Metanoia New Testament

• Location: Eurasia
• Target Completion Date: 2033

A minority group, the Metanoia (a pseudonym) are a "hidden people," out of sight of missiologists and the Church; however, they are not hidden from God. They are also referred to as "unreached" people, since some groups lack enough believers and resources to effectively witness to their people. In their home country, they number about 30,000, with 10% professing Christianity, .3% of whom claim to be evangelical.

These believers, who reside in nine different towns, lack Scriptures in their language and experience persecution for their faith. About one-third of these believers trusted Christ through the ministry of one evangelist, and additional members of this language group have come to Christ in the past few decades. After two of these converts attended Bible college in a neighboring country, one returned to his homeland and encouraged his people to ask for assistance from Bibles International on a New Testament translation. Because foreign language translations are not only difficult to obtain but also not well understood by most, the Metanoia believers desperately need a Bible in their language. They formed a translation team and a sponsorship committee, and the BI literacy team held a literacy workshop and linguistic analysis in 2014.

Bibles International adopted this translation project in January 2015 and printed a trial edition of the Gospel of Mark in 2019. Because local police had already raided their meeting places and fined their pastors for holding illegal services, the translation team asked for no public mention of the translation project, and even withheld the news of the translation work from their own congregations initially. Today they are experiencing more freedom due to official government recognition, but local persecution remains.  In 2022, the Metanoia received a second printing of the Gospel of Mark. This time, it was printed in two scripts to include most Metanoia speakers. In addition, Faith Comes By Hearing produced an audio and a video version of the Gospel of Mark.

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