“There’s a lot of thinking and a lot of work,” says a lady in her 70s, “but it isn’t impossible. It has given me a new way of reading the Bible.”

“People have developed a new interest in Bible study,” reports Elizabeth Wilson, who has run RUB workshops at her church. “Even ‘old hands’ were refreshed and discovered a new way of integrating old knowledge.”

Anticipated

One particular area of success that the Bible Society could hardly have anticipated when it launched the RUB program was the way in which it has been adopted by Chinese-speaking congregations. The materials were translated by the Rev David Zhang. He first heard about RUB from his senior minister, who knows Dr Peggy Yao, the Bible Society’s Scripture Use Facilitator and the person who developed the program.

Grow in faith

“At the time we were looking for a program to train our church members, realising how poor their biblical literacy was,” he recalls. “After they became Christians, they needed something to help them grow in their faith and knowledge. There are very few good materials in Chinese. So we decided to look at RUB to see if we could translate and adapt it for use with the Chinese-language congregations. We wanted to help lay people to study the Bible for themselves and to help one another in doing this.”

Daunting task

Tackling the translation was initially a daunting task for Mr Zhang, but he soon found ways of transferring English linguistic and cultural concepts into Chinese.

“I found a book that had the necessary terminology in both languages, which helped a lot. Other than that, the format and concepts proved to be transferable cross-culturally. The only changes I made were to talk about Chinese versions of the Bible rather than English ones and to add a timeline showing biblical history in conjunction with Chinese history.”

As well as developing the RUB program within Australia itself, the Bible Society has responded to a request from the Bible Society in Singapore to run the RUB workshop there and to train local facilitators. Dr Yao, originally from Singapore herself, has travelled there several times for this purpose.

Simple skills

Lim Khay Tham, General Secretary of the Bible Society of Singapore, explains that the program has also been very successful there:

“I wanted a program that would help people to engage with the Bible, not just own a copy of it. This program introduces simple skills for studying and interpreting the Bible. After assessing it with my colleagues, I knew that it was what I was looking for.

Cultural lens

“I had no concerns about its suitability for our context because the skills of Bible study transcend nationalities. People naturally read the Bible through their own cultural lens, but the skills that RUB imparts are foundational.