Big Item: Sayão’s Study Bible Starts Strong

The Brazilian Christian publishing house Geográfica editora lists 63 Bibles and 115 other books for sale. 

Its current best seller is the Route 66 Study Bible with Luiz Sayão.

“Professor Sayão is well known in Brazil,” said Maria Fernanda Vigon, the firm’s editorial director, during an Oct. 30 presentation at the TWR Ibero-Latin America Partners Conference in Bogotá, Colombia.

The study Bible, more than 2,000 pages long and 15 years in the making, was officially launched in August although released in May, Vigon said, with a print run of 20,000 copies. As of last week, 7,000 copies had been sold. 

An update on Route 66 – or Mission 66, as it’s known in the United States and other countries – was a highlight of the final day of the biennial conference, which drew 50 representatives from 21 countries. I wrote three previous blogs from the conference but ran out of time to complete this installment.

The progress is exciting, said Jon Fugler, whose role as chief content officer for TWR includes bringing Sayão’s work to a wider audience.
 

Reaching Farther

Sayão, who led the team that translated the New International Version of the Bible into Portuguese, began working on Route 66 in 2006 and completed it three years later. The book-by-book study — engaging, informative and relevant – plays out on radio and podcasts over 2½ years.

It has been produced for more than a decade in conjunction with RTM (Radio Trans Mundial) Brazil, TWR’s partner in that country. Its reach was already being expanded to other languages when Lauren Libby, then TWR’s president, signed a partnership agreement with Sayão in March 2023 to foster still more widespread growth. 

Susie Lee, project coordinator for Route 66, said the program now is available or in development in Spain; Spanish-speaking Latin America; Angola, Mozambique and East Timor (Portuguese); China (Mandarin); 10 English-speaking locations including the United States; Germany, Japan; Arab-speaking countries; Indonesia; French-speaking Africa; Ukraine; and the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau (Creole).

Nine additional languages are being explored, Lee said.

Meanwhile, TWR has decided to refocus its efforts on international distribution, which is where its roots are, Fugler said. Because of that, TWR stopped distributing the English-language programs on U.S. radio stations. The last episode broadcast in that way was on Oct. 31, about a year after its debut. It’s still available on demand as a podcast via TWR360, however.

That aside, Mission 66 is making inroads.

“The thing that really struck me is how it’s multiplying,” Fugler said.

Sayão, who suffered a stroke earlier this year, was unable to attend the conference in person but paid a live visit by video.

The Publisher

Geográfica operates out of three plants in the vicinity of São Paulo, Brazil’s capital and largest city. It employs 450 people across three shifts and is printing 2 million Bibles and other books per month, Vigon said.

In assembling the study Bible, the Geográfica team used artificial Intelligence to transcribe the notes from Route 66 programs, she said. That was a massive endeavor in itself. But Sayao’s style presented an additional wrinkle.

“He likes to make jokes,” Vigon said. “That just doesn’t work on the printed page.”

If the study Bible is produced in other languages, being able to work from the Portuguese version will make the process easier, Fugler said.

There’s interest, also, in making the Mission 66 Study Bible available in a digital format, he added.

Images: (top banner) Luiz Sayão speaks via a video link during the Ibero-Latin America Partners Conference, (middle, right) Jon Fugler holds the Route 66 Study Bible with Luiz Sayão during the Ibero-Latin America Partners Conference.