About the Canadian Bible Society
A Bible can be sitting ten feet away from someone and still be inaccessible.
Perhaps they cannot read the language.
Perhaps their eyesight is gone.
Maybe printed words have never been the way they communicate best.
A newcomer to Canada understands Punjabi far more naturally than English.
An Indigenous community wants Scripture in the language grandparents fear their grandchildren may lose.
A soldier needs something small enough to carry in uniform.
A prisoner has plenty of time to read but has never understood where to begin.
For the Canadian Bible Society, putting a Bible into someone's hands is only part of the work.
The deeper goal is helping that person hear God speak.
Start With the Heart Language
Language carries more than information.
It carries memories, humor, relationships, culture, and identity.
That's why hearing Scripture in your own language can feel profoundly different from reading it in a language you learned later.
Bible translation has therefore remained central to the Canadian Bible Society's mission.
Sometimes that means translating Scripture for the first time.
Elsewhere, an older translation needs revision because the language people actually speak has changed.
CBS supports both.
Its work stretches beyond Canada's borders through the worldwide fellowship of Bible Societies, but some of its most meaningful translation work is happening within Canada itself.
Walk Alongside Indigenous Communities
The relationship between Christianity and Indigenous peoples in Canada carries a painful history.
CBS doesn't ignore that context.
It describes its current approach in terms of humility, reconciliation, partnership, and responding when Indigenous communities themselves invite collaboration.
In some communities, Scripture translation has become connected with something larger than producing a religious book:
language preservation.
CBS currently works alongside Indigenous speakers, churches, and organizations on languages including Blackfoot, Kwak'wala, Anihshininiimowin, Naskapi, Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, Plains Cree, Mohawk, and Iñupiaq.
The work can take years.
Translators wrestle with individual words.
Community reviewers listen.
Passages are revised.
Audio is recorded.
Eventually Scripture begins sounding like home.
In 2023, one of those journeys reached an extraordinary milestone when CBS published the first complete Bible in Mohawk.
Sometimes the Right Bible Isn't Printed
A printed Bible isn't equally accessible to everyone.
Someone who is blind may need Braille.
A senior whose eyesight has deteriorated may need large print or audio.
A person who communicates through sign language needs Scripture expressed visually.
Someone living in a primarily oral culture may connect much more naturally by listening.
So CBS publishes and distributes Scripture through print, audio, video, Braille, digital resources, and other accessible formats.
The principle remains simple:
Don't force the person to overcome an unnecessary barrier before they can encounter Scripture.
Bring God's Word as close to them as possible.
Put a Bible Where Someone May Need Hope Most
That philosophy takes CBS into places where people are experiencing very different kinds of pressure.
Canadian correctional institutions are one example.
Working with churches, chaplains, and prison ministries, CBS distributes Key to Freedom, a prison-focused Bible produced with Prison Fellowship Canada.
It uses the easy-to-read Contemporary English Version and includes guidance for people who may know very little about Scripture.
For someone sitting inside a cell, words about guilt, forgiveness, freedom, restoration, and becoming a new person can suddenly become intensely personal.
CBS reported distributing 16,745 Scripture resources through Canadian prison ministry in 2024–2025.
The setting may have prison bars.
The message speaks about freedom.
Carry Scripture Into Military Life
Canadian soldiers have another relationship with uncertainty.
CBS began distributing Scripture to Canadian military personnel in 1914.
By the end of World War II, 434,000 New Testaments had been distributed to Canadian military personnel in 18 languages.
That relationship continues.
Today, special military Bibles are designed to fit into uniform pockets and include material intended for service members and their families.
CBS estimates that more than one million Bibles have been supplied to members of the Canadian Forces over the ministry's history.
A small Bible traveling inside a uniform becomes another expression of the same mission:
put Scripture within reach when someone may need it most.
Welcome Someone Arriving in a New Country
Canada itself has changed enormously since the Society's early years.
People now arrive from virtually every part of the world.
They bring Arabic.
Mandarin.
Punjabi.
Spanish.
Tagalog.
Persian.
And many other languages into Canadian communities.
CBS responds by providing Scripture in more than 70 languages within Canada.
Its ministry to newcomers even extends into citizenship settings through resources such as Word of Welcome.
The mission field isn't only overseas.
Sometimes the nations arrive next door.
Don't Assume Distribution Is the Finish Line
A Bible can be translated perfectly.
Printed beautifully.
Distributed efficiently.
And never opened.
CBS therefore treats engagement as part of the Bible lifecycle.
The objective isn't counting how many books leave a warehouse.
It's helping people encounter what the Bible says.
Resources support churches, small groups, families, and individuals who want to understand Scripture.
Programs also bring biblical material into experiences of trauma and recovery.
Caring for the Wounded Heart, for example, uses Scripture within trauma-healing contexts, while Overcomers provides Bible-based recovery and support.
The book becomes the beginning of ministry rather than its conclusion.
Connect Canada to a Worldwide Bible Movement
The Canadian Bible Society is also part of something much larger than Canada.
Through United Bible Societies, CBS belongs to the worldwide fellowship of national Bible Societies serving more than 200 countries and territories.
That network makes collaboration possible at enormous scale.
Translation expertise can cross borders.
Publishing resources can be shared.
Countries with greater financial resources can help Scripture projects where local communities cannot afford them.
A Canadian donor may ultimately help someone receive Scripture thousands of miles away.
In 2025 alone, CBS says it supported 69 Bible ministry and translation projects across 47 countries.
Keep the Bible at the Center
Programs change.
Formats change.
Technology changes.
The Canadian Bible Society itself could scarcely have imagined today's possibilities when its national work was being established in the early twentieth century.
Nobody was distributing Scripture through smartphones.
There were no digital Bibles.
No MP3 players.
No online Bible platforms.
No video-based sign-language Scriptures.
Yet the central conviction survived every technological shift.
The Bible matters because CBS believes that through Scripture people encounter God's voice and are pointed toward Jesus Christ.
Technology simply creates another way for that encounter to happen.
The Bible in the Hands of a Person
CBS describes its work through four movements:
translation.
publication.
distribution.
engagement.
But those aren't really four unrelated ministries.
They're stages in one journey.
Someone needs Scripture in their language.
It has to be translated.
Then produced in a form they can actually use.
Then it has to reach them.
Finally, they need an opportunity to understand and engage with what they've received.
At the end of that long chain isn't a publishing statistic.
There's a person.
Perhaps sitting in a prison cell.
Listening in a long-term care home.
Opening a Bible at military barracks.
Reading Mohawk Scripture with family.
Receiving a Bible after arriving in Canada.
Or hearing the words of Scripture in their heart language for the first time.
That's the moment all the work was trying to reach.
At the heart of the Canadian Bible Society is a simple conviction: everyone should have an opportunity to hear God speak through His Word. For more than a century, that conviction has taken the ministry far beyond simply printing Bibles. CBS translates Scripture into heart languages, preserves and revitalizes Indigenous-language Scripture, publishes accessible formats, supplies prisons and military personnel, serves newcomers and vulnerable communities, supports trauma healing and recovery, and participates in Bible projects around the world. The format may be a printed Bible, an audio recording, Braille, sign language, or a digital screen. The destination may be a church, prison, military base, Indigenous community, long-term care facility, or someone's first home in Canada. What matters is what happens when Scripture finally reaches the person—and the person begins to hear God speak.
