The Value of Partnership
Take what happened in Kayes, West Africa in February 1994. I was facilitating a small meeting of twenty people from six organizations, all involved in Christian outreach to the Soninké people. They were exploring the possibility of forming a partnership to coordinate their efforts. As each individual shared with the group the nature of the work they were involved in, it became apparent that three different people of different nationalities and from different missions were all preparing to start translation of the Bible into the Soninké language.
The problem was obvious. Not only was this a triplication of effort, it was guaranteed to produce confusion. Three different Bibles with different orthography, different words for key theological terms in a language spoken by only a couple of million people. Bible translation is a long haul. Three people were going to make it their life’s work to do something that the other two were doing already. Bible translation is also expensive. It takes something of the order of a million and a half dollars from scratch in a new language to get to the finished product. We were about to triplicate this cost for the Soninké Bible.
Providentially, the mood in Kayes was all for collaboration. It’s one of the hottest places on the face of the earth, so we’d planned a siesta in what was otherwise a very tight schedule of meetings. Instead of resting, the three translators and I took time-out to address their problem. Within a couple of hours, they had agreed three things: they would convene a conference on key theological terms for all known Christian Soninké -speakers and they would share out the books of the Bible between them to avoid duplication. Our short discussion saved something like five million dollars of Kingdom resources, and probably made it possible for the Soninké people to have a Bible in one third of the time.
Excerpt used with permission from Interdev Partnership Associates
Body Matters: A Guide to Partnership in Christian Mission
By Ernie Addicott
Copyright 2005 Interdev Partnership Associates
PO Box 1331
Edmonds, WA 98020
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