The number of people who are becoming acquainted with these books for the first time and even developing an appreciation for them is not keeping pace with the number of the two book's admirers who have died.

Most people have never heard of the traditional Prayer Book and the traditional Hymnal, much less held a copy in their hand and turned over its soiled and timeworn pages. It is the wrong draw. It may have worked in 1979. It is not going to work in 2010.

Portable computers and satellites get the credit for speeding things up by about 125 years.

Previously, a Wycliffe missionary family or team would spend decades learning and transcribing one language in a remote corner of the Earth.

Wycliffe's missionaries had the credo, "one team, one language, one lifetime," Edwards said.

At that pace, the target date had been 2150, Edwards said.

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Wycliffe Bible Translators - Heroes and Saints

And yet there are hundreds of millions of Christians who are faithful believers in the Trinitarian faith of the Creeds, and in Jesus Christ as the Divine/Human Savior of the world. They may not call their daily prayers "quiet time" or talk sentimentally about God often or even expect him to be speaking to them every day. They may focus more on objective, external assurances of grace and less on subjective, experiential ones.

That's only a part of the globalization of local church life. International visitors speak at churches all the time, email campaigns urge action to distribute malaria nets or assure decent wages for coffee pickers, bake sales raise funds for Haiti. Habitat for Humanity speaks of the "theology of the hammer," where groups working together live the spirit of "doing unto others."