Questions as gift on Christmas day

Yesterday, we watched the movie, "How the Grinch stole the Christmas?" One of the theme/morale of the story is the key of focus of the Christmas gift. Anyway I got gift from my family.

Today I got the gift from the questions of a young girl. I think those are great questions. I tried to paraphrase them:

1. If three of your wishes would be able to be fulfilled, what are your wishes?

2. If you can change yourself, what would you like to change?

3. What is you ideal vacation? Where? and with whom? what context?

4. Who are your best friends? Why?

I have a rough ideas about mine. How about yours? One of the great gifts of Christmas is the holiday that we can spend time with our families or someone that we love and care. Relationship with God and others are certainly great gifts that we should not take if for granted.

I wish you all Merry Christmas and a very blessed new year.

A tribue to Ellis Diebler -- our first consultant in Merei Translation Project

Almost twenty years ago I met Ellis, when I was serving as a translation advisor in Vanuatu for Merei Translation and Literacy projects. He came to serve as our first consultant. We were working on the book of Mark. I am very thankful for that. He was the master of implicit information in the Bible. He was well known for his practice and theory of "Index of Implicit Information" in the New Testament(1993, 1999) especially among the communities of Bible Translation practitioners.

I still remembered the conversation that I asked why didn't he write more for Bible translation. At that time SIL had a lot of research in  linguistics and anthropology, but not much about Bible translation. He replied, "It's because I spend my time to people like you and expect you will do that."

As a good Asian protege taking his mentor's words seriously, I did. I finished my DMin in Bible Translation in 2014. Yes, Ellis, I did.



Ellis is more senior in me in decades but demonstrated the quality of confidence with humility as a Consultant since than has been one of my role models. I still have a long way to gom but as my Bible Translation teacher Merge Croft told the class, I am confident to say and to serve, "I am good, but I am humble." Thank you for all of my clients and colleagues trust me serving them as a consultant in these years. If I can contribute to you as a consultant, it is because of the modeling of Ellis along with many of the consultants and mentors in my life.

Ellis sent out his retirement announcement recently. I don't know what does it mean, in the field of Bible translations and/or ministry, retirement may mean something different. No matter what does it mean about Ellis retirement. His contributions to the field of Bible translation will continue through his books, writing, the Translator's Translation, and the consultants that he trained ....


You may learn more about Ellis and His Work:


https://www.sil.org/biography/ellis-w-deibler


Ellis,  May the Lord bless you whatever your retirement means and is.

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Ellis  has been with the Lord since March 20, 2020.

https://tahlequah.hartfuneralhome.net/obituary/Ellis-Deibler

Open Source, Sharing Resources and what are really yours?

Today I read a blog post from my American friend, title "Are they really yours?" about their children, when they were living in China.

Are they really yours? It think it depends on what does ‘yours’ or possession mean. I think children are our properties in one sense. In different cultures the linkage and relationship change differently overtime. From a Christian point view, we own the responsibility to take care the children and the resources entrusted to us to fulfill His mission. All resources and what we 'owned' are really entrusted to us by God, as He is the creator and owner of all creations.


On the other hand, we will inherit all these in one day, as we will rule with the King of Kings in new heaven and earth.
In this world, we would like to protect our right, copy right, property right, human right. The example of Jesus is about giving His right in order to give us the right to back to the Father's house.

Ironically open source movement reflecting some practices of sharing resources in the early church, but not necessary the churches today. Resources is entrusted to us to bring Glory to him and enjoy our life and labor in a Christian manner.

What are the bottle neck(s) of 'consultant development' or "Scriptural translation/engagement"?

I try to think out of the boxes about "consultant and bottle neck" in the context of God's mission with the following concern and questions:

#Bottle neck of what?

I think we need to clarify what are the bottles of the bottle neck about. Are we thinking the bigger pictures of making God's word in every languages .... or Missio Dei, the Great Commission.  What are the theology and biblical based supporting the God's word need to be in every languages or what languages?

a. What are all the tongues in Revelation or other part the bible referring to? All the existing tongues(7000+ languages) plus those languages already dead?

b. What can be other necks of the bottle? Can there be more bottles? Consultants can be one, consultant training can be one tube of one of the neck, but there can be other necks, other ways, such as collaborating, computer aided, paraconsultant,  diaspora engagement and other suggestion by innovators. 

c.Beside bible translation what are other alternatives of making God's words available to all people? I believe that Bible translation is only a small step to make God's word accessible by other other in some context and not all context.

d. Besides the BT communities here, what can be other perspectives from other disciplines within the body of Christ and the people that we served plus the cutting edge technologists and researchers?

e. How can we improve the churches partnership/engagement/trust and BT practitioners morale?

f. What can we do with the decreased volume of the traditional consultant and missionaries from those supplying countries in post-church context?

g. What could be the implementation and proper ways of operation in ideological Bible unfriendly context in access restricted regions?

h. What would be the implementation and role of BT communities in the contexts of fast growing church in spite of difficult situation(even without vernacular scriptures)? If they can survive and grow healthily(as they thought) without vernacular BT, what evidence of BT for transformation as recent testimony can convince the churches and ourselves? 

i. As the technology and education level of some host countries improving significantly, how possible are the national and local churches to grow healthily with or without vernacular scripture especially in urbanization setting?

j. How can we match the right wine with the right bottle in global and local context? One of my concerns is how can we have general principles and  allow flexibility of ethno-lingual customization. 

k. Beside the fastest concern, how can we implement self-sustainable long term Bible translation movement/development in the countries? bi-vocational development of the consultants and BT practitioners? Engaging volunteers? Diaspora and remote HR? 

gosp4el_hk2017hack Oct 20-22, 2017

GOSP4EL_HK2017_hack
Now is 9.37 a.m. on the plane from BJ to HK.
Yes Hackathon start from here. I supposed to land around 12 noon at HK airport.
I think I would like to start a todo list in next 48 hours. Put this document into either blog or gosp4el wiki.
-------
I just arrived WOHK office, the venue of the event gosp4el_hk2017. Quite likely this will be a solo here but with virtual connecting many in next couple days.
I copied the above to the blog just now. 15.02 pm UTC.

I think the focus would be ABCD -- audio bible of Chinese diaspora and dialects.

What good questions are you asking today?

I just finished a coaching training yesterday. During the first day, one of the questions is "What do you want to achieve in this coaching training?" My answer, "I want to coach myself so that I can be a better follower of Christ and better disciple maker for Christ." I think one of the key questions about coaching and the element of discipling/coaching is about "What, Why and How" questions and put the question and get the outcomes in time frame and context.
Asking the right question matters! I have been teaching about the importance of good questions in different occasions.

Around the dinning table, what would you ask your children after the school?

PAUSE. Think about this, and answer the question before you keep reading.

I forgot where did I learned about asking question in different cultures. I have heard and thought some of the following?

1. How did you get along with your classmates?
2. What have you learned in the school?
3. How are you doing in the school?
4. Are there anyone bullying you?
5. ...
6.What did you do?
7. How were you doing in your test/exam?
8. What questions do you ask?
9. What questions have you been asking?

What are yours?
What can we learn about asking questions and ourselves through question?

Missional prayer Tour and prayerful awareness

I have been traveling quite a bit for consultation, training and meeting. I have shared ideas about the ideas of tour with mission concern and prayer for the places and the people that visited. Short term mission became a trend in last 20 years. One of my concern is that we are having a tourist mentality for short term mission. I am promoting a mission mentality while Christians are travelling. While we are travelling, God may speak to us because our invention of STM. However, as I am intentional to think about prayer and would like to spend 30 minutes per day of prayer and/or scriptural reading from the prayer for a 30 days hustle project. I found that it is not that easy to be aware of the presence of God as I am travelling. I am still thinking it is worth to do it.

I am very thankful for the opportunity visiting school, friends and tour a bit in California recently. I did pray for the country, the state, the people and the cities. May the Lord's grace and mercy be with them. I am also very thankful and was blessed by the hospitality of friends and colleagues last week and this week. I will try to be alert what and whom the Lord will bring to me and live prayerfully day by day.