When I first became a missionary, my view of language learning was somewhat nebulous since I had never seriously studied a language before (high school and college Spanish doesn’t count). I had never committed my life for an agreed-upon time frame to studying day in and day out for the purpose of speaking and being understood, listening and comprehending. My first missionary assignment required that I spend my first year studying the local language. I was single, so that task came with few inconveniences or distractions. After my year was up, my given job was to be a rural evangelist. My experience was that although I had invested a long year of diligent study, I passed my sending agency’s required language evaluation, and many people in the local community told me I spoke well, I still had to put in long hours each week of translating words and ideas into the local language before I could take a Bible story to a group of village women. Then, because my language was “good” but still very amateur, I always traveled with a local believing friend to help me re-tell the story and participate in the follow-up discussion so I knew things were communicated well. Each time I did this, the women always positively affirmed what they were hearing. However, I had enough cultural teaching beforehand to assure me that they were most likely “saving face” – that is, keeping the peace and treating me respectfully to my face but questioning or disbelieving my message once I left town.
Fast-forward three languages. Josh and I spend a year learning basic French with a splash of Biblical vocabulary thrown in. This was mainly so we could navigate our way through government bureaucracy in the Chadian capital and interact with the Chadian church. Then, I spent a few years getting a little more than halfway through a six-phase language learning method with Chadian Arabic. Josh has continued on and well surpassed me in that endeavor. (Maybe it will require another blog post to explain that reasoning.) I am at a point where many people tell me my language is really good. I am also at a point where I realize how much I don’t know. I have learned that people will tell me my language is really good because they are pleased to hear a white person speaking their language, but this cannot be my measuring stick for a job completed.
Now I have just begun, God willing, a life-long endeavor learning to communicate well in the Maba language. What has changed? How did I go from investing one year in my first language on my first missionary assignment to committing to a life of learning the Maba language? Certainly, several factors have influenced the decision Josh and I have made to invest significantly on the front-end of our ministry career in learning language well.
One reason is that we have come to understand that the value of the gospel message is worth our efforts to put in the hard work of language study up front so that when people hear us communicate precious truths of Scripture, we are communicating them in a manner worthy of the message being presented. We have a treasure to share with our neighbors, but we don’t want to sound like my toddler when we try to tell them this good news. We seek to present the gospel message, as well as do discipleship, with clarity. Communication in a foreign language and across a huge cultural barrier is not a trivial matter. We are concerned with both the words we say as well as their connotation and the way they’re understood in the minds of the hearers. In an Islamic society, this is further complicated by the Islamic corruption of the biblical narrative and biblical terminology, so that what words like “grace” or “sin” or “heaven” mean to us are not necessarily the same as what they mean to a Chadian Muslim. So we devote ourselves to the tedious task of achieving language proficiency in order to, like the Apostle Paul, “declare the mystery of Christ,” to “make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” (Col. 4:3-4)
Another factor is that from my own experience and from observation, it makes a lot more work for us in the long run if we have to constantly prepare not only the content of our messages but also the language translation each time, we plan to go share with someone. It was painful to spend that amount of time hoping I had the right words and phrases. There was always a nudging sense of doubt that something was only half-communicated. How did I know if the valuable message I was sharing was actually the message that my friends were hearing? This is not something that can be learned in one year of language study.
Another significant reason we choose to invest more time learning language is because over time we have come to understand and appreciate the entirety of the Great Commission. We are not in eastern Chad just to make converts and leave them to flounder on their own, producing fledgling churches that are not grounded in the Word, but are instead tossed to and fro. No! We are here to obey the words of the Great Commission that say, “Go and make disciples…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” How can we obey Jesus’ command to us if we have only a half-knowledge of the language and we are chopping up the language or wondering if we actually communicated clearly the message we are hoping to communicate? How can we discuss deep spiritual truths with a novice understanding of language and culture?
Friends, thank you for standing with us and persevering alongside us in your prayers, support, and encouragement of this ministry. For years, our updates to you have been mostly about more language learning instead of more converts. I assure you that the convictions we have come to regarding language learning are currently unpopular in many missionary circles, probably because it doesn’t result in quick converts and exciting stories. However, in missions history, we see many examples of men and women in invested years of language learning up front before they were able to engage in strong ministries amongst indigenous people which resulted in biblically sound churches. Thank you for your commitment to stand with us as we seek to honor the Lord in the way that we hope will communicate the precious truths of the gospel as well as disciple believers to maturity in the Christian faith.