John Chesnut, CEO of Wycliffe Bible Translators, on Collaboration and the IllumiNations Impact Alliance (Ep. 49)

John Chesnut is the President and CEO of Wycliffe Bible Translators USA. Wycliffe began over 80 years ago in an effort to see the bible translated into the heart language of every people group, and now consists of over 100 partner organizations working around the globe. 

However, in the last few years, the bible translation landscape has changed dramatically with unprecedented levels of collaboration between organizations. John lays out the foundation of the IllumiNations Impact Alliance as well as the exponential growth that has taken place since then, all with the goal to translate God’s Word into every known language by the year 2033.

IllumiNations started as a collaboration between 5 financial partners and 3 translation agencies and has grown to include 11 major translation agencies today. The purpose of the alliance is to coordinate, reduce redundancy, and share resources in order to accelerate the work of making God’s Word accessible to every person on Earth. 

In addition to the work of IllumiNations, John shares about the challenges ahead in reaching the remaining languages, quality assurance in translation, and stories of financial partners who have come beside Wycliffe over the years.

John has a unique birds eye view into the work happening globally to make God’s Word accessible everywhere, and you won’t want to miss what he had to share.

QUOTES TO REMEMBER

• “This God of yours, if He is so big, why doesn’t He speak our language?”
• “It used to be common for a New Testament translation to take the life career of a missionary family.”
• “Now today, more and more translation is being carried out by people from these communities.”
• “God is bringing together different partners to carry out His work in ways I don’t know if we’ve ever seen in the history of the church.”
• “What would it look like for the Great Commission to be fulfilled in our lifetime?”
• “We’ve seen collectively more resources come in working in an open handed posture in that way than what we could have done individually, by far.”
• “The unreached people groups of the world are unreached for a reason. If it were easy, they would be reached. But those that are unreached are literally at the ends of the earth.”
• “Where outsiders are not allowed in, God is raising up people from within these communities.”

LINKS FROM THE SHOW

 

• Wycliffe Bible Translators
• SIL International (see our interview with CEO Michel Kenmogne)
• Jesus Film (see our interview with Executive Director, Josh Newell)
• Faith Comes by Hearing (see our interview with VP Morgan Jackson)
• Finishing the Task (see our interview with Global Church Planting Strategist Dan Hitzhusen)
• IllumiNations Bible Translation Alliance (see our interview with Todd Peterson)
• The Finish Line Community Facebook Group
• The Finish Line Community LinkedIn Group

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