For the last forty years, Wycliffe has been privileged to have our offices at The Wycliffe Centre in Buckinghamshire. We’re moving next month – only about 10 minutes down the road – and it seemed a good time to celebrate some of the quirks of our long-time home, like the fact that all the buildings are named after missionaries. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing some of the names that have not only designated our rooms but have shaped our organisation.
Kenneth Pike, a renowned linguist of whom we will find out more in a couple of weeks, said of William Cameron Townsend (known affectionately as Uncle Cam) that, “Not since the third century has there been a man like Cameron Townsend who attempted so much, and saw so many dreams realised in his lifetime.”
It was when he was just 21 that he felt called to take the Bible to the indigenous peoples of South America, and came up against his career defining discovery: many couldn’t read Spanish. It sounds obvious, but Townsend’s realisation set off sparks. Within a few years, he and his wife were living with the Cakchiquel people of Guatemala, studying their language and beginning to help them to translate the Bible so they could understand it.
He became ill, and had to return to the US, but that didn’t stop him. In 1934, he ran the first Wycliffe Summer School. Within 10 years, this had become the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), one of Wycliffe’s key partners, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.
He worked, travelled and knew everyone, including more than 40 heads of state. He received an honorary doctorate, was decorated by five Latin American governments and was declared ‘Benefactor of the Linguistically Isolated Populations of America’ by the Inter-American Indian Congress. What people commented on, though, was his humility: when the president of Mexico visited an Aztec village, a local man said of Townsend, “He treats us just like he does the President. If President Cárdenas comes, he leaves his dinner to talk with him. If one of us comes, he leaves his dinner to talk with us, too.”
As we thank God for his heritage in providing The Wycliffe Centre, we thank him too for providing William Cameron Townsend. When he began his work, he estimated that maybe 1,000 languages needed God’s word. We now know that to be nearly 2,000 without any Scripture at all, and many more with only portions or work in progress. Help to get the Bible to them!
For more about William Cameron Townsend, visit SIL or Wycliffe USA. Photos: Wycliffe USA.
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