One of the Bible seminars hosted by national Bible Societies in the UBS Americas Area. Photo: UBS/Edesio Sanchez (ARG06DJ-1.JPG)

AMERICAS AREA — The story of the Bible Seminars facilitated by the United Bible Societies’ (UBS) Americas Area Service Center is an inspiring one. It describes how UBS, whose role could once be neatly summed up as that of translating, publishing and distributing the Bible, has become a Bible educator.

In the countries of the Americas Area there are hundreds of dedicated church pastors who are almost totally lacking in formal theological training – by our estimates, the proportion is as high as 80 per cent. Hosted by many of the 26 national Bible Societies in the Area and using UBS resources, the Seminars, normally two or three days long, provide pastors and others with the Bible knowledge to teach and preach on an expanding range of key aspects of Scripture. And at the same time the seminars are catering for increasingly younger, more interconfessional groups, with more women among their number than was the case when the first Seminars were held more than 20 years ago.

Radically different

Back at the beginning of the 1980s, the original idea was to promote – or, if necessary, defend – the different versions of the Bible and related materials which were then being produced in the Americas. In particular, a number of national Bible Societies had approached the Director of the Area’s Promotion and Distribution Department for help in responding to the reactions prompted by the publication in 1978 of Dios Habla Hoy, a Bible translation which, for a number of reasons, was radically different from the Reina-Valera translation so well loved by Spanish-speaking evangelicals.

Later, with the help of various Translation Consultants in the Area – notably Alfredo Tepox, Eugene Nida, Gonzalo Baez-Camargo and Alfonso Lloreda – a broader program got under way. Among the subjects presented were the history of the text of the Bible, exegesis, the principles of Bible translation and, naturally enough, its translation into indigenous languages.

Special enthusiasm

I first began taking part in the Seminars in 1984. At the end of November and the beginning of December we held Seminars in San José, in Costa Rica, and Comayagua, in Honduras. The most interesting thing for me, and what gave me a special enthusiasm for the Seminars, was that, while in Costa Rica these events were attended exclusively by Protestants, in Honduras Catholics also attended.

Years later this interconfess-ionality would become the common feature of the Seminars, wherever they were held.

To some extent the ‘apologetic’ character of the Seminars, following the reaction to Dios Habla Hoy, continued into the 1990s. Many pastors who attended were obviously not happy with the new Bible translation on account of its inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books, and attacked UBS for now being ecumenical. So the UBS Consultants who were our Seminar speakers had to arm themselves with patience, grace and prudence in responding to the questions and complaints which came up.

By 1989 the planning of the Seminars was the responsibility of the Americas Area Translation Department, and a restructuring of responsibilities in the Area office caused a change to their focus.

No accident

It was no accident that the first time this change became noticeable was when we held Seminars in Cuba. For the Cubans, the concern was not about the virtues of Dios Habla Hoy as against the Reina-Valera version – they were more worried about the shortage of Bibles!

Related to this, the participants were also different in character: whereas in earlier years most had been over the age of 50, the ones attending in Cuba were younger and wanted, above all, to learn – trying to make up for the long years when there had been no religious or biblical education at all in the island. Thus, new subjects were added to the curriculum: how to prepare a Bible study… how to prepare sermons… the historical context of biblical events. The new vision and plan for the Seminars became concerned less with UBS’s ministry and more with showing how the Bible came to us, how to study it better, how to present it more effectively, how it is translated and what the main obstacles and achievements of a new translations are.

More effective

The new style of Seminar coincided with the arrival of new blood in the Americas Area. A generation of Translation Consultants retired and new ones – men such as Bill Mitchell, Robert Bascom, Samuel Pagán and others – came, bringing new ways of making the missionary task of UBS in the Americas wider and more effective.

In the mid-1990s, the Seminars began to multiply: more and more Bible Societies wanted to hold them as a way of supporting church leaders. They were growing in other ways, too: soon they were covering more than 20 different topics, and the people who came to them were asking for materials to take away with them so that they could go on learning afterwards.

In response, we decided to take the knowledge being imparted at the Seminars into other media. In 1998 we published the first Manual for Biblical Studies, Descubre la Biblia. With 18 contributors, the majority of whom belonged to the UBS translation team in the Americas, this volume offered the great wealth gathered during the years when the Seminars had been presented throughout Latin America. Since then the book has developed a life of its own, being used as a resource not only in the Seminars themselves but also in theological institutes and seminaries, on church-run Bible courses and in student groups. Reprinted several times, it has become one of the most widely distributed books in the Area, and an English version, Discover the Bible, is now spreading its influence even further afield.

Secondly, we decided to produce some videos based on the book. So far nine have been produced, covering the most popular themes. Like Discover the Bible, the videos – or DVDs, as they are becoming – now provide teaching resources well beyond the Seminars: they have been adopted by theological institutions and have a firm place in church educational programs.

As the number of Seminars has grown so, too, has the need to provide participants with tools and materials to continue their Bible education. For most of them, a Seminar is a rare opportunity for formal training about the Bible and we have made it a priority to publish more support materials on the topics covered. And from this year, Discover the Bible, originally a single volume, is to be published in three volumes of some 500 pages each.

Different cities

So, in a little more than 20 years, Bible Seminars have developed quite significantly. On average there are now about 12 per year across Latin America, and countries such as Cuba and Honduras hold two or three per year in different cities. Participants have changed, too: whereas in the early stages they were pastors and adult church leaders from old-established, male-led churches, we now have an audience that is younger, comes mainly from Pentecostal and charismatic churches and includes a significant proportion of women and lay-people. Seminars of a multi-denominational character are now commonplace and more Bible Societies are joining the trend. At the same time, in Guatemala for the past two years there has been a special one for a particular Catholic Diocese; similar Seminars have taken place in Peru and the Spanish-speaking communities of the United States. In some countries, conference speakers from Catholic universities and seminaries are taking the platform alongside UBS Translation Consultants.

As the years go by, the needs and challenges change, and we adjust and change the topics accordingly. Sometimes people ask for teaching on subjects which do not at first seem to have a direct relation to our ministry. But by virtue of the trust they place in UBS, they ask us to talk to them about: the Book of Revelation and its message for today, The Da Vinci Code, the Gospel of Judas and Gnostic literature are some examples. And last year, Seminars in Peru and Uruguay centred on Power and Violence, as part of the World Council of Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence program.