Scrambling for Bibles

In the buckle of the Bible Belt last year, Katie Richardson found herself scrambling for, of all things, a Bible.

The World Relief caseworker was shepherding a Muslim Somali family through a refugee resettlement program in Nashville. That's when the family's eldest brother, during his sister's hospital stay after surgery, asked for a Somali Bible.

"I didn't know it would be such an ordeal," Richardson said. Her staff spent weeks chasing dead-end leads before finally sleuthing out an online catalog specializing in non-English Scripture. Richardson ordered 10 Somali Bibles, only to find just one Somali New Testament in stock.

"Many of our refugees come from closed countries where they've never heard the gospel," Richardson said. "It shouldn't be this hard."

The call to "go ye into all the world" spurred a 19th and 20th-century mission movement from North America. But now that the world has moved in next door, some are asking, "Where are the Bibles?"

Often they're concentrated overseas, where Bible agencies hold copyrights to various translations, and where printing and distribution systems are most cost-effective. As a result, a handful of retailers, ethnic ministries, and home missionaries have pioneered their own supply networks to funnel non-English Bibles back to the United States—where at least 12 percent of the population is now foreign-born. But they wonder why, in this technologically advanced, global age, the non-English Word remains so elusive here.

"It's a very significant problem, one the International Bible Society has wrestled with for years," said Steve Johnson, publisher of the International Bible Society, which in March merged with the Christian distributor Send The Light (IBS-STL). "It's a challenge to get these translations we own overseas to indigenous communities in the U.S."

According to a 2006 United Bible Societies report, 1,541 languages now have a printed New Testament. Fewer than 200 of these translations are available for sale in North America, however, and many common languages are difficult to keep in stock.

Some leaders of smaller ministries blame the large Bible operations for safeguarding their copyright investments by limiting reprint and distribution rights. The monopolizing effect, they say, restricts access to God's Word and inhibits its missional mandate. Yet outdated business and mission models are as likely to blame for the bottleneck on foreign-language Scripture.

The Chicago-based Bible League, for instance, has long found it more efficient to print and distribute African-language Scripture from the Ukraine. The immigration wave of the last 20 years is now forcing it—and other U.S.-based ministries—to probe for new ways of operating, said Bible League executive Mike Southworth.

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"We're just beginning to ask the question, 'For Nigerians in New York City, how do we make available to them the resources that we already have in Nigeria?'" Southworth said.

Society Snags

Starting in the 1970s, Seattle surgeon Kyle Chapman vowed to give all his patients a Bible in their native tongue. But he felt stymied by U.S. Bible agencies, which were consistently out of stock of the translations he wanted. The agencies also complained that he "strained resources" by placing more than one order at a time. Meanwhile, the better-furnished Canadian Bible Society, citing UBS protocol, refused to ship him orders a few miles across the border.

So Chapman developed his own resource channels through missionaries. He gathered Bibles in 350 languages at his farmhouse, and Bible societies started referring people to him. During the 1990s Bosnian War, the ABS itself called him and requested a Croatian Bible.

"It started as a hobby. Then I became a source," said Chapman, who at age 81 still keeps several translations on tap. "It's a tragedy that, in this age of jet travel, Bibles aren't readily available here."

Jay Krause knows the feeling. After managing a bookstore for Operation Mobilization, Krause returned to the U.S. to find ministries struggling to serve an influx of internationals with Bibles. "It's like a famine," Krause was told.

He started phoning contacts overseas: publishers, booksellers, and missionaries. In 1985, when his Bible inventory outgrew his bedroom, Krause opened Multi-Language Media, a supplier now based in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

Krause fields customer referrals from ABS and IBS for hard-to-get languages like Albanian and Nepali. Still, because of the shortage of Bibles, some distributors have seen Russian and Korean Bibles scalped online for as much as $300 each. "Unfortunately, it's sometimes about who you know," said Steve Maxted of MGL Multilingual, a Tacoma-based supplier.

Bibles Without Borders

Complaints about Bible societies have caught the agencies' attention—and they've begun responding. During the last several years, IBS has partnered with frontline ministries that work with internationals in the U.S., helping them to raise funds for non-English Bibles. IBS has also created a top-10 list of Bible needs, based on both demographics and spiritual need.

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"People need Scripture in their own cultural context," publisher Johnson said. "IBS has a responsibility to re-inject the Word back into American culture, in the languages America is now speaking."

Last year, the United Bible Societies addressed a key element of the problem by relaxing borders between its 141 member agencies. U.S.-based customers, once limited to requesting orders through the American Bible Society, may now contact overseas societies directly.

"Our traditional model was restrictive," said John Cruz, executive director of ABS's Bibles.com unit."But the world has become a much smaller place. Sometimes, a home country is better able to serve a population than the host country."

The offspring of a $1 million cost-cutting move in 2003, Bibles.com outsourced warehouse operations and reduced staff. The result, Cruz said, is more efficient service and affordable Bibles—not to mention a greatly expanded selection of languages.

"We're building up the [ABS language] list, but we have to be good stewards of limited resources," Cruz said. While inventory in Cambodian, Cebuano, Czech, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Russian, and Syriac is improving, languages like Kinyarwanda (Rwanda's main language) remain perennial problems. ABS officials say it's not feasible to warehouse every language, but they note their recent work with foreign Bible societies to better forecast inventory needs, order extra stock, and track immigrant populations in the U.S.

"We're more proactive now," said John Greco, director of operations for Bibles.com. "We weren't as keen on planning before, but [now] we're really seeing where the holes in the [supply] lines are."

Another challenge remains, however. In 2001, the 25-member Forum of Bible Agencies, which includes groups like ABS, the Bible Society, and Wycliffe Bible Translators, set out to create an internet catalog of the world's Bibles. More than 40 million people in the U.S. don't speak English as their first language. Yet as of today, the Forum has been unable to establish an online database, let alone to begin selling Scripture from it. If all goes well, a site might launch later this year.

"For the church working with the diaspora, it's really disappointing that [such a website] doesn't exist," said Roberto Laver, the Forum's executive director. "But we're operating in a very decentralized world of Scripture information. It's difficult to get buy-in from everyone."

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In 1816, ABS founders stood on the steps of the newly built City Hall in New York City and pledged to disseminate Bibles "until the whole Earth be full of the knowledge of Jehovah."

Although more Bible translations exist today than ever before—2,400 languages have at least a portion of Scripture—the ABS's goal remains elusive. Better cooperation between Bible ministries would go a long way toward fulfilling it.

Christopher Lewis is a freelance journalist based in Kansas City, Missouri.