Every Tribe Every Nation website

Forty years is a long time — just ask the Children of Israel. Or ask the Eastern Jacaltec of Guatemala, who waited 40 years for the completion of a Bible translation in their heart language. The image of one Eastern Jacaltec man in tears as he received his long-awaited Bible made a lasting impression on donor and filmmaker Mart Green, who had flown down to Guatemala with Wycliffe Bible Translators for the dedication ceremony of the new translation in 1998. That image went on to spark an idea that Green later shared with the Forum of Bible Agencies: a vision for a collaborative effort that would link Bible ministries together, in partnership, enabling them to share God’s Word on an unprecedented level.

That is the vision behind Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN), a cooperative initiative to collect, digitize, store and distribute Bible translations from a single clearinghouse location. John Mark Mitchell, American Bible Society (ABS) director of digital ministry, says that ETEN facilitates “Bible agencies working even closer together, and donors working even closer together, in a concerted effort to complete the translation goals that are before us . . . and massively accelerate Bible engagement through digital distribution.”

This effort, now a joint partnership of American Bible Society, the United Bible Societies, Wycliffe/SIL and Biblica, is quickly moving to launch. As technological advancements enable increased digital access around the globe, ETEN’s goal is to ensure that a heart language Bible translation is available for previously unreached people groups in a format they can understand and relate to.

ETEN is poised to “explode [Scripture] distribution beyond anything we can imagine right now,” says ABS Executive Adviser to Global Scripture Ministries Peter Bradley. Smartphone technology, for example, has “just leapfrogged over
the old technology of landlines, and everything else.” It’s Mitchell’s hope that through the use of technological advances, such as smartphones and print-on-demand technology, ETEN will allow an “even deeper relationship to develop between Bible agencies. And, through an active participation from donors, we could see and be able to live in an era when the Bible is available in every language, in every tongue, for every tribe.”

Worldwide, only 451 translations of the full Bible have been completed, but some 1,200 New Testaments and 850 single books of the Bible are also translated. As ETEN works to digitize and aggregate those Bibles, some 2,000 heart languages remain untranslated. “It’s going to take some important investment, but we have the possibility that in our lifetime,” Mitchell says, “that gap could be closed.” And no one would ever wait 40 years for a Bible again.