Every Tribe and Tongue

A new ministry is building an online community to expedite Jesus' goal of making disciples from every tribe and tongue.

Using open-source wiki technology and an army of volunteer translators, Gospel Translations is looking to provide online access to Gospel-focused books and articles in a variety of languages.

Wiki is a code framework used for collaborative Web sites like Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia where registered users can contribute and edit articles.

Gospel Translations builds its English library by partnering with ministries that allow the use of their copyrighted content (See list here). Then, volunteer translators convert the resources into other languages on the site.

The goal is to quickly and efficiently provide a knowledge base for Christian leaders in parts of the world where there is a dearth of suitable theological materials or where traditional print distribution hasn't kept up with the demands of the rapidly growing church.

The leaders of the effort say the Christian center of the world is shifting away from its traditional seat in the West as the evangelical populations of Africa, Asia and Latin America multiply exponentially.

In some of these areas, the Bible is the only Christian literature available. In places like China, many resources are published, but they're regulated by complex rules.

The emotional fervor of Christianity can spread like wildfire, but if a spiritual movement is not based on true discipleship, it's ultimately an exercise in fanaticism. Yes, God's Word has everything we need for the process of discipleship, but a broader base of knowledge provides protection against heresy and a check against the temptation to interpret difficult passages based on presupposition rather than truth.

The one spiritual commodity the West has available for export is biblical knowledge. What would my spiritual intellect be without the insight of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity? How would I have started to understand the supremacy of God in day-to-day life without John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life? If not for Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, who would have colorfully explained the mystery and wonder of finding identity in the person of Jesus?

Resources like these need to escape the stuffy libraries of ungrateful and complacent hoarders like me. This new platform gives them a chance - through telephone lines, underground wires and fiber optic cables - to really spread their wings.

Projects have already begun in Arabic, Russian, Bahasa Indonesian and other languages, including an entire portal in Spanish. See the complete list of languages on the homepage.

Click here to become a translator.

Watch Gospel Translation's intro video below. It is an initiative of OpenSource Mission:

Cow Tongue Tacos - Enjoying Georgia's Immigration Problem

A recent AJC article cited U.S. Census Bureau data showing that more than half of Georgia’s almost million-strong immigrant population is here illegally. Georgia has the third-highest ratio of any state in that category, posting a 53 percent mark trailing only Arizona at 65 percent and North Carolina at 58 percent.

With all the financial strain this puts on the taxpaying citizens of the state, it would be easy to get bogged down in debates over what can be done to stem the tide of immigrants to Georgia or allay its societal burden. While I do think this is a serious problem that needs fixing, I’ll leave you to the AJC article for more information. I want to look at something more tangible and less controversial—the opportunity for adventure these sub-legal enterprises and communities create.

A few friends visited us for Thanksgiving, and we drove toward Albany to visit my in-laws. One of them had a hankering for good Mexican food, but the road signs and billboards on that stretch of I-75 weren’t leading us to anything. Just when we thought we might have to go for some greasy American fast food, bold-red, backlit letters appeared on the western horizon: El Carneval. Certainly this was our promised land, flowing with cheese and salsa.

After a winding exit and a brief gas stop, we headed toward what we thought would be an authentic taco stand in that glorious strip mall just north of Crisp County. But as we approached, signs in the window and dim lights inside told another story. El Carneval was a grocery store, and it wasn’t even open this late in the evening.

Disheartened, we decided to drive down the road a ways to see if we could find a Wendy’s or something. A hulking building that at first glance looked like an abandoned shopping center loomed on our right. I was about to keep driving, but neon lights and palm tree murals in a window on the end of the shopping center caught someone’s eye. The sign read “La Playita Taqueria,” and the sunny seascapes on the window promised that the “Little Beach” taco shop would be an unlikely oasis.

A sign on the door welcomed costumers (not customers), and I jokingly scolded my friend for not bringing his clown suit. A Puerto Rican beauty pageant blared on the TV, and a lone Latino sat sleepy-eyed at a table. We seated ourselves and waited for the one-woman restaurant crew to greet us and take our orders. True to obnoxious gringo form, we requested chips and salsa, only to find that such American indulgences weren’t offered here. This place was Mexicano autentico, our waitress said.

If that’s the case, we resolved, then we might as well have a cultural experience. When she returned, my friend ordered beans and rice for an appetizer, a plate of steak and eggs and tacos for his wife and daughter. Katy, ever cautious, stuck to beef tacos and ordered a bottle of Jarritos fruit soda.

“Jou want strawberry, grapefruit or tooti frooti?” the waitress/cook asked. Katy smiled at the cute way the lady’s accent turned the y into a j and shaped the last word, which is a bit funny even without the accent. She eventually decided on the grapefruit flavor, a favorite of Mexican laborers at construction sites, I had learned during three summers as sprinkler pipe fabricator and installer.

I took the cultural experience a bit farther. If you’re adventurous with food, sometimes it comes back and bites you. Other times, your bites become surprisingly rewarding. Along with a set of two beef tacos, I asked for a taco featuring a dish that I saw as intriguing and befitting of this strange evening, a taco featuring grilled and chopped lengua de vaca, cow’s tongue.

As the Puerto Rican beauty queens cooed on TV and the waitress cooked, a few other Mexicans walked in and gave us the same kind of looks I’ve gotten in China as the only foreigner for miles around. With construction-stained jeans and disheveled hair, they looked pretty rough-and-tumble, so it’s unlikely that we scared them away. But either our strange presence or the slow service sent them packing after a few impatient minutes.

We were alone with our server, who promptly brought my cow tongue and a variety of fiery sauces to douse it in. I would need them, ironically, to dull my palate as I ate the little cubes of tongue, which still had the bumpy taste buds on them. Wrapped in a warm, homemade corn tortilla and blanketed with beans, rice and sauce, the tongue was actually pretty tasty. Although she knows I’ve eaten rat and dog meat before, Katy for some reason didn’t want to kiss me later that night. I think she said something about not wanting to French kiss a cow. My only consolation was that I had added another culinary trophy to the long-running list I’ve built over four different trips to China.

I have no clue whether La Playita is a legal business, but going by the studies, at least two of the four Mexicans that shared our time there were in the U.S. illegally. The interesting thing is that although they have come into the state I’ve lived in my whole life, in that community, I was the foreigner. Only in America. With all our problems in this country, we have loads of privilege and almost as many adventures for the taking.

Photo: the U.S. Capitol, Copyright Trevor Williams, 2007