About

Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada bridges the gap between the church and the Bibleless. We translate the Word into the heart languages of unreached people to see transformed lives and grow thriving New Testament churches. The church needs to know how great the need is for entire people groups to receive the Word of God in their heart language. The Bibleless need to know how great their need is to receive the Word. We use Bible translation, literacy, and development as tools for church planting and evangelism.

Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada employs missionaries on Canadian projects that are often in partnership with our Pioneer Bible Translators’ global partners. Together, by God’s grace, we will meet the remaining needs for Bible translation among 300 language groups and do our part in the efforts of the worldwide Bible translation movement. To this end, we mobilize the church to both send and support Canadian missionaries.

Our Mission

Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada exists to disciple the Bibleless, mobilizing God’s people to provide enduring access to God’s Word.

Our Vision

Transformed lives through God’s Word in every language.

Our Primary Strategy

Prayer is our strategy.

Statement of Faith
  • We believe in one God who created the world and exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  • We believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of the Father interceding for the saints, preparing an eternal dwelling place for all who have received Him as Savior and Lord.
  • We believe in the Holy Spirit who indwells believers to lead and help them.
  • We believe God saves people and gives them eternal life through Jesus.
  • We believe God’s salvation is by grace through faith in the Son of God.
  • We believe in Jesus’ atoning death on the cross for our sins as well as His resurrection from the dead.
  • We respond to God’s gift of salvation by obeying His commands.
  • We believe baptism is a public demonstration of faith in Christ out of our obedience to Him.
  • We believe baptism represents our dying with Christ, turning from sin and our old way of life, being raised in Christ to walk a new life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • We believe in the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s purposes in our lives and the world around us.
  • We believe each follower of Jesus should seek to live a holy, godly life as they learn to put to death the deeds of the flesh and be led by His Spirit.
  • Jesus is building the Church by assembling communities of His followers.
  • We accept the Bible as the Word of God, our supreme authority and the basis of all we believe and do.  
  • We believe that Scripture cannot be understood apart from the work of the Holy Spirit who convicts us and confirms His Word to us so that we can truly know Him and His will.
Core Values

We do what we do because we value:

  • The church as God’s instrument to accomplish His mission that all peoples would glorify and worship Him.
  • Pioneering among the least-reached, Bibleless language groups, planting a network of reproducing churches adapted to their contexts.
  • Enduring access to God’s Word as essential for life transformation, discipleship, and growing the church.
  • Obeying Christ’s commission by teaching people to follow Jesus and by living out the values of His Kingdom.
  • Partnering with like-minded people to accomplish mutual goals.
  • Living incarnationally with the local people, learning from deep relationships and communicating in the most effective language.
  • Equipping those we send, their families, and local teammates for healthy and effective ministry.
Strategies and Methods

Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada works collaboratively with our global partner Pioneer Bible Translators, based out of Dallas, TX, to be the best problem-solving team for helping a people without God’s Word impact their context with Scripture, equipping them to translate it into their language and use it to transform their community. Helping a people group go from Bibleless to Bible impact constitutes our sharp focus. Our flexible, holistic approach is a core strength. We will consider our ministry among a people group complete when a network of churches is using Scripture to grow, mature and multiply. Our primary strategies are to:

Mobilize God’s People
  • Praying to the Lord of the Harvest.
  • Calling and equipping God’s people everywhere to pray, give, and volunteer with us.
  • Recruiting, training, and sending missionaries, including any children in the family for excellent service.
  • Involving each missionary to mobilize God’s people through partnership development efforts.
  • Equipping Bibleless people for partnership.
Provide enduring access to God’s Word
  • Determining the need through survey.
  • Translating Scripture.
  • Developing sustainable literacy programs.
  • Joining with others to provide oral, visual, and written Scripture-based materials for church planting and discipleship.
Disciple the Bibleless by maximizing the impact of Scripture
  • Living in a way that glorifies God to exemplify the impact of the Bible on us, including personal evangelism and works of compassion.
  • Working with existing churches to transition them into greater use of Scripture in their own language.
  • Establishing and strengthening churches to maximize the use of the translated Scriptures, working together with partners where they are present.
  • Promoting the use of local art and music to increase Scripture impact.
  • Ministering through community development and community health evangelism in ways that promote the use of Scripture:
    • by building the church’s economic capacity to partner in mission.
    • by softening the hearts of people groups resistant to Scripture.
Accelerate the mission through teamwork
  • Cooperating and partnering with others.
  • Building effective teams.
  • Caring for missionaries and their families by promoting mutual love and concern.
  • Providing administration and leadership at the international and national levels.
  • Providing support services in the field.
Heritage

This mission combines the genius of Cameron Townsend (founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators) with that of Donald MacGavran (founder of the Church Growth movement), with an emphasis on excellence in Greek and Hebrew exegetical studies inspired by Eugene Nida (United Bible Societies). We mobilize churches to send missionaries who would use Bible translation and literacy as strategies for church planting and church growth.

From this vision, Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada was born in 1996 out of one’s man desire to see God’s Word transforming lives in the least-reached people groups of the world.  Through timely encounters and words aptly spoken, God used a  group of committed volunteers to work tirelessly and to register as a Canadian charity.

With our roots in the Restoration Movement, Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada is committed to practicing unity in the body of Christ with Scripture as the sole authority. We promote the restoration of the unity of the Church by mobilizing Christians to work together on the basis of obeying the clearly taught, essential elements of Scripture while allowing for a wide diversity of opinion on matters that Scripture does not make clear. Because of our history we work to mobilize the churches of our heritage as well as believers of every background and all who are able to unite around reading and obeying the Bible and making it accessible to people who do not have it.

Future

In the future, Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada in partnership with our global partnerships will follow the Spirit’s lead to fill the gaps in the Bible translation movement so that we and our partners will see churches with Scripture transforming every language group on earth by 2050.

The Pioneer Bible Translators Global Movement has the audacious goal of starting and finishing 250 projects by 2050 bringing our total number of projects to 300. We estimate that if we can complete 300 translation projects total, our 30 Forum of Bible Agencies partners will have enough momentum to handle the rest of the needs.

Because we are a Bible translation agency that also does church planting, we are uniquely suited to send teams of translators, church planters, literacy workers, and community development workers to cross language barriers among 200 of the remaining language groups for whom there is still no church and no Scripture. These least-reached, Scriptureless language groups suffer the greatest spiritual poverty remaining on earth. We are focusing most of our energy on this strategic gap to help eliminate the tragedy of extreme spiritual poverty.

We plan to help fill a second critical gap in areas of extreme linguistic diversity where the sheer number of languages currently overwhelms the resources of the Bible translation movement. The Pioneer Bible Translators Global Movement plans to start 50 translation projects to help our partners overcome the challenge of extreme linguistic diversity.

Some language communities scattered over the earth have received a finished New Testament, but have not yet started to use it to transform their context. To fill this third gap, the Pioneer Bible Translators Global Movement intends to send 100 Scripture Impact workers who will find innovative ways to ensure that every language community that has Scripture begins to use it. Pioneer Bible Translators of Canada intends to send 25 of those 100 Scripture Impact workers.

By intentionally filling these three strategic gaps, we believe we will lighten the burden on our partners, making it possible for the Church to cross every remaining language barrier with church, Scripture and life transformation. Never before has it been imaginable, but we believe we are now training and sending out the generation of missionaries that can leave behind Churches using Scripture to transform every language community on earth.