After the Bible,
what next?
An African chief’s vision for his people
By Jacob Taku, HRH Fon Taku Tanze Tanau I of Agong-Mangang
The Mundani language is spoken by 60 – 70,000 people in southwestern Cameroon. In the 1920s, Basel Mission set up schools and introduced the gospel in a coastal language, which the Mundani didn’t understand. They assumed that God’s word was just a school subject. The Cameroon Baptist Convention and the Full Gospel Mission started work in the 1970s using Pidgin English, to no avail.
In 1978, Wycliffe’s sister organisation SIL set up a Bible translation project, which has been managed by the Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy since 1994.
It is finished! Thanks to the help of Doug Estabrook here at the Wycliffe Centre, UK, Joseph Akem and I have completed the typesetting of the Mundani New Testament. This may be the first New Testament to be typeset by an African chief!
After we finished cheering, Doug asked the obvious question: “What next?”
After the decisive defeat of the German army in North Africa in 1942, Winston Churchill pointed out, “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Typesetting can look like the end of a Bible translation project, and the celebrations when the printed copies arrive could be taken as the grand finale. So, will the launch of the Mundani New Testament in Cameroon in a year or so mark the culmination of the 27-year process of delivering the word of God to the people in their heart language? Certainly not! At best it is the end of the beginning.
How will they hear?
At the celebrations, Mundani believers will say, like the prophet Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.” (I Samuel 3:9) They are likely to be disappointed to learn that our God has only written in their language, and to hear him speak they have to read it themselves!
Mundani people are accustomed to hearing their gods speak. Last year, the god of one of the villages came to speak to the population. A group of young Christians sneaked into the forest to find out just what was behind the voice they were hearing. To their amazement they found that the voice was that of an old man of the village.
This incident did not spark off a conflict between church and conflict as would be expected—Fon Taku intervened! This led to an ongoing dialogue with the whole village, as in ancient Athens. (Acts 17:23)
Mundani ears are waiting to hear God speak, and if he does, they may believe (Romans 10:17). God speaks through his church, but the Mundani church is numerically weak. It needs to be built up to communicate the word effectively to a largely non-literate community. This is where the Mundani New Testament project comes in! If the church hasn’t the resources, the Bible translation project must take responsibility for evangelism.
The most efficient way for people to hear is through an oral version of the Scriptures. We can train people to read the text, but the recording will be beyond us. Similarly, the Jesus film exists in Mundani, but its use is hampered by lack of funds. We also need to organise informal meetings in every Mundani community, where people can hear and discuss the scriptures and receive teaching. In other countries, this is how churches have started. We are praying that the Lord will provide through outside agencies with the expertise.
Follow-up is key
Our focus is the effective delivery of God’s word through scripture use, rural evangelism, church planting, literacy and development. Funding for the Mundani project will stop after the launch. Wherever there is no follow-up, the scriptures end up on shelves collecting dust and nourishing cockroaches and white ants. They grow fat; we go hungry! Christians who have backed this project would be heartbroken if the Mundani New Testament ended up like this. Follow-up will have to continue for a few years until the church has the vision.
There are Christians in the traditional homeland and among those who have moved away from this remote area. We would like to remind them of their responsibility towards their homeland—their ‘Jerusalem’—as Jesus told his disciples that mission begins at home. (Acts 1:8)
Denominationalism is divisive, especially in an unevangelised community. People get confused when churches speak about God as if he is God of their denomination. We invited leaders of all Mundani churches to help with the final review of the New Testament and will keep on encouraging them to work together, spreading the gospel through the Mundani scriptures.
The last way we can reach the Mundani people is through the traditional Mundani leadership. A traditional leader with a Bible in his hand working in collaboration with the churches and the traditional rulers is an opportunity we intend to exploit to the full.
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