Bill with the city of Tijuana spread out behind him, and San Diego in the distance
One of our joys during this season of ministry is Bill’s involvement at Radius International as part-time adjunct faculty, training young missionaries.
Radius equips cross-cultural workers to plant churches among unreached people groups. Bill teaches two courses. The first one is five days (10 hours) long, called Form & Meaning. It is part of the Culture Acquisition curriculum at Radius, and is presented during the students’ first semester. Here’s how the Radius website describes that course:
In all areas communication, the difference between “form” and “meaning” is hugely significant. When functioning in our own language and culture, we intuitively manage that difference, and we depend upon it constantly! But what we do intuitively in our own culture can really hinder clear communication across cultural and linguistic boundaries. We want you to avoid the common communication errors that take place when we assume that similar “forms” shared by two cultures have similar “meanings”. We’ll equip you to become aware of the form-meaning challenge and teach you how to successfully manage it.
Bill uses lots of examples from the Philippines and the Palawano people. It’s a fun, interesting module.
Tijuana street scene
The Radius campus is in Tijuana, Mexico. Now that we are based in San Diego, we can drive across the border into Mexico. It takes us almost exactly 30 minutes to get from our house to the school.
Donna often accompanies Bill on the days he teaches, as she really enjoys interacting with the students and staff.
The second course he teaches is Semantics and Translation. It is two weeks long (20 hours), and a bit more intense and technical. It expands on the Form and Meaning course, and covers many of the areas involved in Bible translation with an emphasis on translating the original meaning.
The students are a committed bunch. They live in Tijuana for 10 months developing ministry skills and character to be effective, long-term cross-cultural workers.
“Radius is a serious, 10-month course,
designed for people who are planning to do serious, long-lasting church planting among unreached peoples.”
They inspire us! One young couple is headed to a war-torn Asian nation, another wants to work in South Asia, another couple is headed for Africa.
The Radius kitchen
The students live full-time in Tijuana, and eat at the school. We get to join them for lunches when we are down there. Wonderful, home-cooked Mexican food.
Great lunches! This one was chile rellenos by Donna’s special request.
This past December, Radius’ second graduating class made its exit. And now, just this week, another group of students have started their year of studies.
The map below shows where they may end up in the years to come. Bill and I sincerely hope our relationships with these students will be long-term, and that we will be able to see some of them in their future places of ministry over the coming years, to encourage them, to help them in their language learning, and to see in person what God is doing among Unreached Peoples.
For a close-up, interactive version of this map, go to this link.
We appreciate your partnership as we train these young people to effectively plant churches among Unreached People Groups by ministering in their Heart Languages.