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A Body with Parts

The Members of the Extended Family

The individual Wycliffe-family organizations perform unique functions for the whole family. Some of these organizations are related to each other more like cousins than siblings. In ways similar to most other enterprises (companies, armies, governments, clubs, churches, etc.), our work is a mixture of widely differing functions: linguistics, accounting, construction, translation, publicity, management, personnel and, obviously, IT. These functions are often housed within several "kinds" of organizations in the Wycliffe family.

The Implications of This Structure

There are some things you need to keep in mind about Wycliffe as you connect with our various organizational entities, and these things are mostly consequences of our history:

• Interaction with "Wycliffe" very frequently involves one or more organizational boundaries being crossed. This is particularly true of the membership process (for example, a New Zealander web developer could interact in parallel with both Wycliffe New Zealand, the "membership" group, and JAARS, the IT evaluation/assignment group). Volunteering has this same dynamic.
• In your communications with a specific Wycliffe person, you should know or find out what Wycliffe organization they represent. This will help you "place" them in the larger structure and reduce your confusion.
• You may want to take a short-term trip to a Wycliffe field location. At the present time, there is no one Wycliffe organization or "department" which coordinates all field visits or volunteering. One goal of this website is to provide a central starting point for the IT domain.

The People of Wycliffe

In total, there are more 12,000 Wycliffe workers and partners world-wide. Thousands of volunteers also contribute their time and energy annually, either part-time (short-term trips, spare-time activity, and some remote working) or full-time. Many retirees contribute their professional experience to Bible translation on a seasonal basis or by settling near a Wycliffe centre and working part-time or even full-time.

The language of wider communication throughout Wycliffe is English, though the membership organizations operate in their respective languages locally. Wycliffe members in "field" locations tend to speak the home language amongst themselves, but immediately switch to the national language if a citizen of the "field" country is present. For example, one entity in Africa had 14 nationalities represented among the 80+ Wycliffe staff. They commonly worked together as multicultural colleagues in English, but would all switch to French if any West African joined the conversation. Wycliffe workers are required to become comfortable in the national language of their field location. This is most often done through field study in the national language.

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