Gospel Infrastructure – Bible Translation

Introduction: The God of Language

Words and language are integral to God’s work in the world, from the edict, “‘Let there be light,’” (Gen 1:3 CSB) through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the living Word. God addresses human pride at the tower of Babel, fracturing human speech into multiple languages and thereby dispersing people across the globe. At Pentecost, God’s mercy flows in a stunning reversal of Babel’s confusion: upon receiving the Holy Spirit, the apostles miraculously begin declaring God’s redemption through Christ in the many languages of those present in Jerusalem. It is significant that when God redresses the division of Babel, he does not collapse languages back into one, but rather casts the gospel message into all the diverse languages people understand. This foreshadows the vision of the last days, where a great multitude of worshipers from “every nation, tribe, people, and language” gather around the throne of Christ (Rev 7:9).

Bible Translation as Gospel Infrastructure

The goal of the gospel infrastructure framework is to guide missions work to establish an enduring gospel presence.¹ The Bible undergirds the work of missions from start to finish. Therefore, all the elements of gospel infrastructure, from evangelism to the selection of church leadership and the content of theological education are built on that foundation. Where the Bible is not accessible in a language people understand, translation is elemental to gospel infrastructure. By the same token, considering missions endeavors in terms of gospel infrastructure guides the work of Bible translation for maximum impact.

Bible Translation in Historical Context

Through centuries, God’s people have held that because God’s word is for all people, it must be translated. The ancient translations of the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate originated as texts to be understood by everyday congregants. Translation reemerged as a primary concern in the years leading up to the Reformation, with men like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, and Jan Hus upholding the importance of rendering the Bible in languages people understand, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Bible translation was a pillar of early missions efforts, integral to the work of missionary pioneers such as Adoniram and Ann Judson, William and Dorothy Carey, Hudson and Maria Taylor, and John and Maggie Paton.² This work continues today in many parts of the world, with ProgressBible reporting 26 Bibles and 82 New Testaments published in 2024.³

Bible Translation in Missions

The missionary strives to see the gospel take root among a new people, but often the most important ideas don’t transfer seamlessly across cultures. Many animistic cultures, for example, do not have abstract words for concepts like grace and forgiveness. Other terms, like sin, may be impoverished, having more to do with ceremonial uncleanness than true guilt. Judson’s biographer observes the challenge that “Burmese itself almost completely lacked any words for the kind of ethical and abstract ideas which made up the core of New Testament Christianity.”⁴ Bilingual people who accept Christ through a second language often struggle to find the words to share their faith with their families and communities.

David Watters writes of laboring over the concepts of grudge and forgiveness when translating Mark 11:25 for a language in the Himalayan region. One day he overheard someone exclaim of an adversary, “I’ve got him strung up in my heart!” The image conjured stringing up a fish by the gills. Further conversation revealed that the corollary, “Unstring him!” animated the nature of forgiveness, releasing both the grudge-bearer and the object of the grudge.⁵ People created in God’s image are equipped to consider theological ideas. Careful Bible translation can be like a forge where the very meaning of the gospel message is hammered out. 

How the Gospel Infrastructure Framework Shapes Bible Translation

The lens of the gospel infrastructure framework makes clear that the goal of the missionary endeavor is to nourish an indigenous church to support an enduring gospel witness. Gospel infrastructure holds together the urgency of the gospel message and the importance of building for long-term faithfulness. This clarity of purpose informs the priority and process of Bible translation.

Essential, Not Paramount

Where there is a language barrier between people and the gospel, Bible translation is essential. But it is not paramount. Done well, Bible translation is a long work that often proceeds alongside other elements of gospel infrastructure, namely evangelism. When Bible translation is pursued as a stand-alone strategy, it may go faster, but it is not as effective. Reflecting on the hard reality that many Bible translations are not used by the language group they are intended to serve,⁶ Hannu Sorsamo of Wycliffe Finland asserts, “If no church is born during the translation, the completed translation will have no impact.”⁷

Gospel infrastructure helps relate and order Bible translation alongside other key elements. Sorsamo tells of an outside funder that pushed pastor-translators to uphold a demanding translation schedule at the cost of neglecting their congregations. He warns,⁸“Technology has brought genuine acceleration: computers and custom software mean that many teams complete New Testament translation in under 10 years instead of 30. Less work is lost to disasters; editing is easier. Still, it is not the artifact of a book, but the word preached and taught, that the Spirit uses to bring salvation and transformation.”⁹

Keeping focus on the developing church also informs good decisions about the scope and timing of translation work. For example, when an established church in the Philippines undertook to translate the Old Testament into their own language years later, they saw God’s character in a way that resulted in longing for greater intimacy and holiness.¹⁰ The full revelation of God’s word is necessary for developing a mature church with a robust indigenous theology, ready to take up its role in the Great Commission. Gospel infrastructure allows Bible translation to serve the church as it matures.

God’s Work

Bible translation is God’s work. Translators tread into the sacred space of those who handle God’s own words in reliance on his Spirit. Judson expresses this dependence in dedicating the Burmese translation, “imploring … [God’s] aid in future efforts to remove the errors and imperfections which necessarily cleave to the work.”¹¹ It is devastating to acknowledge “errors and imperfections” unless translators are believers who work in hopeful dependence on God.

This perspective relieves translators of the undue burden of fully expounding Scripture because the church will further interpret God’s word. While unfamiliar customs or units of measure may need explanation, a translation generally does not need to be more explicit than what the original audience understood. For example, a team of translators we knew struggled with the phrase Son of Man, suggesting Salvation-giving King as a clearer alternative. When they understood that Son of Man was somewhat ambiguous even in the original context, they chose to translate the words plainly, leaving further implications to be drawn out by pastors and teachers.

Martin Luther translated the first widely-used German Bible. His team at Wittenberg generally opted for clear German, but where they felt important textual meaning was beyond the reach of everyday German, they stuck close to the original.¹² Luther’s team faced criticism, as he wrote, “because we extolled the principle of at times retaining the words quite literally, and at times rendering only the meaning,” but he maintained that such flexibility was necessary to faithful translation.¹³

The translator’s first charge is to communicate accurately. Sound translation principles help ensure faithfulness in both the process and the resulting text. Yet even in applying good principles, the translator remains dependent on God for spiritual insight to understand the meaning clearly and wisdom to communicate it well.

Worthy of Bold Investment

God can afford Bible translation. The gospel infrastructure framework guards against decisions made from fear or desperation. For example, some have lamented the proliferation of English Bibles while the Bible is not accessible in all languages. Though the heart of compassion for those without the word is honorable, the view that scholars laboring over English translations is an obstacle to the Great Commission arises from a scarcity mindset that sees all kingdom investment as competing for a finite set of resources. God is not impoverished by translation efforts in English nor by church buildings in California. Ironically, this way of thinking can fall prey to seeking fast results with minimal investment, resulting in hesitancy to embrace the long work of Bible translation — especially the Old Testament — when so many lack access to the basic gospel. Solid missions strategy can take stock of current resources and exercise good stewardship without casting every decision in light of competing opportunities.

Notes on Evaluation and Planning for Bible Translation

It is difficult for those from a monolingual culture to appreciate the degree to which the rise in globalization affects most of the world’s remaining unreached areas. Multilingual communities rely on more than one language to navigate daily life, and their grasp of each language is limited to the contexts where it is required. Where our family served in South Asia, family and community life took place in one language, business and education in a second language, and entertainment and national government in a third. Sorsamo observes that “in a multilingual community …, it is not always obvious which of these languages might be the heart language.”¹⁴ Resources such as the Ethnologue¹⁵ and the Expanded Graded Scale of Intergenerational Disruption¹⁶ are helpful in understanding these realities when evaluating translation needs for a community.

Dynamics such as the degree of literacy and orality in each language matter, too. Literate populations may prefer to read an existing Bible in the language of education, while the church may still benefit from oral resources in their community language. These resources may include Scripture or consist mainly of stories, songs, and gospel presentations. Developing the vocabulary and resources needed to allow a community to discuss the gospel and pray together in their shared language is important, even where most people can read the Bible in another language.

Where different language communities gather together for church, it is important to involve church leadership in translation decisions. For example, in the community where our family helped start translation work, there was already a church of first-generation believers meeting in the national language, which is the medium of education. The pastor, himself skilled in the national language, is now leading efforts to see his community use the local Scriptures. The national language is likely to continue to have a place in church, but the local Scriptures are enabling people to walk with God in their homes and community.

Finally, even when the Old and New Testaments are complete, revision of the Scriptures may be a worthwhile investment. Multilingual language communities tend to experience faster language change and may need revision more frequently. Growing spiritual maturity may also lead a church to desire revision as the words and cultures of the Bible become more familiar and the need shifts from basic gospel comprehension to articulating indigenous theology. In considering whether the need for Bible translation is met for multilingual communities, it can be helpful to think in terms of a written translation for every church and spiritual words and songs for every worshipper.

Conclusion

Where Scripture does not exist in an accessible form, Bible translation is a necessary piece of the gospel infrastructure for a truly indigenous gospel witness to flourish. At the same time, this framework guides the work of Bible translation, helping to ensure that the translated word bears fruit in its proper relation to the rest of the gospel infrastructure as a new church grows towards maturity.

1. Scott Logsdon, “What Is Gospel Infrastructure?,” The Reaching & Teaching Blog, May 13, 2026, What Is Gospel Infrastructure? – Reaching & Teaching International Ministries.
2. Each of these husbands remarried due to a wife’s death. I have tried to name the wife to whom each was married during the bulk of translation work.
3. SIL Global, “Public Data,” ProgressBible, last modified 2025, https://progress.bible/products/data/.
4. Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore (Judson Press, 1987), 180.
5. David E. Watters, At the Foot of the Snows (Engage Faith Press, 2011), 171-172.
6. A research study published in 2020 found that 39% of 162 published translations in Papua New Guinea for which data was available were not used by the language community. René van den Berg, comp., Scripture Use Research and Ministry, ed. Becky Quick and Susan McQuay, SIL e-Books 73 (SIL International, 2020), 46, https://www.sil.org/system/files/reapdata/81/48/24/81482401611600786303933718281375711095/ebook73_SURAM.pdf.
7. Hannu Sorsamo, “What Have I Learned about Bible Translation?” (adapted translation of a speech, Wycliffe Finland Missions Retreat, August 7, 2023).
8. Sorsamo, “What Have.”
9. See, for example, Romans 10:14-17.
10. “Seeing God Through the Old Testament Lens,” Wycliffe Global Alliance, accessed September 13, 2025, https://www.wycliffe.net/seeing-god-through-the-old-testament-lens/.
11. Anderson, To the Golden, 411.
12. For example, of Psalm 68:18, Luther writes, “…it would have been good German to say, ‘Thou hast set the captives free.’ But this is too weak, and does not convey the fine, rich meaning of the Hebrew, which says literally, ‘Thou hast led captivity captive.’ This does not imply merely that Christ freed the captives, but also that he captured and led away the captivity itself, so that it never again could or would take us captive again.” Martin Luther, “Defense of the Translation of the Psalms” (1531), in Luther’s Works, ed. E. Theodore Bachmann (Muhlenberg, 1960), 35:216, quoted in Mary Jane Haemig, “Luther on Translating the Bible,” Word and World 31, no. 3 (2011): 258, https://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1094&context=faculty_articles.
13. Luther, “Defense of the Translation,” 216, in Haemig, “Luther on Translating,” 258.
14. Sorsamo, “What Have.”
15. SIL Global, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, last modified 2025, https://www.ethnologue.com/.
16.  Wikimedia Foundation, “Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale,” Wikipedia, last modified September 26, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_Graded_Intergenerational_Disruption_Scale; SIL Global, “Language Status,” Ethnologue: Languages of the World, last modified 2025, https://www.ethnologue.com/methodology/#Status.