Video tribute courtesy of Seed Company.

On Sept. 29, 2025, one of the great heroes of Bible translation, Dr. Katharine (Katy) Barnwell, went home to be with the Lord after a lifetime of faithful service.

Katy’s impact on Bible translation is almost impossible to overstate. As Russ Hersman, Wycliffe’s former chief operating officer and now a field coordinator for Anglophone/Lusophone Africa, put it: “I don’t know that there’s anyone doing translation work today who hasn’t been impacted in some way by Katy’s writing and teaching. Her technique, known as the ‘Barnwell Translation Method,’ is used by local translators to translate the Scriptures into their heart language.”

Her journey began in 1960, when she heard George Cowan speak about the need for Bible translation at her university’s Christian Union. Katy later recalled, “When I heard about the need for Bible translation and what was involved, I immediately knew in my heart, ‘This is for me.’” That simple moment of calling set her on a path that reshaped the face of global missions.

Katy spent much of her career in Nigeria, training and mentoring teams to translate God’s Word into dozens of languages. Her groundbreaking textbook, “Bible Translation: An Introductory Course in Translation Principles,” has been printed and reprinted for decades, becoming the gold standard for training translators across Africa, Asia, the Americas, Eurasia and the Pacific. As Russ reflected: “Most of us take for granted that much of Bible translation today is done by local translation teams. Katy wrote the book on that. I mean, she literally wrote the book on that — the book that has been used to train a couple generations of national translators.”

But Katy’s influence extended far beyond methods and manuals. She was deeply relational, marked by humility and approachability. “One might think Katy was some high-level, barely approachable academic,” Russ noted, “but nothing could be less true. Among the majority world, where relationships are the currency of working together, Katy has always been ‘one of us’ — whether the ‘us’ were from England or Ethiopia or East Timor.”

Her colleagues in Nigeria often called her “Mama Katy.” Others have called her the “mother of modern Bible translation” or even the “mother of 21st century missions.” What united these titles was her deep commitment to equipping others, building up the Church and ensuring that people everywhere could encounter God’s Word in their own language.

Katy’s legacy is not just in the methods she pioneered or the books she wrote. It is in the thousands of lives she touched, the leaders she mentored and the generations of translators she empowered.

“We grieve her passing, but we also celebrate a life marked by extraordinary faithfulness and impact,” said Dr. John Chesnut, Wycliffe’s president and CEO. “I believe she has already heard the words she longed for: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”