Power Encounters





The Ghanaian symbol for God the exceptional – Gye Nyame


That’s for others

Langauge Map of GhanaThere are some large, unreached people groups in the north of Ghana. They have been resistant to various attempts by missionaries and churches to reach them with the Gospel. In recent years however, small congregations have started springing up here and there. These people groups have low education and literacy rates coupled with high poverty, which is quite a contrast to the southern parts of Ghana.

A number of Ghanaian churches have outreach in the north. They have have had modest success in evangelism and church planting. As Bibles were translated into the languages, some of them began literacy programs for members of their churches so that the Bibles could be used.

They funneled money from their churches in the south for to support the literacy effort. Literacy has had effects no one really expected, and those effects have been so big that two of the churches have changed their strategy for growing their churches in the north.

Keep in mind that most of the rural Christians were poor, subsistence farmers with little or no education. Prior to learning to read, their only participation in church was to sit and listen. Neither they nor church leaders thought that they had any role to play. When church leaders organized literacy classes, their hope was that these believers would be able to grow in faith through reading their Bibles. That happened, but much, much more.

Christians in the Northern Outreach Program read the Bible in their languages

Lay preachers from northern Ghana reading their Bibles at a church conference

Some of the Christians who attended literacy classes started seriously reading the Bibles in their languages. I’m not talking about reading a few verses a day. One man told me how he read the New Testament clear through 5 or 6 times in the month following the dedication. Where the whole Bible has been translated, some of those previously uneducated and illiterate peasant farmers used their newly acquired literacy skills to read their Bibles through multiple times in short order and then to continue reading it through every few months. They became known in their communities as Bible experts.

Literacy took them way beyond being able to grow in their personal faith – they became a faith resource for others. People came to them asking questions about the Bible and about Christianity. They started teaching Bible and Sunday school classes in their language. Some became lay preachers in their churches. A few have weekly FM radio broadcasts in which they explain the Bible or have a call-in segment where listeners can ask questions. In some cases, clerics from other religions come and ask them questions.

Learning to read

Learning to read

Not that long ago, these local Bible experts were simple pew sitters. Churches have realized that they need to recognize these lay preachers and include them in their pastoral staff, both because that seemed reasonable and because they are more effective than the more educated pastors sent to the north from other parts of Ghana who have to learn the languages. But these newly-literate lay preachers have provoked yet another change that goes way beyond the church to affect their whole community. Before, many people from northern Ghana considered that Christianity was not a religion them.

They thought that Christianity was the religion for the more educated peoples of the south of Ghana. But now the local lay preacher is from a family that has lived in the community since before anyone can remember, is widely respected, and preaches and teaches in the language of the community. Faced with that, people change their mind about his religion being only for people from somewhere else.

Bible translation and literacy for believers is radically altering the perceptions about Christianity, they are changing it from being generally considered a foreign import to something that is becoming an accepted part of the community – an understandable and acceptable choice. This hasn’t happened everywhere yet. There are still communities where the churches have not organized literacy classes. There, Christianity remains a religion for others.

The Picture Window

A Particular Glory - John PiperJohn Piper has written a book about the Bible entitled A Particular Glory. I find the book fascinating partly because it echoes some of my experience with the Bible that I have not been able to articulate, and partly because it offers a very fresh break from the “battle for the Bible” that has dominated Evangelical teaching and writing about the Bible for more than a few decades.

Piper shifts the focus of the discussion to the view of things (of god, of human beings, and of creation) presented in the Bible. That view, he says, is compelling because it is rich in the glory of God.

As I said at the beginning, the Bible has not been for me like a masterpiece hanging on the wall of an Alpine chalet but rather like a window in the wall of the chalet, with the Alps on the other side. In other words, I have been a Christian all these years not because I had the courage to hold on to an embattled view of Scripture, but because I have been held happily captive by the beauty of God and his ways that I see through the Scriptures.

I have stood in front of this window all these years, not to protect it from being broken, or because the owner of the chalet told me to, but because of the glory of the Alps on the other side. I am a captive of the glory of God revealed in Scripture.

John Piper is a well-known pastor and theologian with a seminary degree. He has written numerous books. This book, A Particular Glory, has received endorsements from leading evangelicals.

But poor, uneducated, subsistence farmers in northern Ghana (among others) beat him to the idea and to the experience. It is only in recent years that the Bible has been translated into the languages of northern Ghana (and not yet all of their languages). But when it was, many of them accepted it and the truth it contains, not because they had some fancy, logical defense of its inspiration and historicity, or because of who brought it (they had long rejected the Christianity brought by Western missionaries), but because what it says gives them a compelling new way to see God and all of life.

Dr. Solomon Sule-Saa, who did his doctoral research on the impact of new Bible translations in northern Ghana, told a conference in 2012 that for those peoples in northern Ghana:

The Bible now provides the key to understand the world.

Before John Piper wrote his book, those poor farmers were already standing in front of the large and clear picture window which is the Bible in their language, joyfully compelled by the glorious view it provides. At a church meeting in Ghana in 2014, I saw their joy they read and talked about the Bibles in their languages they all held in their hands.

Under girding positions

John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe







Church in Abetifi, Ghana

Church in Abetifi, Ghana





If you send your child

Some time back, one of our Ghanaian colleagues said to Dayle: “If you send your child, you send yourself.” He was referring to a specific circumstance. But Dayle did not understand what he was saying, so she asked him to explain. He explained that he had sent someone on an errand, but the person he sent couldn’t handle the matter, so eventually he had to go himself and he was able to handle it.

At first, Dayle had thought that he was saying that if you delegate your child to do something, that is as good as going yourself. But he was saying exactly the opposite – that if you send your child (or by extension a subordinate) to do something, you will eventually have to go do it yourself.

We can paraphrase our colleague’s comment like this: “If you send your child to do something (you should do), you’ll eventually have to go do it yourself anyway.” We have a roughly equivalent expression in English – if you want something done well, do it yourself.

Now I don’t know what you think of that, but one thing is clear. We can’t understand our colleague’s statement: “If you send your child you send yourself” by examining the words, no matter how scrupulously we examine them. We can only understand what he meant when we understand his cultural perspective.

My journey in ethnodoxology

Ghanaians composing songs in their language

Ghanaians composing songs in their language

Ethnomusicology is the study of the music of different cultures. Christian missions have created a specific type of ethnomusicology called ethnodoxology. According to the International Council of Ethnodoxologists:

Ethnodoxology is the theological and anthropological study, and practical application, of how every cultural group might use its unique and diverse artistic expressions appropriately to worship the God of the Bible.

The parts of the word illustrate its meaning – “ethno” refers to people of different ethnic backgrounds and “doxology” means praise.

Even as a missionary, I initially considered ethnomusicology and ethnodoxology nothing more than interesting sidelines to real mission. But when I saw how people connect to God when they worship in their own music styles and what happens when they don’t, I changed my tune (pun intended). When Ghanaians sing Western hymns, they are subdued. When they switch to their own languages and music styles, worship comes alive. One missionary observed that when people sang in their own language and musical styles:

“the whole church starts singing—even the children”

I used to think that ethnodoxology was about people singing the kind of songs they prefer, or the kind that brings back great childhood memories. I eventually came to realize that it is about worshiping in the language and music styles that allow people to express their deepest emotions and thoughts. Translators for the Lala language in Nigeria reported that when Lala youth started singing worship songs in their language and musical styles, many repented and became Christians. Jesus said:


Singing brand new songs

Singing brand new songs

Music is an important way that people express their deepest things in their hearts and souls, especially in places where music is less what people consume and more what they do. I came to realize that it must be difficult, if not impossible to express “all your heart” or “all your soul” (emphasis mine) in a language or in music styles a person does not fully master. If it is necessary to have the Bible in the heart language, then it must be necessary to worship in that language as well. Furthermore, songs do much more than express emotion. A Christian song – We Shall Overcome – galvanized the civil rights movement in the US and in other places. Martyrs singing worship songs while being burned to death caused an explosion of Christianity in Uganda.

The opposite is also true.

I found that when people are only allowed to worship in other languages and in music styles that are foreign to them, they can start to feel like they have become like others to worship God. They may start to believe that God doesn’t like their music – that he prefers the way others do it. The idea that “God doesn’t like worship in my language and musical styles” becomes “God doesn’t like me” or even “The Christian God has cursed my people and me”. That is so sad.

Joseph Gyebi and family

Joseph Gyebi and family

A Ghanaian musician and friend, Joseph Gyebi, wants to change that. He has already helped Christian musicians from two language groups in Ghana develop worship and praise music in their languages and music styles. He is doing that while being a full-time student and serving part-time as a pastor to a congregation in Accra. The Ghanaian organization we work with wants to help him do more. We’re working on that.

There won’t be preaching in heaven, because we will know in full. But ethnodoxology? Oh, there’ll be lots of that!

And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain,
and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation, (Rev 5:9)

“Missions exists because worship doesn’t. – John Piper

Here’s a video of some believers (not in Africa) worshiping to the first praise songs in their language.

What value for unity

Road to Siwu country

Road to Siwu country



Siwu New Testaments being auctioned

Siwu New Testaments being auctioned



Siwu chief at the launch

Siwu chief at the launch


Jesus prayed for unity for his followers:


Young Siwu man with traditional drums

Young Siwu man with traditional drums


The Doctor











Announcement in a church bulletin

Announcement in a church bulletin





©2013 GospelGifs

©2013 GospelGifs






Endangered Languages

Endangered languagesYou may have heard that many of the world’s languages are dying. That might lead you to ask why translate the Bible if languages are dying. It’s a good question. The answer is simple. But let’s back up a bit before answering it.

A while back I heard one of Ghana’s leading linguists, a man who spent decades helping to translate the Bible into 13 language in Ghana and neighboring countries, Professor Gilbert Ansre, speak about Ghana’s languages. Here’s what he said:

‘The numbers of speakers of most of the indigenous languages are on the increase and the vast majority of our mother-tongues are not about disappear or “die”. They are here to stay for a long time and need to be reckoned with…’

Dr and Mrs Ansre with portrait

Prof and Mrs Ansre with portrait

Professor Ansre was talking about Ghana. In other places language are dying in significant numbers. Those places include the Americas and Melanesia. The situation simply is not the same in Ghana. In fact, in all of West Africa few of the hundreds of languages are dying. Most are increasing in number just as Professor Ansre said that they are in Ghana. Data gathered independently by governments, churches, linguists and others all lead to this same conclusion.

Why are most of Ghana’s languages growing? Because of population growth. The population growth rate in Ghana is 2.5%. At that rate, the population in Ghana will double in 29 years. Since almost 100% of the native population of Ghana speaks at least one Ghanaian language, the number of people speaking those languages increased by 28% during the last decade and doubled in the last 29 years.

Children in the street

Children in the street

The evidence of population growth is everywhere. When our son Matthew visited with his fiancée who had never been to Africa, she keep commenting on all the young children she saw. They are with their mothers who sell food or vegetables by the road or in the market. Children are everywhere. The church we attend has an attendance of about 500. There are about 100 children in Sunday School, in spite of fact that many who attend are unmarried university students without children.

To see the effect of population growth on keeping languages alive, let’s take an imaginary case of a language spoken by 100,000 people where two thirds of its speakers stop speaking it in the coming 50 years. Here are the numbers using Ghana’s annual population growth rate of 2.5%.

Number of speakers of the language today         100,000
Number in 50 years (2.5% compounded)           335,000
2/3rd stop speaking the language                       -224,000
Remaining 1/3rd                                                      111,000

Children in the street

Children in the street

As you can see, even though 2/3 of the people stopped speaking the language, there were still more people speaking it at the end of the 50 years than there were at the start. Besides, it appears that very few of Ghana’s languages will lose 2/3 of their speakers in the coming 50 years. On the contrary, the number of people speaking Ghanaian languages will probably double or triple.

Back to the original question – why translate the Bible if languages are dying. The simple answer is that we do not translate the Bible into dying languages, but rather into languages that are not only alive; they are growing.

If you liked this, you might also like Dying Langauges or Ten Thousand.