About unfoldingWord
unfoldingWord exists to see
THE CHURCH IN EVERY PEOPLE GROUP
THE BIBLE IN EVERY LANGUAGE
Home > About unfoldingWord
Our Mission
We work with Church leaders around the world who are seeking to establish their churches in sound doctrine but lack access to Bible translations in the languages their people speak. By equipping these leaders with biblical resources and effective training, they are empowered to translate the Bible with excellence and efficiency in every language that needs one.
Imagine a world where ...
- ... the global church has expanded into every people group such that everyone in the world is within reach of the gospel.
- ... every disciple of Jesus has a pathway to grow to full maturity in Christ as part of a local body of believers led by godly leaders who teach the Scriptures faithfully.
- ... every disciple in every people group has unhindered access to excellent translations of the Bible and abundant biblical resources in their own language, in formats that make them immediately useful in evangelism and unlimited in ministry impact.
- ... the number of people across the world who are directly involved in expanding, establishing, and equipping the global church is 1,000x greater than it is today.
Our unified strategy
By purposely integrating Church-Centric Movements, Church-Centric Theological Formation, and Church-Centric Bible Translation, young churches can be established in previously unreached people groups and grow to full maturity while also learning Bible translation skills.
The outcome of this integration of theological formation and Bible translation is leadership of the church in any people group equipped to produce trustworthy Bible translations. It also helps to build a strong church that continues to expand while also using the translated Scriptures to build itself up in the faith, growing to full maturity in Christ.
Projects
- Leading the unfoldingWord project to provide unrestricted biblical content, technology tools, and training resources (including translationAcademy) to empower the global Church for Bible translation.
- Extending the Gateway Languages Strategy in collaboration with Church networks worldwide in order to provide essential biblical resources to 100% of people groups in their own languages, through languages of wider communication.
- Promoting the use of and encouraging translation of Open Bible Stories, an easy-to-understand, visual overview of the Bible. These fifty key stories, from Creation to Revelation, are effective for evangelism & discipleship, in text, audio, and video, on any mobile device, in any language, for free.
- Developing translationCore, an innovative, open-source Bible translation platform with a focus on empowering the Church to improve and confirm the trustworthiness of their Bible translations.
You can help us achieve these audacious goals.
Give today so that Church-Centric Bible Translation can flourish around the world!
Give NowIn the News
Stories From the Field
Ten Times Faster
- March 14, 2023
Imagine you are ordering a new internet connection or cable TV or maybe something new from Amazon and you get the message saying, “Your town is too remote and we can’t serve your area at this time. We...
Meet Amy & Priscilla
- March 14, 2023
unfoldingWord operates as a catalyst for the Church-Centric Bible Translation movement. We collaborate as part of the body of Christ to develop and implement strategies and unrestricted biblical resou...
Jeremiah and the Occult King
- May 04, 2023
When Jeremiah* first heard that his Chadian church-planting network needed his help translating unfoldingWord® Open Bible Stories (OBS), he was skeptical. “I thought Bible stories were for children, l...
The Exponential Journey
- April 10, 2023
Khartoum, Sudan, April 2021. I was sitting in a small hotel conference room with the leaders of Greater Reach Alliance and half a dozen representatives of unreached Sudanese people groups. We were ta...
Iran: Bibles in every language
...
Escape from Kharkiv
- June 13, 2022
BAM! A rocket penetrates a building, shattering windows and shaking foundations. Clatter! Bomb debris splatters cars, building façades, and adjacent roofs. Bang-Bang-Bang! The jackhammer staccato of A...
Innovation in Bible Translation
- March 13, 2023
unfoldingWord catalyzes innovation in Bible translation. Your gifts and prayers are enabling remarkable new developments! One of those is happening in a state in Asia. It began with translationCore. ...
Breakthrough in Chad
- July 04, 2022
Three churches were birthed when a local chieftain, who formerly combined Islam and the occult, came to Christ. In the another community, new believers were baptized, and two new churches were planted...
OVERCOMING the ODDS for 300,000 PEOPLE
- April 06, 2022
The challenge Pastor Manish was facing seemed insurmountable. His 300,000-member South Asian mountain people group desperately needs Scripture in the language they understand best. Pastor Manish, an e...
Ruska Roma celebrate first Scripture in their language
- September 20, 2021
EASTERN UKRAINE — To Stephen K., holding a Ruska Roma translation of 3 John means more than a chance to celebrate with his Roma friends. It’s the answer to 10 years of prayer. In April, a team of fou...
Escape from Kharkiv
- June 28, 2022
BAM! A rocket penetrates a building, shattering windows and shaking foundations. Clatter! Bomb debris splatters cars, building façades, and adjacent roofs. Bang-Bang-Bang! The jackhammer staccato of A...
Oscarcito and the Yanomami
- June 23, 2022
Hernán walked out to board a missionary’s small plane deep in the South American rainforests. Then he paused, turned around, went back to his house, and did something unusual. “I feel like I should le...
SOUTH ASIA GATEWAY LANGUAGE TRANSLATORS OPEN the GATES to TITUS
- April 06, 2022
Imagine you had never heard of Noah’s Ark, Joseph’s many-colored coat, Moses and Pharaoh, or David and Goliath. You could not call on their inspiration and encouragement, because your language did not...
A Scrap of Paper that Changed a Life
- March 13, 2023
It was 2006. A young Islamic man, walking home in Khartoum, Sudan, found a scrap of paper that changed his life and began his journey to the forefront of Church-Centric Bible Translation. His name is ...
Bible Without a Village
- December 27, 2021
On December 4, our Spanish Gateway Language partners held their first translation workshop with Portuguese translators. Portuguese is the Gateway to 530 people groups representing about 50 million peo...
Iran: Bibles in every language
Transform Iran President Lazarus Yeghnazar dreams of the day his country, Iran, will have Bibles in every local language. Using unfoldingWord's translation tools and Biblica's newly-revised Farsi Bibl...
Maryam the Librarian
- March 08, 2023
Maryam was a little girl living near the Iran/Iraq border when war broke out in the 1980s. When she was still very young, her family moved to Tehran to escape the fighting, but the move did not fill t...
Paying the Price of Persecution
- March 13, 2023
"We have been invited to the police station many, many times," said Pastor Vic*. "We have been harassed and so has the Bible translation team. Some of our original team members left because of the ris...
Zafar's Favorite Tool
- March 13, 2023
This year, unfoldingWord completed the initial training of the Russian Gateway Language team. All 50 Open Bible Stories and nine Scripture Book Packages are now available in Russian, serving as the Ga...
Inside a Church-Centric Bible Translation Workshop
- March 13, 2023
A large conference room in sub-Saharan Africa is filled with 45 Sudanese men and women. Gathered around tables in groups of five or six, laptops open, with soft conversations punctuated by occasional ...