D r . C owan : We look first for character. The person must be born- again and definitely committed to the Lord’s service. He should have a call to God’s service, especially overseas. Then there must be adequate prep aration in the Bible and Christian service. There should be spiritual maturity and depth. He should know how to lead a soul to Jesus Christ. In Wycliffe we use a wide variety of skills. Not all of our people trans late. Others whom we use are pilots, mechanics, agriculturalists, printers, stenographers, s ec re ta rie s , school teachers, nurses, and, as you can see, a wide range of talent can be util ized. The applicant is expected to have competence for his task. We will give them the basic linguistic training, while they should come al ready with a basic knowledge of the Scriptures and an ability to use them effectively in dealing with men. As an example, we require all of our workers to take a jungle training session which will prepare them to live under the rigors of life on our fields. These will be very primitive conditions, so they must learn cer tain survival techniques in times of emergency. They need some under standing of the general attitudes of the peoples among whom they’ll work. We add to that a good orienta tion program concerning our meth ods and policies. One of our most helpful and productive programs for new missionaries is our Summer In stitute of Linguistics. This embraces eleven weeks of preparation in pho netics which teaches them how to hear, recognize and reproduce sounds of any language, especially those never written before. They then learn the techniques of preparing grammars, dictionaries and other useful aids giving them competence in the language. While being faith ful to the original texts they need to speak in the idiom into which they’re translating. D r . C hase : What do the Wycliffe 19
with Dr. J. Richard Chase and Dr. George Cowan
D r . C hase : It's a privilege for Biola to be associated with such out standing missionary organizations as the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Dr. George Cowan, of WBT can ex plain their basic objectives. D r . C owan : What we seek to do, under the guidance of the Holy Spir it, is to provide Scriptures in the language of the people who never before had the Word of God trans lated for their understanding. We are seeking to reach men for Christ, building them up in the faith, and seeing the establishment of churches as an on-going witness for Christ. To give you an example, recently one of our workers went into one of the tribes of South America. First he had to reduce the language to writing, learn how to speak it, and then begin witnessing for Christ. The people are then taught to read through use of the Scriptures. In this case, two of his early converts took the translations of the Gospel of Mark and headed upstream where they started a little jungle school where a number came to receive Christ as Saviour. Soon a church began in that area, and they in turn had their own missionary projects in sending workers to adjoining tribes. This is typical of the way this program develops under the blessing of the Lord. D r . C hase : We here at Biola stand firmly behind such a dedicated concept. In our entire educational program we believe the Bible is cen tral to each aspect of our curriculum. Regardless of the vocation for which an individual may be preparing he needs not a passing knowledge but a careful understanding of the Word of God. This is both basic and essen tial. Dr. Cowan, what are the quali ties you seek in a candidate going out with Wycliffe?
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