The Traveling Team documents that Americans spend more on Halloween costumes for their pets than they give to missions. That’s scary! But it’s not the case at BG. A major portion of our budget goes to missions both locally and globally, surpassing the national average at about 20%.
BG has a missions legacy. Joseph Grimes, retired Cornell linguistics professor and a pioneer in Bible translation, is the only person known to have helped translate the entire Bible into two different languages in two different countries. He and his wife Barbara were longtime missionaries from our church. He retired in 2021 at the age of 93 after 71 years of service. Joe worked on the modern Hawaiian Pidgin English Bible with 27 pidgin speakers for 12 years and on the Huichol Bible (the native language of the Wixáritari people in Mexico) for decades longer.
Joe is often credited with pioneering the use of computers in linguistics and Bible Translation, including the first computer-typeset New Testament in 1969. Several translators have said that Joe’s National Science Foundation-funded Concordance project of the 1960s and 70s was the single most useful tool for raising the quality of Bible translation. The Grimes also created The Ethnologue (ethnologue.com), a reference website cataloging all of the world’s known living languages.
The Global Missions Committee attends to the needs of our missionaries. Specifically, the committee has three tasks:
1) To facilitate the church’s support of missions through finances, prayer, and correspondence,
2) To inform the congregation of missionary news, prayer concerns, and international issues,
3) To provide training that encourages individuals to participate in global mission work.
Over the next two weekends, we will welcome the Benjamins and the Olsens, two of BG’s missionary families. The Olsens serve in Ecuador, and the Benjamins serve worldwide.
There are two special opportunities for the congregation to meet and get to know these missionaries…
Monday, October 23rd at 7pm in the Family Center, the Benjamins will lead us in “Finishing Well” where they will share keys to flourishing during the “fourth quarter” of life.
Saturday, October 28th at 6pm in the Family Center, the Olsens will judge BG’s first-ever Pie Bake-Off with a prize from Ecuador for the winner.
Please join us!