Keeping Up With What God Is Doing
Meet Dave McNeill! Dave has been serving with Wycliffe for nearly 40 years, and his journey to missions began in college. As a business management major, he spent a summer overseas contributing to a missions project. While there, Dave learned that one team had pulled a team member into an administrative role, but that skill set wasn’t a part of the person’s gifting. Dave began to realize that he could play a part in God’s mission.
During college, Dave decided to attend a missions conference, where he encountered a Wycliffe booth about opportunities to serve in Bible translation. Dave discovered God was leading him to serve in missions, and he joined Wycliffe right after graduating with his degree! Now he serves as a strategic innovations consultant and lead administrator for the Convergence accelerated apprenticeship program.
Accelerating Progress
God is raising up local churches to take the lead in Bible translation. We’re ready to support local leaders in accomplishing their vision through technology, resources and funding. Local churches are asking us to journey with them and assist with resources at a pace we’ve never experienced before!
We want to strive to keep up with what God is doing and continue saying “yes” to every language still needing Bible translation. As a result of a meeting in 2017, we noticed that even as the number of translation programs was increasing, the number of translation consultants was decreasing.
Traditionally, translation consultants pick up their skills on the job after getting involved with a translation project. As a result, it could take up to a decade to be fully equipped as a translation consultant. But churches don’t want to wait for translation work to start for their communities; they want to start it now. This required teams to think creatively about how to train and mentor more new translation consultants.
Accelerated Training Program
With the pace of Bible translation continuing to accelerate, Wycliffe developed an accelerated apprenticeship program called Convergence! This program equips new Bible translation consultants with both classroom knowledge and hands-on experience in less than five years. Convergence participants are equipped to support and mentor churches, language communities and translation teams. They learn how to participate in the translation and quality assurance processes in a way that is locally relevant and rooted in excellence. This empowers the local church to take ownership of the work in their communities, countries and even entire regions. After completing the program, participants will work in a specific region as a translation consultant!
Convergence is a cross-cultural program — training could happen in Africa, Asia or South America and includes additional short trips to a variety of overseas locations. Convergence participants serve under and with local churches to strengthen the community’s goals and develop sustainable church-led Bible translation programs.
Becoming a Translation Consultant in Training
We’re passionate about empowering and learning from local churches as they work to make Scripture available for their own communities. This means Convergence participants must embrace collaboration with humility. Dave said:
Participants of Convergence are embedded into a cohort of up to eight other people who encourage and pray for each other every step of the way. Mentors from Africa, Asia, Europe and the U.S. provide the participants with global training. Along the way, they develop meaningful relationships with each other. One Convergence participant shared:
Dave and his team work closely with each participant to determine if Convergence is a good fit for their gifts and skills. He shared some of the skills Convergence participants bring:
- A masters of divinity or a master’s degree in a field like biblical studies, linguistics or theology
- The ability to read a biblical language with reference helps
- Knowledge of a modern language other than English that can be used in the local community and to communicate with others on the team
- An eagerness to live and work overseas
An Eternal Impact
Local church leaders recognize that lack of Scripture is a massive barrier to evangelism, discipleship, church planting and other forms of ministry. Scripture empowers people to fully know God’s truth and live in His hope! Dave said:
Today at least 7,300 languages are spoken or signed around the world, and many languages still need Bible translation to start for the first time. As of January 2025, 1.78 billion people are being served through active Bible translation projects. Each number represents a person who has a story that matters to God. Convergence participants get the opportunity to engage with people on a personal level. Dave pointed out:
Ready to Join Us?
You could be part of seeing the Bible — the greatest story ever told — go out to all people around the world. At Wycliffe we embrace collaboration as we serve with the global body of Christ, because every person deserves access to all of God’s Word.
When you serve with us and become a translation consultant in training, you’ll receive global training and join God where He is working. We won’t stop until all people have access to all Scripture.
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