In the Company of Travellers. Season 1, Episode 5: Christlikeness in Relationships with Partners and Others

Here is the interview transcription of Season 1, Episode 5. Guests: Edith Sola, Philibert Ouedraogo. Interviewer: Hannes Wiesmann.

Hannes Wiesmann: Today our conversation is with Edith Sola who is the CEO of Wycliffe Philibertpines and with Philibert Ouedraogo who is the director of ANTBA the Alliance organisation in Burkina Faso. Welcome to both of you.

Philibert Ouedraogo: Thank you.

Edith Sola: Thank you, Hannes.

Hannes: So Edith from the Philippines. What is something surprising or unexpected that has shaped the spiritual life of an organisation or team you are part of?

Edith: Well, this is not really something that is exciting, but it was a surprise indeed for Wycliffe Philippines because last year we lost two of our valuable workers, one after the other. Ordinarily, it’s a terrible moment, but God has assured us deep in our hearts that his will and his purpose is supreme. Then shortly after, [I] should say about 3 months after, another surprise this time from Mindanao. She’s a young, young lady who’s been with us since time immemorial. She was so loved by the team, not just in Mindanao, but the whole Wycliffe Philippines. I cried a lot. So did everyone. I never asked the Lord why. But the Lord is faithful that today those projects under them have been accomplished without delay and that our hearts are healing. So that’s how we came even closer to the Lord. My brothers, prayer was our weapon, acceptance was our obedience and taking care of their families was our compassion.

Hannes: Well, thanks for sharing that, Edith. Difficult times with open questions. So, Philibert, now you are free to go as deep as you want, but is there a phrase, scripture or wisdom from your culture that has guided the leadership and decision making of your organisation?

Philibert: We really love proverbs. It’s part of our natural or social university, it’s a kind of informal school. We learn a lot through old men who really got a lot of … we got a lot of proverbs. And one of the proverbs that really shaped my life is, it says “If you want to do better, if you want to implement huge achievements, you got to work in unity.” And this proverb says that “One finger can’t gather the flour.” If you want to make a cake with wheat flour, you can’t use only one finger to do it. You’ve got to use many fingers. As many as possible, and everybody has a good role to play for a common good purpose which is the holistic transformation of our communities. From the hierarchy of leadership, from the director, the executive director, to the security guard. Everybody is important, no matter small, long length, like the fingers, the image of the fingers. We all need all these fingers with the different shapes and different types to get the common vision fulfilled.

Hannes: Well, thank you. And that’s actually a nice segway into the topic of today’s episode because we want to explore together how we can grow in our Christlikeness as we relate to partners and the outside world in general. So these may be the fingers that work together, the different organisations we relate to. As always, we want to learn together how we can do this as an organisation. Both of you lead organisations and have been doing this for a number of years. So I’m looking forward to learning with and from you how you do that, what you have learned as leaders. Can you share a story of how your organisation reflected Christ’s character in its relationship with partners or communities?

Philibert: Maybe [I] focus on two or three. God’s attribute is really love and Jesus say that he’s the way, he is the life and he’s truth and I can say God’s attribute also is a God of reconciliation, reconciling human beings to himself, and God is a God of restoration. So I’m going to focus on these three pillars to practically display … I’m going to focus on the impact partner because we got two or three kinds, the technical partners, the impact partners and the funding partners. But I would like to really focus on the impact one, the linguistic community mainly. Church is seen as the language killer. In our history, colonialism came with the predominant languages, predominant colonial language. We seem to crush down our languages, our identities and we continue on with this chat with this button. In our way of reaching out to the unreached people, we continued on using the major languages and the community seem to be neglected, seem to be looked down upon. Our relationship with our partners is to bring life to these languages and bring life to these cultural identity with musical style and musical genre. An old man in 2008 taught me, I was in the field for research and said, “I will not follow a God who doesn’t speak my language, who doesn’t sing my music.” I say, “Oh, you got a misunderstanding of our God. Our God in fact loves languages, loves music and the love is about loving the person no matter who he is and what it is.” So let me go quite quickly to the restoration pillar of God’s attribute. Sickness is the enemy of God. Sickness came or broke out in the garden of Eden when man fell. When Christ came, he came to restore us, kind of inner restoration and sometimes even physical restoration because Christianity is a holistic mission, holistic vision. But I want to focus on the specific broken heart in our communities due to terrorism attacks. These guys are wounded in their inner beings and have lost the image of God because they become bitter. They don’t display God’s character any longer, even in churches. So we came up with a kingdom based tool to restore the inner being so that there will be a blessing to the other human environment and human life. God’s attribute should be our baseline in our entities with any type of partners: funding partners, impact partners, technical partners.

Hannes: Well thank you Philibert and talking about real situations you addressed the terrorism situation in Burkina Faso that is a very real thing. So it’s one thing to mention reconciliation when everything is well but in your country you have real, big concerns. So Edith in the Philippines you also experience true challenges. How does what Philibert shared, how does that resonate with you?

Edith: It’s close to my heart, Philibert. What you’ve shared is something that also happens here. The situation in my country is very challenging to say the least. So in my old life, I would be on the streets, but it’s not the same anymore. I have my God who will redeem the country from my point of view. So there are many challenges when it comes to implementing the Bible translation process, but we’ve learned to use a number of entry-level introductory programmes. So, we’ve been using a lot of ethno-arts techniques and we followed this up with Bible storying which resonates with the context, with the culture, with the sentiments of the people. We’ve taught them how to craft stories. We take time before we go into the Bible translation project right away. It takes time. It takes building friendship and relationships. It’s not easy. But we’ve learned the trade and now we’re working on at least 76 or 78 ethnic language communities. We have approached BT [Bible Translation] holistically. We have made ourselves available to some of the most depressed communities needing help, material help and many things else. We use as much ingenuity and a lot of sincerity and compassionately hold their hand. The transformative power of the Word of God works so tremendously when you hold their hand, feel their hearts.

Hannes: So, what comes to mind, Edith, as I’m listening to you is the word “shalom”. God’s peace is not just one-dimensionally, but it addresses all aspects of our lives. Of course, reconciliation we just talked about is also an important element, maybe actually the core of shalom. And I know Philibert, you also are involved in the communities in your nation beyond simple Bible translation in the sense of translating a text. Can you share a little bit about that?

Philibert: One of the stories about being a blessing not only through Bible translation but through the cultural values, promoting the language prestige. So we go to the community through what I call the community mobilisation for a self-language self-awareness so that they got confident in the gift God has entrusted them and this very language is a tool of holistic development. So this language can change your history if you practice it and if you use it like training. You don’t need to use frame to be trained in how to manufacture soaps and do soaps or whatever small enterprises to earn your living. We can do everything that we can do in French or in English, we can also do it in your own language. So we want them to be knowledgeable, to be scholars of their own language. So we do programmes like how to run a business with the modules, teaching modules based in their own languages. At first we don’t mention God or whatever about Christ. At first we go as the agent of transformation, agent of valuing their own riches, their own language what God has given them.

Hannes: I wonder, Philibert, would you have an encounter that you have had within the context of this work, a specific encounter that just illustrates how this works.

Philibert: Yeah, we make a tour to many villages because we know that we are about to complete the Bible translation and we say all right. So we will go to the traditional chiefs, local authorities, traditional and administrative ones, and we will sit with them, drink the local water, not water is kind of not beer but something made out of maize and we say, “Okay, we just come to say thank you because because of your leadership, although the terrorism attack or all the stuff, you made all your ways and possible ways to keep this village safe and we are enjoying freedom and safetiness. We enjoy life here and because of that we can even do some activities such as Bible translation or literacy.” So we just come to say that your life has a good value for us and we promise that we’ll be praying for a good leadership at your side and even a long life. And then they open their hearts and say, “Oh, we are friends now. We are teaming up. We are a network.” Yeah, these are special encounters.

Hannes: We have been primarily talking about your relationship within your respective nations with people groups there and other partners there. I wonder with your relationship with external partners how you treat outsiders. Do you have an example how your organization managed to show trust and dignity with people from the outside?

Edith: So for our relationship with safe funding partners and even our fellow BT [Bible translation] agencies in the Philippines does not have any friction whatsoever. We are basically good. We help each other and outsiders, especially those who also still would like to come in and help out to fund our projects. I think people basically that’s who they are: People with a heart. And I know that if I communicate with them about the problem and honestly tell them that unless we resolve this part or that part, we may not be able to finish our job on time. So I think basically it’s communication and it’s sincere effort to overcome problem areas.

Hannes: I’m also hearing you assume the best in your partner.

Edith: That’s right. I have learned to trust the partners that we have chosen to work with. When they “demand”, quote unquote, I understand that they have a goal to meet and that we should work together to meet that goal. It’s a matter of understanding each other and if there are a little bit of areas that needs to be discussed, I am not afraid to walk up to them and say, “Listen to me.”

Hannes: Philibert, I wonder how this resonates with you. How do you interact with your partners?

Philibert: Yeah, great. As she mentioned, I really want to feel at ease with my partners. So, I always build up a kind of family relationship above the funding relationship. I may say it’s not a kind of funding-driven relationship only but brotherly-driven relationship. So that I feel able to say, “Oh man, here it’s we didn’t do good and we apologise or we got this challenge,” like one day our computer crashed with all the data and I just explain, I say, “I’m true. I’m sincere,” like my sister said. And I let the partners know that I value their life. I love, I want to continue getting funding but really this is not only the main focus. I am interested in their life, the physical, the family life, the organisation life because it’s a kind of teamwork based firstly on the spiritual aspect before being based on the funding aspect.

Hannes: Well, thank you so much for sharing so richly from your heart, both of you. Now, we do hope that many people around the globe will listen to this conversation and be inspired as I was. I wonder if you have a question that you could ask the audience and they would give you feedback on the general topic that we were discussing.

Edith: I’ve always been wondering why some translation agencies are too academic in their approach. I just noticed this and maybe the question I’d like to ask in general is how does compassion for the less privileged appeal to you as a Bible translator? Is it just finishing the book of Luke or the book of Matthew that matters in what we do? My people know this. I go down to the communities. I don’t like staying in my office and mulling with papers or the laptop all the time. As long as I have the opportunity and the resources to go and visit, I go down.

Hannes: Thank you, Edith. And I can see how this last question of yours is linked back to what you have shared previously about being kind and love and all that. So, how do we experience and express compassion for the people we work with or relate to? How about you, Philibert?

Philibert: I got maybe two, but I can say that how to continue on partnering for the long life translation process? For me, maybe it’s a phrase of an assertion or a quotation, I don’t know, but a translation starts after THE translation. What do I mean? I think when we complete the Bible translation and we celebrate dedication, this is what I may call THE translation, a very specific one. But a translation is not only textual or oral. It’s a process, ongoing one. I may say long-life translation programme, and completing the Bible translation textual one or oral one, this is one phase. And the second phase is the long-life impact. We only focus on having the Bible done and then we fund it like the funding partners. They funded it, completed and they’re done. I say no, we should still be linked. Three partners: funding partners, impact partners, technical partners, continue on with the translation. If we see that partnership is not only funding-oriented but other aspect also oriented, I mean, for me it’s a long life journey with the three partners. And the other one, how to much more shape the translation to be a need-meeting-oriented one. I may say that we’re not looking at having a Bible but we need holistic (effort) to combine all the paradigms. We have to combine all the parts of the compartment of the sections of human beings of the committee linguistic community right away by strategising by doing the profile of the describing the programme, the translation programme at the beginning. It’s not after translation that we start thinking this but it should be a kind of combining one, the kind of togetherness. So for me it’s have to much more shape as an alliance translation to much more be holistically framed out right away at the beginning.

Edith: So on our side of town we’ve come up with some ideas that are less expensive if not free as soon as let’s say a book has been and I’m just going to share this, a book has been consultant checked and community checked and good to go. We don’t wait until the rest of the books that will have to be finished for that period of time. We engage the community. We also encourage the churches and the community members themselves to use it. So just to give you an example, some of our communities actually broadcast the finished book in their radio programmes. These finished well checked passages become the backbone of some of the preachings of the pastors in the community. They’ve learned to use them, especially when they preach in their mother tongue. There’s a funny but very effective way of doing it. Also, in some of the communities that we work with, some pastors with the prodding of our people decided they would buy an amplifier, a public address system. And they put this up in the tallest tree within the community. And early in the morning, one pastor would read the Word of God and engage the people. We took this from the example of the Islam, the mosques would broadcast every morning whether you like it or not. So we thought whether we like it or not we have to broadcast the Word of God and this does not cost much. I mean the amplifiers they’re cheap, but putting it up in the tallest tree and reading the Word of God every morning keeps the community hearing the Word and helping in their own transformation.

Hannes: Is there just anything else you would like to say with regard to being like Jesus in our relationships with partners and the outside world?

Philibert: For me, Christlike attributes and partnership should be holistically implemented. I mean the partnership should tackle every corner of the entire existence of our linguistic communities. Christlike partnership doesn’t focus on maybe one aspect, the spiritual one, or maybe other programmes like economic empowerment or whatever. So to wrap it up, Christlike partnership may really tackle every corner, every aspect of our life as an Alliance organisation. We should line it up, we should use it as our backbone or as our driving pillar.

Edith: There’s one word that has become my favourite after I left the world to be in the missions. That’s the character of Jesus that I like best: His humility, that even in the event that he was being humiliated, he was able to stand firm and be as humble as he could be even in his own deity. I’d like to emulate that. It’s a long toil. It’s hard. It’s not easy, especially for someone so assertive. And I have chosen that path. And I think that we could be like Jesus in our relationships with partners and the world when we can master humility. I’m not saying I have mastered it yet. I have not. I still can get triggered. But it’s really in prayer and faithful adoration of my Christ. It’s something I really would like to accomplish in my life. I think that attribute of Christ would help me establish better and better relationships with my partners, with my own people in Wycliffe and with the outside world.

Hannes: Yeah. Thank you. Now, piggybacking on that, how would you express humility as an organisation? What would that look like?

Philibert: For me as an organisation, humility should be very practical. It’s not because we are scholars in the biblical languages, Hebrew, that we are better than the impact community who didn’t get a chance to go to university or to what. We are not superior. We are just collaborators. But there’s no boss in the Bible translation partnership. Even with the funding partners, when we go to the communities, we just tell them that in fact you are the scholar and we are ignorant because it’s your language and you [were] born with it. But we just come to help, but you are the very good specialist and we can’t do further in terms of quality assurance without your input.

Edith: Humility for me is not timidity. It’s not timidity at all. It’s a matter of expressing yourself and whatever you believe in and whatever you think is best under the circumstances. But with due respect to people and with enough understanding that no one is better than the other. You just mentioned Philibert about being one with mother tongue translators or the impact partners in the community it belongs. I believe that when they see us initially, they would look up to us and say, “Oh, she’s the CEO of Wycliffe Philippines.” I get embarrassed by that. So I normally just correct them and say, “Yes, officially that’s my title but I’m here like anyone who works for God.” So explaining what you are there for and why you have come to visit and holding their hands and making them feel important is part of what I think I would like to be as a servant of Christ because that’s who he is.

Hannes: Now I’m curious, Philibert. Edith just said humility is for her a very important aspect of being like Christ. What would you choose?

Philibert: Similar choice of mine is I think humility – [it] is not a word. Humility is not a concept. Humility is not a dictionary word but humility is a behaviour and the behaviour starts individually and collectively. How does the CEO act with his colleagues and how do the employees act with the human environment and how do we behave with our linguistic communities? So for me it depends on the culture but in each culture, you may display a way of telling the other fellow that it’s not because I speak English for instance or I travel that I am. If you can sweep the floor of the organisation, I as CEO, I can also do it. If you can carry a box of Bibles during the dedication, I CEO, I can also do it. The difference is the leadership position just to help the organisation to get its best results.