The most important thing when I am preaching in British Sign Language (BSL) to a deaf congregation is that I must prepare in BSL not in English. The challenge of preparing as well as preaching in BSL is that there aren’t an awful lot of resources I can access directly, so I need to be somewhat creative in my approach to preparation.
The Bible does not, yet, exist in the form of a BSL translation. The BSL Bible translation project (https://bslbible.org.uk) have only managed to translate Mark’s gospel so far and have just started work on Genesis. So, as I search for a suitable text to preach on, it needs to be one that both I and whoever I ask to sign it in worship can translate clearly. I tend to use the lectionary as a starting point, sometimes looking at the week before or after as most deaf church services are monthly. I am looking for a text with a strong narrative that I can retell within the deaf BSL storytelling tradition, or one with characters I can envisage the community relating to. Sometimes thinking about how I might translate a passage into BSL can bring forth a whole sermon idea around why I’ve chosen this sign for that concept instead of another possible option.
