The Question Nobody Had Asked Them
On the margins of the Africa Sings meeting, Bio was asked if he could help students learn Biblical Hebrew. Bio agreed to talk. But first he asked a question: did the institute have any curriculum on biblical poetry?
The Third Idea
Before writing a single line of a song, Jon Hutchins works through a psalm in detail — its structure, imagery, the progression of its thought. When he came to Psalm 19, he saw two main ideas. Then he opened Scriptura’s resources, which showed him a third idea he had missed.
Beauty Is Not the Reward. It’s the Work.
On the first morning of the workshop, our facilitator made an argument that stops people in their tracks: “If not beautiful, a poem translation is not accurate.”
A Musician Must First Be an Exegete
The musicians who came to the Yaoundé workshop had composed before. Yet what they hadn’t done was go through the process of internalizing a psalm. Working through Scriptura’s materials changed that.
David Doesn’t Sit in a Chair
In Scriptura’s training materials, there is an image of David lamenting. Four participants in Mbandaka flagged it.
The Word They Dropped
When the Lingala group composed their song from Psalm 133, they ran into a problem. Their chosen wording felt formal, distancing — the opposite of the warmth the psalm was reaching for.
The Instrument Nobody Could Fully Explain
Psalm translation into local languages isn’t only a linguistic challenge. It’s a cultural one.
He Read the Document and Began
We handed over training guides without giving instructions. The results surprised us.
