Quotes

“One of the best ways to defeat paternalism is by teaching believers to read.” —Unknown

“We have lost the eternal youthfulness of Christianity and have aged into calculating manhood. We seldom pray in earnest for the extraordinary, the limitless, the glorious. We seldom pray with real confidence for any good to the realization of which we cannot imagine in any way.

“He seemed hopeless [with learning to read] but now he’s a reading machine who loves to read. Other older people see him and say, 'If Ponciano could do it, I could!'” —A literacy team in the Philippines

“Jesus does not write a book to transmit the good news to succeeding generations. Instead, he chooses, prepares and commissions a community to make the goal of universal history known.” —Mike Goheen

"The Bible addresses issues that missionaries don’t. People in different situations see things in the Bible that others miss. Missionaries come with a whole load of cultural baggage and they will never be able to see the Bible in the way that people from a very different culture will.

"We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive. But we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed." —Elisabeth Elliot

"One of the great blessings of being involved in Bible translation is that you get to wrestle with expressing God’s word in other languages and as you do, you begin to see things clearly that were, up till that point, somewhat opaque." —Eddie Arthur

"One of the abiding values of language acquisition is developing the capacity to listen well. Most missionary training programs focus almost entirely on teaching missionaries what to say with very little emphasis on learning to listen well.

"When we look at the New Testament in its entirety and especially when we start to get to grips with the Old Testament, we see that God’s people are called to serve and to advocate as well as to preach the Good News.

"You cannot love someone across the border until you have loved someone across the street." —Jerry Ireland