£500 million needed to fund Vision 2025
As a result of God's enabling, faithfulness to the task, and many partner organizations, the pace of Bible translation is accelerating as it never has before. Every day more people hear the good news in a language they can understand and begin to walk down the road that leads to eternal life. If we continue at the pace we are on, the last translation project could begin in 2038. That's great news since just six years ago, when we embraced Vision 2025, we were expecting to start the last project in 2150.
But as the work expands, so does the list of needed resources -- prayer, people and funds. Prayer is needed for every project underway as well as for each one still to begin. The gap between the workers we have and the workers we need is widening daily, and the same is true of the gap between available funds and needed funds.
This year (Oct 2006 - Sep 2007) our colleagues on the field have asked for £17M million to fund the strategic opportunities they see before them. In spite of the best efforts across the family of organizations in fundraising, only £11 million is projected - much of that in faith. That leaves a gap of over £6M million which means projects will not get funded.
One field director told recently that his entity is reluctant to spend time writing projects when they know the funding won't be there. So, unless something changes. every year our colleagues on the field will watch more opportunities slip away, and more people will pass into eternity without hearing the Good News in a language they can understand.
Studies also show that ample resources to support Bible translation exist around the world. The total annual income of God's people around the world comes to £3 trillion. Even a tiny portion of giving to the work we do would be sufficient to meet Bible translation needs.
It is estimated that it will need £500 million to start the remaining 2,529 languages (not finish them).
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