of these checks, it is important to record any noteworthy translation decisions and the rationale/reasoning behind them.

Core Outputs

1. Checked Translation: Each session of the Equipping Journey is based in a key passage of Scripture. After completing each session in the Equipping Journey, your church network should have a translation of that key passage which has been checked at three different levels (at least) of quality assurance.
2. Glossary List: After completing each session in the Equipping Journey, translation teams should update and revise a list of how they translated key terms.
3. Translation Decisions: In Personal Reflection, Ministry Practice, and Missional Outreach movements of each session, you are asked to check your translation draft. You are also asked to identify any noteworthy translation decisions (things you affirmed about your translation or things that need to be changed) and the reasoning behind these decisions. After completing each session, you should add these decisions to your list of translation decisions.
4. Session Guide: The goal of the Equipping Journey is to help you study, translate, and use key biblical passages in the context of ministry. After studying, drafting, and checking each passage, you will be asked to reproduce your own version of that Equipping Journey session in a way that will be useful to equip leaders in your own church context. You can feel free to add, delete, rearrange, or reformat elements as your training team decides. In the end, you want to have a usable process/tool that will help you train others in your church context and in other language communities.

Final Thoughts

As you prepare for your own work through the Equipping Journey, here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Identify key trainers and equip them to equip others. In order to reproduce equipping capacity, it is important that your network develops a competent group of trainers who can design and deliver this content in to others. The production of a tool/resource in your church network is not the same as cultivating the leadership capacity in your church network. Use the Equipping Journey as a means to build competent leaders and churches so that will serve your Bible translation and ministry needs into the future.
2. Encourage the whole church to participate in the process. Not every person will be involved in every part of the translation process. Think and pray together as a community can you can mobilize various churches and Christians in your network for various parts of this work (i.e., some people might deacons who can offer technical assistance, others might be evangelists who can check drafts in the wider community, others might be pastors who can provide theological insight into the draft, etc.).
3. Keep your focus on the multiplication and maturity of the church. The aim of the Equipping Journey is to help you grow in Bible translation capacity as you serve the work of the Great Commission. Consider how you can leverage the need of Bible translation as an opportunity to help your churches grow in the faith and mobilize Christians for the spread of the gospel.
4. Design the Equipping Journey for your own context. When you create your own version of each session, feel the freedom to add, delete, rearrange, or reformat components as needed. In its current form, the Equipping Journey is meant to provide the basic content and process to equip your network to develop whatever is needed in your own context. Networks can feel free to use the entirety or portions as needed.