Meet Durk – Weekly Inspiring Image

Durk Meijer

Sunkissed, dusty, and with a beam­ing smile, Durk Mei­jer is an end­less stream of anec­dotes about his trav­els through­out South­ern Africa as­sist­ing mi­nor­ity lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties to get God’s word in their lan­guage. Durk works for a joint ini­tia­tive known as Re­gional Trans­la­tion Services and they are us­ing oral Bible sto­ry­ing as a way to get God’s word out quickly. An oral Bible story is a short pas­sage of Scrip­ture that is trans­lated orally and then shared with oth­ers. This method al­lows peo­ple to en­gage and dis­cover the truths of Scrip­ture from the be­gin­ning of a pro­ject. They don’t have to wait un­til the trans­la­tion is finished.

Durk is pas­sion­ate about us­ing this ap­proach be­cause he be­lieves it helps a com­mu­nity cre­ate a strong the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion. “Peo­ple are dis­cov­er­ing for them­selves what the Bible re­ally says,” he says. “It gives them an enor­mous free­dom, but also sim­ple prin­ci­ples they take into their heart.”

“If we bring what they can re­late to, they start to get in­ter­ested and want to learn more,” Durk shares. “And that’s what you want.”

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Photo & Words: El­yse Patten