<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you want to meet the Michael Jordan of Bible translation?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n It was early in the 2010s, and Jordan Monson was a low-level Bible translation intern. He was attending a conference when a friend posed that question to him.<\/p>\n Unsure who it might be, Monson assented to the offer and was understandably surprised when he turned to see an English woman in her early 70s with a bit of a limp walking toward him.<\/p>\n \u201cI noticed around the room as all of these senior leaders \u2026 the whole room just stopped \u2026 and everyone just looked to her and, one by one, these incredibly important people walked up to her,\u201d Monson recalled, jokingly adding, \u201cThe only way they could show more reverence is if they bowed; it was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Needless to say, the burgeoning scholar was determined to learn more about Dr. Katharine Barnwell. And he quickly discovered she is one of the most influential missionaries people have never heard of.<\/p>\n In the West, notoriety is seen as a byproduct of influence \u2014 but that\u2019s not always the case. In fact, Barnwell\u2019s obscurity spins that aforementioned assumption on its head: her ambiguity in the greater \u201cevangelical industrial complex,\u201d as Monson called it, is because she was busy working, mostly in West Africa, to make Scripture accessible to people who had never heard the Gospel.<\/p>\n \u201cShe sort of slipped away from the limelight, or she was never noticed,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if you look at the number of people in the world who have become Christians, largely because of her work, there is a very real claim to her having more than 100 times the influence of Billy Graham. [It\u2019s] just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n In the years since that conference where he first encountered Barnwell, Monson has become a true student of her work.<\/p>\n He is the author of a forthcoming biography about the notable missionary, \u201cKatharine Barnwell: How One Woman Revolutionized Modern Missions,\u201d releasing April 29 and available now for pre-order.<\/p>\n As missionary work has shifted away from solely an export of the Western world, reorienting around the global church, Barnwell\u2019s quiet influence has left an indelible mark.<\/p>\n \u201cAll around the missions world, people were looking to lift up the nations, lift up the global church, and say, \u2018The Westerners have been doing this for 400-some years, with some success and also with some major blindspots along the way.\u2019 \u2026 It was time to pass the baton and hand it off to the local church,\u201d Monson explained. \u201cKaty Barnwell \u2026 trained the world to translate the Scriptures for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Barnwell, 87, is the pioneer of the \u201cmother-tongue\u201d translation method of the Bible. Having spent a great deal of her career in Nigeria, the faithful linguist centered her work on establishing a system for communities to access the Old and New Testaments in their heart languages.<\/p>\n Her technique, now known as the Barnwell Translation Method, is used extensively and mostly, as it was designed,\u00a0by non-professional translators. The goal of the system is threefold: to accurately communicate biblical meaning, to employ natural and clearly understood language, and to remain steadfastly faithful to the intent of the original text.<\/p>\n With a team of community translators, Barnwell\u2019s method relies on the source text\u2019s original languages (mostly Greek and Hebrew), focuses on meaning- and ideas-based translation (as opposed to word-for-word translation), and then, to sure up the precision of the translation, requires drafts to be back-translated into major languages (like English or French). The system also features exhaustive linguistic and exegetical workshops to equip local translators with the tools they need to achieve their goal.<\/p>\n Despite her unprecedented success and indisputable contribution to Bible translation, Monson described Barnwell, who still works in linguistics, as \u201cmaybe the most humble person I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d recalling, for example, how bothered she was to even see her face on the cover of her biography.<\/p>\n That exchange, he said, is emblematic of her whole life philosophy.<\/p>\n \u201cShe just works tirelessly for the good of people around the world and thinks so little about herself that she\u2019s almost offended when she\u2019s remembered,\u201d Monson said. \u201cShe kept insisting the whole time, \u2018Everything I did, I did on teams; I don\u2019t know why this whole book is just about me.’\u201d<\/p>\n That attitude \u2014 Barnwell\u2019s counterintuitive humility \u2014 has served as a deep encouragement to Monson.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does it look like to be laser-focused on the Kingdom, laser-focused on the spreading of the Good News of Jesus while having a complete self-forgetfulness about your own person?\u201d he reflected.<\/p>\n You can watch our full conversation with Monson in the \u201cFaith vs. Culture\u201d episode below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDo you want to meet the Michael Jordan of Bible translation?\u201d It was early in the 2010s, and Jordan Monson was a low-level Bible translation intern. 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