“We give everything away,” could be our slogan. It’s been a hallmark of Wycliffe Associates for forty nine years.
You might think that this is required for nonprofit organizations, but it’s not. Many nonprofit ministries give a portion away, but also charge for some goods and services for a variety of reasons. We choose not to charge. We choose to give. Over the years, we’ve given away hundreds of buildings, properties, equipment and assets to partners advancing Bible translation worldwide. None of these appear on our balance sheet. Wycliffe Associates volunteers also give away hundreds of thousands of hours of service every year.
People occasionally tell me this is bad management. Of course, they’re right. If our goal was to manage these resources, we should retain as much ongoing control as possible. But that’s not our goal. Our goal is to speed God’s Word to the nations.
I recently received the news that Brazilian Christians have completed translation of the Unlocked Literal Bible (ULB) New Testament from English into Brazilian Portuguese. Our team released the ULB publicly under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike (CC:BY-SA) licensing last October. That allows anyone to translate this English Bible text into other languages as long as they release their translation under the same terms. That way, people who are bilingual in these languages can also freely and immediately use the new translation as a resource in translating the Bible into their own languages.
Today, Christians from 42 majority languages are freely translating the Unlocked Literal Bible (https://unfoldingword.org/en/?resource=bible-translations-ulb) into their languages so that thousands of minority language speakers will have free access to Bible translation resources.
Jesus said, “Freely you have received; freely give.” Matthew 10:8b (NIV)
It’s happening!
