Episode 14, The Journey Podcast – Full Transcript – Paul Kimbi interview

December 2025

Paul Kimbi: Translation must be seen as a package. Bible translation is the indwelling of the word of God in a community. It’s not done in a day.

Phil Prior: From the Wycliffe Global Alliance, Welcome to the Journey Podcast. I’m Phil Prior, the Alliance Director for Communication, and I’m here with my co-host, Jim Killam, our managing editor for the Alliance.

Jim Killam: Hi, Phil. Hi everyone.

Phil: Hi, Jim. It’s good to see you. And Jim, that clip we opened up with was part of a conversation you had recently with Dr Paul Kimbi, who’s the Alliance Consultant for Bible Translation Programs.

Jim: Yeah, Paul is from the African nation of Cameroon, and we thought, in the spirit of Christmas, he’s one of the wisest men we know.

Phil: Oh, I see what you did there.

Jim: Sorry. Anyway, Paul is someone who  thinks and reflects very deeply  about Bible translation movements and the work of God around the world, and our conversation was very timely.

Phil: Yeah, we’ve just celebrated Vision 2025, which at least by the calendar, is the culmination of something big that began back in 1999 with SIL, what would become the Wycliffe Global Alliance. Vision 2025 really embraced the idea that by this year, a Bible translation project would be in progress for every people group that needed it.

Jim: That’s right, and we’ve come very close to that actually happening, which is really miraculous. Paul talked about the value of Vision 2025 for Bible translation movements in devising new strategies and a new urgency to the work. But then we also talked about how numerical goals and statistics can misdirect our attention from what God may be doing in unexpected ways and places.

Phil: Yeah. And I think the architects of Vision 2025 would fully agree with that. And let’s just say here to our listeners that you may find this episode particularly useful to share with funders and prayer partners and others that you are in contact with as a way to show them the mindset and direction of Bible translation movements post Vision 2025, especially in Africa, but really all around the world.

Jim: Absolutely. Paul and I were talking about statistics that show the African continent as being the emerging epicenter of global Christianity. So as we jump into the recording here, he says it isn’t that simple.  And in fact, it can be emblematic of how the rest of the world misunderstands Africa. So let’s give a listen.

Paul: The discussion about the center of gravity of Christianity having gone down to the South, southern hemisphere and where Africa is, and I thought Africa was in the centre of that. And I was asking myself the question, what is the pivotal strength for Africa to host the centre of gravity of Christianity in terms of the depth of Christianity, in terms of the numbers of Christians?

And I thought it was mostly about numbers, but how are these numbers derived? When you go to Facebook, a lot of people profess their Christianity and a lot of people say nice things about Christianity. If you were to go by numbers and only by numbers, you’ll say, OK, the centre of gravity is right here. Africa is growing exponentially in Christianity and you can come up with statistics and say, OK, the growth grew from this number of millions of Christians and just in 10 years it has doubled.

And that is great. But when you come to Africa and  you think about the depth of Christianity and you think about some of the values of Christianity, you would say, OK, how does this translate into  qualitative living?

When you take for example, this can be a sensitive but corruption, and you find out that a country may be said to be 80% Christian but it is ranked a very corrupt nation.

Who are those who are corrupt if 80% of the population is Christian? So there is some kind of disconnect. The numbers are speaking, but the facts seem to be disconnected a little bit.

And I’m not saying that by being a Christian you will not find certain certain ills or so, no, But in terms of depth, you will want to say, OK, corruption is greatly reduced in this nation.

And one thing that can account for this is because we see this great number of Christians here. So it looks like, one, Christianity is mainly in terms of numbers. The second thing that I thought Was, what may account for this? Have we really understood the Christian message?

Jim, you and myself are speaking in English and I can manage to speak some good English. I give myself that. But the fact is I still struggle a lot in my vocabulary. I still don’t know a lot in terms of the English vocabulary. I still go through a lot of processing to be able to understand English idioms for example, or metaphors. And I am asking myself the question, if Christianity in Africa, for example, is mainly communicated in the language that is from the Northern hemisphere, English, French or Portuguese or Spanish, the colonial languages in Africa, could that deepen the roots of Christianity? Could we say Christianity has moved, truly moved down to the Southern hemisphere and has its tentacles in the north because it is in the Southern hemisphere, but in the languages of the north?

Those are some of the thoughts that went through my mind.

And of course, I also am asking the question, when we talk about Africa, what exactly do we mean? Is it just geography?

Is it a cultural de facto? What do we really mean? Because if you talk about Africa, you are in the US and there are many, many, many Africans in the US. Basically, their worldview may be African even though they’re in the US, or their worldview may be Western even though they’re Africans. So what exactly do we mean when we use the adjective African?

Jim: We tend in the West, I think, to view it as one monolithic culture too, which of course is not true and there are so many cultures in Africa.

Paul: I come from Cameroon and I go to the US and the gentleman asked me welcome a warm discussion that I appreciate and then he Says, “How is Africa?” I’m like, I live here, only I don’t know all of Cameroon.

Cameroon has more than 250 ethnic groups.I come from one of such ethnic groups. I don’t know how life is in the farther north of Cameroon or in the farther side of Cameroon. I go to Kenya is significantly different in culture from Cameroon. So the question, ‘How is Africa?’ It’s difficult for me to even to understand it.

Jim: You talk about a kind of a lack of depth of Christian —literacy will call it—in your country and in other places. The one story where someone put on social media there was from Luke 4:7.“If you worship me, it will all be yours.” And someone got all kinds of likes for, for that statement and people not realizing those are the words of Satan and not the words of Jesus. It was it rang very true to me too, because I think in in our American culture, there’s a lot of superficiality with belief. And I just thought that was a really interesting story. Does that continue to ring true for you?

Paul: It continues to ring true for me, especially with what has become known as prosperity gospel. We have really great men of God in Africa and they have large followings and sometimes what they communicate appears to be more powerful than what the Bible communicates. So sometimes, and I’ve seen that a lot, lots of people will quote their man of God in quotes.

The man of God said that the man of God believes that they will quote the man of God, but they will not quote the Scriptures. And it looks like the man of God is more authoritative than the Scriptures. And that’s the challenge.

And I’m not saying the man of God may be wrong, but it is just that people need to know that and to cross examine to know that what the man of God says ensues from Scripture. That it is sound doctrine. It aligns with what God wants rather than just quasi total absorption from what the man of God says because he may be in error sometimes.

Jim: To relate that to Bible translation, I know that the emphasis sometimes has been on simply getting the Bible to a language or, or producing it in a language. But I, I think you’re saying that that level of misunderstanding is very prevalent even in a language that has the Bible in its own language, right?

Or in a community where the Bible has, where the Bible is available in its own language. So it isn’t just about delivering scripture to a community.

Paul: Exactly. Scripture delivery. Bible translation is not the veneration of a book, is not the veneration of a text. It is the engagement with a communication from God. God has communicated and we engage with it. The Bible is God’s revelation.

God’s revelation is God’s talk, God’s communication. We interact with God in what he has communicated.

And I said just a few days ago, God is not ultimately interested about a book, even a holy book. God is interested about a people, a nation, a church. And God has communicated so that our people will become a royal priesthood, a holy nation, A Kingdom called out of darkness into God’s light.

God has communicated like Jesus tells Peter, I’m building my church and the gates of Hades. I’m not going to prevail against it. So God communicates to build a church. It’s not about the book, and I think Bible translation is that. It’s about helping people hear God. So when God communicates to Israel, God expects Israel to be different because now I’m talking with you, Israel, you need to be separate. You need to be different because now these people group has heard God. The purpose of God’s communication for them is transformation.

So it’s not about the text. Even a high quality text, a high quality text is good. A faithful translation, a clear translation and all the qualities of translation are excellent things that we must work to achieve. But mind you, that text should be engaged with with the people for whom it has been translated in order to make it a successful text and a relevant test achieving the purpose for which the translation was designed.

Jim: How does that inform you, Paul, as as a Bible translator, as someone who works in this movement? Have we been doing this wrong? Or are we just at a stage where it’s evolving now from getting scripture to people to getting people to engage? Or is there something we’ve we’ve not been doing correctly?

Paul: I think we’ve been doing good, but I also think that we can do better. I think we should not be satisfied with the status quo, but we should always look for ways of improving what we have been doing.

We live in a highly technological world. How should we take advantage of technology to be able to engage with scriptures much more than we’ve done with the paper and the ink in the past decades? How should we look at the shifts in terms of culture in order to be engaged to engage scriptures with people in different ways? Take this example, 20-30 years ago, translation was mainly perceived in a local community as this language is spoken in this part of the world, in this remote area. And today in the world of urbanization, in the world of migrations, the people of this remote area are not confined to this area.

Many of them may be in the United States, though it’s an enclave community in Cameroon. How do we reach out to those people that come from this area in the United States who have now migrated? So even though we’ve been doing well, there is always room to improve and there is always room to update what we’ve been doing. And again, to place emphasis on translation as a package, translation as a process, not to see translation as a product, but to see translation in terms of its outcomes. I think we need to place more emphasis on that.

Jim: There’s been a tendency to emphasize the number of languages remaining to be translated, things like that. And it’s an easy thing to count and to raise money around. And you know, there’s, there’s something tangible there. I think you’re saying, and I’ve we’ve talked about this before, but there are better ways to measure transformation in the impact of Bible translation.

But can you talk about that a little bit about some different ways that that could be measured?

Paul: Let me begin from what you’ve just mentioned, looking at the statistics and saying, OK, these are languages that we need to complete translation. And I’m remembering a quote from the former Executive Director of SIL Global, Michel Kenmonge. He said we have been talking about Bibleless people, people without a Bible, but we need to take good considerations because we may have a people-less Bible.

So we move from a situation where we’re saying these are people without the Word of God, and we go to a situation where we have a Word of God without the people because we want a translation in a language.

And I just mentioned that God is interested in our people. First, Peter chapter 1 says you are a holy people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. God is interested in a nation. He tells Abraham, I will bless those who bless you. You shall be my cherished possession, a great nation. God is interested in our Kingdom, and this is all about people.

So one way that we need to do this is to first of all consider the people. What will a successful translation for these people be? And we’ll need to begin with a situational analysis of the stakes on the ground of the impact that the translation needs to achieve.

And these days we talk about a translation brief and so we bring stakeholders together and we envisage a community and say these are some of the key things that this translation can achieve and let’s do it. That will be a point of envisaging scripture engagement even up from before the translation happens.

And I think that is one approach that we can consider rather than just know that OK, yes, this is a language is spoken by 5,000 people. Let’s do it. Who are these 5,000 people? Do they have a church? What will be the scope of  …There’s something called scope of story. What will be the purpose, the function of the translation? The situation analysis upfront will greatly address some of the scripture engagement things that we want to achieve.

Is it evangelism? Is it discipleship? They are considerably church people. So do we do a translation that is looking at discipling them or one that is more oriented towards evangelism or a bilingual translation? Because there are people whose first language is not even their parents first language.

So for instance: I speak English most of the time more than my mother tongue. I could argue that my mother tongue and English are both first languages to me. What kind of translation do I need? Perhaps a bilingual translation? This will determine what kind of Scripture engagement and how a translation will be designed.

Jim: And very much not only involving that community in those discussions, but letting them drive a lot of that, right? So it’s not being imposed from outside?

Paul: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean this.

We’ve been talking about ownership of the translation and the Wycliffe Global Alliance philosophy of Bible translation proceeds a local ownership as key to a success of a translation. So under all various ways of defining what local ownership really means, does it just mean shepherding the translation in terms of resourcing funds? Does it mean making key decisions and choices? Does it go in the area of quality assurance?

Local ownership is something very key, and it’s context specific, and each context speaks for itself. And one thing, Jim, that we’ve done in translation has been to proliferate best practices all over. It’s a good thing, but best practices in Asia may not always work the same way in Africa. So while we learn from the best practices in Asia, for example, we should ask ourselves the the question, how does this align fit with the African context? And what are the best practices within the African context that we can elicit and apply in order to make a translation more successful, more relevant and more you say about?

Jim: What place, Paul, do you think statistics have in all of that? We’ve just celebrated Vision 2025 and, and you know, this idea that every language that needs Scripture can have something in place or have something in progress very soon. Obviously that’s not a complete way to look at Bible translation, but what is the value of looking at those statistics now and then?

Paul: I think statistics are important. They create motivation and then they give direction. For example, if you take All- Access goals, I think it’s built around statistics and they say X number of language and languages with a million speakers would have had say a complete Bible languages that are run. This would be so statistics kind of help us determine in terms of numbers what will be the greatest gain of a translation that is done. Will it be serving a million people or just 5,000 people and where should we go in terms of that?

So the great motivation, the help in strategy in US developing a strategy for translation.

And somebody says the world is governed by numbers. They are all around us and we cannot evade them, we cannot avoid them. But our choices should not be purely informed by statistics. Statistics should be a key thing in helping us shape our choices, but there should also be some key considerations. Jesus tells the parable of the sheep. He says consider a person has 100 sheep and one of them gets missing. What does he do? Will he not keep the 99 and go after the one sheep again numbers 99 and one. The one sheep out there is as important as statistics.

Even if it is a population, a language that is spoken by just 100 people, their lives are worthy before God. And if a translation can be done for them to know God, that is important. So I think there are many other variables that help inform choices, help organisations to strategize, and one of such variables is numbers and it is important.

Jim: There’s the factor of communicating to funders about progress and about impact and numbers. I think sometimes maybe the easiest method to do that, maybe not the most effective, but what would you say is a better way to communicate with potential funders about the impact of Bible translation and not overplaying what you what we just talked about, not just about numbers, not just about numbers of languages or how many people speak that language?

Paul: Because of limited resources, I think funders want to go where the most impact will be it, and that impact often is easily measured in numbers. But godly living is difficult to be measured just in numbers. Quality living is not just about numbers.

I have a cousin of mine who went to school and who love just elementary school and she’s a good Christian. But she could barely read her Bible in English and it will take her a long time to be able to read through a chapter of the Bible in English, and even then she will not understand.

When the Bible, the New Testament, was published in my mother tongue, I could see her flourish. I could see her by the heat, by the fireside, trying to get herself warm and reading her Bible. I can see her now going out trying to do evangelism on her own. I see a lot of qualitative growth in her Christianity and her potential unleashed.

And I say to myself, if this New Testament was done just for her, then it was worth doing it. But it is difficult to communicate what I’m saying to the funders.

But I think what she is doing is a ripple of the impact of the translation. What she has already achieved because of the translation has rippled through many lives.

Even though we see only her, there’s a lot of people that she has been able to influence because she now understands the Scriptures better. So what do we need to do in order to be able to communicate to the funders that numbers are good, resources are limited? It is good to reach out to the largest number of people with the funds, but also how can we reach out vitally, strategically to a person who shows such a potential of being a massive influence in the body of Christ?

Again, it’s easy just to go by the numbers, by the percentages, but there should always be considerations.

One thing, Jim, that we are considering and we’ve been talking about is to do a comprehensive project design. A comprehensive project design will be able to address some other aspects of life in the community and to allow the founder fund those aspects that he puts his heart in, while knowing that there will be other domains in the society that are going to push and help the translation to be able to be more successful.

Jim: I was talking with someone else recently about this topic and we were talking about story and how often we can measure impacts or at least see impact through story more than we can statistics. And you just mentioned the story of of someone whose life was changed. And I’m wondering, is that a strategy to be collecting as many stories as possible and then being able to communicate those to anyone, funders in particular, who may want to see tangible results of the work?

Paul: Absolutely. And I think all founders desire to see this, hear testimonies of what the funds are doing. So to be able to share testimonies they edify and then they motivate for giving. Translation is often like a triangle on the one part. There is the pressure that is measured by finances, by resources.

So how much resources are needed for this? There is the pressure that is measured by time, how much time will be needed for this? But the other side of the triangle is how much impact is it making?

And I think looking around the triangle, the different sides of the triangle will help shape strategy than just look at one side in terms of OK, this is a good project. It’s a sizable project. It’s fundable because it’s small. This is a good project. It meets SMART goals. It’s specific, measurable and attainable because it’s going to be just five years.

But also in terms of the impact, the other side of the triangle, we should be able to project what impact that is going to achieve and be able to measure that impact. And all these three sides will help find a balance. Should we draw, extrapolate it a little longer? Should we add a little bit more funds because of the impact that is expanding?

Jim: I wonder how often we look back 10 years later or 20 years later after a community has received Scripture to see if there’s more measurable impact at that point. We tend to kind of move on to the next project or something rather than maybe taking a closer look at what’s happened in a place, right?

Paul: And that is the point when we focus on the product and once the product is achieved, we are done. The translation is done. Translation must be seen as a package. Bible translation is the indwelling of the Word of God in a community. It’s not done in a day. It’s not done within a time frame. God indwells a community and it’s a process.

And it’s always good to look back and say where are we here now? Where are we driving at? What are the joys? What are the sweet stories we hear from what was achieved? So it’s a process and it is not a product.

Jim: Maybe as we wrap up, Paul, I could ask you about Vision 2025. We just had a celebration of that. And as we get to the end of 2025 here as you and I are talking, what do you think has been the value of Vision 2025 for the Kingdom? And I was going to say the Bible translation movement, but I’d say more, what’s its value toward the Kingdom of God?

Paul: Vision 2025 — I’ve heard it being said, Jim, that it was not eschatological vision. It was not telling people that in 2025 we would have begun a translation or finished a translation and then the end comes.

Jim: Right. Yeah, that that one verse is always cited on that one.

Paul: Yeah. I believe vision 2025 was a motivation. It was a stimulation. And in terms of that it has achieved a lot. If you look at from when the vision was incepted to now, you see that there has been exponential growth, exponential awareness, expansion of translation. So Vision 2025 was, in my opinion, catalytic and it helped to spur, motivate translation on the field, resourcing of funds out there and create awareness of the need of translation.

It’s been a successful vision. I heard that a vision is like seeing ahead. It’s like a prophet who’s prophesying what God is saying. And he tells you there is a mountain out there and then you move to the mountain and you are going to the mountain. But until you reach that mountain you don’t see that there are other mountains behind the mountain.

Vision 2025 has taken us to the mountain and now we are able to see clearly what lies behind the mountain and what needs to be done after this vision. So what are the next steps? It’s up to the Bible translation movement to see and address from here on the threshold or on the eve of Vision 2025? How do we carry on forward? Of course there is Vision 2033 and who knows?

So yes, visions help us as catalyst to motivate, energize and give us a push. And I think Vision 2025 did that excellently well.

Phil: Our thanks again to Paul Kimbi for a really fascinating conversation. Again, we would encourage you to share this episode widely as an illuminating look into Bible translation today and in the coming years. Meantime, that leaves me to say may all of you have a wonderful Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour.

Jim: Yeah, Merry Christmas. And then even if you’re listening to this late, we could still say Merry Christmas, I think. Phil, this is probably the point that we’re supposed to break into song, but we would really like our audience to come back. So maybe let’s just skip that part.

Phil: Yeah, I think nobody needs to hear me sing at this end of the year, so we can skip straight past that part and just say thank you to everyone for listening and for being with us this year. These podcasts have been really fun to put together and it’s been great to talk to so many different people. And we look forward to coming back in 2026 with more great stuff.

Jim: Yes. So, so long for now, everyone.

Jim: We’ll see you soon.

Phil: Bye bye.