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Do you think The Message will be well suited for reading in worship?

When I'm in a congregation where somebody uses it in the Scripture reading, it makes me a little uneasy. I would never recommend it be used as saying, "Hear the Word of God from The Message." But it surprises me how many do. You can't tell people they can't do it. But I guess I'm a traditionalist, and I like to hear those more formal languages in the pulpit.

You have said that if you dig your wells deep enough, relevancy is pretty much irrelevant. What sorts of hazards await a translator who focuses on relevance?

The hazard is just triviality. Relevance is relevant for about 10 minutes in the kind of culture we're in. I never thought of relevance. I was thinking of my congregation. I was thinking of these people, the lives they lived. I didn't want to be cute; I didn't want to just get people's attention. So I was always working very closely with those Greek and Hebrew texts, trying to get underneath them and get into them, and then let it come out as the kind of language that we're using. And I wasn't trying to make it easy. I was astounded when I learned about some of the new versions of the Bible that are being published by companies that spend thousands of dollars trying to find the vocabulary level of the average person and exclude all the words that don't fit into that grid. I think you do the best you can with the language you have. The fact is, the Bible is hard. It's not an easy book. I don't think we should compromise the accuracy of the Bible just for ease of reading.

Do you consider it one of the unique qualities of Scripture that it can be translated into so many forms and still retain such spiritual power?

An African theologian, [Kwame] Bediako [author of Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion], says that every time the Bible is translated it releases new meanings. And he was talking about African languages and African dialects. Every time the Bible is translated, you enter a culture and a language system that is unique. And the Bible is true and gets into those rhythms and those idioms and there's more truth there. So the truth is kind of endless, and each culture, dialect, and language gives a new chance to express something nobody has ever quite done this way before. The comments of appreciation that mean the most to me are from Wycliffe translators. They're doing this, and they understand immediately what I'm doing, and they love it.

As The Message has attracted critical praise and a fairly substantial audience already, is there anything else that could make your joy complete?

To tell you the truth, I'm quite detached from it. It wasn't my idea, I've been trying to be a servant to this text for 12 years now, and so it's almost like it's happening to somebody else. I'm surprised at how little emotion I feel about this.

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October 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 11