Heart Language
We believe that it is important to teach people about God and His Word in their heart language. A person’s heart language is the language that the person understands best.
Communication is tough. It involves transferring an idea from my brain through a medium of some sort (like speech, body language, or writing) and forming the same idea in the mind of another person. Obviously, many barriers confront clear communication. Sometimes it may be my speech that is slurred together so it sounds unintelligible to the listening ear or creates the wrong idea in the listener’s mind. Many times, the information I output may be good, but no communication happens because the listener does not comprehend what I’m saying.
For example, every group of enthusiasts of a particular hobby has their own vocabulary that sounds like gibberish to the rest of us. If I were hanging out with a fellow radio controlled plane enthusiast, I could tell him to hit servo reverse on the radio, and he would know what I meant. But most people who have no background in this would not understand. They may conjure up a completely different image in their minds, which could unwittingly result in a catastrophe.
As you can see, these barriers to communication are present, even between two speakers of American English. But crossing the language barrier brings in many more factors that make miscommunication very probable. You may have studied Spanish in school. Now, imagine trying to understand a college lecture on Physics in Mexico city, with a professor speaking Spanish quickly. What percentage of it will you understand? Probably not much, unless you learned Spanish well. But this is similar to the approach that many people adopt in missions. Presenting the gospel to a tribal man in Portuguese when his heart language is a tribal language, has much potential for confusion, especially if he only understands a little bit of Portuguese. He may have only picked it up from his infrequent trips to the closest city.
Cursory knowledge of a language is often good enough to “get by”. You may only need a few words and hand gestures to buy a souvenir in the marketplace. But you will need more than short phrases and hand gestures to clearly communicate the gospel. It is difficult enough to communicate the gospel in our own American context to an English speaker who has his own worldview presuppositions (see article on Worldview), let alone teaching someone about the Lord in another language. You see, knowing a language is not an all-or-nothing asset. Just because someone claims to speak Spanish doesn’t mean that they would understand the professor’s lecture.
Since there is a range of competency when it comes to knowledge of a language, both parties need to know it very well in order for good communication to transpire. Now let’s sum it up simply, as it applies to missions: the tribal guy needs to be a very proficient speaker of the language being used for teaching and the missionary needs to be a very proficient speaker of that same language.
Communication is tough. It involves transferring an idea from my brain through a medium of some sort (like speech, body language, or writing) and forming the same idea in the mind of another person. Obviously, many barriers confront clear communication. Sometimes it may be my speech that is slurred together so it sounds unintelligible to the listening ear or creates the wrong idea in the listener’s mind. Many times, the information I output may be good, but no communication happens because the listener does not comprehend what I’m saying.
For example, every group of enthusiasts of a particular hobby has their own vocabulary that sounds like gibberish to the rest of us. If I were hanging out with a fellow radio controlled plane enthusiast, I could tell him to hit servo reverse on the radio, and he would know what I meant. But most people who have no background in this would not understand. They may conjure up a completely different image in their minds, which could unwittingly result in a catastrophe.
As you can see, these barriers to communication are present, even between two speakers of American English. But crossing the language barrier brings in many more factors that make miscommunication very probable. You may have studied Spanish in school. Now, imagine trying to understand a college lecture on Physics in Mexico city, with a professor speaking Spanish quickly. What percentage of it will you understand? Probably not much, unless you learned Spanish well. But this is similar to the approach that many people adopt in missions. Presenting the gospel to a tribal man in Portuguese when his heart language is a tribal language, has much potential for confusion, especially if he only understands a little bit of Portuguese. He may have only picked it up from his infrequent trips to the closest city.
Cursory knowledge of a language is often good enough to “get by”. You may only need a few words and hand gestures to buy a souvenir in the marketplace. But you will need more than short phrases and hand gestures to clearly communicate the gospel. It is difficult enough to communicate the gospel in our own American context to an English speaker who has his own worldview presuppositions (see article on Worldview), let alone teaching someone about the Lord in another language. You see, knowing a language is not an all-or-nothing asset. Just because someone claims to speak Spanish doesn’t mean that they would understand the professor’s lecture.
Since there is a range of competency when it comes to knowledge of a language, both parties need to know it very well in order for good communication to transpire. Now let’s sum it up simply, as it applies to missions: the tribal guy needs to be a very proficient speaker of the language being used for teaching and the missionary needs to be a very proficient speaker of that same language.