Back to Babel
January 8th, 2008
(By Jesse Johnson)
Grace Church has recently put Gospel presentations in 25 different languages on our website. Let me explain why:
The 2000 census showed that only 42% of Los Angeles speaks English in their homes. This number became less abstract to my wife and me when we moved into our apartment in Granada Hills. In the four apartments directly next to ours, four different languages are spoken.
It didn’t use to be this way. Back in Babel (Gen 11) everyone spoke the language of their neighbors. But then, to limit the potential for evil, God came to Babel and “confused” the language of the earth. When the people realized they no longer spoke the same language, they scattered around the globe. In a sense, Los Angeles is Babel in reverse. With over 240 languages spoken in one city, it is as if people of every language have decided to come back to one place.
Los Angeles is perhaps the most cosmopolitan city in church history. This causes Grace to see our position as a “community church” differently. We have the ability for ministry and evangelism on a global scale without leaving our zip code. Our community presents an opportunity to reach the world with the saving power of the Gospel.
To meet this challenge, Grace Community Church has several different approaches for the kind of cross-language evangelism that Los Angeles requires. We have evangelistic Bible studies taught in nine different languages. We have teach ESL (English as a second language) classes that serve as a connection for people in our community. The idea is that they join our ESL class, and then get connected to the appropriate Bible study.
We also offer Gospel presentations on CD in the 40 most common languages in our area. We give these away Sunday mornings from a table at our church. We have found they are popular and helpful, as people take them to give to neighbors and co-workers that don’t speak the same language.
We have recently put those gospel presentations on-line, for free. So, if you know someone who is more comfortable in another language, and you are looking for a way to present them the Gospel, see if their language is on our site. You can make your own CD for them, or you can email them the link.
Great idea! Really great idea!
Walter Heaton
Jesse,
A very encouraging post.
As a grad student in language education, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the language that was spoken before Babel? Was it Hebrew? Some other proto-language?
Mike,
I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure we will be speaking Hebrew in heaven
Jesse
Jesse
This is an awesome idea!
I’ve tried, with no success, to download a couple of the files so as to burn a message on CD as the article indicates we can.
I have been unable to download them (right-clicking, then “save as”) onto my hard drive–I am only able to download them into my “temp. internet files”, which only enables me to listen to them….
Is there a way I’m not aware of??
Our IT department is working on it as we speak.
Thanks, IT people!
The links work for downloading now!
This is beautiful! I can’t wait to make these available in my store. Great work, Grace , as always.
Jesse, I have a question for you:
Is the same message used in the different translations, and, if so, what message?
I’m specifically wondering about the Spanish and the Cantonese versions…..
Also, a P.S. from the other day re: my download problems:
The problem appears to be with the MSN Explorer browser. If accessing the website through Internet Explorer, I have no problem downloading onto my hard drive; through MSN, I still have the same problem mentioned above. Go figure……
From the IT department:
The users will need to click the download link on the download page which will take them to a 2nd page which requires the user to click the download button. That will launch the dialog to save the file to your hard drive as an MP3. The 2nd step was implemented to block mass downloaders. Thanks!
The new link is here.
Or here.