Reflections on Language Learning from a Pastor-Turned-Linguist

It’s no newsflash to emphasize the importance of language learning for missionary and some pastoral work. Yet how much time have you spent reflecting on the pastoral significance of language learning?

God’s idolatry-diffusing dispersion of languages in Genesis 11 continues to bring challenges to pastors today, especially as we consider (a) pastoring multicultural and multilingual congregations, and (b) the importance of language in training for missions. These aren’t just difficulties for those laboring to translate the Bible or facilitate literacy. They’re urgent matters in being and making disciples of Jesus in our local churches, both domestically and globally.

I recently completed a Ph.D. in second language acquisition from a major U.S. research university. During my studies, I had the joy of serving my local congregation as the elder who primarily connects with our supported workers abroad. Through these friendships and pastoral conversations, questions connecting my research work with how we support missions have come up repeatedly.

• How should we as pastors think about language as we consider new candidates for membership in our churches and disciple our members toward missions?
• As we seek to send workers to the field, how does the inherent variability in individual language learning ability shape both our preparation and expectation-setting (time, energy, resources)?
• Perhaps most importantly, how is language involved in fulfilling the Bible’s “one another” commands in the context of a local church? Can a Mandarin-speaking expat be a meaningful church member in an Arabic-speaking church with many members who speak only Arabic, especially if the Mandarin speaker has limited or no ability to communicate in Arabic?

I’ve been a lay elder whose career has focused on language learning, and my doctoral research focused on how adults (i.e., people older than twelve) process and learn new languages. Here are a few reflections on crosslinguistic pastoral work and local church membership.

1. Language Learning Is an Incredible Gift

The more I learn about the way our brains are designed to communicate meaning, the more I worship the God who made our brains. Through language we learn about the world. We learn what it means to be made in God’s image. We learn what others are like and what God is like. None of that can happen without language!

2. Language Learning Is Gloriously Complex

Babies begin to process language sounds and create categories for those sounds when they’re growing in their mother’s womb. They create auditory categories for their first language by the age of six months. Some articulatory features of language are wired into us by the age of two. Our brains change dramatically around middle school, which means there are certain features of language that are easier or more difficult to learn. I could go on here, but you get the point.

3. Language Learning Is Almost Always Difficult for Adults, Both Cognitively and Emotionally

Because of cognitive and emotional changes during physical maturation, it becomes much more difficult as we age to hear and repeat new sounds accurately and detect new patterns in language. This makes certain aspects of language learning, especially in spoken language, more difficult for many people as they get older. We also become much more embarrassed to make mistakes, which slows our progress further.

4. Language Learning Happens Best in a Meaning-Focused Context

This is a controversial claim in many ways, but it makes sense if you find classroom-based language instruction to be mind-numbing. When we’re motivated to get a message across, we’re much more motivated to learn, and we tend to do so more quickly. This happens when the tasks and goals of language learning are both clear and focused on meaning.

5. Language Learning Involves Input, Interaction, and Feedback

Learning apps can be wonderful in providing information (input), but very little opportunity for interaction or feedback. Classroom-based language instruction likewise involves the teacher speaking rather than meaningful interaction patterns and opportunity for feedback. Our members and supported workers should seek out all three.

6. Language Learning Is Community-Based

Language learning is closely tied both to the relationship between the language you know with the language you’re learning (called linguistic distance), as well as the specific ways that language is used within the community (think dialect). Understanding the language involves understanding the forms of the language (its sounds and symbols), along with how meaning is communicated within the culture, and how to communicate the truth of the Bible within that language and culture. If language is focused on meaning, our members must be able to understand the meaning intended by both the speaker and the audience.

7. Language Learning Is Individual

God created our minds in a delightfully complex way, and there are real cognitive differences between us. We know this anecdotally. Usually, if you like learning a language, it’s because you were good at it in school or when traveling or if you lived in another culture. If you don’t like it, it’s often because you weren’t good at it. Being “good” at learning language means many things, but some of them are written into our design. We as pastors need to know that our supported workers will learn languages in different ways, at different speeds, and with different outcomes.

8. Language Learning Is Essential to Bible Translation and Gospel Proclamation

Deep knowledge of the language and culture we seek to reach is of central importance in the massive and essential task of faithfully translating the living and abiding Word of God into another language. It’s also essential to the regular preaching of God’s Word. If the pastors we’re training and sending don’t have the skills necessary for careful explanation of the text, or if the members of our congregations can’t understand us, then the likelihood of misleading the congregation on essential points (intentionally or unintentionally) increases. Deep language learning rises to the level of a gospel protection issue.

9. Language Learning Is Essential to Loving One Another in a Local Church

Here, I’m thinking about the counseling ministry of a local church especially for missionaries who labor in churches where literacy rates are low. How can we provide biblical counseling without a shared language? How can we have difficult conversations about church membership, discipline, and doctrine? How can we keep a close watch on those under our care if we don’t have a common language?

10. Language Learning Is Temporary, but Unity in Diversity among God’s People Will Last

The biblical picture of confusion among languages that first surfaces in Genesis 11 has an endpoint. Praise God! Even in Scripture, we see glimpses of confusion turning to understanding. The gospel goes forth in comprehensible ways in Acts 2, the Corinthian church is encouraged toward unity in 1 Corinthians 12, and those from every tribe, nation, and language surround the throne without linguistic or theological confusion in Revelation 5. Until Christ returns, language learning will be essential to fulfilling Jesus’s command to make disciples. As pastors, let’s grow in our understanding of how important language learning is for preparing and supporting multilingual laborers for the Lord of the harvest to send (Matt. 9:38).