The businessman whose family’s $70 million gift lifted Oral Roberts University (ORU) out of debt is backing a cooperative effort to digitize Bible content and speed the pace at which translations are completed.
Every Tribe Every Nation plans to initially put 160 existing texts into digital format, although Mart Green said the process for converting several thousand will likely take 20 to 25 years.
“This is driven by the sense of urgency in several areas,” said Green, who became chairman of ORU’s board of trustees three years ago after helping the school pay off $54 million in debt. “What’s front and center for me right now would be mobile. Every hour 1,000 people are downloading the Bible onto their iPhone.”
What is most interesting about this story is that here we have publishers not just being pursued by their customer audiences, but now donors are also getting into the fray making sure that no effort is spared using financial and collaborative tools that would make sure the Bible makes it to every corner of the reading, listening, and communicating world.
In our Future Bibles series, we looked at publishing being effected by digital trends. This report by Charisma Magazine further emphasizes this point. For publishers, the challenge will not just be technical, but also aiding teachers and communities to also digitize their teaching tools and methods to account for this huge digital push.
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